Of course my main point was about presence/absence bias in our usual
perspectives, but the other theme was the importance of a multi-scale
approach to 'context'. I am now, I think, finally getting something more
useful than our usual notion of context by including multiple (often
hierarchically embedded, spatially or temporally) scales and units in a
single dynamical system view. Context as some sort of static external
reference was always just a first approximation, I think. The next step was
contexts that are partly constituted by action. But beyond that good idea,
we need better ways to understand what aspects of context change by
participation in what sorts of processes, and this leads, I think, to the
multiscale approach. What aspects are constant, for how long, and why?
changed on what timescale by which processes? process with what extension,
including what other participants?
So, of course, I am all for something like a "time-geography" view (not
just historical time and long-distance geography, but multiscale for both,
a notion that I think David Harris is approaching in his work, which has
some antecedents in common with Giddens) that takes us beyond local
interaction to more macro-ecosocial issues; indeed I sometimes criticize
ethnomethodology for not doing so. I believe, however, that to analyze
across many scales of organization of social dynamics we have to radically
reconstruct the traditional categories of macro-sociology, including class
and gender, not to elide the struggle, but to refine our tools for
participating in it effectively.
JAY.
RE:
> >PS. Leigh Star has been writing recently about the role of infrastructures
> >in embodying our notions of functionality for legitimate activity; to walls
> >and seats, we have to add electrical wiring (and LAN cabling), plumbing,
> >staircases, windows, and the more explicitly semiotic infrastructures of
> >classification standards, etc. Really makes one want to understand better
> >just what are the functions of matter in making meaningful activity
> >integrable across time and space.
>
>It can be expected that focusing on a site without taking into account its
>relation to other sites in what Giddens calls the "time-geography" and also
>failing to consider the refraction of class and other social struggles into
>the classroom would lead to a metaphysical approach and conceptualization of
>the relation between space and enculturation/education (vospitanie), albeit
>a post-modern metaphysics.
>
>Paul H. Dillon
>8/27/99
>
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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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