----- Original Message ----- From: "Miles Jackson" <cqmv at pdx.edu> To: "Lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 7:19 PM Subject: re: Power
>
>
> On Thu, 5 Dec 2002 topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au wrote:
>
> >
> > I was just rather shocked that you [CC] should react to the idea that
> love
> > involves social relations of power by quipping that social relations
are
> > impersonal. In my view, it takes a concerted effort to render
relations
> > impersonal and such an effort only really changes what it is to be a
> > person in such circumstances. (In my mind right now is the Stanford
> > Prison Experiment.)
> >
> >
> > Thiago Oppermann
>
> Zimbardo (and I) would argue that you misunderstand the results of the
> SPE. The results actually undermine your position, as I understand
> what you're arguing. It is not necessary to understand the specific
> subjectivities of the individuals in the social roles of prisoners and
> guards to effectively predict their behavior: you simply need to know
> who is in which social position in a social structure. The
> "subjectivity" of the guard is irrelevant to the analysis of the
> social structure of the prison. --And so in any social situation:
> the general patterns of behavior are not the product of unique
> subjectivities; rather, the individuals are products of the demands
> of the social positions they occupy.
>
> Miles
===========================
Whoa, that's one heck of an inductive leap from a small sample size. Subjectivities are both cause and effect, no? Doesn't Madison Avenue love Goffman too? It's not that Goffman is wrong, it's that his and others work affords the opportunity to turn people into black boxes/zombies; a plug and play theory of selfhood. Individuals and groups/classes are capable of creating subjectivities/modes of intentionality that afford breaking out of their institutional roles, no? Or is that something that's caught up in "the law of unintended consequences"?
Ian