File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1996/96-09-26.073, message 19


Date:         Thu, 12 Sep 96 08:52:08 EDT
From: Marshall Feldman <MARSH-AT-URIACC.URI.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Internal and external relations


>Let us look at a working husband and a working wife. Both have two children
>to care for. Then we have a firm with a director and two workers
>In both examples who takes care about what and why ? And who directs who ?
>In the first case we have mutually discursive ability , based on mutual
>interpretation of intuitive feelings.  As opposed to the other example, of a
>firm whereby all discursive ability only be will consumed by one end
>without exchange or face firing. If the director is democratically oriented
>, he will assert his/her authority through  organisation measures (soft
>authority) to which he will labour to manipulate the works in order to reach
>effectivity and productivity. This is a relationship impregnated by
>authority. And can only be as external with alternative means of internal
>relationship i.e. organisation if the latter fails to reach desired effects.
>In mutually discursive functioning society , family too  will be disposed to
>offer / in this case play certain rolls on a basis of mutual understanding.
>In a capitalistic communicative action, language is instrumentalised , that
>is to say , you obey or other wise (Fordian ). Here society loses it's
>interpretative ability of intitutional issues.
>Internal family relationship  to me,  are not conscious to the agents. That
>is to say they come out of feelings for each other. There is a shift in
>feelings, continuity. For example will , " will you do this ,okay  so right
>I will. " As opposed to "we have to" or .... ...
>That is probably why in Rawls Johns Theory of justice , capitalism is a
>commando economy . Do it or ......

I think the discussion has to get away from the subjective, meaning-laden side
of things.  The fact that the husband and wife have two children to raise is
itself part of the institution of marriage.  Children could be left on the
street, brought up in communal centers, etc., and people could couple up or
triple up or whatever for a night, according to a rotating calendar (sort of
like garbage collection -- every Tuesday we're in X neighborhood), etc.
There are a number of aspects of marriage or any other institution that people
may or may not be aware of.  The important issue is what aspects are intrinsic
to the institution and have causal powers with or without the consciousness of
the participants.  Do the participants have to make the volitional choice not to
engage in the garbage collection mode of sexual relations in order for them to
a) be unable to because it's not a collectively performed mode of conduct but
as a social practice it would have to be, and b) be subject to the causal
constraints of whatever mode they do practice?  I don't think so.

Marsh Feldman                               Phone: 401/874-5953
Community Planning, 204 Rodman Hall           FAX: 401/874-5511
The University of Rhode Island           Internet: marsh-AT-uriacc.uri.edu
Kingston, RI 02881-0815



   

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