Thanks for the comment and for forwarding the note from Jim Heap,
whom I have known for a long time and respect highly.
I certainly agree that 'social structures' are not 'objectively
out there', but are analyst's interpretations and models -- and
need to be analyzed in fact as part of the practices of analysts
(as Latour proposes we need to do, and Bourdieu agrees, though
neither have really done this for social science). And I agree
that we make these models to help us account for what happens in
situations -- but the point of the models is to break out of
the limitation that Jim notes in EM/CA: the limitation that the
data is only in/about the situation, and so also the interpretive
constructs. This is a species of what I called 'localism'. I think
it is a very important research program to see how much can be
done in local models and paradigms. I just happen to believe there
is a lot that cannot be done that way alone. I'm interested in
the 'borders' or 'translations' between local situational perspectives
and the phenomena they help us explicate and those we formulate
in more macro-structural terms. EM/CA is very good, as is linguistic
discourse analysis, and some sorts of micro-ethnography, at seeing
how the macro is constructed out of the micro (though this assumes
some macro notions, in EM preferably those of the members, but in
general also those of the analyst's since these shape our perception
of members' activity however we discipline ourselves).
What is missed I think is a systematic sense of the kinds of linkages
that connect one situation to another. These too are present in
every situation, but they may seem marginal or invisible or
irrelevant, both to members and analysts, when our attention is
on the activity-focus of that one situation. Yet they form the
'glue', or the warp and weft that knits together a social fabric
from what otherwise are numerous isolated events, or event types.
This perspective gives rise to system views, network views, and
'social ecosystem' or self-organization views (complexes of
practices across as well as within situations). There are also
relations, easier to see and study, that we discover when we
do aggregrate statistical comparisons of many situations. There
are regularities there that are not visible to members. Yes, they
are constructs of analysts, and no they are not 'objectively out
there' but they cry out for explication and no social theory that
has nothing to say about these matters will ever satisfy many of
the needs for which we want to have a social theory. Particularly
to the extent that analysts and members belong to multiply
interlinked communities, social theories are themselves functional
practices in these communities: particular historical periods
and cultures and classes and genders (or what _we_ construct
as such) make particular sorts of uses of social theories and
set criteria for what makes an adequate one by doing so. We can
change these criteria, and do, but they are always at least
implicit in our practices. (Bourdieu would say that some of
us have more influence over the valuation of a theory than
others, and perhaps, as I would, that the valuation differs
in different social locations or subcommunities.)
Finally, in relation to the sorts of more globalist models
I referred to above, I think one needs much more in the
way of macro-social constructs than just norms and rules,
indeed I doubt the usefulness of those notions for their
principle intended purpose: to provide the link between
macro-structures and micro-social action. One of the reasons
EM and other micro approaches have rejected the macro is
because most current macro theories are really pretty
unsatisfactory. I think most serious social theorists
today believe that one has to build a unified theory from
the ground up, defining constructs that include both
local and global aspects, rather than trying to bridge
between already established micro and macro models.
Bourdieu's abstract theoretical work is of this integrated
type, though most of his empirical work is more traditionally
macro-structural. Here and there he succeeds in sketching
something bolder (as in _Distinction_ for notions like
social class trajectories and the habitus associated with
them). Latour's abstract theoretical model is also of the
integrated type, and probably more radically so than B's,
but his empirical work is more localist, except where he
sketches out some of the putative (but rarely empirically
established) longer network connections. The fact is that
it is damn difficult to gather the kind of data needed
to get at the links and interactions of practices in
very different sites and activity types. B. takes a
bit of a shortcut in _D_ by using the survey method
across a wide range of activities and topics, but winds
up only showing, as this method only can, that there
must _be_ links -- but not exactly what they are and
how they work. He gives us 'product' but not 'process'.
I assume from Jim H.'s response that you'd asked about
longitudinal studies in EM/CA. These are also needed,
also difficult because of scale considerations, and
really doubly difficult because as the time-scale gets
longer, the number of relevant different activity-types
also generally grows as well. So one has the problem
of collecting data across situation types as well as
across time. Moreover, the usual shortcut in longitudinal
studies is just like the survey method shortcut in
cross-sectional ones: you aggregate data for each of
several points in time (time series method) and then
analyze these by comparison. But then you still miss
the _dynamics_, you don't have data on what happened
along the way between these points to connect them,
and you are left with conjectures, with underdetermined
modelling problems.
I think there is a very real sense in which the problem
lies not with out theories, but with our data. JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
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