I used this expression in the context of talking about some
possible views of what middle-class culture takes as distinctive
about itself, especially in models that propose that our
'superiority' has something to do with our wider worlds or
networks of concern (a view I more or less rejected in the
posting). This view includes a notion that we respond to
immediate situations by using as guides for action more 'global'
models of the causes of the situation, the consequences of
possible actions, and the nature of the activity in which we find
ourselves. These models are not 'experience-based' in the sense
that they are constructed from _other_ people's experience, and
passed to us in codified form. I suppose we experience the
_models_ but not the experiences on which they are based, and we
experience the _use_ of the models and their consequences -- but
many of us take the models 'on faith' and use them even when we
are not all that happy with the consequences.
Examples of such models would include the use of scientific
theories, technical manuals, financial and economic models,
ideologies of belief, etc. JAY.
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JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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