fevers, resistance, arbitrariness

Rolfe Windward (IBALWIN who-is-at mvs.oac.ucla.edu)
Wed, 17 Jan 96 19:45 PST

Edouard correctly chides me for a bit of sloppiness so let me be more
precise. First, I take it that the arbitrariness in gender designation that
he refers to is expressed in sociocultural terms. Biologically, sexual
dimorphism and alternating generations represent rather specific
evolutionary strategies (males as genetically incomplete females who
increase dispersion of desirable traits for e.g.) that are admittedly only
aducable retrospectively but for all that are not particularly arbitrary
once so modeled. My use of the term "settled" was probably unfortunate
(which is why I placed it in quotes in my original missive) but what I meant
by it was simply that gender, as a social marker, is indeed arbitrary in a
modern, deeply labor divided society (whatever it may have meant in more
"primitive" times) and so what "settles" the matter is usage. People, in the
absence of constraint, essentially follow the Socratic dictum: they become
what they wish to seem.

As to "telos", I am completely in the dark. Even if we assume, as I think is
reasonable in a infodynamical view (cf. Salthe; Lemke), that our identities
are emergent within and entrained by the larger system trajectory, it is not
something whose endpoint we can prognosticate; or at least I can not. But I
admit my response was probably too sanguine: the unknown is as fearful as it
is exhalting. In any case, I agree completely with Edouard in this respect:
there is truly no way of deciding beforehand--the information might be there
(somewhere) but how could we come to know it?

Bernardo comments that SIT and RCT are diametrically opposed. That may be
the case today, I honestly don't know, but Tajfel & Turner were quite clear
in their original formulation that SIT was an expansion of RCT, although as
Bernardo comments, the primary reason for that "expansion" was precisely the
absence of identification in RCT. To whit:

This identification with the in-group, however, has been given relatively
little prominence in RCT as a theoretical problem in its own right. ...
It is our contention that the relative neglect of these processes in RCT
is responsible for some inconsistencies between the empirical data and
the theory in its 'classical' form. In this sense, the theoretical
orientation to be outlined here is intended not to replace RCT but to
supplement it in some respects that seem to us essential for an adequate
social psychology of intergroup conflict ..." (Tajfel & Turner, 1986,
pg.8)

This may have been politic on Tajfel & Turner's part but the words seem
clear enough.

Tajfel, Henri and Turner, John C. (1986). _The Social Identity Theory
of Intergroup Behavior _. in Worchel, Stephen and Austin, William G (Eds).
_Psychology of Intergroup Relations _. 2nd ed.

Regards, Rolfe

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Rolfe Windward (UCLA GSE&IS, Curriculum & Teaching)
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"I respect belief, but doubt is what gets you an education." W. Mizener