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[xmca] social history ex: Knotworking (ex: Double stimulation?)



I need to find the time to read this social history of Finland, and I will say something about that.

"Structuralism" reflects of course an aspect of the reality of modern life: things go according to deep processes beyond the influence of any individual; great institutions such as the market, the political system, nation-states, cultural norms like patriarchy dominate our lives almost as laws of nature. But I do not think a theory based on this aspect of the world and our place in it helps us understand or change it. I prefer the Romantic Science which sees the history of science as part of science itself (to quote Goethe), for whom human subjectivity is the uncontrollable, living engine which shapes the world. The figures you mention (Marx, Touraine, for example) are not in my view strucuralists; Bourdieu is I think also open to different readings.

But I will read this article about social movements in Finland. It looks very interesting!
Andy

Rauno Huttunen wrote:
Hello,

You can ask this from Martti Siisiäinen. He is also a scolar of Niklas Luhmann's system theory (and Marx, Bourdieu, Touraine, Althusser etc.). Martti was my supervisor when I made my master thesis on sociology.

His mail is: martti.siisiainen@jyu.fi

Rauno

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

________________________________________
Lähettäjä: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] käyttäjän Andy Blunden [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



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