[Xmca-l] Re: social / societal

[Andy Blunden]

Oh, and further down the same document, Marx says:

"Ricardo, dem es darum zu tun war, die moderne Produktion in
ihrer bestimmten sozialen Gliederung aufzufassen ..."

translated as: "Ricardo, whose concern was to grasp the
specific social structure of modern production ..."

So, even Marx, it seems, occasionally uses "sozial" in the
sense of "societal"!

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 16/01/2018 12:01 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> 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
>>>> ugenics-Conference-Uncovered-at-University-College-London/&
>>> utm_campaign=TS_D
>>>> AILY%20NEWSLETTER_2018&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=
>>> email&utm_content=5994
>>>> 4918&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--0-XeLCUUnDDfuDnseG5HUEF4e07f2Kt6
>>> FETdaZKU-LuNy2l-YYp5OtU
>>>> MYu_TX7t6Cty6Zf5sNwbX7zL0wBteZ0FmKQ29FAn7V0wUCfIAPc_PrMXk&_hsmi=
>>> 59944918>
>>>> &utm_campaign=TS_DAILY%20NEWSLETTER_2018&utm_source=
>>> hs_email&utm_medium=emai
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>>> FETda
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>>> Q29FAn7V0wUCfIAPc_PrMXk&
>>>> _hsmi=59944918
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>> Peg Griffin, Ph. D.
>>>>
>>>> Washington, DC 20003
>>>>
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