Re: question

From: Paul H.Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Sun Jan 21 2001 - 20:23:16 PST


Judy,

I found your first statement to be a prime example of how the
supra-individual, the social structures individual conceptualization and is
hence a good example of exactly what it is written to oppose. You wrote,

> I don't understand how collective action can be possible if inidividual
> participants can't negotiate their positions; I don't understand how
> negotiation is possible if meaning isn't recognized as more than
> referential -- positions are social and idiosyncratic every one.

What is so evident here is that the very idea of "negotiation" is derived
from market place behaviour. Your description fits people in a market place
perfectly. And yes its true that each person in a market place has a
different product to exchange but the fact is that the rules of the exchange
are governed by the value of the products they exchange which exists in not
one single of the products considered in-itself but only arises through a
comparison with the totality of others. Without this, nothing gets brought
to the market place, in other words, it simply doesn't exist as such.

But that's sort of metaphorical. The bottom line is that your description
can only refer to collective action in a society that is based on market
place behavior. The first meaning of "negocier" in french is to trade,
ditto Spanish, (anyone know the Latin root??) Yes, I know all about
Bourdieu's discussions of Kabyle gift strategy as well as all of the
earlier anthropological work on the economic rationality of New Guinea big
men, etc. But one can't ever lose sight of the fact that it was
anthropologists from market based (capitalist) societies making all these
observations etc. What we see here is rather the extension of a concept of
the marketplace into the domain of all action -- I especially like the way
Peter Blau did this a long time ago.

The very idea of a negotiating individual thus (1) presupposes a
collectivity within which differences can be equally valued in some way, (2)
a prime example of, a mass psychological phenomena..

In my opinion this isn't an adequate basis upon which to develop a
theoretical framework for the study of the mind across peoples with
different languages, customs, etc.

Paul H. Dillon

What



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