>>> Kelley <oudies at flash.net> 02/09/00 11:05AM >>>
yoshie sez
>I think it best to avoid organic metaphors to describe "society." As I
>argued in my posts on Habermas, I think that organicism is a dialectical
>twin of individualism. "Society" is not an individual organism writ large.
>"Culture" cannot be usefully examined if it is seen as a giant version of
>an individual mind. Organic metaphors obscure contradictions in social
>relations and ideology. They attribute to what exists a false sense of
>monolithic wholeness.
So, what's the alternative, then, Yosh? To get to Bhaskar with this, what is it about society that makes it an an object *for us* --so that can be systematically examined? And more importantly, the problem with Ken's response [He sez that individuals are society writ large] is that he [zizek] collapses any distinction between the two and thus, as Bhaskar argues, such a theory lacks any capacity for theorizing social transformation without reversion to an appeal to something outside the whole and/or to a functionalist organicism.
Typically, the charge against organic metaphors in social theory is that they represent society as operating according the homeostatic equilibrium: the body sweats to cool itself down; shivers to warm itself up. On this view, it has been argued that structural Marxism is sometimes represented in subtle organicist metaphors which are in relations of conflict, not unlike the description of fetus and mother described here not too long ago as competing over limited resources. You find it in Marx, [more accurately interpretations of Marx], in all that economicistic biz about the forces of production inevitably coming into conflict [through technological innovation] with the social relations of production where equilibrium must be achieved but through conflict. I read it a great deal in the evolutionary marxism discussed on this list.....
&&&&&&&&&&&&
CB: Not that I am proposing using organic or physiological metaphors for human society ( for example, a la Radcliffe-Brown's functional anthropology buttressing British colonialism with physiological equilibrium metaphors of the type Kelley mentions), but one can get around the homeostasis issue by bringing in the evolutionary part of biology. That is extend the metaphor, such that some "species" of society go extinct, and new ones come into existence. This qualitative transformation is due to "internal contradictions". etc. The conflict between forces and relations of production does not come into equilibrium in the old society. It destroys the old society, and is the means by which the new society is created. In other words, punctuated equilibrium , a la Stephen Jay Gould.
But I am not for using biology as a metaphor in cognizing human society. I am for recognizing that human society remains the society of a biological species in dialectical contradiction with its uniquely human, symbolic, historical qualities. Marxism is the understanding of society as a contradiction between the natural and the cultural; not the utter obliteration of the natural. The Marxist focus on production is based on the fact that human society is still partially determined by biology or fulfillment of physiological needs, even if , as I say, this determination is in unity and struggle with historical or cultural or "super"natural determinations. The subject matter of physical anthropology is not empty.