Thank you for your kind message!
I am using the term eco-social system in a special sense which derives from
my own work. It is well described in my 1995 book _Textual Politics_, esp.
in chapter 6, but also in other publications. What I mean, in very brief
terms, is a special type of ecosystem. In the ecosystem proper I include
also the non-biotic elements, and so also the artifacts as material
objects. An ecosocial system is really an ecological-social-semiotic
system, and it is an ecosystem in which human meaning making activities
must be taken into account even to analyze the purely material
characteristics of the dynamics of the system. For me the units of
analysis, or units of constituency, of such an ecosocial system are not
persons or objects, but processes and practices (interactivities) both
involving humans and not involving us (directly), all interdependent and
interlinked, in networks (much as for Latour, but more emphasis on
dynamics). For me networks are a special case of systems topology, and an
important and useful one (but not the only one). With dynamics in such
complex systems there are emergent levels of organization and emergent
phenomena at all scales.
Please remember that I am not a psychologist of any sort! my models come
from physics and ecology, and from cultural analysis, semiotics,
phenomenology, hermeneutics. My approach is to integrate as completely as
possible the material and the meaningful. I suppose no 'mental' units of
analysis at all. And so my ecological terms and ideas do not come from
either Gibson or Bronfenbrenner. I am generally favorable to Gibson's views
on perception, and to the 'Umwelt' tradition in which perception is mainly
meaningful-perception, and context-dependent, and if not exactly
species-specific, certainly a product of co-evolution of our species in a
dynamic ecosystem (and for the last many millennia, a dynamic
ecosocial-semiotic system). I take perception to be an aspect of
interaction, and so affordances are matched to interests to produce
saliences and potential saliences in the perceptual field. But I am not an
expert in this area. Regarding Bronfenbrenner, I admire his general
direction, but it is not the same as my own, though we both perhaps see
cultures as embodied in ecological-social systems and individuals acting in
this context.
I do not believe that we can replace spatial metaphors with temporal ones.
We need both. An 'event' cannot be non-spatial, though I agree that it is
the extension of events in time that is essential for our participation in
them (and so for perception), but all materiality is also spatialized. What
is usually the error people make with spatial metaphors (or really with
spatial discourse, since these usages are as much literal as metaphorical),
is to regard them as static, to see extension in space without extension in
time. But in physics we know this is impossible and self-contradictory.
Both space and time are created by interaction, and you cannot create one
without the other because they are merely different aspects of the same
extensionality of interaction and process as such. Our discourses of space
and time, however, do emphasize different aspects of interactivity, and
either one will be misleading and incomplete without the other. Just as
space and time are not a priori, or prior to interaction, so also our
discourses of them are not foundational for discourse as such, and we
certainly need to evolve better ways of talking about them. Topology can
tell us much more about the possible discourses of space than our folk
traditions, and I try to learn from it. So also both theories of
multidimensional space-time and discourses that try to integrate space-time
with interaction, rather than posit space-time as prior to interaction,
need development. I do not believe this is a task just for physics. It is
also a task for ecosocial dynamics. Different kinds of interaction produce
different relations of space and time, and those in ecosocial systems
(including what we call the 'subjective' perception of duration and
extension) are not the same (though consistent with) those produced by
elementary particle interactions. In my book I have a few notes on this,
and also in a new paper that may interest you on complex systems theory,
Latour networks, and ecosocial dynamics (Denmark paper).
If you would like to discuss on the list what can be done with temporality
but leaving out all spatial metaphor and presupposition, I would be quite
interested. In physics, the theory of time traditionally derives from the
theory of motion (and hence implies space), and in relativity this is
doubly so (but in a more abstract way). In fact one of the failure of
physics is that it permits a reduction of spatial extension to zero (the
point, like the Einstein 'event' reduces time to an instant of zero
duration), and this leads to contradictions in quantum field theory. There
is undoubtedly a 'quantum' of space-time, and it is generated by the same
interactions that we classify in terms of matter and energy, but we have no
complete theory of this (variations of the String theory are attempts in
this direction).
I will also post this reply to xmca, since other members may be interested
in it as background for any future conversations on these important
questions. Many and heartfelt thanks for continuing this dialogue!
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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