RE: The link between "macro" and "micro" (fwd)

Jay Lemke (JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Wed, 03 Jan 96 21:33:44 EST

In response to Eugene's suggestion about more global approaches
to situated activities, his recommendation to look at a larger
joint situation or activity that includes the focal one and
another/others is fine, and my own practice, _if_ I know what
those relevant other situations and activities are. The problem
arises when we do not do so _a priori_ and may even miss paying
attention to them because their role in the situation and
activity in focus is not salient or obvious. This is especially
true when the connections are highly non-local in space and
time, and perhaps even in participants. This is where macro
models can suggest things to look at, ways they may be connected
to other times and places and activities.

Suppose, for example, that we do a wonderful micro-analysis of
the interactional dynamics of telephone conversations. What will
tell us that we should look at/for gender effects? esp. if, say,
all our data happened to be same gender pairs of one gender? what
in micro-analysis of this activity as activity points us to an
interest in gender differences, in class differences, cultural
group differences, age-group differences? esp if our data is
(invisibly because we are not paying attention to these variables)
homogeneous and uniform (by bias or chance) on these dimensions?
Why should we seek to compare two phone conversations, unrelated
in other respects, that happen to be, one M-M and one F-F? If we
do decide to look at such a comparison, it is likely because
we or others have found such factors relevant in entirely other
situations, events, and activities, but some more global social
model tells us there may be a connection to the activity we are
studying.

Much the same issue arises with the historical or biographical
dimension. Should we be interested in the effects of a long
history between two people of phone conversation? In the effects
of some one critical conversation between them long ago? In
differences between pairs with different prior interactional
histories?

Long ago my late friend Klaus Riegel gave an eye-opening talk
I heard (and which led me to talk further with him, etc.) in
which he said, memorably for me: History and culture are
present in the dialogue. -- but their presence may not be
evident unless we bring a more macro or global perspective
and set of questions to the analysis of micro data. JAY.

PS. I do feel limited, as Eugene suggests, by the machine
metaphors in notions like 'linkage' between activities or
practices. More abstractly I speak of interdependencies,
and redundancies. The problem with our homely and comfortable
language here is that all our familiar prototypical systems
are local ones, where elements that are 'linked' tend to
be nearby in space and time. When I use this metaphor now,
I tend to think of newer phenomena like hypertext links
and internet linkages of people and events remote in
time and space as well. JLL

JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU