From: "Howard Engelskirchen" <howarde-AT-twcny.rr.com>
Subject: BHA: Re: RE: Institutions as Mechanisms?
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:40:34 -0500


Hi Dick,

Perhaps there is an ambiguity in the word "start."  You have to start with
events, interactions and other surface phenomena of social life to begin
inquiry.  But, following Marx, one works from there to simpler and simpler
determinations until you come to the simplest determination.  Then you
reconstruct a concept of the real and concrete in thought as a rich totality
of many determinations and relations.  So inquiry definitely starts with
events and interactions.  But the presentation of analysis would presuppose,
at least implicitly, the simplest determinations from which the
reconstruction begins.  Those simplest determinations will be relations -- 
value, capital, gender, race, empire, promisor, preacher, etc.  For example,
there is a whole set of police citizen interactions gathered roughly under
the label, "street encounters."  That simple label itself gathers a
bewildering and complex totality of "many determinations and relations,"
including, for example, the altogether most fundamental relations of
autonomy on which the reproduciton of contemporary social life depends.

Howard





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Moodey, Richard W" <MOODEY001-AT-gannon.edu>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 7:01 AM
Subject: BHA: RE: Institutions as Mechanisms?


> 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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