From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: Re: BHA: Culture as structure
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 09:06:11 -0400


Hi Viren, Dick, and Carrol--

Very interesting questions here.  Viren, you're probably right that I
haven't been altogether clear about how I'm distinguishing structure from
culture, or whether culture should be understood as one structure among
many, etc.  I should first note that I wasn't "separating" the cultural from
the social, but rather attempting to point out distinguishing or
characteristic features, in hopes of producing a real definition in the
sense that Dick has described.  "Separating" suggests that there are
existentially separate objects (some social, some cultural), which I think
is rather obviously false; as I see it, there are different underlying
stuctures which shape social actualities, but only in conjunction with other
structures: the structures may be different, but they operate in
combination.  And they *must* operate in combination, since humans are
always simultaneously social and cultural (not to mention sexual and a few
other things).  So again, I'm making an analytical distinction.

That said, however, part of the unclarity in my comments comes I think from
the fact that to some extent I'm shoehorning my actual ideas into the more
customary notions of structure and culture.  (This touches on Carrol's
question about what the term "culture" means in the present discussion.)
But I'll get to that in a moment -- first I want to respond to another issue
you raise, since it I think it helps clarify the difficulties.

>        First, I am not sure why you call not separating cultural
> structures from social structures central conflation.  After all, central
> conflation seemed to concern conflating structure and agency rather than
> two distinct types of structures.  Sometimes it appears that you claim
> that by failing to distinguish between cultural and social structures one
> risks committing epistemic or linguistic fallacies. But I have always
> understood these fallacies as negating the existentially intransitive
> realms, whether they be cultural, economic, political etc.

For what it's worth, I wasn't exactly accusing Sewell of contral conflation
(I haven't read him), just saying that some of his ideas as presented in
your encapsulations could be understood that way.  Be that as it may, your
question is a significant one.  You're right that central conflation
concerns conflating structure and agency; but it also concerns agency and
culture.  (Archer puts these analyses in two different books.)  Moreover,
two things.  First, I'm not sure whether central conflationist theories can
consistently uphold a theory of multiple structures -- but that could just
be a matter of my ignorance.  Second (and I think more significantly), as
Archer points out, central conflation grounds its theory of society on the
metaphor of language, as conceptualized by Saussure (see RST 94-95, 107-10
and passim; I notice Archer takes on Sewell in this section).  The use of
the linguistic analogy in this manner *is* the linguistic fallacy.  Thus
central conflation's collapse of structure and agency is founded upon the
linguistic fallacy.  This is not so much a matter of negating intransitive
realms as conceiving the intransitive realm strictly in terms of the
intransitive, or more exactly, understanding the ontological in terms of the
epistemological (the epistemic fallacy) -- in practice this often does lead
to a negation of the intransitive, but that's not the only possible outcome.
Finally, if the linguistic metaphor leads to the conflation of structure and
agency, it necessary also conflates culture (fundamentally, meaning systems)
into the mess.  (Archer doesn't make this argument, but see her Culture &
Agency, 73-76 etc.)

> A key point behind the difference between your position and Sewell's
> concerns your respective
> definitions of the social.  You want to separate the cultural from the
> social, while Sewell believes that it is more useful to separate
> economic, political and cultural structures and affirm that they
> together make up the social.

This is where I was "shoehorning."  A lot of that problem arises because the
terms "social" and "structures" are being used in several different ways.
I've been using "cultural" in part to bring out a difference between
activities, products or aspects that principally concern meaning and
ideation, from those concerned with other things (e.g. the realization of
profit, the production of food, etc).  As I view it -- and this view
diverges somewhat from standard CR -- meaning involves an ontological domain
distinct from the real and the actual (the empirical is one part of it).
Further, this semiosic domain is emergent: it possesses powers and
properties which cannot be reduced to the strata from which it emerged.
Likewise, logic (and art, for that matter) isn't simply a puppet of social
power structures.  So the emphasis on semiosis within cultural matters
differentiates them from societal activities more concerned with other
things.  It is the source of their partial autonomy.

Such distinctiveness and autonomy entails the conclusion that there *must*
be multiple structures -- that cultural structures are one type of
structure, among them economic, political, familial, and so forth.  For
cultural structures are not free-floating: the fact that they aim to produce
and manage meanings and perceptions does not release them from material and
social foundations (nor conversely does the fact that other structures focus
on other things imply that such structures lack a semiosic component; nor
could these different structures be wholly independent of one another).
Whatever else they might be, meanings are still produced, and their
producers are humans -- material, social, and conscious beings who
necessarily depend on and embed all that into their products.  No physical
medium (sound, paper, electrons), then no communication.  But there's no
contradiction in saying there are multiple structures, and that cultural
structures are different from other ones in ways that we can define.  And by
"define," I have in mind the development of a real definition, of the sort
Dick discussed.  And Dick's discussion of cultural and social modes of
interaction is I think pretty much on the mark.

>        Sewell goes on to say that when people distinguish between the
> the "cultural" and social, by "social", they indicate a "vague but
> significant residual category indicating that there are other forces,
> structures, and relations that determine human conduct than those named
> in the first of the contrasting terms."  One can make this distinction,
> but then one is using a much more limited definition of the social for
> critical purposes

Well, I don't accept the claims of vagueness or of marked limitation, but I
don't think it's unreasonable to make the distinction, for the reasons given
above.  Is it so unclear to speak of "social structures" in order to
indicate those societal systems primarily concerned with things other than
semiosis, and of "the social" to refer to the realm of human society
overall, as distinct from the strictly biological?

On a minor point:

>        however, there is definitely a difference between your
> (Tobin's) understanding of capitalism as a social structure and Sewell,
> and I wonder
> whether this is related to more fundamental theoretical
> differences.  You conceive property relations as the key to capitalism,
> while Sewell argues that the conversion of use value to exchange value
> lies at the core.

For what it's worth, actually I listed several features of capitalism,
aiming not so much for a real definition as a brief description.  I'm no
economist, so I can't judge whether there's a larger issue here.

Thanks,

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce





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