Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 16:18:59 -0400 (EDT)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: BHA: People's ideas


But look, (just to beat this thing to death) if social structure x is to be
rejected as a causal mechanism of social phenomenon y on the basis of
individuals' beliefs about y (viz., that it is not x at all that causes y,
but rather z; that they couldn't care less about x; that only creepy
stalinists care about x; whatever), then what is meant by the following
sorts of passsages from RR:

"I want to distinguish sharply then between the genesis of human actions,
lying in the reasons, intentions and plans of human beings, on the one hand;
and the structures governing the reproduction and transformation of social
activities, on the other; and hence between the domains of the psychological
and the social sciences.  The problem of how people reproduce any particular
society belongs to a linking science of social psychology."


"It is thus in the enduring relations presupposed by, rather than the actual
complex motley of, particular social forms, that on this conception,
sociology's distinctive theoretical interest lies."


And again later, (p. 93) where he again distinguishes between the social
sciences and the social *psychological* sciences, maintaining that the
proper object of the former is "social structure", rather than the "social
interaction" which is the concern of the latter.

*  *  *
                             
To put it crudely, while I agree with Howie's observation that individuals'
indifference to the category of class presents a serious strategic problem
for organizing class struggle (although I'm not clear, Howie, what you mean
when 
you say that class struggle is not the only way to get from capitalism to
socialism), while it's a genuine practical problem, it still seems to me
that at the level of explanation, from the perspective of critical realism
the response to the complaint that people don't report class as being
important to them is "so what".  The complaint simply does not speak to the
question of whether or not class is indeed the primary causal mechanism in
capitalist societies. 


And again, how to integrate this stance with recognition of the
concept-dependency of social structures is the question of the hour.  Maybe
it can't be done.  I don't think Bhaskar's got it right yet.  But I just
can't imagine him (for what it's worth) going along with the idea that a
social scientific account of a given set of social relations should be
rejected on the grounds that it is at odds with individuals'
self-understanding of these relations.


Okay, now I really will be done,
Ruth

 



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