Q: Why can't a 'general ideal' be responsible for more than one outcome? A: Because they are constants and constants do not explain any variance. To explain variance you need a factor that vary, so you can associate change on that factors with changes on the factors you are trying to explain. So at the very least, you need a variability on a "general ideal" and ideally, factors that explain that variability.
Q: What actually left political agenda is legitimated by hegemonic
> Utilitarianism?
A: I do not know. But I do not know how it relates to the point I was
making either.
Q: > You're claiming that variants of capitalist competitive individualism are
> qualitatively different and have more differences than their collective
> distance from anarchocommunalism, agrarian populism, feudalism or (whatever
> picture we each have in our head of) a liveable socialism.
A: No I am not. I would imagine these are different, but it is a
different subject. I was merely making a statement that attitudes
toward government regulations differ among different groups of people.
Q: > You are claiming that the kinds of processes that generate
subcultures under
> capitalism have nothing substantive to do with the fact that capitalism
> constrains some avenues and enables others?
A: Not at all. It goes without saying that material conditions
constrain some venues and enable others, but I also imagine that they
do so differently under different sets of conditions.
Q:> You are claiming that almost all subcultures (accepting for the moment that
> there is a materially abstractable set of relations called capitalist
> culture) under capitalism don't hardly have much in common because
> capitalist democracy isn't robust enough to constrain the range of viable
> subcultures?
A: No. I am claiming that 'subcultures' have some things in common
but differ in other things. I focused on the latter to explain
variation in attitudes toward government regulations (see my answer to
first question.)
Q: > Is corporate culture really all that variable?
> Is government bureaucratic culture really that viable?
> Are youth subcultures really all that different?
> Is the culture of sports all that variable?
> Is the academic subculture all that variable?
A: Yes to all of the above. It's quite obvious. But the right
question to ask would be what effect, if any, those differences have
on what one is trying to explain, and under what conditions.
Q: > You keep asserting that organization differences trump structural
> similarities in terms of cultural expressions but you provide no empirical
> referent or support.
A: Not really. I keep asserting that sometimes they do and sometimes
they do not - depending on what is at stake and under what set of
conditions. As to references, I thought it was a collegial discussion
not an academic seminar, and that differences in organization behavior
are quite obvious to people who study (for a starter, check out
Smelser & Swedberg, 'Handbook of Economic Sociology" which will give
you tons of references.)
Q: > Weber certainly didn't agree with you, A: I don't know. He dead. But I know that what wrote is consistent with the notion of "ideal type methodology" in one of the books he wrote (Economy & Society pp. 18-22, if you need references).
Q: most all Marxists don't agree with
> you, I don't know of feminists who agree with you, or environmentalists...
A: So?
Q: > are you turning Durkheimian on us? A: Yes. He had some really good ideas, and inspired some good ideas, no?
Wojtek
>
> On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Alan, you wrote a 695 word essay, but I could not find anything in it
>> that addresses the point I made. To reiterate that point: "there are
>> very different outcomes justified by the same general ideals, so it is
>> clear that these general ideals do not explain the variation of
>> outcomes."
>>
>> So unless you are claiming that social relations are all the same
>> under capitalism, which means some 80+% of human population, how do
>> you explain cross national (or cross-social class) differences in
>> attitudes toward government regulations of the economy (which was the
>> original question in this thread?)
>>
>> Wojtek
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Dude, don't be a jerk. Of course material conditions mediate the actual
>> > expression of hegemonic philosophies. At the same time, your argument
>> > suggests that the philosophical foundations that grounded the
>> > materialization of modern capitalism/production, modern
>> > democracy/bureaucracy and modern science/technology - and which are not
>> only
>> > embedded in how just about everyone is socialized to understand, approach
>> > and reproduce these relations but are also strategically used by the
>> > economically, politically and technoscientifically powerful to legitimate
>> > their power and their role in solving the problems their power produces
>> are
>> > less important than the particular practices of specific firms,
>> communities,
>> > organizations, etc.
>> >
>> > What is demonstrably false is your perspective on ethnography.
>> Sociological
>> > ethnographies, 99 times out of 100, study and compare groups within a
>> > society not to determine what makes the qualitatively different but to
>> > evaluate where commonality and singularity lies. Anyone studying a
>> > "subculture" - a term now long out of vogue in the theory of ethnographic
>> > methods - who asserts that that subculture is qualitatively different
>> from
>> > other subcultures within the same society necessarily rejects the idea
>> that
>> > social structures are substantively meaningful. Really nice work has
>> been
>> > done by Charles Ragin and others on using comparative methods in order to
>> > parse difference and commonality along these lines. Furthermore, and
>> you're
>> > the one who recently quoted Marx in another thread, a foundational
>> argument
>> > Marx makes about capitalism is that it's need for growth makes it a
>> > powerful, global homogenizing force. Radical geographers, like Henri
>> > Lefebvre, David Harvey, Neil Smith, Erik Swyngedouw, Richard Walker,
>> Matthew
>> > Gandy and hundreds of others have over the last thirty years done a
>> really
>> > nice job of exploring the dual dynamics of capitalist homogenization and
>> > differentiation.
>> >
>> > You've recently taken on the habit of radically overinterpreting what
>> people
>> > write in response to your posts. It is a very unattractive trait. I
>> never
>> > said that all you needed was Utilitarianism to understand contemporary
>> > social relations and, since you've been reading my posts for two years
>> now
>> > (I hope), you know I never would. In terms of the Catholic
>> Church/Aquinas
>> > example: that's weak, too. You've completely inverted the point. If I
>> were
>> > saying what you're claiming I'm saying - which I'm not - then the
>> argument
>> > would be that Aquinas was actually no different than any other Catholic
>> > theorist because all you need to know is the outlines of Catholicism to
>> > understand Thomism or any other sect with The Church. In fact, my
>> argument
>> > is exactly the opposite... you can't understand Aquinas, the debates he
>> > engaged, positions he took and subsequent interpretations and rejections
>> of
>> > his work without understanding Catholicism.
>> >
>> > If you want to read on subcultures, Dick Hebdige's books, Subculture: The
>> > Meaning of Style and Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things, do a
>> > masterful job of addressing issues of the economic, political, scientific
>> > and cultural production of the category "youth" and the subsequent ways
>> that
>> > the agencies of the market, government, researchers, and kids themselves
>> > have made and remade the category BUT always within the bounds of a
>> > hegemonic political economy. If you're interested in even more along
>> these
>> > lines, Rob Latham's, Consuming Youth: Vampires, Cyborgs and the Culture
>> of
>> > Consumption (2002, UChicago) draws explicitly on Marx but in really
>> > provocative ways. Here are two quotes:
>> >
>> > “As Dick Hebdige has observed, “The relationship between the spectacular
>> > subculture and the various industries which service and exploit it is
>> > notoriously ambiguous. After all, such a subculture is concerned first
>> and
>> > foremost with consumption…. It operates exclusively in the leisure
>> sphere…
>> > It is therefore… difficult to maintain any absolute distinction between
>> > commercial exploitation on the one hand and creativity/originality on the
>> > other.’” [Latham 2002: 67]
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > “Building on Michel de Certeau’s analysis of how the strategic power of
>> > dominant institutions calls forth tactical resistance on the part of
>> those
>> > subjected to its hierarchies—a resistance that takes the field of
>> operations
>> > established by those institutions as its own terrain of agency—Bukatman
>> > extrapolates this argument to the realm of cyberspace, a network of
>> > information controlled by corporate and governmental and governmental
>> > authorities yet at the same time vulnerable to a concerted ‘nibbling at
>> the
>> > edges of power and thus an elision of control.’” [Latham 2002: 224]
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 9:21 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Alan: "Wojtek, its almost as if you've never heard of Utilitarianism.."
>> >>
>> >> [WS:] Utilitarianism is a philosophy. A belief that society operates
>> >> by philosophical principles in everyday life may be acceptable to
>> >> economists, philosophers, or lit-critters, but strikes me as rather
>> >> odd when pronounced by a sociologist. It is like saying that
>> >> Catholics, or even the Catholic Church operates by the philosophical
>> >> doctrine developed by Thomas Aquinas. This is not only demonstrably
>> >> false, but undermines the very assumption on which ethnography,
>> >> anthropology and sociology rest - that local cultures are different
>> >> from each other and studying them matters. If the collection of ideas
>> >> - whether organized into a coherent philosophical system or simply
>> >> assembled in some form of scripture - was the only thing that we need
>> >> to know how society operates, we would not need ethnography,
>> >> anthropology and sociology - philosophy and lit-crit woud be
>> >> sufficient, and more cost-efficient too as studying text costs far
>> >> less than field research.
>> >>
>> >> One more point - the underlying assumption of organizational
>> >> sociology - in which I was trained in graduate school - is that
>> >> organizational behavior is determined by the cast of organizational
>> >> actors - their interests, relative power, mutual connections, values
>> >> etc. - but it is ex post facto rationalized by references to the
>> >> dominant ideology or mythology, such as utilitarianism, efficiency
>> >> maximization, economic rationality and similar Platonic ideas. The
>> >> point is that there are very different outcomes justified by the same
>> >> general ideals, so it is clear that these general ideals do not
>> >> explain the variation of outcomes. Hence the focus on the cast of
>> >> social actors, their interests, power, subculture, etc. Consequently,
>> >> while I do appreciate abstract economic, philosophical or theological
>> >> theories as art forms, I do not see them as very useful in explaining
>> >> social behavior.
>> >>
>> >> Wojtek
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 7:51 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> > Wojtek, its almost as if you've never heard of Utilitarianism... the
>> >> > philosophical foundation that undergirds not only the kinds of
>> "economic
>> >> > rationality" you ascribe to a deviant subculture of capitalists but
>> also
>> >> to
>> >> > the who rational, self-interested, individualistic, and personally
>> >> > responsible norms and values that pervade what you appear to think is
>> the
>> >> > rest of our non-deviant society. But, then again, you (implicitly)
>> admit
>> >> to
>> >> > having a sense of it when you point to he ways that these norms and
>> >> vallues
>> >> > are celebrated and glamorized in the media and most areas of the
>> academy
>> >> > (and, by the way, its not just academic literature... it is how
>> students
>> >> are
>> >> > told to be entrepreneurial in their pursuit of a degree and faculty
>> who
>> >> are
>> >> > insufficienty "rational, self-interested, individualistic, and
>> personally
>> >> > responsible" are told to go elsewhere).
>> >> >
>> >> > Yeah, it is true that there are other values resident in and produced
>> by
>> >> > other kinds of less-utilitarian social relations out there. But,
>> since
>> >> > Utilitarian norms and values also undergird modern representative
>> >> democracy,
>> >> > the heroic brand of technoscience and the rationalization of
>> >> bureaucracies
>> >> > everywhere, as well as the secularization of previously religious
>> >> > ontologies, these other arenas are constantly under threat within
>> >> > modernity... thus the myriad forms of reactionary anti-modern
>> movements
>> >> here
>> >> > and abroad.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 9:02 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >> Miles: " personal responsibility, individualism, self-interest"
>> >> >>
>> >> >> [WS:] Where do these come from? This discussion started about
>> >> >> breaking laws & government regulations. Business propaganda (quoted
>> >> >> by Michael P.) argues that this is a universal condition and
>> >> >> regulations will never work - which is the standard spiel of most
>> econ
>> >> >> textbooks. I countered that it is not, because regulations work if
>> >> >> compliance with them is a part of business subculture, in which case
>> >> >> it is enforced by informal sanctions (e.g. Japan.) On the other
>> hand,
>> >> >> if noncompliance is legitimized in that subculture - they will not
>> >> >> work (e.g. the US.) Furthermore, a subculture that justifies breaking
>> >> >> the law for a personal gain is considered deviant by generally
>> >> >> accepted standards - whether it is corporate subculture or a street
>> >> >> gang subculture. The only difference between the two is that the
>> >> >> former receives good press and legitimation by academic theories
>> >> >> whereas the latter does not.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> So what do personal responsibility and individualism have to do with
>> it?
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Wojtek
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 7:39 PM, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>> >> >> > On 10/30/2010 05:59 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> In sum, different social groups and networks develop different
>> value
>> >> >> >> systems, which in turn affect the behavior of members of these
>> groups
>> >> >> >> and networks. Some of these value systems are considered deviant
>> by
>> >> >> >> general population, but most of them are not. This is Sociology
>> 101.
>> >> >> >> What makes the deviant value systems of the capitalist subculture
>> >> >> >> different than those of "ordinary" deviant subcultures is the
>> immense
>> >> >> >> propaganda effort undertaken by the media and the academia to
>> >> >> >> legitimate it. This creates a highly deceptive illusion that
>> these
>> >> >> >> deviant norms are "natural" and prevail in every human society.
>> In
>> >> >> >> reality, however, they are limited to a narrow group of
>> capitalists
>> >> >> >> and their mouthpieces. It follows that fighting the deviant norms
>> >> and
>> >> >> >> behavior of the capitalist class is much easier than the noise
>> >> machine
>> >> >> >> that glamorizes it claims - it is fundamentally no different from
>> >> >> >> controlling (if not eliminating) other forms of deviance that all
>> >> >> >> human societies do.
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > Hey, I love Soc 101, so I agree with most of this. I do have a
>> hard
>> >> time
>> >> >> > thinking of the norms of capitalists as "deviant" when they are in
>> >> fact
>> >> >> the
>> >> >> > dominant norms of our society (e.g., personal responsibility,
>> >> >> individualism,
>> >> >> > self-interest). For instance, if you ask the majority of people
>> in
>> >> our
>> >> >> > society why some people are poor, they will typically point to poor
>> >> >> people's
>> >> >> > personal deficiencies. I agree that's the result of the
>> incessantly
>> >> >> > reinforced norms and values of capitalism; however, from a
>> >> sociological
>> >> >> > perspective, there's nothing "deviant" about it; it's just the
>> >> dominant
>> >> >> > perspective in our society right now.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > Miles
>> >> >> > ___________________________________
>> >> >> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>> >> >> >
>> >> >>
>> >> >> ___________________________________
>> >> >> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>> >> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > --
>> >> > *********************************************************
>> >> > Alan P. Rudy
>> >> > Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
>> >> > Central Michigan University
>> >> > 124 Anspach Hall
>> >> > Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
>> >> > 517-881-6319
>> >> > ___________________________________
>> >> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> ___________________________________
>> >> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > *********************************************************
>> > Alan P. Rudy
>> > Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
>> > Central Michigan University
>> > 124 Anspach Hall
>> > Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
>> > 517-881-6319
>> > ___________________________________
>> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>> >
>>
>> ___________________________________
>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
>
>
>
> --
> *********************************************************
> Alan P. Rudy
> Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
> Central Michigan University
> 124 Anspach Hall
> Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
> 517-881-6319
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>