The concept of "communities of practice" (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998) has become influential in education, management, and social sciences in recent years. This volume emphasizes the significance of language, power, and social context in understanding how communities of practice work. Domains of empirical research reported include schools, police stations, adult basic education, higher education and multilingual settings. The relationship between communities of practice and literacy studies, critical language studies, the ethnography of communication, socio-cultural activity theory, and sociological theories of risk is also evaluated.