Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 19:22:43 +0100
Subject: Re: BHA: Dialectizing


Amit <amitr-AT-polisci.umn.edu> writes
>The point is, again, that the distinction between natural and social
>structure makes us overlook these important things, such as roads.

I think this is really important. Perhaps this trap could be avoided if
we thought, as Amit suggests, along the lines of a material dimension to
social structure (defined as relations between positioned-practices),
comprising (off the top of my head) (a) the physical relations between
the individual people occupying the positions (b) the emergent relations
between non-human beings which have been effected by human beings
(between the components of a car, a computer, a building, a road, a
city, etc etc) and usually depend on their social activities for their
maintenance, and (c) the relations between those relations. Clearly, the
causal enabling and constraining powers of such structures vis a vis
people are enormous - far too important to be excluded from sociology!

I think BTW that this is very much in the spirit of the TMSA, or of the
social cube (one of whose four faces is material transactions with
nature)....

Mervyn
-- 
Mervyn Hartwig
Editor, 'Alethia'
Newsletter of the International Association for Critical Realism
13 Spenser Road
Herne Hill
London SE24 ONS
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Tel: 44 (0)171 737 2892
Email: mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk



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