On Tue, 19 Apr 2005, Doug Henwood quoted Z. Toufe:
> I am not defending or proposing that we ignore
> institutions and structures, quite the opposite. Of course we must primarily
> concentrate on changing and abolishing unjust institutions; however, in the
> mean time, let us not lose a basic respect for the people in them by
> withholding a demand for accountability.
Whaaa--? Let's recognize the influence of social institutions and simultaneously hold people accountable for behavior that is an inextricable part of those social institutions? To put it bluntly, this is not a logically coherent argument. If social institutions shape behavior, it's naive individualism to see the behavior of individuals in social institutions as the product of "individual moral agency".
Nor are people social dopes, to anticipate the straw man response: behavior in a social situation is a precipitate of the complex interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors (did I leave anything out?). To question "individual moral agency" as the determining factor in social behavior is not to "lower expectations" about people; it is to appreciate the complexity of social life and how we reproduce social structures through our interactions.
Miles
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> Individual moral agency is a precious component of being human; it is also
> something that people try desperately to avoid coming to terms with. It
> turned out that my therapist was married to a Vietnam vet -- she wasn't just
> trying to protect her patients, she was protecting herself from the reality
> of that war. She basically asked me to stop coming. A month later I got a
> check in the mail refunding my co-payment for those last contentious
> sessions. There was no note.
>
> Zeynep Toufe has recently launched the blog http://www.underthesamesun.org.
> She can be reached at z at underthesamesun.org.
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