Big and Small Social Things

Charles Bazerman (bazerman who-is-at humanitas.ucsb.edu)
Sun, 30 Nov 1997 09:41:12 -0800 (PST)

WARNING: PRETTY LONG MESSAGE

The discussion between Jay Lemke and Naoki Ueno about micro-macro has made
evident to me some of the issues in the attempt to recover
plausible accounts of larger socially structuring dynamics from concrete
local action. Let me explain by first setting out several heightened
accounts of social structure.
1. There are underlying forces and structures as well as
mechanisms of social interaction, likely invisible or only partially
visible to participants, that pervasively shape their social locations,
resources, fates in ways beyond their control and independent of their
behavior. It is one of the jobs of the social sciences to make visible
these structural dynamics and their influence on lives individually and en
masse. (Let us call this traditional structural-functional sociology)
2. There are certain behaviors, dispositions, habits, attitudes,
practices that are learned within participation of various activities that
occur at socially differentiated locations (locations of activity and
locations of class status). The translation of these habits,
dispositions, etc. into new circumstances helps reproduce behavior,
statuses, outcomes, in ways that maintain social differentiation of
activities and demography. Participants again are not fully aware of
these behavioral and dispositional practices and it is one of the jobs of
social sciences to make them visible. (Let us call this structurationist
sociology)
3. Powerful participants make visible, concrete, and otherwise
reify their ad hoc power relations into explicit systems of order
articulated in various material and symbolic ways, and to which the other
participants seem to acquiesce, by accepting such things as
representations of organizational structure. Participants are necessarily
awarew of and respect the material and symbolic means of social ordering,
though they may not be aware of how such arrangements came about (but they
also may well be able to provide some insider account, and even some more
comprehensive view, of how they came to reside in the social p[ositions
they do) Insiders may also be aware of the opportunity to reinscribe the
system in ways more favorable to themselves and thus are potentially
politically at play to some degree. The task of the social sciences here
is to open up the mechanisms by which power was inscribed into the
explicit but reified systems, thereby putting more of social organization
visibly at play. (This let us call the actant-network view of social
structure).
4. All structure arises out of concrete moments of interaction and
the strongest elements of social order are those rules and principles by
which we order our micro-interactions. We can only know larger ordering
mechanisms of social interaction insofar as they are made visible and
relevant in the micro-interaction. Participants may or may not be aware
of the mechanisms of interaction they deploy, but it is the work of social
scientists to make those micro-mechanisms visible and analytically
precise, and then to demonstrate how other conceptsa of social relations
are deployed and brought to bear on interactions in the micro-moments.
(let us call the the Conversation analytic approach).
5. People in order to make sense of the variety of interactions
they engage in, perceive those interactions through various forms of
social types they have come to know through their own experience and
through categorization talk with others. These typifications bring with
them typical behaviors, dispositions, beliefs, subject positions,
discursive patterns, actions, etc. Participants are to some degree aware
of the typifications they invoke (through their embodied participation in
them), and may be to varying degrees articulate in the typified categories
that identify varied events and the correlates that go along with the
typifications. Since, however, types are reconstructed by each user from
their own experiences and reinvoked in singular occasions--despite perhaps
relying on publically shared category vocabulary and a public archive of
models and shared experiences, even training--there is a spreasd ogf
understandings and uses of the types, even by participants in the same
event. Here the task of social sciences is to display the
processes of typification and help elaborate the systems of typifications
available for participants to come to terms with and deploy at any social
time and place. (Let us call this the typification/genre approach). (I am
also not sure how this would/would not intersectr with a symbolic
interactionist characterizatiuon of the creation of the appearance of
larger forms of social organization--Leigh, could you help me out here?)

Several xmca'ers may find difficulties with my characterizations
and I welcome discussion and refinements and additions to this
Sunday-morning typology.
I myself find that all of these kinds of theories help point to
various phenomena and are useful on different occasions. The kind of
problem one is addressing would seem to me to be crucial in selection
which of the theory/inquiry approaches is best. The last, of course, has
proven particularly useful in my own sphere of the teaching of writing to
help people locate their communication activities within complexly ordered
possibilities for writing and text interpretation, and thus locating their
reading and writing within differentiated social activities. There also
seems some overlap among the kinds of accounts that could be generated by
some of these approaches, but that needs to be worked out in the concrete
cases.
In setting the alternatives out like this, however, it becomes
clearer to me how the issue of participant knowledge/awareness varies
across these models, not just for analytical purposes but for
understanding the nature of participation and in reflexively providing
tools for more effective participation (which seems in a number of cases a
chief end of the social inquiry). That is, to what degree are the various
accounts of social order depent on the participants own awareness, use,
respect of the various categories and/or behaviors/habits/dispositions out
of which social differentiation/organization is said to occur in each of
these accounts. That is, how much and in which ways do we participate in
projecting and maintaining the social orders we seem to be living within?
Can there be, in any sense, orders that we do not somehow concretely
participate in creating?

Again, as a writing teacher, I have the general orientation that
you can participate in most anything if you come to recognize how it works
and develop the knowledge and skills to hold up your end of the
participation. Thekinds of habits and dispositions Bourdieu talks about
provide ways of thinking about the practices within particular discursive
worlds and the kinds of discursive experiences and imaginations students
may arrive on our door with, but which we might extend into other domains
of practice and disposition. The traditional structural-functional
accounts help people articulate the social and economic world the seem to
find themselves in--but the more structurationist accounts help them
understand the kind of agency they might have within these worlds. Actant
network perspectives also support understanding the shape of the world one
seems to arrive into and how it got to be that way, but also points one
toward rhetorical tools in perhaps reshaping the landscape in ways that
might accommodate oneself and others. C.A. seems to point people towards
understanding the ways situations unfold through series of interactions,
and thus to reflect on how things are going and how one can find the
niches for utterances an interventions that might cause things to unfold
in different ways.
I guess what I am doing is trying to make some comparative sense
of various approaches to social order I have found useful, and to suggest
that the micro-macro problem looks different depending on where you sit.
Trying to reconcile concrete small things (as we perceive them) with the
appearance of large abstract things (which we treat as though they had
meaning--social facts), is clearly a generative exercise in many
instances and for many purposes. Is it, however, a task that from a
pragmatist position needs to be resolved. To suggest that we need an
account that draws them together coherently and comprehensively seems to
derive from a desire to have an absolute and total account of human
behavior. Similarly to suggest that alternative accounts that rise from
concrete actions to interpretation and appearances do not provide
useful accounting seems to be a bit to impatient with the kinds
ofcomplexity and phenomena that arise from the variety of practical
problems that people usefully address.

Yours,
Chuck

On Sun, 30 Nov 1997, Naoki Ueno wrote:

>
> Dear Jay,
>
> Thanks a lot again for your response.
>
> I will be out of town this Tuesday. So, I do not have enough time to write
> a mail.
>
> In this mail, I write only about Latour.
>
> What I understand in Latour(or at least what I am interested in Latour)
> is not formulating and analysing the given "macro" or "large scale" itself.
>
> Rather, it seems to me that he tried to show how "macro" becomes
> visible or observable for whom through cascade of inscriptions.
>
> For example, a modern thematic map is one of good examples.
> Thematic maps describe industrial configuration, networks of
> transportation of a nation based on various statistic data and
> huge survey by army or other govermental institutions.
>
> Just like other filing systems like records of students, examination
> in school, a thematic map makes visible of "macro", that is "the nation"
> or "people in the nation".
> In a thematic map, something invisible is visible.
>
> What kind of "macro" becomes visible through cascade of inscriptions?
> For whom? That "whom" is visible?
> Following Foucault, Latour tried to answer these questions more
> concretely as all of you know.
>
> The question how and for whom "macro" becomes visible is quite
> different from the question how one should analyse "macro" or how
> one should integrate "micro" with "macro".
>
> I am not sure that was successful, however, Latour also tried to show how
> making visible of macro is embedded in what kind of practices or
> what kind of places. Further he pointed out the practice in the place
> like centre of calculation is local while he criticizes great dichotomy.
>
> The qeustion how panopticon like view is organzed for whom is
> different from the question what kind (or level) of panopticon(s)
> we should choose in order to look at the "macro" or "meso"
> as the given reality.
>
> Suchman, Goodwin and Goodwin's research on airport operation
> room can be regarded as concrete research that tried to analyse
> the situated practice and constitution of "centre of calculation" .
> Actually, Suchman wrote the paper entitled "centre of coordination"
> that directly came from the term "centre of calculation".
>
> In this way, what I noticed in Latour cannot be reduced to
> the dimension of micro-macro.
>
> For Bourdieu, I should do quite different discussion although I am not
> sure it is possible in this mailing list.
> Anyway, it is impossible for me to categorize both of Latour
> and Bourdieu in the same category such as "macro".
>
> Naoki Ueno
> NIER, Tokyo
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>