Re: in/formal and non/coercive

Windward, Rolfe (windward who-is-at lindsey.edu)
Mon, 1 Feb 1999 12:55:06 -0600

Although the distinction between scalar and command hierarchies can be
cleanly made I think the central metaphor remains one of subsumption. To
paraphrase Stan Salthe (incidentally Jay how is Stan doing?), the
metaphor invokes the image of the chief corporate officer (or other high
ranking functionary) as containing his/her underlings or, as C.S. Lewis
phrased it in his marvelously ironic (but I think deadly serious)
Screwtape Letters, as engulfing ones 'subordinates.'

It is this sense of disempowerment, becoming figuratively devoured by
something huge, that fills us with a sense of forboding. But as Sara's
vignettes illustrate so also do actor-networks continue to grow, in many
instances cutting through the human hierarchies we think of as so large
or influencing through their 'leverage' (cf. Latour) the scalar
hierarchies that some elites may attempt to control but yet which can
not be controlled in the way they think. Sara is there in all the
vignettes and they are under no single point of control nor are they
necessarily subsumed..

Perhaps Sara might care to comment if she feels some of the contexts she
mentions strengthen her in her relations with the others?