File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/97-04-21.144, message 77


Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 09:21:57 +0100
From: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk (COLIN WIGHT)
Subject: Re: BHA: Once more to the breech, my friends...


I'm not sure Tobin or I are going to get any further, and I get the feeling
that Tobin is getting a little exasperated (and missing my point somewhat I
think, although perhaps I'm also guilty of missing his). So just some very
minor points. 

>
>No, you are referring to what Archer calls "primary agency."  "Corporate
>agency" for her is organized.  We are born into primary agency (e.g. class
>positions); from a legal perspective, I suppose one could argue we are (or
>may be) born into the State as citizens, but even if that argument holds up
>(I'm not making it!), I don't see that it would tell us much.


OK. I accept this. Yes she does indeed make a distinction between these.
Nothing much hangs on this for my argument. Since for Archer, the category
Agency, refers primarily to collectives of people, organised or otherwise.
my argument is that the state is not simply a group of people. (see RB's
critique of 'groupism' in PON on this).

>
>The same statement holds for entire societies, for multinational
>corporations, and for the large networks of urban gangs we have in the U.S.;
>so we need further specification.  And especially, what is the "not simply"
>about?

The state consists, at a bare minimum, in embodied people, their products,
and the relations between these elements. In this complex partial totality
only the embodied people possess the power to 'act'. I insist that any
explanation of a state "acting" cannot simply talk of the state acting since
only certain elements of the state, the relations, for example, cannot do
anything as such, except in virtue of those elements of the totality which
possess the power to act; our embodied people. Tobin, I think seems to read
me as saying that the relations do nothing. Nothing could be further from my
position. But what the relations do not do is "act".


>C'mon, Colin, nothing I said even remotely implied that individuals could be
>spirited out of the analysis. 

OK. So, we agree. My point is that talk of Union carbide acting has a
tendency to do just this.

  If you believe that the corporation is *in fact* "a necessary
>component for particular acts" (in your words)--that is, with winking or not,
>it is a real, causal entity of a sort and not merely a discursive excuse for
>sueing multinational conglomerates, then you are saying similar (if not
>identical) things.

But i have consistently argued that such things are real causal entities. To
say that something does not have the ability to act is not to write is out
of the analysis. But has it the power to act?

>
>> Because, atoms have certain powers, and individual others, and corporations
>> yet others. I still do not understand this argument. One would not speak of
>> atoms acting.
>
>Well, atoms certainly don't have intentionality, but they do exert atomic
>sorts of powers and therefore "act" in that sense.  It was partly for this
>reason that either you or Howard raised the "chemical agent" business.

Yes, but we, or at least I did, explicitly rejected this kind of talk in the
social world, or else everything can be said to be an actor. An agent in the
social world is not the same kind of thing as a chemical agent, that was why
I raised the issue.

>So let's say four people get together to achieve some goal.  

In saying this you have already conceded my position. You cannot begin the
analysis without recourse to the people. 

They come to an
>agreement, but it's a compromise.  Person A thinks the chosen action is too
>weak; Person B feels it's too strong; for C, the aim isn't quite right; and D
>believes it's exactly the thing to do but doubts that the four of them have
>the skills or resources to pull it off.  Not one of them fully endorses the
>decision, yet it's what they all say they're going to do, and they fully
>intend to act accordingly. 

You are assuming an awful lot here (because I think you are already
presupposing the group mind). Why should we, for example, think that they
are going to do it? Who is going to do it? The "group" or the people that
comprise the group? Supposing person A simply refused to go along, on the
grounds that it is too weak. Moreover, if B really thinks it is too strong,
will he/she do it? The individual simply refuse to go away. This argument
could have come from me?

  There is a
>group reason, and it is distinct from the individuals' reasons. It is
different, but it could not be without the individuals who agree to compromise.

 (To retread
>our example, the garbage collector's reasons for hauling garbage are not
>society's, 

But society cannot do it without the embodied agents. Equally of course, I'm
not sure, but are you arguing that society is an agent? This would be an
interesting spin on the agent-structure problem.

 But a collective agency, you say, is not an agent.  So what has
>happened--have they indulged in a fantasy, or what?  If none of the
>individuals are acting on the basis of their own thinking, yet there is a
>decision guiding their action, where does that decision exist?

Well, only in the heads of the people who were party to the compromise (they
all know what their preference was, but equally know the compromise
decision) (I can't resist a cheap shot here, apologies in advance) Where
would you say the decision resides, in the group mind I suppose?

>
>As for talking about States in monolithic and personified terms, I've already
>argued at least twice that the "internal perspective" must be the primary
>focus when speaking of the State, and often for other organizations.

Well if this is the case, we are clearly closer to agreement, certainly in
terms of the argument for my thesis.

 I'll bounce the question back to you: shall we attempt a critical
>realist analysis of theatrical production?

Of course, but i don't really understand your point. Sorry.

>Oy, gevalt.  How many times do I have to repeat, I think there are two sorts
>of agents, namely collective and individual?  See that last word there,
>"individual"?  It does not mean "collective."  Therefore it is false to claim
>that for me "agents refers to collectives."  Some agents are organized groups
>of individuals.  Some agents are simply individuals.  Individuals appear in
>both sorts of agency.  A single individual may be simultaneously an agent in
>her own right (so to speak) and a member of one or more organized
>collectives.

Yes but the real problem comes when you talk of the collective as an agent
without also introducing your individuals that make up the collective. And
besides, I repeat, the state is simply not a group of people acting
together. And once you define a collective, at least in part, in terms of
the relations between the individuals that comprise it, then I argue that
only part of the collective is really acting. 

>
>Nor have I said a word suggesting that agents were not human beings, or that
>agents don't act but actors do.  (Despite the fact that in the theater world,
>all of that is a pretty fair assessment!  Small in-joke.)  "Agent," "actor,"
>and "person" are different ways of conceptualizing humans in their
>relationship to society, and I think Archer is pretty much right about this
>distinction. 

I absolutley agree with this, how we make the distinction is of course up
for grabs.

  But
>to think of the agent-position as the person herself, as you seem inclined to
>do, is I think a case of misplaced concreteness.

This is categorically what I do not do. The positioned-practice-place
enables and constrains the inhabitant in a way that causally impacts on the
world, but only in virtue of the embodied agents. But the positioned
practice place itself does not act. This is exactly what I think you seem to
be suggesting. Put the president into the TMSA. The President of the USA is
a an embodied person (the agency side) who is positioned in a set of social
relations which defind that particular person in time and space as the
President of the USA (the structure side). Which one of these two elements
acts? 
And when we talk of the President signing a treaty do we mean the social
relations, or the embodied person? 

>
>So is a structuratum not some form of organized group?  And what are those
>powers?  Why don't they reduce to the individuals', or the structures'?

Because the structuratum consists of both and simply can't be reduced to
either. As a structuratum it has a set of powers derived from the lements
that comprise it and the relations between those elements. 


Once again, thanks, I've really benefited. maybe we'll get a chance to go
over this at the conference if your going (helped by a few beers). It would
have been a really good topic for a panel. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----

Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA

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