middle class sensibilities and doublings

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
Sun, 4 Feb 1996 11:34:40 -0500

Hi, Eugene. I've said enough beyond good judgement about doubled moms on
XMCA, but I'd like to respond to some of your "conservative" points.
I always appreciate and benefit from your sense-making on e-mail
but want to sort out the differences in our orientations to middle class
sensibilities. First, you are right to chide me and others
(whether or not you intended to chide!) for attacking middle-class values,
as if the values themselves were problematic. I never imagined that
that European styles of parenting etc. were worse than other styles.
However, I do believe that dominant value systems oppress those who don't
share them, because those who walk, talk, and think from within
them are socioculturally positioned to assume that theirs is the
"right" way to walk talk and think etc. and other ways are wrong,
lacking, ignorant. In schools where most students are middle class,
the middle class sensibility is often problematic - those who are
"not us" are deliberately or implicitly "othered." I am so tired of the
othering I see every day, this far into
a postmodern age, I can't see how we can do without the "analytical
sophistication" that "switching between observant and participant
positions" at least makes possible. The COMPARISON
of alternative views foregrounds the differences between them, and that
is leverage for a critical perspective on values that had been
taken for granted, and that makes more likely a more accepting
orientation towards others who are different and less likely
a righteous defense of one's own preferences
and dispreferences. I know that I often need more of that critical
perspective on my own dispreference for "othering" modes of behavior.

I don't fully understand your point #3:
>
>3. This point is both for Judy and for Jay. I don't see why the congruence
>of the observant and participant positions in an activity (or the espoused
>theory and the theory-in-use using Argrys & Schon's terms) is better than
>discontinuity of them. It seems to me that this is a very rationalist and
>individualist position

How so, Eugene? What makes the congruence of the performative and
critical stances "rationalist and invidualist"??? It is NOT the same,
I agree, as the sort of communion that is possible when the critical
voice goes underground, and there may be in your ideal of community,
a preference for the sort of interaction and learning that operates
only "emically." I can appreciate the good-feeling that comes from such
co-participation. But first, it is also possible for a doubled stance to
operate emically, for a social practice to develop
that assumes a doubled stance, for a more complex notion of
community to develop in heterogeneous settings. And second, it is possible
that the participant with a doubled perspective in some activity can
contribute in interesting, helpful ways to the activity, by mediating
disagreements perhaps or offering a novel interpretation (and still be
learning from doings of the others).

You ended on this note:

>Of course, I don't want to say that people can not cross their cultural
>styles of socialization. I just argue that this crossing should be careful
>with full focus on changes in ecology and safety net.
>
I sure would like to hear more about your observations of the
ecology of activities, communities, cultures, and how you see
appropriate safety nets designed to sustain that ecology. Is the
ecology closed to what is going on outside the immediate system?
I would very much like to hear more. Can you send references
to your work?

- Judy
Judy Diamondstone
diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
Rutgers University

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