Re: VS: [xmca] Re: Knotworking (ex: Double stimulation?)

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

What is the Sahlins ref, Greg?
mike

On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 8:13 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>wrote:

> Yes, this idea of projects works very nicely for capturing the mutual
> imbrications of persons in one another's lives.
>
> But I'm still caught up on "voluntary associations" vis a vis kinship. My
> "beef" here is with the idea of historical discontinuity of primitive vs.
> modern systems. I think there always were "voluntary association" as you
> put it, and perhaps the major difference is one of scale.
>
> Consider this passage from Marshall Sahlins on kinship:
>
> "On the Alaskan North Slope, the Iñupiat will name children and sometimes
> adults after dead persons, thus making them members of their namesakes’
> families.  Over a lifetime, reports Barbara Bodenhorn (2000: 137), an
> Iñupiat may acquire four or five such names and families, although those
> who bestow the names were not necessarily related before, and in any case
> they are never the birth parents. Begetters, begone: natal bonds have
> virtually no determining force in Iñupiat kinship. Kinship statuses are not
> set by the begetters of persons but by their namers. Indeed, it is the
> child who chooses the characteristics of birth, including where he or she
> will be born and of what sex.""
>
> Thus, kinship itself can be a "voluntary association" that holds different
> groups together. Exogamous affinal kinship relationships make the point
> still more clearly - kinship is always a "voluntary association" and one
> that holds groups together in projects by virtue of imputing a sameness of
> substance.
>
> Today it seems that the modes of establishing a sameness of substance are
> making all kinds of inter-relations possible that were previously
> unthinkable. Creating bonds by marital relations are rather limiting in
> terms of bond-forming since marriages typically involve small numbers of
> persons - notwithstanding polygynous and polyandrous marriages - which
> increase the numbers of connections only slightly. Those numbers are
> miniscule in comparison to the bonds that are formed by modern statehood
> and nationality.
>
> Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities provides a nice case study of
> the kinds of projects that you speak of, Andy, and with respect to the
> emergence of "nationality". In Anderson's narrative, states are formed by
> the process of nationalization of a language and, critically, by the
> creation of a national press. Collective projects (the basis for imagined
> communities such as a "state") thus are implied by collective
> representations of happenings in the world.
>
> But the situation has been transformed still more by recent developments.
>
> Today a student in Brazil can watch a video of the tazing (or
> pepper-spraying) of a student or bunch of students in California and feel a
> kind of shared substance - that she and I share some essential substance of
> commitment to a cause or oppression by a dominant power. It would seem that
> this creates whole new possible forms of kinship/nationalism/solidarity. A
> step towards conditions in which workers of the world might begin to see
> their common situation?
>
> maybe that's taking things too far.
>
> -greg
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 7:16 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> > And as Mike sketched a few days ago, what an amazing little country
> > Finland is!!
> >
> > The point is that in order to understand an object (such as the unique
> > nature of Finland, or the upsurge in Brazil) - complex, dynamic entities
> -
> > we need *units* which are themselves processes of development. For
> example,
> > I don't believe we can understand a nation state as a collection of
> *social
> > groups* (eg ethnic, or economic, etc.), but rather as a process made up
> of
> > many other distinct processes of development, i.e., projects, which
> > interact with one another.
> >
> > Formally speaking, the "systems of activity" which Yrjo introduced are
> > indeed processes of development; but "project" is much more explicitly
> so.
> > Further, we individuals apprehend these units (be they "systems of
> > activity" or "projects") as *concepts*, and the rules, norms, community,
> > division of labour, etc. etc., *flow from the concept* as does the
> > *ever-changing conception of the *object*. If objects (and community,
> > norms, etc.), pre-exist an activity, then we don't have Activity Theory
> at
> > all, we have some variety of structuralism of functionalism.
> >
> > So it is important to begin from the project, each of which is a
> > particular instance of a concept, and all the elements (norms, tools,
> etc.)
> > of the project flow from its concept and the conditions in which it is
> > developing.
> >
> > So for example, I don't think it is appropriate to conceive the social
> > movements, voluntary associations, protests, political conflicts and
> > alliances of 20th century Finland as "systems" or "institutions." They
> are
> > projects, projects which constructed modern Finland, and which indeed,
> one
> > day, become "systems", but never irreversibly. The institutions which are
> > the products of social movements, protests, and so on (projects) are
> never
> > irreversibly reified as "fields" or "figured worlds" or "pratico-inerts"
> or
> > "structures" or any of the other renderings of the social fabric as
> > composed of dead and lacking in teleological content.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> >
> > Rauno Huttunen wrote:
> >
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> Similar things happened in Finland too. See article by professor Martti
> >> Siisiäinen: Social Movements, Voluntary Associations and Cycles of
> Protest
> >> in Finland 1905-91 (Scandinavian Political Studies, Bind 15, 1992).
> >>
> >> https://tidsskrift.dk/index.**php/scandinavian_political_**
> >> studies/article/view/13149/**25059<
> https://tidsskrift.dk/index.php/scandinavian_political_studies/article/view/13149/25059
> >
> >>
> >> Rauno
> >>
> >> ______________________________**__________
> >> Lähettäjä: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> >> k&#228;ytt&#228;j&#228;n Andy Blunden [ablunden@mira.net] puolesta
> >> Lähetetty: 26. kesäkuuta 2013 3:30
> >> Kopio: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >> Aihe: Re: [xmca] Re: Knotworking (ex: Double stimulation?)
> >>
> >> But to make a distinction is not necessarily to set up a dichotomy.
> >>
> >> In Australian social history the appearance of voluntary associations n
> >> the 19th century (mostly trade union-type organisations, but also sports
> >> and recreation, mutual-aid of various kinds, and later political parties
> >> and groups) was a significant development, which meant people regularly
> >> travelling long distances to stitch together the fabric of the emerging
> >> nation. In the US, the parallel role was played, I believe, to a great
> >> extent, also by Protestant sects, who pioneered the building of new
> >> bonds of sociability and trust across great distances.
> >>
> >> These New World projects constructed a new kind of civil society and the
> >> basis for modernity. According to Hegel for example, modernity is
> >> characterised by the eclipse of family as the chief bond and political
> >> force in a state, by voluntary associations, such as professional
> >> associations or regional community organisations, where people of
> >> differing traditions construct new modern conditions of collaboration.
> >> But of course, the family and the state both remain in place!
> >>
> >> Andy
> >>
> >> Greg Thompson wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> Yes, Andy, I think the anthropological notion of kinship captures your
> >>> point that not all biological relatives are "kin". Anthropologist
> >>> David Schneider, for example, points out how kinship is really just
> >>> the Aristotelian notion of "identity", and that "kinship" is
> >>> fundamentally a matter of sameness of substance. Thus, political and
> >>> religious affiliations are, in his view, systems of kinship.
> >>>
> >>> Seems like the same would be true of so-called "voluntary association"
> >>> (scare quotes because of skepticism of notions of voluntary and the
> >>> assumptions it makes about us as subjects). Any voluntary association
> >>> worth its salt will surely have this sense of shared substance (and
> >>> with regard to the making of this shared substance, Durkheim is
> >>> essential - but that's a different story for a different time!). And
> >>> don't most of these organizations have some sense of kinship built
> >>> into their relational terms, whether "brother" or "brotherhood" or
> >>> "family" or whatever?
> >>>
> >>> -greg
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 6:47 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
> >>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>     Yes, there is no doubt that the commitment many people have to
> >>>     continuing the work of their parents and even ancestors, and their
> >>>     investment in their children, evidences a project, an archetypal
> >>>     project in fact. "Voluntary associations" are historically a
> >>>     relatively recent invention, prior to which kinship was possibly
> >>>     the most significant project in human life. Of course, it is not
> >>>     always the case that a kinship relation always indicates the
> >>>     relevance of the concept of "project" - I have cousins whom I have
> >>>     never met and to whom I have no commitment whatsoever.
> >>>
> >>>     Andy
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> ______________________________**____________
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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > --
> > ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> > ------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> > Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> > http://marxists.academia.edu/**AndyBlunden<
> http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden>
> >
> > ______________________________**____________
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>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Visiting Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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