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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Patrick, Bill --<BR>
<BR>
If you'll allow me to interrupt the focus of your exchange and piggyback on something, Patrick, that you wrote here, one of your passing comments illustrates a central problematic -- or at least, lack of clarity -- in many discussions of 'social construction.' It is a point that seems to get lost in the uptake of these ideas, and it is one worth being careful about, I think.<BR>
<BR>
I have in mind here social constructionist arguments that purport to build on Berger and Luckmann's articulation of Schutz's ideas, not other streams and not the debates over contructIONism vs. constructIVism (altho this may bear on the latter).<BR>
<BR>
You wrote:<BR>
<BR>
"...brackets the ultimate normative status of the thing explained in favor of a focus on the socially operative principles at a given point in time (and, perhaps, how they changed; c.f. Neta Crawford's argument about the abolition of colonialism because of, and through, global normative change.) What does the explaining in the "social norms" argument is not the moral status of the institution, but the judgment of contemporaries about the moral status of the institution. Subtle difference, but important, I would say."<BR>
<BR>
You capture here the distinction that Ian Hacking makes in his book "The social construction of what?", in which he goes from A to Z with examples of 'things' people have said are socially constructed, whereas the phenomenological argument was/is that it is our IDEAS about those things that are socially constructed. So, I am not socially constructed as an object of some public policy, e.g., although some other group of people may have some idea about my traits in light of this policy and that idea of me may be their social construction.<BR>
<BR>
Going the other way -- treating persons, e.g., as 'social constructions' -- objectifies them in a way that denies them agency and portrays them as pawns moved around on some policy chessboard (or as 'targets' of policy 'missiles,' the '60s-70s way of talking about policies).<BR>
<BR>
Dvora Yanow<BR>
<BR>
-----Original Message-----<BR>
From: interpretationandmethods-bounces@malagigi.cddc.vt.edu on behalf of Patrick Thaddeus Jackson<BR>
Sent: Wed 09-Jul-08 04:08<BR>
To: interpretation and methods group<BR>
Subject: Re: [Interpretationandmethods] Explanation and Ethical Evaluation<BR>
<BR>
I have no objections to Bill's claim about social scientists operating <BR>
with implicit models of things like human social action; indeed, <BR>
making such models explicit is part of what Weberian ideal-<BR>
typification is all about in the first place. So we're on the same <BR>
page there. The difference, I think, comes in precisely what is of <BR>
interest in applying those explicit models to particular cases. Both <BR>
Bill and I seem to disagree with the rational-choice notion of what <BR>
one does with presumptions of rationality, which is to look for the <BR>
hidden rationality in any bit of human behavior; rational-choice <BR>
theory is often about demonstrating that -- and in what precise way -- <BR>
some behavior is rational, particular some behavior that looks <BR>
irrational at first glance (like gift-giving, or dueling, or becoming <BR>
a suicide bomber). So we agree that what is interesting about <BR>
particular cases are their deviations from the ideal-type, not their <BR>
correspondence with it. But then we diverge. Bill claims:<BR>
<BR>
> Ancient Greek democracy was based on a slave economy. If slavery <BR>
> shows a lack of respect for human dignity, then those Greeks acted <BR>
> in a less than fully rational manner. But their behavior was not so <BR>
> irrational as to manifest pathological causes.<BR>
> This judgment of the Ancient Greeks gauges the degree of rationality <BR>
> in their behavior. Thus, the existence of Greek democracy can be <BR>
> explained, in part, by their insensitivity to the dignity and <BR>
> intrinsic worth of those people they forced into slavery. In this, <BR>
> they failed to fulfill their full potential for human rationality. <BR>
> A society of fully rational folks would not reduce their fellows to <BR>
> chattels.<BR>
><BR>
> This is a judgment. But it is not the sort of judgment that a <BR>
> priest makes when he condemns lovers for having sex out of wedlock. <BR>
> Nor is it like the judgment of an abolitionist when he condemns all <BR>
> slavery as an abomination. It is far more like the judgment a <BR>
> doctor makes about the state of a patient's health after a thorough <BR>
> examination. All judgments of this sort are normative, or norm-<BR>
> based, but not all judgments are moral/ethical judgments. A <BR>
> judgment of the degree of rationality in human behavior is like the <BR>
> judgment of an Olympic diver's performance; it is an appraisal of an <BR>
> achievement.<BR>
><BR>
> In short, one reality of human behavior is that it manifests varying <BR>
> grades of rationality. Therefore, an explanation of human behavior <BR>
> cannot be complete without accounting for its gradient of <BR>
> rationality. Indeed, to ignore this range of rationality is itself <BR>
> a less than rational act. For social scientists to ignore it, as if <BR>
> all rationality was equal, is professionally irresponsible.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
If I read this right, Bill is claiming that the moral status of an <BR>
institution like slavery is, or can be, a causal explanation for that <BR>
institution. The logic runs: slavery is an irrational social <BR>
institution ("A society of fully rational folks would not reduce their <BR>
fellows to chattels"); the Greeks had slavery; hence the Greeks were <BR>
not fully rational, and this lack of full rationality explains why the <BR>
Greeks had slavery. Obviously this is not the way that Bill expressed <BR>
the claim, because if he had expressed it this way then the logical <BR>
flaw would become strikingly apparent: this is a circular argument. <BR>
The claim uses the moral status of slavery to argue for the <BR>
irrationality of the individuals and the society that upheld it (more <BR>
on that in a moment), and then proposes to deduce why that society has <BR>
slavery from the irrationality of the individuals and the society that <BR>
upholds it. We know that the Greeks are irrational because they had <BR>
slavery, and they had slavery because they were irrational. [Aristotle <BR>
keeps coming up in this discussion; that's appropriate in many ways, <BR>
because this kind of argument is vintage Aristotle. Except that <BR>
Aristotle used it to argue *for* slavery: slavers are inferior to free <BR>
men, which is what justifies enslaving them, and the primary evidence <BR>
for the inferiority of slaves is that they are enslaved to free men. <BR>
Slaves are slave-ish, which justifies their enslavement. Replace <BR>
"slave" with "irrational societies" and see what you get.]<BR>
<BR>
So as a causal explanation of a social institution, the moral status <BR>
of that institution simply doesn't measure up. There is one way to <BR>
make that argument work, though, and that is to build moral status <BR>
into the structure of the universe. If the universe tends towards the <BR>
Good, say, the existence of a Not-so-Good social institution might be <BR>
explained in terms of the moral failings of the people responsible: <BR>
they're standing in the way of universal moral progress, and the fact <BR>
that they are doing so is producing all sorts of nasty effects, like <BR>
slavery. Of course, to do this, you'd have to be either Kant or Hegel, <BR>
and if you're Hegel then you have to deal with the rather striking <BR>
problem that for Hegel slavery *implies* recognition of the humanity <BR>
of the Other -- making it not so irrational after all. (If you're <BR>
Kant, well, you have a bunch of other problems, like the fact that <BR>
standards of rationality have altered over time.) Absent this rather <BR>
drastic step, I can't see any way to make the moral status of an <BR>
institution of an action count as an explanation of that institution <BR>
or action.<BR>
<BR>
Of course, this is a very different thing from saying that the social <BR>
norms in force at a given point in time explain the existence of an <BR>
institution or an action. That's a claim I'm perfectly happy with, <BR>
because it brackets the ultimate normative status of the thing <BR>
explained in favor of a focus on the socially operative principles at <BR>
a given point in time (and, perhaps, how they changed; c.f. Neta <BR>
Crawford's argument about the abolition of colonialism because of, and <BR>
through, global normative change.) What does the explaining in the <BR>
"social norms" argument is not the moral status of the institution, <BR>
but the judgment of contemporaries about the moral status of the <BR>
institution. Subtle difference, but important, I would say.<BR>
<BR>
As for Bill's comparison of the judgment of slavery with the judgment <BR>
of a diver's performance: sure, I'd buy that, if the rules for <BR>
appraising human society were anywhere near as clear as the rules for <BR>
appraising a diver's performance! Yes, judges in Olympic sporting <BR>
events have a measure of discretion; that's part of why there are more <BR>
than one of them, and why we get complicated aggregation formulas (or <BR>
not-so-complicated formulas, like "toss out the East German judge's <BR>
score," which used to be the operative rule in many international <BR>
sporting competitions :-) and the like. But the range of discretion is <BR>
considerably smaller than the range of discretion which we have in <BR>
appraising a whole society. And those standards change over time -- <BR>
and change considerably more than do the rules of diving or baseball <BR>
or almost any other major sport. Also, note: judging that a diver did <BR>
thus-and-so and did not deviate from the ideal is *not* an explanation <BR>
of that diver's performance. It is an evaluation of that performance. <BR>
Interesting, important, critical to the sport -- but not an explanation!<BR>
<BR>
PTJ<BR>
===<BR>
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson<BR>
Director, General Education Program, American University<BR>
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Relations and Development<BR>
<A HREF="http://profptj.blogspot.com">http://profptj.blogspot.com</A> | <A HREF="http://www.kittenboo.com">http://www.kittenboo.com</A><BR>
calendar: <A HREF="http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick">http://ical.mac.com/onyxdr/Patrick</A><BR>
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