[Xmca-l] Re: Interesting to think about: the social springs of giving

[mike cole]

What did you make of the CBS segment, Jay? Does it provide useful example
of principle of community's in Turner?
Mike
Mike

On Monday, October 19, 2015, Jay Lemke <lemke.jay@gmail.com> wrote:

> For an interesting approach to "community", I'd recommend Edith Turner's
> "Communitas". Ethnographic deepening of late Victor Turner's concept.
>
> JAY.
>
>
> Jay Lemke
> LCHC/Department of Communication
> University of California - San Diego
> www.jaylemke.com
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
>
> > Yes, indeed I am interested, Mike.
> > Critiquing the concept of "social capital" and developing an alternative
> > concept of "social solidarity" and searching for a suitable unit of
> > analysis was how I got started down the track I have been on ever since
> > then, about 2003. What is the difference between community as in all
> people
> > living in such and such town, and "real" community? Robert Putnam had
> > assembled evidence that almost any collective activity fosters what he
> > called "social capital." The problem was that he couldn't distinguish
> > between the mafia taking root in a community and a community taking
> control
> > of crime on its streets, etc. His classic "example" activity was the
> > formation of choir groups, proven promoters of collective "wealth".
> >
> > Andy
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >
> > On 19/10/2015 2:07 PM, mike cole wrote:
> >
> >> I found a segment of the American weekly TV program, 60 minutes, more
> than
> >> usually interesting this evening, and one segment in particular
> >> seemed to have a lot of relevance to many different interests of people
> on
> >> xmca. The topic was the the activities of the "Make a Wish Foundation."
> >>
> >> Of the very many issues that the program discusses, one which I found
> >> particularly interesting was the ability of the organized practice of
> >> communities
> >> raising money to give seriously ill children "a last wish" is one that
> has
> >> particular relevance to questions about the mechanisms of social
> >> solidarity. In small towns in northern Arkansas, a relatively poor and
> out
> >> of the part of the US, people raise amazing amounts of money to provide
> >> special experience for kids who are dying of some disease that has not
> >> known current cure. What particularly caught my attention especially is
> >> the
> >> powerful effect that participation in the money raising and the
> ingenious
> >> social organization of the activities, has on community members across
> >> several generations, from peers to grandparents. In one sense, it seems
> >> that everything is so focuses on the individual kid that it is "just a
> >> manifestation of late capitalist individualism." If effects on the kids
> is
> >> interesting, but it is the reflected effect on the community pretty
> >> generally, and the emergence of strong personal bonds in particular that
> >> caught me most.
> >>
> >> Andy might find this interesting as an example of a project.
> >>
> >> mike
> >>
> >>   http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/topics/60-minutes/     click on make a
> >> wish
> >>
> >>
> >
>


-- 

It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
object that creates history. Ernst Boesch