Mike,
When I read Goffman's name I decided to jump into this discussion.
I think your comments are right on target, as long as we have in mind that
even the "cultural resources" are not - and cannot be - a well defined set.
These "resources" and their "appropriate" uses should be understood as
"prototypes". It's much the same way as in Wittgenstein's famous discussion
of the concept of a "game": we can't give a finite number of necessary and
sufficient conditions to characterize all and only the activities that are
games, but nevertheless we are able to tell if someone is or is not playing
a game.
In this sense, we might say that someone is acting "appropriately", even if
we are not able to give a clearcut definition of what "appropriately" means:
"It goes without saying". And Eugene, if you see things that way, there is
no need to worry about the word "appropriate".
Rgrds,
Luiz Carlos Baptista
lucabaptista@sapo.pt
lucabaptista@hotmail.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Cole" <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: quarta-feira, 8 de Outubro de 2003 17:48
Subject: RE: enculturation, ethnemes, pedagogy, research
> Eugene-- I would relate appropriation to the concepts of passing and
> management in Goffman. That is, one learns to behave in a manner that
> is appropriate to the group/idioculture one is participating in. A wide
> range of behaviors can be so considered and it is clearly an ongoing,
> negotiated, interactional process. Not a fixed state. Since no two
> members of any group share 100% of its cultural resources, how could
> it be a static state, in principle?
> mike
>
>
>
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