Subject: BHA: RE: Institutions as Mechanisms?
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 07:01:05 -0500
Hi Howard,
I know what you mean about there being times when it is impossible to let myself get into e-mail discussions. I am glad to hear that you, and Bhaskar, don't overlook generative mechanisms other than social relations. But you might not trust my analysis of society, because I'm not sure that I "start" my analysis with social relations, in the sense of starting with Marx's assertion that society is an ensemble of social relations. I prefer to start with the more concrete notion of social interactions. I consider social relations to be one locus of explanation for explaining interactions, which I think of as "events," but, as I said in my last post, I also think of learned dispositions and shared culture -- such as the English language -- as necessary elements in any adequate explanation.
Social relations are, however, much more pervasive than psychologizing individualists like to admit. Learned dispositions and cultural symbols are socially constructed, products of (often very long) sequences of interactions which had been structured by "positioned practices."
Best regards,
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Howard Engelskirchen [mailto:howarde-AT-twcny.rr.com]
Sent: Wed 1/14/2004 3:15 PM
To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
Cc:
Subject: BHA: Re: RE: Re: RE: Institutions as Mechanisms?
Hi Richard,
First off, sorry about missing your posts on Boyd a couple of weeks ago -- I
could not dare touch an email post at just that moment. Maybe I can go back
to it.
Anyway, on this point, I'm sure Bhaskar is not saying that all mechanisms
for social life reduce to social relations, particularly not in the sense of
any implicit suggestion that individuals are somehow inert. He says the
contrary -- things only happen through the activities of individuals. But
individuals act within structures that they do not make -- through their
actions they either reproduce or transform them. You can embrace them,
ignore them, whatever, what you do is in relation to them. No one on this
list, for example, has to write in English. But we do. By doing so we
reproduce determined social relations (that are relevant to
oppressor/oppressed nation structures). Bhaskar's phrase is that we engage
in 'positioned practices.' The positions are given by the structures of
social relations.
The underlying question is, what is society as an object of study? Bhaskar
follows Marx who says "society is an ensemble of social relations." Not all
mechanisms of social life can be reduced to social relations, but if you
don't start there I won't trust your analysis.
Howard
----- Original Message -----
From: "Moodey, Richard W" <MOODEY001-AT-gannon.edu>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 12:46 PM
Subject: BHA: RE: Re: RE: Institutions as Mechanisms?
> Hi Howard,
>
> I don't dispute your interpretation of Bhaskar, here, but if this is what
he intends I cannot follow. We are embodied, and physical structures in our
bodies are generative mechanisms for our social life. To take time-worn and
obvious examples, we reproduce bi-sexually, we get information about our
environment through our external senses of sight, hearing, etc. In
addition, we learn through experience, and the residues of experience serve
as generative mechanisms, influence future experiences and actions.
>
> Social relations can be generative mechanisms, but I reject the notion
that all generative mechanisms for social life can be reduced to social
relations.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Dick
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Howard Engelskirchen [mailto:howarde-AT-twcny.rr.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 10:53 AM
> To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> Subject: BHA: Re: RE: Institutions as Mechanisms?
>
>
> Following Bhaskar in the second chapter of Possibility of Naturalism (or
the equivalent chapter (ch.5) in Reclaiming Reality) the generative
mechanisms of social life would be social relations, wouldn't they? This
would be true of international social life as much as any other. So any
analysis of institutions would have to be built up as a phenomenal
consequence of such underlying generative structures. Institutions can
still be causally efficacious, certainly, but that potency must be located
within a generative context. So, for example, the WTO would have to be
situated within the context of underlying structures of oppressed/oppressor
nations, no?
>
> Howard
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Moodey, Richard W" <MOODEY001-AT-gannon.edu>
> To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 7:52 AM
> Subject: BHA: RE: Institutions as Mechanisms?
>
>
> > Hi Ismail,
> >
> > It seems to me that because "institution" and "mechanism" are very
> > general
> concepts, statements that relate them are bound to be ambiguous.
"Institution" is sometimes a synonym for "organization," in which case it
can have real people as "members." But it can also mean an established set
of practices, ways of doing things, in which case we think of an institution
as consisting of such things as rules, roles, patterns or positions, but not
> of real people. When you think of the WTO as a mechanism for managing
the
> global econony, do you imagine the WTO as a concrete organization, with
real men and women as members (serving, perhaps, as agents of different
countries), or do you have a more abstract notion of an institution as an
established way of doing something?
> >
> > What Carrol suggested in his reply is relevant, here. Is "managing
> > the
> global economy" something that the WTO routinely does, or is it something
that some people hope it might do? This gets to the difference between
> attempted control and the capacity for successful control -- power. Be
> careful not to confuse the acts of attempted control on the part of some
actors with the power to exercise successful control.
> >
> > Best regards.
> >
> > Dick
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ismail Lagardien [mailto:ilagardien-AT-yahoo.com]
> > Sent: Tue 1/13/2004 8:36 PM
> > To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> > Cc:
> > Subject: BHA: Institutions as Mechanisms?
> >
> >
> >
> > (resent under different subject)
> >
> > Dick
> >
> > thanks for that... i am still working on these issues. as for
> > mechanisms,
> i am considering the WTO as a "mechanism" for managing the global economy
(See Hirst and Thompson 2000 p 191)...
> >
> > yeah, i sent that message off too quickly... while I am looking at the
> social and historical forces that shaped the institutions of global
governance, i am considering THEM as mechanisms.
> >
> > indeed part of my critique of neo-classical economics is the
> > reification
> tendency. to repeat, no conclusions or firm decisions, yet - just having
fun with this under-labourer.
> >
> > ismail
> >
> >
> >
> > There May be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but
> > there
> never must be a time when we fail to protest." Elie Wiesel (1928- )
Writer, Nobel Laureate
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends
> > today!
> Download Messenger Now
> >
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