(this message bounced once, so sending again with different subject header)
Alfred,
You wrote:
> Also the affinity perspective may throw much light on the problem of
> "units of analysis" that has been discussed on this forum time and
> again. My "non-solution" or dissolution of this problem would be: do
> not rely on units decided upon and retained under all circumstances
> if you do not want to loose connection to the real world. The world
> does not consist of units; rather it operates on the basis of
> relations; relations constitute what we can discern as things or
> units. The consequence is to follow possible relations. The sum total
> of possible relations of something focussed by an observer is the set
> of its affinities.
I do think this is a non-solution. As I've stated earlier in the thread, I
agree with Bakhurst that Vygotsky's "unit analysis" is an example of what
Ilyenkov theorized as a concrete universal. Concrete universals are by
definition historical products, as such they are not eternal verities. The
issue concerns ultimately how one handles the problem of history; e.g., the
commodity as "unit" or "concrete universal" does not exist as such in
ancient and feudal societies but emerges historically when the economy is
oriented to the production of exchange values per se and more importantly
when labor itself becomes a commodity, the latter being the key to the
emergence of the commodity as historically determined concrete universal and
consequently the unit of analysis for capitalist political economy.
Carl Ratner and I have been debating for several weeks whether there is any
unit of analysis or concrete universal for psychology. He wrote me that " .
. . psych. is very general and, as such, has no
particular content. thus, a unit of analysis can't contain any specific
characteristics like commodity does for capitalism. We can specify important
relationships for psychology, like social activities, ideology, the cortex,
but I don't see any definite unit of analysis there. We can specify more
localized interactions, e.g., parent-child, teacher-student, but can any of
these be a unit of analysis."
I tend to disagree with Carl and in this find myself in strange alliance
with the post-modernist theorists who insist on the primacy of language
broadly understood. Verbal language is most certainly a rather late element
in hominid evolution (following say the opposable thumb, upright posture,
and other biological adaptations, as well as (possibly) social organization
based on kinship structures involving marriage alliances. (There is no
direct evidence for the kinship alliance/social structure argument but it
seems a reasonable hypothesis on the basis of what we know of the settlement
patterns of early man.) With respect to a word-meaning, we could consider
that for the *historical period* defined by human use of verbal language
(which could hypothetically end with the evolution of telepathic abilities,
for example), Vygotsky's word-meaning could quite well function as the unit
of analysis for studying mind and higher mental functions. Interesting from
the practical insertion of theory in practice, Stalin himself was forced to
confront this issue when he wrote his little piece placing language at the
level of infrastructure.
Concrete universals (the unit in "unit of analysis") are always already
generative relations and as such are not subject to the first criticism you
are making. Also, for the reasons I've given here, they are not subject to
your criticism of being static, eternal verities.
Paul H. Dillon
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Sep 01 2000 - 01:00:49 PDT