On 5/9/2011 9:28 PM, Alan Rudy wrote:
> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Andy<andy274 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> What you've linked to (Alan) is helpful,
>> even if the authors don't seem to feel quite as... threatened?
>>
>>
> Threatened, I see you're being fair again... it couldn't possibly be that
> I linked to it because, maybe, I wasn't threatened... but perhaps you're
> just Andy bein' Manny...
>
> WRT Charles's comment about germs: All the blankets in the world
>
>> wouldn't explain the asymmetry of the spread of virulent infectious
>> diseases. So there's a biological question in there, like it or not,
>> one that Diamond might actually have the background (in zoology) to
>> address.
>>
>>
> Have you read the book? If so, does it limit itself to biological
> questions?
> For that matter, let's imagine you've read Levins and Lewontin's Dialectical
> Biologist AND GG&S, is there anything like the conceptual sophistication
> of the former in the latter? Do you have any idea what you are writing
> about or are you just spewing?
>
>
>> I mean no general defense of GG&S. I get the annoyance with an
>> outsider blundering into a question seemingly unread and unschooled.
>> What I find intriguing is the fury that any suggestion of material
>> influence seems to invariably provoke.
>>
>
> Perhaps, its not the outsider blundering that's really the problem... maybe
> its
> that the book's a selective, partial and deductivist peice of work. In
> terms of
> the fury, just maybe, you'd like to search the archives for the number of
> times I have contributed arguments that insist on the importance of
> material,
> even environmental, phenomena... it might leave you looking less foolish.
>
> There's information out there on the web about me, you might want to
> look into it. My work includes the investigation of the social production
> of insect pests; the long contestation over water politics in irrigated
> agricultural regions of the desert southwest; the various forms of
> resistance to agricultural biotechnology - ecological, health and cultural
> forms that often serve as tropes for resistance to the neoliberalization of
> everything; a collaboration with another member of the list on an effort
> to understand the history and valences of ecoskepticism; an extended
> query into the socionatural production of locations called regions; and,
> even, an arcane and very graduate-studenty paper on 16 dialectics of
> enablement and constraint between nature and capital.
>
>
>
>> I always wondered if the
>> phrase "material determinism" (always used as an accusation) is meant
>> to exclude every other factor. Apparently in Alan's case it does.
>>
>>
> Again, you can only write this after engaging in the same kind of refusal
> of inquisitiveness Joseph implicitly put forth. It is the determinism that
> is the problem, not the materialism... but you'd have to read with a shred
> of sympathy to get that.
>
> I guess, most importantly, the part of my post you chose to ignore was
> this: "If you don't want to come off as a jerk, just don't, it's ok." I
> guess you
> decided it wasn't ok not to...
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