Re: [Critical-Realism] Holism and social structure

["Dave Elder-Vass" <d.eldervass@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mervyn,

I would certainly accept the importance of the temporal dimension, so I 
think we are in agreement on that. And indeed on the rest of your response!

Dave

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List" 
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 07 June 2007 19:05
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Holism and social structure


> Hi Dave E-V,
>
> I think I fundamentally agree with you *if* your conception explicitly
> incorporates a temporal dimension, and in particular the massive presence 
> of
> the past, both at the level of social structure and at the level of the
> stratified person. Going exclusively on what you've said in recent posts, 
> it
> doesn't, though there's no reason why it couldn't.
>
> Re social entity: I was thinking at the highest (philosophical) level of
> abstraction, which in CR is concerned with the general features that any
> society must possess given the nature of human intentionality -- the
> universal dimension of any concretely singular society. You want to say 
> that
> there is no such thing as society in general, only particular, 
> historically
> specific societies, and I agree. But the term 'society' (social form, 
> social
> totality etc) does duty for people + social structure in its widest sense,
> whatever that may be as discovered by science in any particular case, and 
> in
> that sense I don't think is metaphysically unreal -- any more than
> 'organisation' is. It is a real, not an ideal, type. As you say, one can 
> of
> course deal with social entities at lower levels of abstraction. But 
> surely
> critical realists do? So I don't see that the concept's 'missing' from CR,
> although it doubtless has been in this thread.
>
> Mervyn
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Dave Elder-Vass" <d.eldervass@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007 9:11 AM
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Holism and social structure
>
>
>> To qualify one of my responses from last night:
>>
>> Mervyn wrote: "An organisation has a structure that is precisely not
>> just a property of the people who operate it and their relations".
>>
>> And I replied: "As I understand the term, the structure of an entity
>> precisely IS what parts
>> it has and their relations to each other."
>>
>> But a better reply would consider the different levels of abstraction at
>> which we might choose to address this question. At the level of a
>> metaphysical ontology, my statement still seems to me correct, but when 
>> we
>> turn to the narrower question of the ontology of organisations (and 
>> indeed
>> some other social entities that are types of groups of people) we can 
>> move
>> down to a lower (and thus richer, more detailed, but less general) level
>> of
>> abstraction. This enables us to be more precise about the sorts of parts
>> and
>> relations that are characteristic of organisations. As I have argued, the
>> parts are people. The relations are more interesting, and this is where
>> the
>> argument connects up with others earlier in the thread (and in parallel
>> developments of it): the relations that we are interested in here are
>> those
>> that Bhaskar has characterised as 'position-practices' (I forget the
>> precise
>> terms - could someone point me to where he discusses this?).
>>
>> My assumption is that when Bhaskar refers to positions and practices as
>> underpinning social structure he is referring to what sociologists
>> normally
>> call roles. A role is a bundle of expectations (generally backed up with
>> sanctions) regarding the relations the role incumbent is to maintain with
>> others. This covers both their positions (the name of the position
>> occupied,
>> and its relationship in authority terms to others) and practices (how the
>> incumbent is expected to perform the role). In other words, it is a more
>> concrete expression of the relations that bind the parts into the form of
>> the whole.
>>
>> To illustrate the point, we can move one step further down the scale of
>> abstraction and consider a particular role - say a team manager. Their
>> position is defined by the expectation that they will exercise authority
>> over the members of their team, and defer to the authority of their own
>> more
>> senior manager. Their practices are defined by such things as job
>> descriptions and operations manuals, which define their responsibilities
>> more precisely and set down standards regarding how they are to be
>> performed.
>>
>> The use of the term 'practices' for this is slightly unfortunate, since 
>> as
>> Andy pointed out, this often has actualist implications, in sociology at
>> least - practices are simply repeated patterns of behaviour in this sense
>> of
>> the term. If my interpretation above is correct, then Bhaskar's usage is
>> NOT
>> actualist in this sense, as he is referring to the expectations (some
>> might
>> say rules, but that opens up another can of worms!) about behaviour 
>> rather
>> than the behaviour itself.
>>
>> I hope this goes some way towards reconciling some of the views expressed
>> in
>> this discussion.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>
>
>
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