Re: play, power & misinformation

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
Sun, 3 Mar 1996 21:32:06 -0500

This note is a request for Rolfe W. to say more. I'm not really sure how
"uncoordinated and changing contexts woven around participants" count
as "efforts at social control." & I would be interested in some
elaboration of your discussion of identity
formation in terms of "ambage-ambiguity" tradeoffs and your last point,
"from a structural perspective at least, it becomes difficult to explain
identity formation in any other way."

At 02:12 PM 3/2/96 PST, Rolfe wrote:

>Efforts
>at social control may usefully be thought of as having two extremes: one
>extreme may be captured by the example of regimentation as in a military
>drill or in strongly caste conscious embeddings where ambage is very high;
>the other extreme can be seen as a maze of uncoordinated and changing
>contexts woven around participants wherein ambiguity is very high. Both
>control extremes seem likely to have their counterbalance in the other to
>some degree and the ambage-ambiguity tradeoffs may then be seen as an
>integral dynamic of identity formation. Indeed, from a structural perspective
>at least, it becomes difficult to explain identity formation in any other
>way.
>

- Judy
Judy Diamondstone
diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
Rutgers University

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