Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2002 10:48:02 -0400
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.org>
Subject: Re: Theory and Practice: More Verbiage Ahead!


At 03:22 PM 9/7/02 +0200, Claus Hansen wrote:
>Dear Matt,
>
>thank you for your very inspiring post - I have some comments which I 
>would like to share with
>the rest of this list...

Actually, your post is far more inspiring than Matt's crapola.

>I think the main problem for me to accept this way of seeing things is 
>that is misses out on a crucial aspect of how 'theory production'
>today is done. Adorno writes in his "Introduction to Sociology" about this 
>kind of gap - a gap which is one of the aspects
>of the theory/practice dichotomy mentioned above. He says that - being a 
>sociologist in spe - one has to choose between wanting
>to 'make sense of the world' and 'doing socially useful labour'. In other 
>words - it is not possible - in Adornos opinion to reconcile these two 
>contradictory aims. The real problem about the theory production today is 
>that it is TOO theoretical - most theories are not based on careful 
>observation of the social world - but are 'books about books' as Manuel 
>Castells puts it. The theories (Habermas is a brilliant example) are not 
>second order reflections of the theories the everyday actor uses in her 
>handling of her daily life - instead they are third order reflections: 
>discussions of how other theoreticians have interpreted the world. On the 
>other hand, the scientists who actually study the world are so narrow 
>minded that they only see how our reified and ugly world looks like on the 
>surface - they never penetrate beneath it to reveal the true state of 
>society because they lack the conceptual tools for doing this. One of the 
>things which make Marx so admirable is that he actually studied the world 
>and from these observations tried to draw some consequences - both 
>theoretically and practically. This practice practically doesn't exist in 
>the social sciences of today - and this has the consequence of producing 
>some kind of gap between theory and practice. Perhaps the only exception 
>is the late Pierre Bourdieu...


Third order thinking -- the commodity fetishism of abstract thought.  And 
look at the consequences not just for political practice, but much worse, 
for the life of the mind.  To be intellectually sophisticated, yet mentally 
paralyzed--this is our time.

>Habermas and Giddens being prime examples of this tendency to write books 
>about books - instead of studying the world they live in?

The phenomenon of alienation as it affects theoretical production needs to 
be studied, but not so much as to further reproduce the phenomenon!


>Isn't their conclusions about the inevitability of capitalism due to 
>precisely this lack? Because they have never for instance studied the 
>potential for resistance which still exist throughout the world - for 
>instance in the anti-globalisation movement? In my humble opinion one has 
>to revive the ideas of Horkheimers original statement on the task of an 
>Institute of Social Research and which Habermas tries to carry on. 
>However, one would have to ask the professor himself (in this case 
>Habermas) to participate in this program and study the world instead of 
>only letting his research assistants do it!


Very funny.  Let's hope the movement is really moving and not just an 
exercise in street theater.