>Some pieces that I think fit into this puzzle:
I think there were eight of them. Jay, each of your points seemed to be
framed in terms of system theory or network theory, and my question is
whether you intended such terms to be exclusive. I've been catching up on
my reading of Habermas, specifically the two volume Theory of Communicative
Action. There he engages in a critique of systems theoretical explanations
of the social order. As I imagine you know, systems theory and other
functional theories have been attacked by ethnomethodologists, symbolic
interactionists, by Giddens, and others. I don't have all the arguments at
my fingertips, by any means, but two central points seem to be that (1) the
goals of the system can never be identified a priori, so that predictive
power is poor, and that (2) systems theory has no place for the meaning of
behavior, the intentions of agents, and so forth. It can quickly turn into
a determinism, as a result.
It is for reasons such as these that Habermas insists that the notion of
"lifeworld" must be included in any analysis of a society. He sees a place
for a functional analysis as well, but thinks that this alone is
inadequate. I'm interested to hear your comments--and those of others-- on
this.
A couple of other points. First, I learned yesterday that symbolic
interactionists have, in exploring the relations between micro and macro,
invoked the "meso-structure." Mike, I thought you'd be interested in this.
The reference is Maines, D. 1982. In search of mesostructure. Urban Life,
11:267-79.
Second, I was startled to find in Habermas an argument for a role for
narrative in social scientific analysis. What he writes is this:
"The lay concept of the lifeworld refers to the totality of sociocultural
facts and thus provides a jumping-off point for social theory. In my view,
one methodologically promising way to clarify this concept would be to
analyze the form of narrative statements, as Arthur Danto was one of the
first to do, and to analyze the form of narrative texts. In the grammer of
narratives we can see how we identify and describe states and events that
appear in a lifeworld; how we interlink and sequentially organize into
complex unities members' interactions in social spaces and historical
times; how we explain the actions of individuals and the events that befall
them, the acts of collectivities and the fates they meet with, from the
perspective of managing situations. In adopting the narrative form, we are
choosing a perspective that 'grammatically' forces us to base our
descriptions on an everyday concept of the lifeworld as a cognitive
reference system" (vol 2, p. 136).
Martin
================
Martin Packer
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh PA 15282
(412) 396-4852
fax: (412) 396-5197
packer who-is-at duq3.cc.duq.edu
http://www.duq.edu/liberalarts/gradpsych/packer/packer.html