kelley,
elucidation and justification would require a more lengthy, perhaps endless, discussion. that's the nature of the thing, and there's no reason to assume that we should in fact agree. but on to it for the hell of it.
re the passage you cited on 'engaged fallibilistic pluralism', I'm inclined to suggest that the maintenance of pluralism (a la rorty or lyotard) is not one of my concerns. fallibility is a slightly different question, and no doubt I'm probably wrong on many things, and will easily change my mind about some come next month. never claimed otherwise. the issue might more properly be characterised as both different preoccupations (we ask different questions to begin with) and different locations (as I mention re the market and state in the US and Australia in the Balibar posting). not much to be done with that other than trying to be clear about what conditions such preoccupations and idioms. I think ken is quite right to say that "The civil society model that Bernstein employs (I can think of no other name for it) relies, as with Habermas, with an alligience to a quasi-transcendental principle: some sort of wacked one way street transparent communication ethic."
btw, you insist on conversing with rorty, and that's fine. but let me be a little Zizek hysterical about it and say I really can't see me in this place you've assigned as your rortyesque interlocutor... ie., I don't recall using the words or gestures of rorty in any place here, of (in your words) "finding objectivism, universalism, and foundationalism in every criticism".
> and dear, dear, what on earth would people who don't do social research do
> if they didn't have social research to find inadequate? I'll admit that,
> in some ways, I'm being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian in this
> post, but this is a very serious question.
dear, dear, who is this person who doesn't "do social research"? are you defining "social research" specifically as observation, interviews, the tool kit of the ethnographer?
> as much as you seem to want me [and social researchers more generally] to,
> i don't deny your characterization of what passes for social research.
> that you assume that there is some pressing need to delineate these
> deficiencies reveals more about your position than mine. the critique of
> social research i read here seems to require the existence of some sort of
> monolithic, undifferentiated, static body of research theory/practice that
> simply does not exist.
not at all. read it again. I wrote: "...the emergence of techniques of superintendence, management and control. in this sense, methodology, in particular that of the social sciences, is only possible as part of this split, as the seemingly neutral technology of control and study of those already deemed objects, made over once again into the objects of sociological research and ethnographic observation. methodology assumes a separation between these the techniques and the object. so, a belief in methodology is already a belief in this separation as a principle, or prelude to, analysis."
not all social research proceeds on the basis of a Methodism, and not all social research is sociological or indeed 'social scientific'. historically, sociology is only possible as a result of an historic split. as philosophy is only the result, or rather is, surplus theory, ie., premised on the time made possible by surplus labour. these last two points are simply a question of history, not a blanket indictment, but a precondition. the previous points are more specific, they apply to a particular kind of social research, not research per se. (Methodism I would define as the presumable separation of method from theory/politics/narrative, as separate events in research, as the analytical separation of the telescope from that being observed.)
>worries about Doug's cranky portrayal of 'the
> masses' are a little more than amusing.
it never worried me; but why would it be amusing if it did?
>it is accurate to characterize
> most social research as engaging in the kinds of practices you describe;
> but it is...well...a bit wrong to characterize all social research as
> premised on these assumptions. not all social research proceeds the way
> you want it to.
never said it did.
> i am wondering about these specific charges you make though. why is it a
> problem that sennett has never done manual labor before? surely you aren't
> suggesting that he shouldn't do this work simply by virtue of who he is?
I would never wish most manual labour on anyone. it should be avoided as much as possible, and I find little virtue in it or even most forms of intellectual labour for that matter. I thought my constant tirades against the work ethic, including Sennett's lauding of such, have been fairly clear on this.
the question is not whether Sennett should do manual work. the question, for me, is whether he should be observing and studying those who have distinctly less social power than he does. for whom does he do this work? to put it more starkly: is he a spy for the industrial sociologists and other social managers, hidden persuaders, etc? why is he so interested in the 'character' of the workers and not in how capitalism tries to outflank us? why not study capitalists and capitalism? more often than not, the issue is this stark, especially when I hold up _Corrosion_ against a work on a similar theme (ie., the experience of workers in late capitalism) such as Kim Moody's _Workers in a Lean World_. I find the latter much more interesting, insightful and worthwhile. now there's a book that I think has something to offer us.
>it is a body of work that is likely much
> more sympathetic to your position than you've imagined, though, like
> michael, i agree that there is much to be criticized.
both you and Michael have said there are criticisms, fatal ones Michael said, but what are they? I detect a bit of hesitancy to articulate exactly what these are.
getting round to finishing _corrosion_ was a real effort, writing the review even harder. not because it was a difficult book, but because I had trouble reconciling a certain affection for sennett, one derived on the vaguest of recollections that he was on the team, a pioneer, etc. and being quite appalled at the book in front of me. if it says something about me more than sennett, it might well be that as I get older i get less conservative. if it's about sennett, then it might be that he's become more conservative. it might be a combination of both. who knows?
> it also tickles me to read that sennett is 'pretending to listen'. would
> anything have persuaded otherwise? what would make for social research
> in which the researcher 'really' listened. it's not clear how this
> conclusion was reached so i'm curious what inspired this charge and if it
> can ever really be overcome.
as I said in the previous post: " [he] pretends to really listen as if this in itself is a virtue, taking on all the aura of the priest in the confessional, then, finding that the 'data' is 'insufficient' to produce a coherent narrative (which he defines as having a beginning, middle and an end), goes on to produce one ... there may well be useful and interesting things that sennett has to say to us, but his politics and narrative are not amongst them ... there is nothing in the 'data' that suggests this narrative, it is entirely of Sennett's own creation and background".
no one can 'really listen', there are always mediations, as you've said, and I would add non-transparencies, including that of compulsive misrecognitions (as in seeing rorty everywhere). do I object to the topic or the narrative and politics in sennett? the latter. is this objection overcome if he declares them? no.
do I need to elucidate more? how can it be overcome? it would require a different narrative/politics.
>he his clearly aware that he has an agenda and
> tries to flesh it out, perhaps in adequately. but, that he did it at all
> in 1971 is extraordinary because that sort of reflexive, politicized
> commentary was very rare, and it was surely rare among sociologists with
> sennett's background.
what was the agenda he spoke of in 1971?
> perhaps we should take note of all the thinkers who are off limits and
> start a list and doug can post it at lbo. better yet, it could even be an
> auto-generated file attached onto each post.
better still, how about we talk about some other folks?
> he laments is the loss of the *potential* of public life which, like
habermas,
> he sees as having begun to crystallize with modernity but was quickly
> crushed by the juggernaut of capitalism.
he talks fleetingly of similar stuff in the final chp of _corrosion_: a crit of communitarianism, which I would applaud anyone doing. sennett however wants to reclaim the same set of communitarian themes -- of loyalty, the work ethic, character, etc. and, like the communitarians, the problems he sees in capitalism is that capitalism erodes, corrodes, these things which he defines as 'being from the past'. it's a moral criticism, whose sense of morality is founded on a certain moment of capitalist history and a certain experience of a small section of the working class. 'we' had long-term careers, and now 'we' don't, so there's an erosion of long-term commitment, loyalty, etc. who is this a problem for if not, in the end, the company, which must now be suspicious that its employees will not give a shit about ripping off, sabotaging, etc the company, especially if they don't get treated right? where is the future, for working class resistance, in all this nostalgia? as I read it, the things that sennett sees as a bad thing are in fact those points of resistance: slacking off, disloyalty to the company, a re-assertion of the wage as central to working class demands, shorter work time, more leisure, etc. the 'mall rats' are 'dysfunctional', and a good thing too.
> "myths of an absence of community, like those of the soulless or vicious
> crowd, serve the function of goading men to seek out community in terms of
> a created common self. the more the myth of empty impersonality... becomes
> the common sense of a society, the more will that populace feel morally
> justified in destroying the essence of urbanity, which is that men can act
> together, without the compulsion to be the same" [p 255].
interesting, but still paradoxical. maybe that's always the way. maybe it's simply that he can't work a paradox into a dialectical tension _throughout_, without trying to salvage certain things (like narratives with a beginning, middle and end [his words]) as somehow self-evidently good and abstract human virtues. bluck.
Angela _________