Re: fevers and resistence

Rolfe Windward (IBALWIN who-is-at mvs.oac.ucla.edu)
Wed, 17 Jan 96 11:12 PST

Alternatively, the gender issue and others may be at least partially
"settled" by neither acquiesence nor combat. As Sherry Turkle points out in
_Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet_, we are seriously
underestimating the changes that are occurring in the so-called "information
age." Gender and a number of other elements of the human persona may be, and
regularly are, changed at will in cyberspace and the "habit" shows signs of
spreading. That will likely not resolve the issue of the Maori and the
Whites of course since more palpable territories are at stake: as the
Sherifs demonstrated, conflict over realistic totems of identity can become
particularly violent. One can only hope the violence will be of the
ritualized variety.

To tie this in to Eugene and Bill's discussion; Tajfel's social identity
theory (an expansion of the Sherif's realistic conflict theory) would seem
to suggest that beyond issues of strife vs. solidarity, the kinds of
contrasts involved in social comparison may be conceived as cognitive tools
that segment, classify and order the social environment and thus enable the
individual to undertake many forms of social action. Such categories would
not only systematize the social world they would provide a system of
orientation for self-reference. Unfortunately, the finding that self-esteem
frequently ties strongly into maximizing in-group/out-group comparisons
appears quite robust, even when a realistic self-interest would seem to
dictate otherwise.

It would seem that anyone who perceived themselves to be members of a "low-
reference" group would either have to leave that group, attempt to emulate
the "high-reference" group (and likely despise members of their own group
while so doing), or change the rules of the game. The most prevalent
strategy in the latter case is to change the criteria of comparison so that
_your_ group has the superior qualities. Rather a vicious cycle actually yet
still, embedded in those "arbitrary" relationships are visions of what
George Steiner refers to as language's gift of alternity: that it could
indeed be otherwise. One could say, looping back to Ed's comments, that that
is (or should be) an inherent quality of our theorizing -- not simply how
things are or seem to be but how they might be--where we could go next. Good
models can do that I think, even when they do not concern themselves with
ideology (a term that I confess I have still not satisfactorily defined for
myself).

Regards, Rolfe

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Rolfe Windward (UCLA GSE&IS, Curriculum & Teaching)
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"No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work."
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