From: "Howard Engleskirchen,WSU/FAC" <howarde-AT-wsulaw.edu> Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 20:42:45 -0800PST Subject: BHA: past power Now that all of you have completely forgotten about the causal properties of past structures, I've finally had a chance to think through responses to the original question I asked. Probably we'll test whether the causal powers of the past are efficacious without present agency.{PRIVATE } I think some of my words were not so well chosen, but I'm puzzled by the apparently unanimous agreement with Caroline's formulation: "Howard is asking whether the causal powers of social structures are derived entirely from past actions. Yes, I think Tobin and Martha are right here in saying that they are. An act in the present which is brought about (caused by a social structure should not be seen as 'completing' or 'expressing' it." On that much there seems pretty solid agreement. If the causal powers of social structures are derived entirely from past actions, as Caroline here says, then do we say that the causal powers of capital are entirely the result of already objectified labor? Tobin says a standing army may prevent an uprising without there ever being a need for its power to be exercised. But while the power of a standing army does not depend on its present exercise, it does depend on its continuing, in the present, to stand. Also, since its power is a power(2) type power, the character of it in the present could not be explained except in terms of the uprising not attempted now. This is an example of its structure completed in the present. (On the use of "completed" here, remember the "ineliminable" dialectic! The present is always the death of a certain amount of real possibility from the past. But social structures are in process and the present doesn't stop the process.) Martha argues that "the fertility patterns of earlier generations create a population structure (e.g. the depression baby bust, the post-war baby boom) which has causal powers whether or not actors know about it and its potential effects on their lives as the size of those cohorts affect marriage, employment, promotions, construction, etc." But in order for these causal potentials to be realized in the present, people must in fact marry, be employed, apply for promotions, construct things, etc. I was not concerned in what I said with whether people were conscious or not of the significance or consequence of their behavior -- or whether they had any ability, as a result of such awareness, to change those consequences. I thought what I was originally trying to say was captured by Caroline saying "The fact that in the Stephen Lawrence case the outcome was not determined by the preexisting institutional racism of the police, does not mean that institutional police racism did not play a causal role -- it certainly did, mediated as always through agency." Now since institutional racism is a process not buried in the past but completed and so to speak incompleted in the present, and since social relations are concept dependent, what counts as a structure of the past can depend on the present. What occurred in the domain of the actual is fixed, but its significance (upon which our characterization of structure depends, doesn=92t it?) is not. (Caroline, doesn't "mediated as always" contradict the "derived entirely" assertion above?) The only time I can think that present agency would not mediate the causal properties of structures rooted in the past would occur in a circumstance where natural forces were set in motion that escaped the ability of human agency to perpetuate or modify. Perhaps we have a present example. As I understand it, nuclear plants take some time to shut down. You cannot decide today and have the thing shut down tomorrow. So suppose a glitch on January 1. Meltdown. On some date this year we will lose the possibility of preventing catastrophe through present agency. This is an instance where the causal power of social structures in the past is effective without present human agency. But even on this example the persistence of past possiblity as real depends on the agency of present natural (though not human) forces. Causal possibility from the past is realized in the present and the present is not inert. Incidentally, Doug, in a draft I am now working on concerning legal rules I argue that the use of the word "rule" in law is ambiguous in exactly the way the use of the word "law" is ambiguous in natural science: On the one hand we use the word to refer to an object of study in the intransitive dimension -- we refer to a relation of force with generative powers. But on the other hand we also use the word "rule" to refer to the quite different concept of the way a particular social actor will formulate and express this relation, e.g. a judge or defendant or sheriff or academician. I would not understand "rule" distinct from a material social relation as possessing generative power. What have I missed? Howard I'm troubled by the sentence above about the significance of the past not being fixed. I'll leave it as it stands. What I am trying to say is that a wind now blows in a certain way and what the tree was becomes something different than it would have been if the wind hadn't blown. What happens in the present alters the weight of things that happened in the past, at least insofar as an evolving structure is concerned. Is this nuts? I'll click send. --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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