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[xmca] moral life of babies



Larry, you wondered:

(snip)Phillip do you see the difference as one of who or what is doing the regulating. Another way to phrase this is "Can institutional structures REGULATE forms of engagement?" or  only "Others in a dialogical relationship to self  within institutional structures REGULATE FORMS of engagement?" (snip)

like you i agree that individuals have agency within situated contexts - yes, the practice of individual agency and the constraints of institutional structures are a recursive feedback loop.

i would not say that agency is "located" so much as that it is "exercised"- rather in the same fashion as Foucault describes power - power is never situated so much as it is exercised.

i see semiotic mediation as a form of agency - certainly Andrew's mom is exercising both power and agency in her recjection of drugs for mediating Andrew's behavior.

i would situate a 'moral imperative' within the individual, not within the institution - insitutions are systems which serve to maintain themselves.  morals are beside the point.
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i think that the dialogical engagement is between two or more people who are contextually within an institution but the moral imperative is operationalized through their own agency and power.

perhaps this conversation should be enfolded within the larger conversation going on just now about the moral life of babies.

Phillip White, PhD
University of Colorado Denver
School of Education
phillip.white@ucdenver.edu_______________________________________________
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