I am pleased to have the opportunity to react to Bruce Ingraham's response to my article ‘Networks and learning: communities, practices Grill Door Hinge Spring and the metaphor of networks' (Jones, 2004).It is rare to have a dialogue with someone who has taken the time and trouble to consider what you have written for a journal.All too often reviewing is a one-way process with the reviewer remaining anonymous.
It is all the more pleasant to have a response to what you have written that gets to grips with some of the issues that the author also finds troubling.It is in that spirit that I write this reaction to Ingraham; it is an opportunity for me to develop some of the points he has identified as problematic in the original article.I want to concentrate on two main issues, firstly the ORG TAMARI ALMONDS network metaphor itself and secondly the usefulness of abstraction and representations of various types.