Yes, this idea of projects works very nicely for capturing the mutual
imbrications of persons in one another's lives.
But I'm still caught up on "voluntary associations" vis a vis kinship.
My "beef" here is with the idea of historical discontinuity of
primitive vs. modern systems. I think there always were "voluntary
association" as you put it, and perhaps the major difference is one of
scale.
Consider this passage from Marshall Sahlins on kinship:
"On the Alaskan North Slope, the Iñupiat will name children and
sometimes adults after dead persons, thus making them members of their
namesakes’ families. Over a lifetime, reports Barbara Bodenhorn
(2000: 137), an Iñupiat may acquire four or five such names and
families, although those who bestow the names were not necessarily
related before, and in any case they are never the birth parents.
Begetters, begone: natal bonds have virtually no determining force in
Iñupiat kinship. Kinship statuses are not set by the begetters of
persons but by their namers. Indeed, it is the child who chooses the
characteristics of birth, including where he or she will be born and
of what sex.""
Thus, kinship itself can be a "voluntary association" that holds
different groups together. Exogamous affinal kinship relationships
make the point still more clearly - kinship is always a "voluntary
association" and one that holds groups together in projects by virtue
of imputing a sameness of substance.
Today it seems that the modes of establishing a sameness of substance
are making all kinds of inter-relations possible that were previously
unthinkable. Creating bonds by marital relations are rather limiting
in terms of bond-forming since marriages typically involve small
numbers of persons - notwithstanding polygynous and polyandrous
marriages - which increase the numbers of connections only slightly.
Those numbers are miniscule in comparison to the bonds that are formed
by modern statehood and nationality.
Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities provides a nice case
study of the kinds of projects that you speak of, Andy, and with
respect to the emergence of "nationality". In Anderson's narrative,
states are formed by the process of nationalization of a language and,
critically, by the creation of a national press. Collective projects
(the basis for imagined communities such as a "state") thus are
implied by collective representations of happenings in the world.
But the situation has been transformed still more by recent developments.
Today a student in Brazil can watch a video of the tazing (or
pepper-spraying) of a student or bunch of students in California and
feel a kind of shared substance - that she and I share some essential
substance of commitment to a cause or oppression by a dominant power.
It would seem that this creates whole new possible forms of
kinship/nationalism/solidarity. A step towards conditions in which
workers of the world might begin to see their common situation?
maybe that's taking things too far.
-greg
On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 7:16 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
And as Mike sketched a few days ago, what an amazing little
country Finland is!!
The point is that in order to understand an object (such as the
unique nature of Finland, or the upsurge in Brazil) - complex,
dynamic entities - we need *units* which are themselves processes
of development. For example, I don't believe we can understand a
nation state as a collection of *social groups* (eg ethnic, or
economic, etc.), but rather as a process made up of many other
distinct processes of development, i.e., projects, which interact
with one another.
Formally speaking, the "systems of activity" which Yrjo introduced
are indeed processes of development; but "project" is much more
explicitly so. Further, we individuals apprehend these units (be
they "systems of activity" or "projects") as *concepts*, and the
rules, norms, community, division of labour, etc. etc., *flow from
the concept* as does the *ever-changing conception of the
*object*. If objects (and community, norms, etc.), pre-exist an
activity, then we don't have Activity Theory at all, we have some
variety of structuralism of functionalism.
So it is important to begin from the project, each of which is a
particular instance of a concept, and all the elements (norms,
tools, etc.) of the project flow from its concept and the
conditions in which it is developing.
So for example, I don't think it is appropriate to conceive the
social movements, voluntary associations, protests, political
conflicts and alliances of 20th century Finland as "systems" or
"institutions." They are projects, projects which constructed
modern Finland, and which indeed, one day, become "systems", but
never irreversibly. The institutions which are the products of
social movements, protests, and so on (projects) are never
irreversibly reified as "fields" or "figured worlds" or
"pratico-inerts" or "structures" or any of the other renderings of
the social fabric as composed of dead and lacking in teleological
content.
Andy
Rauno Huttunen wrote:
Hello,
Similar things happened in Finland too. See article by
professor Martti Siisiäinen: Social Movements, Voluntary
Associations and Cycles of Protest in Finland 1905-91
(Scandinavian Political Studies, Bind 15, 1992).
https://tidsskrift.dk/index.php/scandinavian_political_studies/article/view/13149/25059
Rauno
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<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
[xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>] käyttäjän
Andy Blunden [ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>]
puolesta
Lähetetty: 26. kesäkuuta 2013 3:30
Kopio: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Aihe: Re: [xmca] Re: Knotworking (ex: Double stimulation?)
But to make a distinction is not necessarily to set up a
dichotomy.
In Australian social history the appearance of voluntary
associations n
the 19th century (mostly trade union-type organisations, but
also sports
and recreation, mutual-aid of various kinds, and later
political parties
and groups) was a significant development, which meant people
regularly
travelling long distances to stitch together the fabric of the
emerging
nation. In the US, the parallel role was played, I believe, to
a great
extent, also by Protestant sects, who pioneered the building
of new
bonds of sociability and trust across great distances.
These New World projects constructed a new kind of civil
society and the
basis for modernity. According to Hegel for example, modernity is
characterised by the eclipse of family as the chief bond and
political
force in a state, by voluntary associations, such as professional
associations or regional community organisations, where people of
differing traditions construct new modern conditions of
collaboration.
But of course, the family and the state both remain in place!
Andy
Greg Thompson wrote:
Yes, Andy, I think the anthropological notion of kinship
captures your
point that not all biological relatives are "kin".
Anthropologist
David Schneider, for example, points out how kinship is
really just
the Aristotelian notion of "identity", and that "kinship" is
fundamentally a matter of sameness of substance. Thus,
political and
religious affiliations are, in his view, systems of kinship.
Seems like the same would be true of so-called "voluntary
association"
(scare quotes because of skepticism of notions of
voluntary and the
assumptions it makes about us as subjects). Any voluntary
association
worth its salt will surely have this sense of shared
substance (and
with regard to the making of this shared substance,
Durkheim is
essential - but that's a different story for a different
time!). And
don't most of these organizations have some sense of
kinship built
into their relational terms, whether "brother" or
"brotherhood" or
"family" or whatever?
-greg
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 6:47 PM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>> wrote:
Yes, there is no doubt that the commitment many people
have to
continuing the work of their parents and even
ancestors, and their
investment in their children, evidences a project, an
archetypal
project in fact. "Voluntary associations" are
historically a
relatively recent invention, prior to which kinship
was possibly
the most significant project in human life. Of course,
it is not
always the case that a kinship relation always
indicates the
relevance of the concept of "project" - I have cousins
whom I have
never met and to whom I have no commitment whatsoever.
Andy
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*Andy Blunden*
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Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden
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Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
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883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson