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Re: [xmca] Polls are closed: Manfred Holodynsk's article is choice

 
Martin, it seems as if we have quite a different reading of the notion of
"project".
 
<<But the notion of "project" makes no reference to the structures and
processes that you have spelled out so eloquently.>>
 
I agree with Andy that collaborative project can be a deployed as a unit
of analysis to understand human activity. Project then is the logical
beginning of an analysis of activity, not the analysis itself. When I
approach as a researcher the undifferentiated and seemingly chaotic whole
of worker strikes, protests, sit-ins, negotiations, etc., I need a unit of
analysis to start making sense of it. From this unit the other aspects of
the activity are developed: division of labor, objectifications,
internalizations, self-concepts, etc. "Collaborative project" pinpoints
the moment when individual forms of "everyday resistance" in the workplace
become a collective protest or movement. 
 
<<I suppose we could understand a person's actions, and their emotions, in
 terms of a  "project" if we simply take for granted, and treat as a mere
background, the entire social world that makes projects (and the people
take up and engage in them) possible. But we would need to take for
granted all the institutional facts (votes decides the political leaders,
etc.) the societal meanings (red traffic light means stop; etc), the
resources that are, or are not, to hand when someone commits to a project,
and the goals that become feasible in that project. We would have to take
for granted the fact that some *projects* but not others are available in
an existing social world. Making lots of money is an available project in
most social worlds; leading a chivalric quest is not. Why not? Because the
social world defines possible ways to be, and determines the availability
of the means to become that way.>>
 
Of course, "the social world", is a collaborative project-in-development
itself. "The nation" is a project, and often quite a pathological one. A
trade-union, a party, a knitting-group, all are forms of human
collaboration. And even a person is a collaborative project when parents,
teachers, etc. come together to raise a child as a participant in society.
 
The point is, I think, to see how individuals, when coming together in
particular forms of collaboration, with specific aims and goals, use and
appropriate the universals "at hand" for their project. I.e. "the social
world" is seen by mediation of the project. Of course you could study the
reverse movement and trace universals by mediation of the particular
collaborations of individuals. For example, in Egypt, the word "idrab",
which is Arabic for strike, has become another "tool" in the hands of
political protesters who use it denote demonstrations rather than
work-stoppages. The "social world" is not a collection of facts lying in
wait to be used by projects, but is itself transformed by these processes
of appropriation.
 
(Leading a chivalric quest can become an immanent goal within the
collaboration of a tabletop game of D&D, by the way. An activity that
leads to its own objectifications in the form of division of labor between
game master and players, a weekly meeting of these individuals at a set
time, a subculture of geeky jokes and wisecracks pertaining to the game,
etc. But let's not digress...)
 
<<Do so, however, and you lose any possibility of explaining how it is
that people's activity arranges (often without their intention) the
reproduction (and hopefully transformation) of their social world. That
world has becomes a mere playing field, static and ahistorical, without
origins or transformations.
But we can hardly say that a project is the basic unit of human activity.
I think you'd agree with me that it's wise to follow LSV's advice and
ensure that our fundamental unit of analysis retains the key
characteristics of the whole that we are trying to understand. One of the
key characteristics of any society is that it has to arrange for its own
reproduction in time and space (and for capitalism that also means
expansion), along with the reproduction of the people (the classes of
people) who participate in it. A project doesn't have any of those
characteristics. A project doesn't carry within in its own reproduction,
or the reproduction of the people who engage in it. It comes to an end
once a problem is solved.>>
 
A first remark is that project is not a unit of analysis of "society", but
of human activity, as I understand it. A second remark is that, indeed,
some projects simply do come to an end when a problem is solved. In the
case of Egypt (again, I know) some strike committees simply dissolved when
their immediate demands were satisfied (e.g. wage raise). 
 
Other projects, however, DEVELOP, in the sense that they (1) are
objectified in more or less stable and coherent structures (from
"movement" to "institutionalization" although I don't see this as a linear
process); (2) gain new goals emerging from the development of activity
which push the project beyond its orginal object or problem.
 
In Egypt, some strike committees were consolidated into independent
proto-trade-unions vis-à-vis the regime trade-union. They developed
demands that went beyond immediate, economic, and local demands of the
workplace population (e.g. national minimum wage, right to strike, roll
back of privatizations, etc.).
 
Such evolutions cannot be explained by the category of project
collaboration itself. But as a unit of analysis it grants us a lens to
study the development, the dissolution, or pathological growth of an
activity. Also, projects do not exist in a vacuum, as you demonstrate, but
(a) consist of individuals participating in other projects; and (b) as a
project, come into contact with other projects, establishing relations of
"hostile" domination, "neutral" commodification, or "friendly" solidarity.
The project of Egyptian workers created relations with factory management,
the state trade-union, the police, journalists, lawyers, political
activists, the city communities, etc. This "external" interaction
determined to a large extent the "internal" development of the project and
vice versa.

   Best,

   Brecht

Quoting Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>:

Hi Brecht,
What you have written makes a lot of sense to me. Surely you would agree that we need to take all of that complexity into account, if we are to understand in any profound way even something as seemingly simple as the emotion of a bank teller. But the notion of "project" makes no reference to the structures and processes that you have spelled out so eloquently.
I suppose we could understand a person's actions, and their emotions, in  terms of a  "project" if we simply take for granted, and treat as a mere background, the entire social world that makes projects (and the people take up and engage in them) possible. But we would need to take for granted all the institutional facts (votes decides the political leaders, etc.) the societal meanings (red traffic light means stop; etc), the resources that are, or are not, to hand when someone commits to a project, and the goals that become feasible in that project. We would have to take for granted the fact that some *projects* but not others are available in an existing social world. Making lots of money is an available project in most social worlds; leading a chivalric quest is not. Why not? Because the social world defines possible ways to be, and determines the availability of the means to become that way.
Take all that for granted, and you could focus on people's activity as a project that goes on against that background.
Do so, however, and you lose any possibility of explaining how it is that people's activity arranges (often without their intention) the reproduction (and hopefully transformation) of their social world. That world has becomes a mere playing field, static and ahistorical, without origins or transformations.
What you have done is evidently something entirely different. You have explored and articulated the cycles of production and exchange that people are necessarily involved in (the bank teller has to earn a living; the bank plays a central role in the running of contemporary capitalism), and also the cycles of *re*production that are required. Within all of that complexity, projects become possible. But we can hardly say that a project is the basic unit of human activity. I think you'd agree with me that it's wise to follow LSV's advice and ensure that our fundamental unit of analysis retains the key characteristics of the whole that we are trying to understand. One of the key characteristics of any society is that it has to arrange for its own reproduction in time and space (and for capitalism that also means expansion), along with the reproduction of the people (the classes of people) who participate in it. A project doesn't have any of those characteristics. A project doesn't carry within in its own reproduction, or the reproduction of the people who engage in it. It comes to an end once a problem is solved.
So I think you have nicely illustrated the point I wanted to make. (Take care of yourself in the field.) 

  Martin




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