Re: [xmca] Church Report Cites social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and '70s to blame in Priest Scandals

[Valerie Anne Wilkinson <vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp>]

Mike,
I'm not sure I can map out the wayward curves of my post yesterday morning.
The genesis was Andy's comment: (The 60s) created the conditions for people who 
were abused to come out in public and denounce their tormentors.

That brought back to mind Weick's description of the process of making child abuse visible.

Now this thing about clergy abuse is one of a number of kinds of abuse.

Anyway, your question:
"Valerie-- Are your comments about articulation and loose coupling a response
to Larry account of Anna's ideas about NO GAPS?"
was wonderfully focussing.

> What I find so radical in Anna's writings is how she is attempting to
> connect ontology, epistemology, agency, subjectivity as a single unity
> {gestalt, whole] with NO GAPS.  Her writings in this area is helping be to
> understand the concept of "bi-directionality" within this unity.  The
> concrete & abstract, cases & types are a single process or unity with NO
> GAPS and it is only one's stance [perspective] which raises to awareness
> the concrete or abstract.  From her perspectives "examples" "events"  or
> "cases" if explored deeply lead to the abstract while the abstract is grounded in
> examples, events, and cases.


This absolutely random news story, Canary Islands, Spain lit off my identification with Jennifer Mills-Westley because we  are close to the same age.  She is near family in the Canary Islands, flees from an attacker in tears, runs for shelter. Is sent off with assurances only to meet her death.  Processing this story and taking the wretch "on-board" who perpetrated this crime means recognizing that a troubled person has been in society's corrective systems - both incarceration and psychiatric evaluation - ineffectively.

So, yes, NO GAPS bring us right here.  This is the concrete which can lead to the abstract.  To take on the shock and sorrow for her and her family, yet not getting pushed into a position where mindfulness is lost about the other one in the situation, nor those with complicity.  Clearly the guy was messed up and clearly the potential of his psychological state was known, and had been known.   

So, anyway, Mike, yes -- articulation and loose-coupling are a kind of procedural response to Larry's account of Anne's ideas,
without the concision, the deft making of an organic unity. I thought I could get close to saying it, but later, upon rereading I thought one would be quite right to be muddled by my switches.  I can only thank you for intuitively forging the possible link to the discussion that I was tap-dancing around, sort of. ( But I had quite a ride!  I liked the part where Dreyfuss describes the enormity of the shark attack in antiseptic medical terminology while the authorities are hoping to minimize it, pretend it didn't happen. )
Valerie

On 平成23/05/21, at 12:19, mike cole wrote:

> Yes, re-covering old ground is very often helpful, Valerie. The way that
> Barth through Tony Whitson re-minds us to  re-read. Interesting how well
> Elliott works for us, whether we are talking about writing poems or writing
> lives.
> 
> mike
> On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 6:08 PM, valerie A. Wilkinson <
> vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp> wrote:
> 
>> Andy said:
>>> And ironcially one could answer : "Woodstock"! That is, the social
>>> movements of the 1960s did not create conditions for sexual abuse
>>> (that belongs to the mediaeval structures of the Church), but they
>>> created the conditions for people who were abused to come out in public
>> and denounce their tormentors.
>> 
>> Karl E. Weick burst upon my consciousness, oh, maybe around 1998 with
>> _Sensemaking in Organization_.  Because of Weick I got my start with Lave
>> and Wenger _Situated Learning_
>> And this is how these things go, working backwards -- finally I had to meet
>> and fall in love with Erving Goffman. (and Goffman takes us back to
>> Bateson.)
>> 
>> Weick detailed in Sensemaking the process of describing, articulating,
>> acting upon evidence, and finally the delicate processes of rescuing
>> children from child abuse.  (just extrapolating here, but this reminds me
>> of
>> that effective scene in _Jaws_ when Richard Dreyfuss was walking around the
>> table bearing the remains of a victim and describing the details of her
>> horrendous wounds in medical terminology. Uh, and we say to the
>> authorities,
>> "Are you trying to say "nothing to look at here?  Move along"?
>> 
>> "We" are becoming more aware in a world which is increasingly (this is a
>> scary moment for someone writing on the verge of committing a solipsism or
>> worse) aware of record, abuses of power, of "national integrity" and some
>> sense of human rights (i.e. Amnesty International, etc.) I mean, it's not,
>> like, we can fix things at once, but things are getting better gradually.
>> The point is, let's keep talking and talking to power, and recounting what
>> happened ...
>> 
>> The attractions of wealth, power, and influence raise some to
>> policy-defining levels permanently! To their children's children's
>> children.
>> Apropos of the state of the world: Jennifer Westley-Mills, a British lady
>> of
>> 60, randomly attacked and decapitated on May 13.  Behind this horrendous
>> story is a messed up person, crunched around by the system.  One glance, by
>> whom?  Who will tell this story fairly.  We don't have Howard Zinn bringing
>> a lucid perspective to the situation, or not yet.  Because this situation
>> cannot be covered by one glance.  But at least, let's say that we can
>> detect
>> willful lack of accountability in the public handling of a person known be
>> dangerously unstable.
>> 
>> So, back to child abuse, whether the history is embedded in a place
>> dominated by an all-powerful religious institution, or a religiously
>> mandated class or gender domination of women and children, and the
>> physically or mentally feeble or yet by an elite domination of the common
>> people by wealth and privilege, if we continue to record, articulate, and
>> archive, advances can still be registered and built upon.
>> 
>> We've spoken of Aristotle, the empiricist, and Plato, the idealist,  here
>> recently.  And Larry (see [xmca] Finding common ground across sociocultural
>> frameworks, Sat 5/21/2011 5:27 AM) by inviting Anna Stetsenko to the table,
>> is arguing for a dynamic activation of the third framework (the 3 major
>> frameworks of the 20th century, Piaget, Dewey, and Vygotsky).
>> 
>> I also want to invite Karl Weick to the table.  His "loose coupling" [Loose
>> coupling in Weick's sense is a term intended to capture the necessary
>> degree
>> of flex between an organization's internal abstraction of reality, its
>> theory of the world, on the one hand, and the concrete material actuality
>> within which it finally acts, on the other. A loose coupling is what makes
>> it possible for these ontologically incompatible entities to exist and act
>> on each other, without shattering (akin to Castoriadis's idea of
>> 'articulation'). Orton and Weick argue in favour of uses of the term which
>> consciously preserve the dialectic it captures between the subjective and
>> the objective, and against uses of the term which 'resolve' the dialectic
>> by
>> folding it into one side or the other. (cited from Wikipedia)]
>> 
>> A rough edged conclusion to my ramble here, this forum is a place where we
>> can remember, record, and articulate what happened.  Somebody nails it,
>> nails it again, then we know it collectively and work towards opening the
>> field to improvement.  Sometimes it seems as though the situation of the
>> poor and disenfranchised is only getting worse.  Sometimes rhetoric is to
>> blame.  But I'll quote it again: There is only the fight to recover what
>> has
>> been lost and found and lost again and again: and now under conditions that
>> seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us there is only
>> the trying.  The rest is not our business.  (T.S Eliot East Coker V)
>> Valerie Wilkinson
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
>> Behalf Of Victor Friedlander
>> Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 6:35 PM
>> To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Church Report Cites social and sexual turmoil of the
>> 1960s and '70s to blame in Priest Scandals
>> 
>> On 20 May 2011 05:32, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> A supplementary to what I said ... the real societal question is why did
>>> all this sexual exploitation stuff start coming out in the 70s and 80s?
>>> After generations of abuse, suddenly Ireland is full of horror stories
>> about
>>> what the priests and nuns do with the children in their care? And
>> ironcially
>>> one could answer : "Woodstock"! That is, the social movements of the
>> 1960s
>>> did not create conditions for sexual abuse (that belongs to the mediaeval
>>> structures of the Church), but they created the conditions for people who
>>> were absued to come out in public and denounce their tormentors.
>>> 
>>> Andy
>>> 
>>> Andy Blunden wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Yes, this was an astounding claim. The Church has studied all the sexual
>>>> abuse of children over the decades and decided that the cause was not
>>>> celebacy, or homosexuality but Woodstock (all their words). They claim
>> that
>>>> the Church was simply a part of a social problem which affected the
>> larger
>>>> social body, viz,. the 1960s Free Love movement. This is how the report
>> has
>>>> been reported here in Australia.
>>>> 
>>>> I don't accept this at all. It is crazy. Abuse of small children by
>> adult
>>>> priests is nothing to do with free love, or love of any kind. Also
>> nothing
>>>> to do with celebacy or homosexuality. I believe it is an issue to which
>>>> Activity Theory gives us an effective lens though because it was not
>> only
>>>> the Catholic Church and its celebate priests who are implicated, but all
>>>> hierarchical organisations, especially those built around a doctrine
>> and/or
>>>> demanding tight loyalty. It affects the even IMF actually. Where you
>> have
>> a
>>>> situation where one person has absolute power over another (a relation
>> which
>>>> can be estabished by doctrine, but to an extent also by economic
>> relations)
>>>> then this kind of sexual subordination and exploitation occurs. It
>> occurs
>> in
>>>> families, too. The question is the quality of the person to person
>> relations
>>>> on which a large social formation is based.
>>>> 
>>>> Andy
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
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>>> 
>>> How ironic.  The Bishops' report manages to deflect criticism of the
>>> consequences of authoritarian relations between ecclesiastical officials
>> and
>>> their clientele by reassertion of absolutist doctrinaire criticisms of
>> the
>>> sexual practices of the public at large. A similar, and perhaps less
>>> well-publicized phenomenon can be found within the Orthodox Jewish
>>> community.
>>> 
>> 
>> By the way, several observations of the report suggest that the sexual
>> transgressions of the clergy resemble more the abuse characteristic of
>> prison sub-cultures than they do of those of gays and pedophiles.  There
>> too, sexual abuse has more to do about the exercise of unrestrained
>> authority than about strictly sexual mores.
>> 
>> --
>> Victor Friedlander
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Valerie A. Wilkinson, Ph.D.
Professor of Communication
Faculty of Information, Shizuoka University
3-5-1 Johoku, Hamamatsu, Japan 432-8011
http://www.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp/~vwilk/
vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp
phone 81 (53) 478-1529





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