Re: structural theory

Judy (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
Thu, 28 Dec 1995 22:02:59 -0500

>1. I agree with Chuck that a conflict theory alone is simply not an
adequate guide for pedagogy. On the other hand, I agree with Angel that we
must keep in mind the wider sociocultural grounding of our practice. "Life
is not just conflict but also full of social injustice and misery" - to
paraphrase, when you see social inequalities realized everyday in the
school system or in the microprocesses of classroom interaction, what
does/can a classroom educator do?

2. Angel wrote, "few human beings intentionally mean harm to or dominate
over others."
Nevertheless we may be so positioned to exercise control over another
person's agency without that being our intent, and our exercise of control
for seemingly righteous or benificent purposes may work to the detriment of
someone else's interests. And it would be only if we _cared_ about issues of
domination, that we might indeed be glad to have someone point out what we
were doing and its effects and might indeed use the info to do differently.

3. Jay wrote, "People really need to read Bourdieu carefully to understand
his position.
It is not formulated in terms of individual intentionality at all...." Also
that an ethnomethodological background ... "may include a bias toward
reformulating structural theses in terms of individual events and actors'
viewpoints." First, ethnomethodology as I understand it doesn't privilege
actors' experiences. Do you understand it differently? Second, are you
really objecting to translating structural theses into the terms of our
experiencing? - what certain conditions of social inequality mean for me in
any given circumstance? In chapter 4 of _Textual Politics_ (one of my
favorite chapters of that book) you discuss the body as carrier of social
meaning, the _semiotic body_. "It is the [social] meanings we attend to and
use.... to define the individual." Elsewhere (pg. 82) you say that there are
"subjective individual identities" which do not necessarily coincide "for
all discursive purposes" with entities such as biographical individuals and
historical individuals. For the purpose of understanding "macro" structural
issues and how we are situated in them and how we might act with them in
mind, are you suggesting that we omit considerations of introspection and
subjectivity, our own, our students', the subjectivity of significant
others, because (chapter 4 _) the individual is a social construction
serving bourgeois interests? I am struggling very clumsily for the question
I want to ask.

I welcome any help I can get, as always.
- Judy
Judy Diamondstone
diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
Rutgers University