[lbo-talk] perceptions

[Alan Rudy]

Good lord, you mean someone's finally pointed out that there's a
relationship between how people have been socialized, the way they've made
their own path through personal experiences, the way they think, what's
going on the wider and immediate world and how they act?  Shockingly, its
non-linear and indeterminate. I always heard that what you do matters but
that what you in critical moments matters more, something somehow related to
the difference between war of position and war of maneuver.  Maybe if this
constantly recurring "debate" began with complexity, uncertainty and
contingency alongside history and political economy, it'd be a lot more
interesting.  Attitudes don't lead to actions, actions don't dictate
attitudes and most surveys are of dubious utility - though, as Doug is
usually careful to note, some are better than others.  Now that we're done
with that, let's find another argument to have.

On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 9:59 AM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:


> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>  involvement in these local activities
>> gradually dissolved the opinion, which I remember expressing to another
>> faculty member at a party a yer or two earlier -- something  like "If
>> the cibvil-rights actions in the South continue, we probably have to
>> support* them, but really they are premature. Something stupid like
>> that. But it was my most carefull formulated and c onscious "opinion" in
>> the year or so before I suddenly found myself on the road to socialist
>> revolution.
>>
>
> But if your pre-involvement opinion had been "I just don't think it's right
> to force the white people of the South to change their way of life," then
> you probably would not have gone to the meeting. And more importantly, if
> you *had* gone for some random reason, it's quite possible you would have
> become even more turned off by the movement once you saw how different their
> outlook was from yours. So, I'll draw the analogy back to what started this
> thread - Doug's posting of poll results. If we did a national poll in 1959
> or 1963, and there were some question soliciting people's level of openness
> to the goals of the civil rights movement, a reading of 25% would indicate
> something very different from a reading of 45%. The higher reading would
> have indicated a much larger reservoir of people for whom it is conceivable
> that they might at some point decide to attend a meeting of a local civil
> rights group; and a much larger reservoir of people who, if they went to the
> meeting, might become more rather than less committed to civil rights.
>
>
> SA
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>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319