[Xmca-l] social / societal

Mon Jan 15 05:01:12 PST 2018

David I never said social/societal wasn't a useful
distinction. I said in 40 years of studying Marxism I had
come across the word "societal" - I was not a psychologist,
that's all.

Consider the opening words of the Grundrisse:

    "Der vorliegende Gegenstand zunächst die /materielle
    Produktion/. In Gesellschaft produzierende Individuen -
    daher gesellschaftlich bestimmte Produktion der
    Individuen ist natürlich der Ausgangspunkt."

Translated into English as "The object before us, to begin
with, /material production/. Individuals producing in
society – hence socially determined individual production –
is, of course, the point of departure."

Isn't it blindingly obvious that "socially" here means what
you might call "societally"? Isn't it obvious that having
been introduced to "social" in this sense, there is no need
for the word "societal"? Nonetheless, I accept, if your
topic is psychology, there is a useful distinction there.
But in the context of reading Marx, there is no need for a
different word.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 15/01/2018 8:45 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> Like Wolff-Michael (and unlike Andy), I have always found the distinction
> between social and societal a useful one. Yes, I see that the similarity
> between the words makes them very confusible: I myself use "interpersonal"
> vs. "social" when I teach, but this actually makes them too distinct. I
> think that "social" and "societal"--even MORE than their German
> equivalents--emphasize how linked they are, and also how tied they are to
> language. At some point--and it is a point that is just as traumatic as the
> first year of life, when the child must pass from primary to secondary
> intersubjectivity--the interpersonal begins to confront us as something
> more, something alien, something quite beyond our direct control. Instead
> of speaking language, language begins to articulate us.
>
> I think, in some ways, Wolff-Michael's example of crime is a poor one,
> because I don't think that "crime" actually exists at the social level:
> "crime" is simply what the ruling class chooses to call certain forms of
> exploitation, aggression, and violence from which it doesn't directly
> profit.  But Wolff-Michael is right to argue for the link--both social
> relations and societal phenomena are the result of the ensemble of human
> relations, although which social relation is foregrounded and which
> backgrounded must necessarily change as we move from the social to the
> societal. The feminist slogan "the personal is political" is not a
> redundancy, but it is usually understood backwards, to mean that everything
> social is societal, when in fact it should be understood to mean that
> everything societal is in the final analysis social.
>
> But sometimes the news cycle will bat a poor example away and provide a
> better one. Take, for example, the presidential proposal that US
> immigration policy distinguish between "shithole countries" and Norway.
> Now, for many years, racists have been whining that people are
> being "politically correct" and taking all the fun out of being publically
> offensive and rude by insisting on some link between social interactions
> and societal issues. The idea is that if you interact with Omarosa, Kanye
> West, Ben Carson, and Condoleeza Rice socially you can say what you like
> about the societies they came from. When liberals insist that someone born
> in America is one hundred percent American, no matter where their ancestors
> were born, they also subscribe to this kind of magical disjunction.
>
> Trevor Noah is right to say that the truly shocking thing in what the
> president said wasn't "shithole". It was Norway. This isn't simply ignorant
> and unrealistic (what Norwegian would give up the generous trust of oil
> revenues and emigrate to a country like the USA which totally lacks a
> decent health service or retirement plan?). As in Finland, the Centre-Right
> government in Norway is in a coalition with a far-right, anti-immigrant
> party, dedicated to keeping the country Nordically pure. THAT is not
> just an attack on civility, like using the word "shithole".  It's an attack
> on civil rights. As soon as the US government takes this
> minority government as a model,  it is no longer a social,
> personal, offense; it's societal now.
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
> Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
> Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
>
> Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
>
> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 4:29 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
> wrote:
>
>> Absolutely difficult to satirise, Rob. As if reason was literally being
>> stretched to push what could be considered to be reasonable, so that at
>> every stretch what few years ago would be absolutely unthinkable becomes
>> not only thinkable but normal. Like Spanish police beating people for going
>> to vote to an (illegal, yet peaceful) referendum in Catalonia and
>> politicians being held for months in prison only for "prevention," while a
>> horde of citizens in other parts of the country encouraging the police like
>> they encourage football teams, "A por ellos!!"
>> Alfredo
>> ________________________________________
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> on behalf of robsub@ariadne.org.uk <robsub@ariadne.org.uk>
>> Sent: 12 January 2018 20:18
>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: epidemic or endemic? white suprem-racists
>> international science?
>>
>> I was going to joke that I bet Toby Young was on the guest list, but I
>> see he was. Truth is becoming really hard to satirise.
>>
>> Rob
>>
>> On 12/01/2018 19:06, Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
>>> I believe that this is London's way of making London a more appealing
>> place for Trump to visit. Recently they have said some not-nice things
>> about him, and that makes him turn from orange to red-orange. On the color
>> scale, that's an escalation of tensions. I see this conference as a
>> validation of his world-view, making the UK less of a shithole of a country
>> to him and his followers.
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@
>> mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Peg Griffin
>>> Sent: Friday, January 12, 2018 11:25 AM
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] epidemic or endemic? white suprem-racists
>> international science?
>>> https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/
>> 51323/title/Secret-Eu
>>> genics-Conference-Uncovered-at-University-College-London/
>>> <https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/
>> 51323/title/Secret-E
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>>
>