Community-based research and the importance of a research stance

I have always been interested in how people use writing to get work done in the world. That one sentence is how I understand my research, and that sentence goes some way toward explaining why I choose projects (when I get a choice). Because of this interest, rhetoric and composition has sometimes been a difficult fit. I tend to understand "the world" as "not school," and so I tend to focus on writing in community or workplace domains. Because of the critical importance of "work" as a category of activity, I consider technical and professional writing a home. However, because of my interest in things community-based (and public, civic), that field can also be a challenging fit for my work. Rhetorical studies does concern itself with how writing works in public domains, but its history and strong historiographic traditions make situated studies of mundane literacies, technologies, and work difficult to value.