Re: a thought from Shep White
David Dirlam (ddirlam who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Sun, 21 Sep 1997 15:02:04 -0700 (PDT)
The potential for studying the "survival of settings" is truly
great. We hypothesize about the interweaving relationship between settings
and practices but without more concrete evidence on the former, it is hard
to test or generate alternatives to these hypotheses. White is surely
right that settings do not survive forever, any more than practices do,
but I find with practices that there are all kinds of durations -- from
months to centuries and these durations depend much on the dynamic
parameters of initial strength, growth rate, competitive success, and
acceptance level.
One problem that those who choose to study this issue will have,
is how to define a setting. With practices, I found that for approximately
a decade, I thought of them as things that people learned and used because
they weren't capable of more. Then, gradually I came to see them as things
that people learned from others: a baseline drawing is like hopscotch --
kids pass down how to do it to kids a few years younger than they and the
form can continue intact for centuries. So, I think settings will have a
similar problem. Are they in the buildings and contents or in the actions
and memories of the users? But that is less a problem with doing such
studies as a reason to begin them.
--David Dirlam