Re: status abdication
Dale Cyphert (DXC20 who-is-at PSUVM.PSU.EDU)
Sun, 15 Sep 96 09:15 EDT
Jay, I think it might be useful to distinguish two versions of "status
abdication" that can occur. One involves an ethical judgment that
higher power carries with it higher responsibility. The high caste
male, the person with unusual intellectual or social gifts, the
financially powerful can all see themselves as having been "gifted" and
thus having more responsibility toward those without similar advantages.
A second scenario is the high caste male, or other "priviledged" individual
whose ethical standards requires conformance with the socialization that will
maintain that status, and is responding to social/political pressures to "be
liberal" with respect to subaltern groups. What you seem to be describing is
closer to the second of my (simplistic) distinction. The status abdication is
inauthentic in that it never recognizes the power relationship to begin with,
and offers a pretense of egalitarianism, instead, as the basis for the ethical"
stance.
I have some problems with Gilligan's model as a strictly gendered difference in
ethical development. This is a situation where gender socialization might be
getting so interrelated with different views of power relationships that it is
difficult to see the complexity.
Regards, Dale Cyphert
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dxc20 who-is-at psuvm.psu.edu/Department of Speech Communication/Penn State Univ