File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1998/bhaskar.9808, message 695


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


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