Re: residual individuals

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
Sat, 13 Apr 1996 10:48:41 -0400

Bill, thank you for posting an interpretation of Bernstein's talk.
It took me one giant step further in understanding it. I think we
do need to specify "the kinds of trnasformations in identity
formation that have much more to do with social practices than with unique
individual choices," and I agree that Bernstein's typological system
may help us to do so. I presume that the differential valuings of
macro-level changes in socieities will invite at some point a topological
mapping, in Jay Lemke's terms - some way of indicating the vast grey
areas, or perhaps better said, illuminating the vast darkness of what
we know about how/who we are in the world....

- Judy

Basil Bernstein's talk this week at AERA dealt with this issue explicitly--he
>put up a framework for a typology of identities afforded by modern
>post-industrial capitalist Britain. The details are ones I'm still trying to
>understand, but the interesting point here is that social practices
>(particularly changing ones of the 1990s) afford particular identity-types
>that are responses to macro-social and macro-economic changes in contemporary
>societies. These identity-types are organized about differential valuings of
>these changes and about typical forms of life that embody these values.
>
>This seems an important level to examine with regard to identity formation
>and the kinds of trnasformations in identity formation that have much more to
>do with social practices than with unique individual choices.
>
>Bill Penuel
>________________________
>PreventionInventions
>PO Box 40692
>Nashville TN 37204
>(615) 297-5923
>
>
>

Judy Diamondstone
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08903

diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
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