A Justice Site
Mirror Sites:
CSUDH Habermas UWP
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: April 28, 2001
Latest update: May 2, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org
- Introduction to Why jeanne hates term papers
- The Dialectical Process of the Individual, Society, and the Resultant Criminal Identity
- Robert's Letter to Professor Henry
- jeanne's comments to first draft
This is a wonderful opportunity for us to explore precisely what I am asking you to write. The application of constitutive theory to higher education in today's institutions brings us to understand that there are unnecessary hierarchies limiting the definitions of self we each develop in these institutions. Students are taught to defer to teachers; teachers to administrators; administrators to more administrators. This hierarchical pattern reflects the dominance and intimidation of adversarialism in interpersonal relationships. Duncan Kennedy excoriates it rather thoroughly in his anger and frustration with such hierarchy at Harvard Law. (in Politics of Law, Kairys.) Introduction
Because of our commitment to constitutive theory and to alterity, we reject such hierarchical patterns and recognize that we can indeed produce different, collaborative, and supportive texts that have a useful and significant role amongst more formal academic texts. We call these process texts.
Process texts are texts produced by students, staff, and faculty, who are holding serious discussions of issues in our current academic pursuits. There is traditionally nowhere to publish our reactions, share our insights, and guide each other in collaborative study. Publication is traditionally reserved for formalized texts that are far more polished than the average student and teacher have time for, and far longer than we can undertake within a semester's time. Yet the semester is the unit of time most vigorously imposed on both teachers and students. The unit of publication represented in the traditional article is more effectively designed for publication in bits and pieces for the newly tenured (or not-yet-tenured professor.) It doesn't fit our needs as active students and teachers.
Thus, Dear Habermas has undertaken the publication of discussion, theory, and narrative that fits the school year as we still live that experience. We have created the "process text." The process text is generally short, since those who will most rely on its information, students and teachers, have little discretionary time for long works, and since that need is already filled by many publications. The process text, like the law review article, is meant to be written in plain English, understandable and clear. Also like the law review article, we demand accuracy of citation, so that those needing more information will be helped along their way.
By dealing with small segments of information we make discussions and debate more likely, both in the classroom, and by Internet exchange. These discussions and debates expand the student's and teacher's horizons by including both other professionals and community people. Because this publishing is less demanding of time, and limits its pretensions, this model affords more rapid and regular exchange. And we hope that it will afford life-time learning and participation opportunities.
This week, Robert Binford sent a term paper to Dear Habermas. It was impressive. Well laid out, nice bibliography. But I am struggling to get through it. It covers many areas, lots of material, lots of sources, and I immediately head for other resources, and lose a half hour's time. On Sunday, I remembered why I hate term papers. If we in fact take them as a point of departure, hours of time I don't have (I have about 200 students this semester.) are consumed. Although it is undeniably good experience for you, especially if you plan to go on to graduate school, I need process texts. Bits of your thought, honestly and sincerely thought out, that are pared down to a single topic I can address quickly and efficiently, and then post it for others to benefit from.
It's going to take me a while to get through Robert's essay. But I invite all of us to work together at turning this essay into several process texts that will both aid us in our study of identity, AND help us define more clearly the place of the process text in the academy.
The Dialectical Process of the Individual, Society,
by Robert Binford
and the Resultant Criminal Identity
Copyright: Robert Binford, April 2001. "Fair Use" encouraged.
Each one of us has a characteristic way of acting and reacting that remains relatively stable across multiple situations. This stability is what constitutes our identity, and everyone’s identity is composed of multiple personality attributes. In certain social circles some attributes are more pragmatic than others; those that are practical in aiding a particular situation will interact causing the individual to behave in a contextually correct manner (e.g. using polite table manners at a formal dinner, or cheering and booing at a sporting event). We would like to believe that we are exclusively responsible in forming our identity, however this is clearly not the case. Excluding biological and hereditary explanations for the purpose of this paper, Psychologists and Social Scientists both agree that our interactions with others in society are what create our identity. As we grow expectations are placed on our mental and behavioral formations by our parents, educators, and acquaintances. In a sense, a proscribed compatibility-oriented (compatible with our respective family histories) schedule of development is placed on each newborn and is under the direction of those who will be directly involved in his\her progress (primarily the immediate family at this early stage). The Behaviorist School of Thought recognizes this process as operant conditioning: behavior is spontaneously emitted (by the infant) and those consequences following the behavior (reinforcement or punishment of) will determine its subsequent occurrence (Skinner). Although Behaviorists are concerned more with overt, physical behaviors than covert, mental processes, this theory is relevant for our discussion here in that it places emphasis on the acknowledgment that our identities are a consequence of what is expected of us by those close to us. Also, our identity can only be recognized in the reflection of other’s eyes, and its stability is dependent on the number of eyes returning that similar reflection.
The family is the primary sub-group of the dominant social ideology and through which each individual originally gains an identity. As human subjects assimilate further into their community culture, adopting roles besides those of a family member, they encounter new situations and new people who further add to the shaping and smoothing of their identity. In essence, the family casts the mold in which our identity will be shaped according to the standards of the social community in which they exist; the social community provides us with the inter-relational experiences through which personality attributes that fit our predetermined identity mold will be obtained. As with the family, one’s social community (culture, religion, neighborhood) also places personality and identity expectations on each of its members. The social community can be thought of as an extension of the family. In fact out of the three dominant social structures (family, social community, and dominant ideology), the family and social community spheres are the two that exert the most influence on the formation of identity. This is true because the two spheres and the human subject share a more intimate and directly influential connection with each other than with the dominant ideology. The dominant ideology serves as the canopy under which the individual, family, and social community flourish. The social community is closer to the dominant ideology than the family is, and it is through this sphere that the dominant ideology combines with the family, exerting its influence in establishing universally goal-oriented behavior.
Up to this point in this discussion, the human subject and his/her identity has been represented as being shaped, through personality reinforcement, by those other than himself/herself. Each of us has a multitude of personality attributes and relative combinations however, while some are recognized as commendable by means of reinforcement and interaction, others remain labeled as undesirable, are repressed, or are never consciously acknowledged. Those that will never be consciously recognized (generalized combinations that are presupposed as similar to others that have been abandoned) are the most dangerous to both the human subject and to the social community in which he/she exists. The importance here is to acknowledge that the human subject does not shed those undesirable attributes that the family and the social community condemn, but instead keeps them, although in a dormant fashion, and without any conscious effort in doing so. A human subject’s identity, ignorant of the dormant attributes, may experience at any time a feeling of inadequacy, or instability. These feelings are essentially of his/her own subjectivity and are not reflected in encounters with others. At this time the human subject will turn to others outside of their social community and yearn to aspire to their identity standards, albeit foreign, in order to fill the void they are experiencing. The human subject now finds himself/herself in a controversial situation where they have the ability of expanding their identity structure, but against the powerfully oppositional force of those who originally structured it.
The human subject can rebel against the proscribed identity standards of his/her social community which can result in one of two ways: the social community can either accept the human subject’s under represented identity need and satisfy it by making room through a compromise; or it will not be accepted and the subject will be forced to repress his/her desires or suffer expulsion from the family and social community. The first situation represents the more ideal humanistic approach that we each believe our respective social communities capable of offering in the face of conflict with fellow members. The second solution is not only the one more disastrous for both parties, but also the route traversed more often than not as the most humanistic and socially advanced method in remedying such conflict-producing proceedings with those considered to be ‘outsiders’ (Beck er). Likewise, the human subject is rarely satisfied through repression, which guarantees sustained support under the original social community, and instead rebels against the oppressive standards expected of him/her. The impetus for rebellion is the social community’s failure to understand and accept the subject’s identity need, and the subsequent threat of alienation. Because of these types of approaches applied only to the unacceptable need, the subject begins the rebellion by identifying solely with the oppositional attribute, repressing all former personality attributes and their respective combinations, and behaving in a manner that he/she perceives to be the standard for that attribute. It is important to acknowledge that the oppositional attribute in consideration here is not considered maladaptive by the human subject, but by the social community and family, more so in the attempt to directly introduce it to the closed system; the social community and family spheres label the identity attribute as criminal, perverted, or pathological in comparison to their standards which, likewise can be either positively or negatively labeled in comparison to the standards of a neighboring social community. The subjective labeling of things in society, and the subsequent acquisition of those attributes by those who have been identified as participating in the thing labeled, is known as positionality, and is similar to the concept of a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ (Wonders 1996).
From this standpoint the human subject, still existing within the original constraining social community and family structure, is alienated from those opportunities once offered to him/her because of the label placed on them. Not only has the community alienated them but they too have alienated themselves from their combined selves in concentrating on the oppositional attribute. The social community may have labeled the attribute, and incorrectly so, but the human subject has agreed to the label in subscribing to the definition proffered by behaving according to assumptions held by society towards the attribute and considering it alone as his/her plight and something the original social community will have to accept; they accept the ‘outsider’ role: one who is labeled a rule breaker or deviant and who accepts the label attached to them and views themselves as different from mainstream society (Becker). The total, moral withdraw of the individual from the original familial, communal, and dominant ideological spheres of his/her life is seen as a necessary step in order to preserve the personally idolized identity attribute. The human subject continues to have the opportunity to leave the oppositional social community, although with a sour taste in one’s mouth, or to continue to exist under its domain and eventually succumb to its correctional and punishing institutions (e.g. jail, prison, psychiatric wards).
In some instances the individual will leave the original social community and enter into one where the idolized attribute is accepted by others who themselves either share it or have other means of socially tolerating it. The importance here is that the subject acknowledges the singularity of the identity attribute as distinct from all of their other attributes and as powerful enough to represent him/her.
In other instances the human subject may move away from the oppositional social community into one that is more accepting and, once there, effectively reintroduce and reintegrate his/her dormant personality attributes with the idolized one. They may even look back at the conflict between them and their original social community and family sphere as foolish but understandable on behalf of both of them. This comprehension of individuality along with the continued respect of different groups (in this case the respect of the actions or reactions taken by those in the original social community) is known as primary deviance: the actor, having an act labeled as deviant, can rationalize or deal with the process as a function of a socially acceptable rule (Becker). The experience may be viewed as a learning experience and even a fortunate turn of events through which the individual was able to further explore himself/herself and to relocate to a place that is supportive of the expression of the new identity combination. On the other hand the subject may move away and reintegrate his/her dormant identity attributes with the idolized one but not look back on the oppositional time as an educational one offering insight and future awareness into the actions and reactions of various exclusive social structures. This stance would continue to view the opposition as prejudicial and deserving of revenge or continued skepticism and mistrust. In both situations the human subject has identified the idolized attribute as one existing outside of the parameters of their original ascribed identity, has learned more about their identity through the interpersonal conflict caused by the unsatisfied identity attribute, and has integrated the unsatisfied attribute with their primary attributes to form an identity constitution that offers them more stability and further growth in a supportive community. Jurgen Habermas labels this form of personal knowledge as Emancipatory Knowledge, which is one of three generic domains of human interest posited by him. Under this assumption knowledge of the self is obtained through:
"…interest in the way one’s history and biography has expressed itself in the way one sees oneself, one’s rules and social expectations. Emancipation is from libidinal, institutional or environmental forces, which limit our options and rational control over our lives, but have been taken for granted as beyond human control. Insights gained through critical self-awareness are emancipatory in the sense that at least one can recognize the correct reasons for his or her problems. Knowledge is gained by self-emancipation through reflection leading to a transformed consciousness or ‘perspective transformation’ (Habermas)
In addition to primary deviance, Becker also described a form of secondary deviance where the labeled deviant reacts to the labeling process by fully accepting the deviant label, and further entrenches himself/herself in the deviant behavior. Here the subject has also reintroduced his/her dormant attributes to the idolized one, but the idolized attribute remains at the center of the individual’s identity; the remaining attributes comply with the stark standards of the idolized attribute introducing its influence into every possible identity combination. This attribute-coping method is clearly pathological on behalf of the subject for the mere reason that they consciously force the new integration and thus, shape their own identity without the necessary experience.
Experience occurs on both the conscious and unconscious levels. On the conscious level our overt experiences with others create contextual imprints based on different states of being [somewhere] (i.e. whether situations are comfortable, uncomfortable, or fearful, etc.). On the unconscious level we extract those characteristic attributes of the other person that we feel are important in understanding who they are, and that we can comprehend as based on a comparison with our own identity combinations. Our unconscious identity bank is limited to those experiences that we have had direct contact with and have consequently further solidified our identity through. The introduction of a foreign identity attribute is not only foreign to the human subject, but also to the social community as a whole, which is precisely why the subject experiences an immediate opposition; no one has had any previous conscious or unconscious experience with such an identity component, and no one is prepared to introduce it either. It is very important to also keep in mind that the human subject, the neutral presenter of the attribute, has no interpersonal experience either, but instead acquires the role that the attribute presumably would have from what he/she has fixedly been able to observe via television, magazine interviews, films, etc. The initial meeting of the social community and the individual’s added identity attribute is usually met with negativity and opposition if there is no room for it, and this negative reaction is the human subject’s first experience with the attribute. From this initial experience the subject bases the further acceptability of the attribute on the reaction of the sample social community and family, further expecting the same response from the larger community.
"The most hardened and unrepentant criminal is all the same aware that he is a criminal…but these [others] don’t even want to acknowledge themselves as criminals. They think to themselves that they had a right to do it, and even…that they did the right thing." (Dostoevsky 1868)
The individual who wraps their primary identity around the idolized, newly introduced attribute, consciously creates his/her own identity, discarding all prior experiences, and using the most recent oppositional one as the stepping-stone in advancing who-they-really-are. They no longer unconsciously contribute to their forming identities for they consciously reinterpret interpersonal experiences in such a narrow way that they are made to support their new identity only: a spousal abuser views the women that are attracted to him as a sign of their wanting to be dominated by him. Eventually this characteristic way of acting out the self-created identity results in it permeating every facet of the subject’s life, both interpersonal and intrapersonal. At this level no powerful social community has any desire to support the narcissistic individual, and through the actions of the family, the social community and the dominant ideology these individuals are labeled as outcasts and placed into the criminal, mentally ill, or obsessive categories of modern society, all of which classify the individuals as dissenters from the ‘normal’ way of life. In this sense the individuals know what their labels are; know what actions are expected of them to live up to those labels; have no qualms with providing the actions because they feel that that is their true identity; and are unrepentant because the actions taken by the social community harm them just as much as their actions harm the social community.
The permeating effect, described briefly above, depicts the mentality held by the opposed individuals; indeed that they are not what they are labeled as by all three spheres of society and that their actions, directly in support of their new identities, are victim of having been incorrectly judged. Such individuals are correct in asserting that the dominant society has wrongly expelled them and/or forced them into incorrigible conditions however, the individual, too has voluntarily abandoned the acknowledgment of the social order as proven by their transition from the level of primary deviance to the current level of secondary deviance.
In modern criminological thought there is a dichotomy present which has at one end of the argument on criminal causation that of the individual acting on their own intentions to combat society, and on the other that of the society forcing the individual to react to its standards in a criminal manner. This argument is more enlightened than the timeless assumption of the criminal as the intentional deviant however, it continues to assume one cause over the other when in fact it should recognize the creation and perpetuation of opposition, leading to dysfunction, as an attribute of both poles. Each exerts and equal force the other and adds to the ever-widening gap between compromise and individuality. There is a parallel interplay between the subject’s actions and the society’s reaction that occurs in near overlapping temporal order.
True, in this paper it was presented that the social community and family’s opposition to the introduced identity attribute are what cause the subject to react ‘pathologically’ (in subjective comparison to the limited standards of the relative social community). However, the medium in which the subject observed the additional identity attribute, not to mention the medium in which the social community viewed how to respond to it, prior to both of their direct interpersonal interactions with it, are what set the stage for the resulting assimilation or alienation. Many times the subject is introduced to possible identity attributes in already labeled form via the television news media, and other journalistic mediums. Although the individual may assume that they may receive a different reaction in their respective social communities, the possible identity attribute is already tainted in the way its complimentary actions are represented. The subject adheres to these observed, universally circumscribed actions, as does the social community adhere to the observed, universally circumscribed reactions, and thus the identity attribute is never given a fair chance to freely integrate with other, already held attributes in a non-labeled form.
Whereas the social community’s reaction may be negative prior to any experience, which in itself is pathological for the mental health of it’s civilians, the subject’s continued expression of both the oppositional identity attribute in idolized form and its proscribed actions are just as pathological for it only serves to exacerbate the already existent prejudice. For example, in Los Angeles county gangs are a primary threat in every community; therefore the police focus a majority of their efforts in combating gangs and their members. However, many youths who are not gang members find the opposition and fear that actual members receive from the community thrilling, and so they too acquire the dress, lingo, and aggressive attitude that they observe of other gang members in school, films, and music videos. When the police question these ‘non-threatening’ youths as though they are threatening gang members the youths become upset and desire retaliation on racial grounds. Racism may be the case in a few instances however, the non-threatening youths are not solving the problem by assuming an identity that serves no immediate purpose other than to evoke suspicion and further support the division between neighboring social communities.
Without direct experience, self-analysis, untainted integration of identity attributes, and internal/external comprehension of society, the self, and their relevant functions as inherent attributes of all three spheres and of the individual, there will continue to be criminals, psychotics, racists, perverts, over-dependent needy children, exploiters, lunatic radicals, etc. The solution is a need for uninhibited integration and understanding of the various identity attributes that we each have. We need to expand our understanding and view each individual as an individual and not a statistic, as well as place ourselves in their position without labeling that position as either better or worse than ours. We need to ask ourselves if thoughts of murder are truly evil; if high yearnings for sexual stimulation are actually that abnormal; if addressing our ‘shadow persona’ is really dangerous; or is it that our conscious battle against the unconscious efforts to integrate these feelings and thoughts with our proscribed ‘socially acceptable’ identity structures are responsible for creating the supposed ‘outcasts’ next door to, and within, us?
References
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot, trans. Alan Meyers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 355-56.
- Wonders, Nancy A. Postmodern Feminist Criminology and Social Justice. Chapter 6 of Social Justice, Criminal Justice. (California: West/Wadsworth Publishing, 1999), 118.
- Habermas, Jurgen. "Habermas’ Three Generic Domains of Human Interest," The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas. (http://www.physics.nau.edu/~danmac/habcritthy.html) (5 February 2001)
- Engler, Barbara. Experimental Analysis of Behavior (Skinner, B.F. Operant conditioning) Chapter 8 of Personality Theories 5th ed. (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999), 212-13
- Charles Wellford, and Ruth Triplett. The Future of Labeling Theory: Foundations and Promises. (Becker, Howard. "Outsiders", New York Free Press, 1963). (http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/) (5 April 2001)
Robert Binford
April 21, 2001
Criminology
On the Natural Existence of Concepts On Saturday, April 28, 2001, Robert Binford wrote to Prof. Stuart Henry, with a carbon to jeanne:
Dr. Henry,Thank you for replying to my last two letters. You provided me with a great amount of information regarding Identity that guided me in writing my Constitutive Criminology Term Paper. Again, I appreciate all of your help. I also had another question to ask of you; one that I figured would be best addressed to you since it deals with the use of Language and reality. I was reading Bruce Arrigo's, In Search of Social Justice, last night and began to think about the reality behing Language. Bruce comments under the Basic Assumptions of the various Critical Social Theories that postmodernists "believe that speech communicates embedded values and implicit assumptions about people and events. According to postmodernists, these meanings 'get in the way'; that is, they color or encode our experiences. Thus, there is no such thing as reality per se. Instead, there are only approximations or versions of it that take form depending on who speaks about it and how it is spoken. Thus, social justice exists but does so from multiple-languaged points of view."
I agree completely with Bruce Arrigo, but I was curious about the basic nature of concepts; those phenomenon that we categorize, explain, or address by means of language. Is it possible that concepts such as "criminal", "justice", "peace" truly exist, although currently unknown, in a partciular form? That is, is there such a thing as a "criminal" with its true complimentary meaning existing in the universe? I feel that such a concept, as well as many other concepts that we have labels for and find all over the world, do in fact truly exist with their intended, but currently misunderstood, true definitions. In staying with the example concept of "criminal", it seems logical that such a concept has to exist outside of human realization considering that every human on the planet is contemporaneously affected by just such a concept. If it were exclusive to one particular area of the globe then I feel it would be safe to assume that the concept "criminal" is a complete human construct. Also in favor of the "criminal" concept existing outside the realm of human comprehension is the fact that we as humans introduced to this realization are unsatisfied with how we are currently applying it. It is as if we are able to compare our application of the concept to its true meaning as a standard, yet we each admit that we cannot objectively do such a thing.
This division between the human existence of a concept versus its omnipresence and the philisophical investigation into the link between concerning this inquiry into social concepts reminds me of the attempt made by Martin Luther to prove the existence of God, particularly by means of "perfection". The argument was that although every human is imperfect and only God is perfect, how is it that every human knows what perfection is, and likewise that it is impossible for a human to ever be perfect? Luther concluded that before we existed we remember meeting our Lord and seeing directly what 'perfection' is by objective standards. He went on to conclude that there is no other possible explanation of where humans obtained the standard of perfection for comaprison because it does not exist within the realm of the physical Universe.
I was particulary drawn into questioning the dichotomy between the human realization of the social concept and the possibility of its objective omnipresence due to the influence of what my intro-to-Philosophy professor once commented on. In discussing the important contributions of such contemporary geniuses, particularly Einstein, he remarked that the theory of relativity was in existence before he labeled it so...as are all other mathematical and physics phenomena. (Einstein may have said this himself). I am interested in asking you this question directly, Dr. Henry, for the sole fact that it addresses the objective existence of social concepts, and because I also read that Constitutive Criminologists are now addressing the intertwined influence of both human agency and social structure. Considering the basis of both agency and social structure are built up from questioning whether social concepts that are employed through agency to construct social structures truly exist outside the human realm, I assumed that you would have a better answer than anyone else at this time. Thank you for your consideration in reading this.
Sincerely, Robert Binford Constitutive Criminology (Cal State Dominguez Hills)
jeanne's comments:
Robert, you give the following definition of identity: "a characteristic way of acting and reacting that remains relatively stable across multiple situations." Where, precisely, does that definition come from? I ask because your definition led me immediately to Kenneth Gergen's The Saturated Self, 1991:"The thesis of this book is that the process of social saturation is producing a profound change in our ways of understanding the self. . . a romanticist view of the self, one that attributes to each person characteristics of personal depth: passion, soul, creativity, and moral fiber. . . . the modernist world view reside[s] not in the domain of depth, but rather in our ability to reason--in our beliefs, opinions, and conscious intentions. . . . both the romantic and the modern beliefs about the self are falling into disuse, and the social arrangements that they support are eroding. . . Emerging technologies saturate us with the voices of humankind--both harmonious and alien. As we absorb their varied rhymes and reasons, they become part of us and we of them. Social saturation furnishes us with a multiplicity of incoherent and unrelated languages of the self. . . . I shall equate the saturating of self with the with the condition of postmodernism."At pp.6-7.I think we need some class discussion time on the complexity of identity across disciplines and across time and space.
I think, Robert, that your essay might be more useful to your classmates if you would start with some of the modern dilemmas in identity issues, such as geographical and technological globalization, alterity, post-scarcity, rather than going back through behaviorism and through traditional learning theory and philosophy. There are new fields that address these issues directly. Time to switch to those new fields.
Robert, I've got to go much more slowly through this. I like that you have identified the multiplicity of factors that determine our identities and our dreams, though I'm not sure you used that word. I am concerned that you are writing this too broadly, and covering too much information at once to adequately document your sources. Perhaps I need to restate at this point the role of a "process text" on the site. If we put in so much detail and try to cover so much territory in our student writings, we are writing miniature professorial works. But our objective on Dear Habermas is not to develop that role of pre-professional socialization to the academy, but to have the "lived" experience of thinking through these issues. Some of our students are going to have both the initiative and the motivation to seek a pre-professional socialization role. That is good. But our objective is to provide writings to all our students that will lead them to these experiences even if they don't plan to follow the academic path in post-graduate school.
This is the primary reason for my asking students not to write term papers. By the time you present me with a term paper, such as this, you have invested so much time, energy, and effort, that I find it very difficult to figure out which track you are on, and how to tug at your thinking to get you to see other tracks. You see, if I were writing this for a publication in an academic journal as an article, I would have considerably more time and focus to give it than you can have possibly have in a single semester course.
Now, how am I going to approach this? Well, I've put up the entire term paper, so that we have it for reference and your classmates can read it. I will try to go through it as I've been doing here, but it took me a half hour or so to find the Gergen quote I needed for you. I don't have that kind of time. So please help me by summarizing in really plain English what your point is for each section of the term paper. Outline it and abstract it for me, and we'll all work together on a unique product, a process text, that will summarize your ideas and your resources, include my ideas and resources, and your classmates ideas and resources. More detailed, in depth references that other students can read if they wish, will go into footnotes.
This is going to be a wonderful exercise, and I think we'll all get lots from it.
love and peace, jeanne
On Wednesday, May 2, 2001, Stuart Henry wrote:
Robert:As I read your latest letter I found that you were still retaining the concept of an independent reality existing outside of a humanity and its ways of constituting meaningful worlds. The position you take overall is a perfectly acceptable ontological stance, consistent with modernist views of the physical world and one that is consistent with that taken by varieties of nominalists, interactionists, labling theorists and moderate social constructionists; it is not the position of radical social constructionists nor constitutive theorists and I will try to explain why. The position you take assumes that because there is a physical world of existence outside of humanity, that there must also be a social world: "a reality behind the social world" as you say. Yes it is possible that the concepts criminal, peace, justice exist. The question is whether there is a reality behind their "existence" other than the concepts themselves. It is the constitutive position that not only is there no consistent reality behind the concepts (other than behavior and behavior is behavior is behavior, etc) but also that the concepts themselves do not "exist" in any independent sense outside their continual social construction and reproduction (and not even identical reproduction) by human subjects/agents. That the concept "criminal" exists in many different parts of the globe, tells us more about a common (though not universal) way that humans categorize and rank as good/bad the actions of their species, than it tells us about any underlying truth, reality, universals. If you examine the content of what is criminal, it is not just that we have not precisely captured some universal reality but that the concept stands for different content, usually some construction of behavior that a particular group/community/society agree that they find offensive, want banned etc.
The baseball analogy to strikes and umpires which my colleague Erdwin Pfuhl and I used in our book The Deviance Process, 1993 in our discussion on ontology and epistemology might be helpful here. Consider three umpires. One umpire (Mr Modernist) says of baseball strikes "I calls them as they are". The second umpire (Mr Interpretationalist) says "I call them as I see them". The third umpire (Ms Social Constructionist-Constitutive Theorist) says "They are nothing till I call them" It is the third umpire that captures the radical constructionist/constitutive position.
Hope this is helpful. I am also sending this reply with your original to Bruce and Dragan one of whom might also like to reply.
Cheers
Stuart
On Wednesday, May 2, 2001, Burce Arrigo wrote:
Jeanne,Look who else replied! You, Stuart Henry, and now Bruce Arrigo, have been so helpful with all of my social/philosophical questions this past semester. Thank you.
Robert Binford
CriminologyOn Wednesday, May 2, 2001, Bruce Arrigo wrote to Stuart Henry and Robert Binford:
Hi Robert (Stuart and Dragan):As usual, Stuart is much more adept at succinctly and crisply explaining complex and thorny theoretical matters that am I. I believe the issue you're struggling with is one that has plagued social theory at least since the enlightenment period where positing the independent existence of the world apart from the observer (i.e., the one who defines the world) took on considerable prominence (recall Descartes axiom: I think therefore I am). Labeling sociologists, symbolic interactionists, and phenomenologists have all offered their unique perspectives on the matter. However, radical social constructionism, constitutive thought (e.g., postmodernism and post-structuralism), and semiotics seem to be, from my way of looking at things, the most compelling and promising.
The naming of phenomena (e.g., this or that is "criminal", "beautiful" , "sick") is arbitrary. I agree with Stuart: "behavior is behavior, is behavior). However, the assigning of meaning (and value) to previously unnamed objects or events in the world is NOT arbitrary. Indeed, the interplay of the subject who defines reality and the object that is so named is informed by political, ideological, social, cultural, intrapsychic, historical, etc., forces that privilege certain interpretations and dismiss, renounce, or otherwise quash others. In this context, then, language insists on naming the subject and the object about which the person speaks. But what is behind, through, over, and under this language? In other words, whose hidden assumptions, implicit values, and unconscious desires represent the person speaking, that which the subject defines, and the co-production of both?
My experience teaches me that lurking within much of what we say about people, about others, and about events or things "out there," are unexamined notions about truth, goodness, punishment, crime, justice, policing, lawyering, etc. From my perspective, the critical task entails exposing these notions and questioning whether they further the interests of some groups (the rich, the powerful, the system of law, the system of medicine) at the expense of other groups ( the poor, the powerless/disempowered, those confined, those institutionalized). I am not interested in seeing these efforts produce new power relations (e.g., privileging the poor over the rich). I am interested in inclusivity: people having a voice and being heard from within their unique approach to the knowledge process and from within their unique way of being in the world. Admittedly, this is complicated. We need to let go of embedded notions about truth, justice, fairness, etc., and accept that different people (or groups) comprehend phenomena differently. It is this difference that needs to be retrieved reflectively, first through speech and then through action.
Hope my thoughts are helpful.
Bruce