Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 21:17:27 -0400 (EDT) From: HDespain-AT-aol.com Subject: BHA: TMSA To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Recently, i have been thinking about the TMSA. It seems a misnomer, for it is not very transformational, but reproductional. In other words, TMSA seems very successful in explaining the reproduction of social structures, mainly by way of tacit knowledge and motivation. But how is it that we act transformationally on discursive knowledge. i do not deny the potential of transformation involved, but question how transformational motivation can be acted on. In fact it barely seems addressed by Bhaskar at all. Moreover, my reading of Lawson's *Economics and Reality* seems to emphasis reproduciton even further. Especially with his notion of "routinisation of social life" (p.159ff). And later in reference to Gidden's psychological account of reproduciton in the notion of 'ontological security'. Gidden's writes: psychological origins of ontological security are to be found in basic anxiety-controlling mechanisms (as indicated by Erikson ...), hierarachically ordered as components of personality. The generation of feelings of trust in others, as the deepest lying element of the basic security system, depends substantially upon predictable and caring rountines established by parental figures. The infant is very early on both a giver as well as a receiver of trust. As he or she becoms more autonomus, however, the child learns the importance of what are in Goffman's term 'protective devices', which sustain th mutuality implied in trust via tact and other formulae that preserve the face of others. Ontological security is protected by such devices but maintained in more fundmental way by the very predictability of routine, something that is radically disrupted in critical situations. The swamping of habitual modes of activity by anxiety which cannot be adequately contained by the basic security system is specifically a feature of critical situations (1984: 50-1). Whereby, in this context Lawson adds: "The performance of routines, in other words, is not only essential to the reproduction of social structure but is equally fundamental to the production and reproduction of each individual personality" (1996: 181). So where do Keynesian like "animal spirits" emerge in this model? Espeically when transformation threatens my very personality. Is there an absence of transformational action in this 'routinisational model of social action" (RMSA)? Lawson spends lots of time criticizing "rational choice theory", but save its deductive structure, his RMSA seems to usher it back into social theory as very good science indeed. It may be? once again i detect a very conservative side to critical realism!? Hans --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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