Re: [xmca] Development of development

[Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>]

Certainly Larry, Habermas is a great and creative writer and 
a study of the concepts he uses is very rewarding. I do 
think though that we can see in his work why it is that he 
has become a liberal.
When I read any social philosopher I always ask myself how 
the writer sees the *constellation of artefacts* and the 
network of *normative practices* which constitute the world, 
and the relation between the two, and the place of the 
individual in there. My judgment that he takes material 
culture as a mere resource leads me to see why he became a 
liberal. But that doesn't prevent a more productive 
appropriation of his insights.

Andy

Larry Purss wrote:
> Andy
> I've been reading J.M.Bernstein [Recovering the Ethical Life: 
> Jurgen Habermas and the Future of Critical Theory] (1995)
> Bernstein explains rationalization processes as focussed on 
> proceduralism. A move from judgements to formal procedures advance 
> rationality because it works against arbritariness.  Insofar as anything 
> is only individual or unique it is mere contingency, and from the 
> perspective of rationality is arbitrary.
> The ideal of  instrumental rationality
> How this looks in schools is the institutional requirement to organize 
> our activity through rules that apply universally to all the "members" 
> or "students".  Any unique person can be SUBSTITUTED for another unique 
> person and the rationalization process will implicate the persons as 
> both alike as "students".
> In a lifeworld [as I interpret it] one's unique subjectivity is 
> recognized by another unique subjectivity and the resulting 
> intersubjective engagement is open-ended and part of a lifeworld of 
> lived experience.
> The traditional notion of institutionalized rationality includes the 
> economic rationality of the marketplace and the political rationality of 
> the state.  Martin's description of how The Federal government and the 
> state government imposed rationalized structural changes at Willow Run 
> are an example of privileging rational "procedures" of school change in 
> opposition to the development of local unique changes that supported the 
> teachers and community maintaining a dialogical pattern of interaction.
> Andy, when I read the Fleer and Hedegaard article their school setting 
> [in Australia] has so many similarities to the schools I work in [in 
> Canada].  The concept of rationalization as proceduralism that 
> constructs settings that are ALIKE  in places as far apart as Australia 
> and Canada [and negates the unique particularism of each situation] is 
> the hallmark of schools as systems.
> Now they view development as a revolutionary process as children become 
> "students" who are expected to follow specific procedures and maintain a 
> good "attitude". The transformation in moving from the 
> family "lifeworld" where all the participants are intimately implicated 
> in each others experience as they constantly move throughout the house, 
> into rationalized schools bursts the lifeworld. The resulting "kind of 
> person" that develops in these rationalized contexts acquires an 
> attitude that is "flexible" and "self-contained" and "independent".
> Now the question I ask is it possible to mitigate these rationalized 
> procedural ways to structure institutions [and develops rationalized 
> kinds of persons] by supporting relational connections among the persons 
> who are living in these school structures.
> There are individual teachers who do create more intimate relational 
> classroom environments, [lifeworlds] but there are also many classrooms 
> where rational proceduralism dominates the relations among the students.
> I don't view these various structural ways of relating as only the 
> "background circumstances" in which individuals navigate their 
> individual paths through the school setting.
> Rationalized structures create institutions that create particular types 
> of developmental pathways which develop particular "kind of persons".  
> This may not be the meaning that Habermas tried to articulate, but it is 
> my "reading" as I respond to Martin's use of Habermas's term "lifeworld".
> Another term that is relevant to Weber's notion of rationalized 
> procedures is his recognition of "disenchanting the world"  {Berman has 
> written a fascinating book "The Re-enchantment of the World" that is a 
> history of this process}
> Re-enchanting the world is re-recognizing the centrality of the 
> imaginal in lifeworlds and the devaluing the imaginal in rationalized 
> institutions.  Wolfgang Isser {who Martin recommended reading} describes 
> "knowing" as a triangle with the "imaginal" and the "real" being 
> MEDIATED by the FICTIONAL that transforms the imaginal to the real. 
> [Isser was a student of Gadamer]
> Andy, I am not well grounded in these traditions [such as hermeneutics] 
> but when I read Martin's linking cultural historical notions with 
> writers such as Isser, H. Whyte, and Gadamer its an area I want to 
> explore further.
>  
> Larry

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 
Skype andy.blunden
An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity: 
http://www.brill.nl/scss


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