Re: [xmca] RE: The Social Creation of Inequality

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

I was too captivated by the vividness and precision with which David
describes these
events to keep track of the concept/project part of the discussion. The
image of your mother in law in such straits, of the city itself in such
straits, of the "solution" coming as the inversion that it does.

I still do not have project and concept straightened out. But I take it that
that the relationship is, so to speak, bi-lateral. Symmetrical or not I
leave to you. This way of posting the issue seems to speak to the idea of
tool and symbol.

Thanks
mike

On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 6:19 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Ha, ha! Very good David, and you are absolutely right (with or without word
> play) that concepts can launch projects. My father taught me that if you
> write a Letter to the Editor, you always sign it as "Secretary of the
> Brunwick Residents Association" or some such thing. But in general, you have
> to have a kind of preconcept in order to launch a movement. But the word
> (symbol or representation, ...) takes on meaning only in and through its
> realisation. ... We have yet to see how this project will work out. :)
> Alternatively a potential concept can become a true concept by means of a
> project, as when an astute social oberver notices some new social practice
> and writes a book about it.
>
> Andy
>
> David Kellogg wrote:
>
>> I have an example of the opposite: that is, the turning of something that
>> is quite literally a project into a concept, and a concept that is directly
>> linked to the social creation of inequality and only notionally linked to an
>> actual project.
>>  I am visiting my mother-in-law, a retired textile worker in a large state
>> run factory town, now bankrupt, in the east suburbs of Xi'an. She is now
>> paralyzed and cannot move around at all but for most of her retirement this
>> was an area run by criminal gangs (the children of people who used to be
>> employed in the textile factory) and populated by drug runners and the very
>> poor (their customers).
>>  Now the textile plant, once a proud project of the "People's Commune"
>> movement, is being shut down for good, and the rump production that was
>> going on is being moved to a village many kilometers away. But the area
>> itself is being...gentrified.
>>  When I first saw it, I could hardly believe my eyes, and I still can't
>> explain it to my mother-in-law, or even to my brother-in-law, who is one of
>> the major investors in the project. Along the banks of the Ba River, the
>> government has established a huge ecological wetlands park, with paths and
>> exercise machines, little explanations of the flora and fauna, small boats
>> to row in, and nowhere to live except the nearby slum where my mother-in-law
>> lies dying of a stroke.
>>  My brother-in-law (who having once sold breakfast in a stall and run a
>> pool hall has now become a multi-zillionaire real estate speculator himself)
>> explains it this way. "We used to build the houses first, and then try to
>> fix up the neighborhood. But now the government will fix up the neighborhood
>> for us, and then we build houses. It's a lot better that way."
>>  Next year, my brother-in-law will actually begin the project of building
>> housing. But already there is a billboard where one of the skyscrapers will
>> someday stand (the houses themselves, although still only notional, have
>> already been sold off to speculators). The billboard reads: "Wetlands area:
>> turning nature into private property".
>>  David Kellogg
>>
>> --- On *Fri, 7/29/11, Andy Blunden /<ablunden@mira.net>/* wrote:
>>
>>
>>    From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
>>    Subject: Re: [xmca] RE: The Social Creation of Inequality
>>    To: "Larry Purss" <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>>    Cc: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>    Date: Friday, July 29, 2011, 6:39 PM
>>
>>    Mmmm, I have not settled on whether "dead" is the right word.
>>    "Objectivication" means that the project becomes an integral part
>>    of a way of life, reflected in a word in the language and other
>>    artefacts which are taken-for-granted as tied up with the concept
>>    which was once a project. In a sense it is very much alive,
>>    because it is enacted by living people and is part of the life of
>>    the community. But it no longer has a life of its own, so to speak.
>>    But projects also die in the sense that they are no longer enacted
>>    and are just a memory, like "old technology" or the soap box
>>    (trying to think of examples, I noticed that such projects often
>>    move over into metaphors).
>>
>>    Andy
>>
>>    Larry Purss wrote:
>>    > Andy
>>    > Thanks for the clarification.  Institutions have a life cycle.
>>    While still "living" it is more accurate to refer to these
>>    conventionalized practices as "projects" that are continuing to
>>    develop. Whe the cycle ends they become dead ojectivications. Is
>>    this accrate?
>>    >  Larry
>>    >
>>    > On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 6:54 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
>>    <http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.**com/mc/compose?to=ablunden@**mira.net<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ablunden@mira.net>
>> >
>>    <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>>    <http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.**com/mc/compose?to=ablunden@**mira.net<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ablunden@mira.net>
>> >>>
>>
>>    wrote:
>>    >
>>    >     Projects have a life cycle. The end of a life cycle (apart form
>>    >     disappearing into nothingness) is objectification. This means
>>    >     fixed material representations, including words as signs for a
>>    >     concept, and social practices which constitute the concepts in
>>    >     practice. But injects" omy view, concepts and institutions all
>>    >     pass through a phase of being projects. But I think that even
>>    >     though calling an institution a project is a bit
>>    >     counter-intuitive, it gives you a good handle on the
>>    dynamics, the
>>    >     history and the potential for change.
>>    >
>>    >     Andy
>>    >
>>    >
>>    >     White, Phillip wrote:
>>    >
>>    >         Andy, you wrote:
>>    >
>>    >         "I stick to my position, that "institutions" should be
>>    regarded as
>>    >         projects, not tools or material artefacts of any kind
>>    (though
>>    >         artefacts
>>    >         are needed in the realisation of an institution, such as
>>    signage,
>>    >         legislation, all kinds of documents, buildings, uniforms,
>>    >         etc., etc)."
>>    >
>>    >         Projects...... an intriguing, to me, idea - institutions as
>>    >         projects - particularly considering the root of the word
>>    - and
>>    >         its cousins, like "projectile", etc.
>>    >
>>    >         many thanks for this thought.
>>    >
>>    >         p
>>    >
>>    >
>>    >         Phillip White, PhD
>>    >         University of Colorado Denver
>>    >         School of Education
>>    >         phillip.white@ucdenver.edu
>>    <http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.**com/mc/compose?to=phillip.**
>> white@ucdenver.edu<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=phillip.white@ucdenver.edu>
>> >
>>
>>    <mailto:phillip.white@**ucdenver.edu <phillip.white@ucdenver.edu>
>>    <http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.**com/mc/compose?to=phillip.**
>> white@ucdenver.edu<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=phillip.white@ucdenver.edu>
>> >>
>>
>>    >
>>    >
>>    >             >
>>    >     --        ------------------------------**
>> ------------------------------**------------
>>    >     *Andy Blunden*
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