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CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June 6, 2001
Latest update: November 2, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

Social Theory Readings
Week of October 29, 2001: Week 10

• Online Readings:

  • The Importance of Play in Understanding the Other Notice that by 1931 the concept of the Other was being actively addressed in social theory.

  • Adversarialim: Shaping the Dominant Discourse Journal entry by Kasie Boone, LaKisha Miller, and Angelique Wyatt. Discussion thread on how the dominant discourse is being turned towards adversarialism.

  • Reactions to War Rhetoric by Ben Graham on Peace Education Commission List. This post addresses the issue of accountability and social justice, pointing out that there is both short term and long term accountability and that a whole range of responses, not just kill or be killed, is available once we allow the rage to subside.

  • Rambo and the Dalai Lama Brief summaries of Fellman's paradigmatic shift from adversarialism to mutuality.
    • Quotas in Jury Selection Journal entry by Talia Baran, UWP. Includes Gordon Fellman's response to Talia on the issue of the use of quotas in jury slection, and Fellman's suggestion that a shift to restorative justice might be more productive as an approach to race, law, and crime.

  • Retribution and Reconciliation by David A. Crocke. On the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy website. Scroll about four fifths of the way down the file for a discussion of ubuntu, social harmony, and a critique of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's approach to reconciliation and restorative justice.

• Hardcopy Readings:

  Readings in Social Theory, ed. by James Farganis:

  I would consider the following three chapters essential to an understanding of the social psychological perspective in sociology. Because of the conditions this semester, I realize that you may be pressed for time. Specific concepts and pages are empasized for your convenience in the section below: Theoretical Concepts You Should Know. Please be sure to read the rest of the material as the present crisis subsides. jeanne

  • Chapter 6: George Herbert Mead: The Emergent Self, pp. 158-178. Be sure to follow Mead's relating of the "double" to the long historical interdependence of the self and the Other. At p. 164, col.2, 3d para. and ff. And be sure to look at "Play, the Game, and the Generalized Other."

  • Chapter 7: W.E.B. Dubois, Double Consciousness and the Public Intellectual, pp. 179-190. Compare Mead's reference to the "double" that can leave the body and return to it, and Mead's comparison of that process to the shamanistic process and to play, which permits us to see ourselves as an "Other." (Farganis, Chapter 6, at p. 164, col. 2, 3d para. and ff.)

  • Chapter 13: Symbolic Interaction: Herbert Blumer and Erving Goffman, pp. 349-368.

• Theoretical Concepts You Should Know:

  1. reflexivity: Mead describes reflexivity as our ability to "understand and react to what others think and say about our behavior,. . . " and to use that information to alter our behavior. (Farganis, at p. 159, col.1.) ". . . the self is not a self in the reflexive sense unless he is an object to himself." (Farganis, at p. 160, col 2.)

  2. the self: George Herbert Mead defined the self as that consciousness that emerges from the dialogue between the "I" (the impulsive need to satisfy one's own desires) and the "me" (the recognition and consideration of Others) (Farganis, at p. 159, col. 2.)

  3. symbolic interaction: the interdependence of human actions and reactions which depends as much on how we interpret the Other's actions as it does on the actions themselves (Farganis, at p. 352.)

  4. restorative justice: "Restorative justice is a valued-based approach to criminal justice, with a balanced focus on the offender, victim, and community. The foundation of restorative justice is to determine the harm resulting from a crime, what needs to be done to repair the harm, and who is responsible for repairing the harm."
     Definition from Restorative justice: Healing the Effects of Crime Website maintained by Tom Cavanagh. Dedicated to learning together how to heal the harm of crime.

  5. retributive justice: The dominant approach to criminal justice at the present time is sometimes called retributive justice and is focused on determining what law was broken, who broke it, and how should they be punished."

  6. distributive justice: Distributive justice is that approach to social justice that delves more deeply into the inequality of access to resources and that inequality's contribution to deviance and crime in the first place.

  7. the "double": W.E.B. Du Bois' description of his own recognition of "double-consciousness":

     "It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bvursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little think, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeious visiting-cards---ten cents a package---and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card---refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows." ( Farganis, at pp. 186-187.)

Some Suggested Measures of Learning:

Comment on one of the following topics, or do something of your own choosing.

1. George Herbert Mead considered the self purely social: "The self, as that which can be an object to itself, is essentially a social structure, and it arises in social experience." Compare Mead's work, published after his death in 1931, to the present school of social constructionism, and to the present emphasis on alterity.

2. Consider the position in social constructionism that the self is purely constructed by social influences. (Remember that's radical social constructionism.) Kenneth Gergen's the Saturated Self, for example.

3. Why does W.E.B. DuBois sense that "double consciousness" can never be completely overcome?

   Consider that his reaction to the recognition of himself as an excluded Other is one of despising that which has rejected him. When he was made a Professor at Harvard would that have, did it, change his mind?

4. Outline David Crocke's concern with some of the arguments of Archbishop Tutu on restorative justice and reconciliation.

   Consider the contrasts Crocke makes between retribution and vengeance, particularly on the issue of constraint. Consider also the arguments Nozick gives about the individual and the community. In what ways does Martha Minow waver between vengeance and forgiveness? (About two-fifths of the way down the file.)