Rokeach's work was a response to a lot of work that came out in the
fifties in psychology and sociology. This was conformist stuff that
confounded conformity to whatever set of social norms actually existed
at a particular time and place with psychological health. Rokeach was
in fact responding to exactly the concerns you are raising. According
to Rokeach, a dogmatist might be perfectly well adjusted to a closed
and culturallly embred community. One of my professors, now long
retired, give Rokeachs' Dogmaticism Scale to every teacher and
administrator in a fair sized, predominantly catholic urban school
district. He found that extreme dogmaticism was absolutely normative
in this community. Teachers who were not close minded and parochial in
the style of this community ended up teaching elsewhere. The question
that very closely determines how psychologically healthy Rokeach would
call a community is the question "how well do the members of this
community deal with persons who are not of their community, how
comfortably and with what success in geting their needs meet?" I grow
up in the southern part of Alabama. Everyone growing up in this area
knows that the region is relatively poor and that they could improve
their economic prospects significantly by leaving. Many people do
leave. Most come back. Most come back because they can not adjust to
life elsewhere. They can not unlearn the habits that make one a "good
ole boy" and they can not get that being a "good ole boy" is even less
likely to make you prosperous or well respected anywhere but the deep
south. I saw something similar happen in a place called Sterling, Ill.
Once there where factories there but not any more. The culture of
Sterling was always an extreme version of the "I don't get paid to
think" approach to life typical of unionized workers in the midwest.
This worked as long as there were plenty of jobs you could get and
keep without thinking. When these dryed up, Sterling became as
desolate and impoverished economically as it always had been
culturally. Almost everyone, after the factories closed, just sat
there waiting for things to go back to "normal". A few folks
eventually left but, just like the "good ole boys" I grew up with,
most came back in a year or two. adjustment is not good psychological
health. The difference becomes most obvious when things change and
people don't. I think of Sterling and the rural deep south as a test
of psychological health you pass by leaving.
Your Turn,
Tony Michael Roberts
---Matthew Thrond <mthrond@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> "Health?" Are we speaking socially or psychologically? And more to
the
> point, are you sure you are not overlooking the problems of
modernity as
> reactions to imposed fluidity? Are you sure that the psychological
> health of a people can be measured strictly in terms of their
tolerance?
> In the discourses which brought to our attention the definition of
> community, c. was a potentially authoritarian conception which had
> little tolerance for or interest in the outside world. Society was
> fluid and tolerant, but bereft of affective bonds and deep emotional
> comforts (Specialists without spirit, said Weber). While the writers
> who established these concepts in sociological language were
ultimately
> ambivalent about the relative merits of community and society they
> desired, like good Hegelians perhaps, that some sense of this
previous
> pre-intellectual feeling could survive amid the coldness of "modern
> society." Your discussion of the community seems to presuppose that
> this has really happened in a sense other than ironic. While I agree
> that no-one who lives off the trappings of modernity ought to turn
> against it by imposing intolerance we must be ever-cognizant of
> premodern "communities" whose health, defined strictly among
themselves,
> can be argued to have been extremely high even though they frequently
> built this "health" upon scapegoating that which lay outside them:
The
> (e)scape(d)goat, literally, or other tribes, races, etc.
"Communities"
> have historically nearly always been ethnocentric (a word whose value
> orientation is somewhat debatable, but in present discourse
negative);
> yet they are not without their charms to those within them and
> particularly to those recently removed from them. But to use this
> particular term to denote either blacks or the Ku Klux Klan is
somewhat
> erroneous, since finding a common Weltanschauung indigenous to each
(as
> opposed to one imposed by colonism or paramilitary/charismatic
> leadership) and exclusive of all others is as spurious as seeking
> virgins in maternity (modernity?) wards. David Duke is Klansman, but
> also businessman and talk show host; Billy Bob Gunrack is Klansman
and
> tobacco farmer: They share an imposed delusion but not a
Weltanschauung.
> Jesse Jackson is not Jesse Owens, and neither is Glen "Rodney" King.
> Don't you dare compare these three to Mobuto, although it is curious
to
> note that the last received a fairer shake from the U.S. government
than
> the first three. That David Duke derives the same peace trying to
> reinstitute slavery as, say, Jackson receives fighting for civil
rights
> is troubling, perhaps, but does not refute my contention that the
> psychological health of the individual is in conflict with most
visions
> of a better society. Hence your use of the term community is fraught
> with peril and I humbly request that you clarify with regard to this
> dilemma.
>
> MT
>
> >From owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mon Jan 11 09:24:18
1999
> >Received: from [128.143.200.198] by hotmail.com (1.0) with SMTP id
> MHotMail3093528255529413506532496215690669446460; Mon Jan 11 09:24:18
> 1999
> >Received: (from domo@localhost) by lists.village.virginia.edu
> (8.8.5/8.6.6) id LAA19154 for foucault-outgoing; Mon, 11 Jan 1999
> 11:37:31 -0500
> >X-Authentication-Warning: lists.village.virginia.edu: domo set
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> to owner-foucault@localhost using -f
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ESMTP id
> LAA23246 for <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Mon, 11 Jan 1999
> 11:37:24 -0500
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> > by internal-gw.email.uncg.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id LAA20589
> > for <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Mon, 11 Jan 1999
11:37:24
> -0500 (EST)
> >From: henry sholar <hwsholar@xxxxxxxx>
> >To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >Subject: re: commentary is a minstral show
> >In-Reply-To: <19990111153854.17309.rocketmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >Message-ID: <SIMEON.9901111118.I@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 11:38:18 -0500
> >X-Mailer: Simeon for Mac68k OT Version 4.1.2 Build (32)
> >X-Authentication: none
> >MIME-Version: 1.0
> >Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
> >Sender: owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >Precedence: bulk
> >Reply-To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> >
> >Well, I don't think a community is "defined by shared beliefs."
> >I think a community is of a group which has shared cultural
practices,
> >some of which may be "beliefs" but most are practical skills that
> >enable shared coping and caring (of the environment & of others) in
the
> >community. Most are unarticulated, even transparent to the members
of
> >the community.
> >
> >To doubt, or even to challenge cultural practices most often does
not
> >"drain" the shared life of the community. Most often they are
ignored.
> >Sometimes they are accepted and amalgamated-- interpreted by the
> >culture. Works of art, political movements, and even consumer
products
> >are simple ways that communities embrace new interps, ways they
change.
> >
> >These challenges (or simple cultural re-interpretations) reveal also
> >that communities are not composed of fixed frameworks like
grammatical
> >rules. The stability of communities is a much looser, intuited
> >membership. Perhaps the ability to be flexible is one way of
measuring
> >the health of a community, ie, those that are open and flexible are
> >much healthier than those which call for rigid and alledgedly
> >unalterable cultural practices.
> >
> >is this the kind of "commentary" you're looking for?
> >kindest regards,
> >henry sholar
> >
> >
> >On Mon, 11 Jan 1999 07:38:54 -0800 (PST) Tony Roberts
> ><fdrtikol@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >> Commentary works to drain the shared life of some community of
> meaning
> >> and reality. This community is defined by shared beliefs which are
> >> deeper than assumptions in that they "go without saying" for
everyone
> >> in the community. To doubt this belief is precisely to become
> >> alienated from this community, is to stop constructing ones
immediate
> >> lived experience exclusivly within the limits of this communitys
> >> perspective. Alienation from a community is finally an ability to
see
> >> the limits of that communitys' perspective. These beliefs which go
> >> without saying are grammar rules which structure a shared space of
> >> experience where many important meanings are fixed and stabilized.
> >> Commentary works to unfix and destabilize this common sense or
> >> conventional wisdom which "everybody knows" in the community by
> >> bringing these contexting beliefs into question ,by telling an
> >> alternative story about what's going on. This story claims to be
the
> >> "real truth" behind the delusion the poor benighted souls of the
> >> community live, in their ignorance, as truth. Imagine a modern day
> >> minstral show put on by David Duke and Company. Imagine it filmed
and
> >> distributed through Dukes' website. This minstral show would bring
> >> into question everything that must go without saying if being black
> >> means what most black people feel the need to think it means in
order
> >> to feel comfortable in their skins. To the extent that it
succeeded
> in
> >> doing so, it would drain the black experience of all meaning and
> >> reality. It would define the point of view of the black community
as
> >> delusion. Part of the neccessary ideological arsenal of any
> community,
> >> Jesse Jackson's or David Duke's, consists in commentaries which
> >> convincingly define the perspective of the other as pathological
> >> delusion. Power is finally the power to make ones' commentaries
true
> >> for the people they are about. Resistence is finally resistence to
> the
> >> commentary of the other. In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat
or be
> >> eaten. In the human world, the rule is define or be defined.
Power is
> >> the power to define, to make knowledge a dispersion of what goes
> >> without saying from ones' own perspective and, at the same time, a
> >> commentary defining the alterity of the other as delusion and
> deviance.
> >> Any Comments,
> >> Tony Michael Roberts
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ==
> >> "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no
face.
> Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave
it to
> our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order."
> Michel Foucault
> >>
> >> _________________________________________________________
> >> DO YOU YAHOO!?
> >> Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
> >>
> >
> >----------------------
> >
> >henry sholar
> >hwsholar@xxxxxxxx
> >
>
>
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>
==
"I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." Michel Foucault
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
fifties in psychology and sociology. This was conformist stuff that
confounded conformity to whatever set of social norms actually existed
at a particular time and place with psychological health. Rokeach was
in fact responding to exactly the concerns you are raising. According
to Rokeach, a dogmatist might be perfectly well adjusted to a closed
and culturallly embred community. One of my professors, now long
retired, give Rokeachs' Dogmaticism Scale to every teacher and
administrator in a fair sized, predominantly catholic urban school
district. He found that extreme dogmaticism was absolutely normative
in this community. Teachers who were not close minded and parochial in
the style of this community ended up teaching elsewhere. The question
that very closely determines how psychologically healthy Rokeach would
call a community is the question "how well do the members of this
community deal with persons who are not of their community, how
comfortably and with what success in geting their needs meet?" I grow
up in the southern part of Alabama. Everyone growing up in this area
knows that the region is relatively poor and that they could improve
their economic prospects significantly by leaving. Many people do
leave. Most come back. Most come back because they can not adjust to
life elsewhere. They can not unlearn the habits that make one a "good
ole boy" and they can not get that being a "good ole boy" is even less
likely to make you prosperous or well respected anywhere but the deep
south. I saw something similar happen in a place called Sterling, Ill.
Once there where factories there but not any more. The culture of
Sterling was always an extreme version of the "I don't get paid to
think" approach to life typical of unionized workers in the midwest.
This worked as long as there were plenty of jobs you could get and
keep without thinking. When these dryed up, Sterling became as
desolate and impoverished economically as it always had been
culturally. Almost everyone, after the factories closed, just sat
there waiting for things to go back to "normal". A few folks
eventually left but, just like the "good ole boys" I grew up with,
most came back in a year or two. adjustment is not good psychological
health. The difference becomes most obvious when things change and
people don't. I think of Sterling and the rural deep south as a test
of psychological health you pass by leaving.
Your Turn,
Tony Michael Roberts
---Matthew Thrond <mthrond@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> "Health?" Are we speaking socially or psychologically? And more to
the
> point, are you sure you are not overlooking the problems of
modernity as
> reactions to imposed fluidity? Are you sure that the psychological
> health of a people can be measured strictly in terms of their
tolerance?
> In the discourses which brought to our attention the definition of
> community, c. was a potentially authoritarian conception which had
> little tolerance for or interest in the outside world. Society was
> fluid and tolerant, but bereft of affective bonds and deep emotional
> comforts (Specialists without spirit, said Weber). While the writers
> who established these concepts in sociological language were
ultimately
> ambivalent about the relative merits of community and society they
> desired, like good Hegelians perhaps, that some sense of this
previous
> pre-intellectual feeling could survive amid the coldness of "modern
> society." Your discussion of the community seems to presuppose that
> this has really happened in a sense other than ironic. While I agree
> that no-one who lives off the trappings of modernity ought to turn
> against it by imposing intolerance we must be ever-cognizant of
> premodern "communities" whose health, defined strictly among
themselves,
> can be argued to have been extremely high even though they frequently
> built this "health" upon scapegoating that which lay outside them:
The
> (e)scape(d)goat, literally, or other tribes, races, etc.
"Communities"
> have historically nearly always been ethnocentric (a word whose value
> orientation is somewhat debatable, but in present discourse
negative);
> yet they are not without their charms to those within them and
> particularly to those recently removed from them. But to use this
> particular term to denote either blacks or the Ku Klux Klan is
somewhat
> erroneous, since finding a common Weltanschauung indigenous to each
(as
> opposed to one imposed by colonism or paramilitary/charismatic
> leadership) and exclusive of all others is as spurious as seeking
> virgins in maternity (modernity?) wards. David Duke is Klansman, but
> also businessman and talk show host; Billy Bob Gunrack is Klansman
and
> tobacco farmer: They share an imposed delusion but not a
Weltanschauung.
> Jesse Jackson is not Jesse Owens, and neither is Glen "Rodney" King.
> Don't you dare compare these three to Mobuto, although it is curious
to
> note that the last received a fairer shake from the U.S. government
than
> the first three. That David Duke derives the same peace trying to
> reinstitute slavery as, say, Jackson receives fighting for civil
rights
> is troubling, perhaps, but does not refute my contention that the
> psychological health of the individual is in conflict with most
visions
> of a better society. Hence your use of the term community is fraught
> with peril and I humbly request that you clarify with regard to this
> dilemma.
>
> MT
>
> >From owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mon Jan 11 09:24:18
1999
> >Received: from [128.143.200.198] by hotmail.com (1.0) with SMTP id
> MHotMail3093528255529413506532496215690669446460; Mon Jan 11 09:24:18
> 1999
> >Received: (from domo@localhost) by lists.village.virginia.edu
> (8.8.5/8.6.6) id LAA19154 for foucault-outgoing; Mon, 11 Jan 1999
> 11:37:31 -0500
> >X-Authentication-Warning: lists.village.virginia.edu: domo set
sender
> to owner-foucault@localhost using -f
> >Received: from internal-gw.email.uncg.edu (internal-gw.uncg.edu
> [152.13.2.73]) by lists.village.virginia.edu (8.8.5/8.6.6) with
ESMTP id
> LAA23246 for <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Mon, 11 Jan 1999
> 11:37:24 -0500
> >Received: from [152.13.144.73] (hwsholar.uncg.edu [152.13.144.73])
> > by internal-gw.email.uncg.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id LAA20589
> > for <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Mon, 11 Jan 1999
11:37:24
> -0500 (EST)
> >From: henry sholar <hwsholar@xxxxxxxx>
> >To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >Subject: re: commentary is a minstral show
> >In-Reply-To: <19990111153854.17309.rocketmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >Message-ID: <SIMEON.9901111118.I@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 11:38:18 -0500
> >X-Mailer: Simeon for Mac68k OT Version 4.1.2 Build (32)
> >X-Authentication: none
> >MIME-Version: 1.0
> >Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
> >Sender: owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >Precedence: bulk
> >Reply-To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> >
> >Well, I don't think a community is "defined by shared beliefs."
> >I think a community is of a group which has shared cultural
practices,
> >some of which may be "beliefs" but most are practical skills that
> >enable shared coping and caring (of the environment & of others) in
the
> >community. Most are unarticulated, even transparent to the members
of
> >the community.
> >
> >To doubt, or even to challenge cultural practices most often does
not
> >"drain" the shared life of the community. Most often they are
ignored.
> >Sometimes they are accepted and amalgamated-- interpreted by the
> >culture. Works of art, political movements, and even consumer
products
> >are simple ways that communities embrace new interps, ways they
change.
> >
> >These challenges (or simple cultural re-interpretations) reveal also
> >that communities are not composed of fixed frameworks like
grammatical
> >rules. The stability of communities is a much looser, intuited
> >membership. Perhaps the ability to be flexible is one way of
measuring
> >the health of a community, ie, those that are open and flexible are
> >much healthier than those which call for rigid and alledgedly
> >unalterable cultural practices.
> >
> >is this the kind of "commentary" you're looking for?
> >kindest regards,
> >henry sholar
> >
> >
> >On Mon, 11 Jan 1999 07:38:54 -0800 (PST) Tony Roberts
> ><fdrtikol@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >> Commentary works to drain the shared life of some community of
> meaning
> >> and reality. This community is defined by shared beliefs which are
> >> deeper than assumptions in that they "go without saying" for
everyone
> >> in the community. To doubt this belief is precisely to become
> >> alienated from this community, is to stop constructing ones
immediate
> >> lived experience exclusivly within the limits of this communitys
> >> perspective. Alienation from a community is finally an ability to
see
> >> the limits of that communitys' perspective. These beliefs which go
> >> without saying are grammar rules which structure a shared space of
> >> experience where many important meanings are fixed and stabilized.
> >> Commentary works to unfix and destabilize this common sense or
> >> conventional wisdom which "everybody knows" in the community by
> >> bringing these contexting beliefs into question ,by telling an
> >> alternative story about what's going on. This story claims to be
the
> >> "real truth" behind the delusion the poor benighted souls of the
> >> community live, in their ignorance, as truth. Imagine a modern day
> >> minstral show put on by David Duke and Company. Imagine it filmed
and
> >> distributed through Dukes' website. This minstral show would bring
> >> into question everything that must go without saying if being black
> >> means what most black people feel the need to think it means in
order
> >> to feel comfortable in their skins. To the extent that it
succeeded
> in
> >> doing so, it would drain the black experience of all meaning and
> >> reality. It would define the point of view of the black community
as
> >> delusion. Part of the neccessary ideological arsenal of any
> community,
> >> Jesse Jackson's or David Duke's, consists in commentaries which
> >> convincingly define the perspective of the other as pathological
> >> delusion. Power is finally the power to make ones' commentaries
true
> >> for the people they are about. Resistence is finally resistence to
> the
> >> commentary of the other. In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat
or be
> >> eaten. In the human world, the rule is define or be defined.
Power is
> >> the power to define, to make knowledge a dispersion of what goes
> >> without saying from ones' own perspective and, at the same time, a
> >> commentary defining the alterity of the other as delusion and
> deviance.
> >> Any Comments,
> >> Tony Michael Roberts
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ==
> >> "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no
face.
> Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave
it to
> our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order."
> Michel Foucault
> >>
> >> _________________________________________________________
> >> DO YOU YAHOO!?
> >> Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
> >>
> >
> >----------------------
> >
> >henry sholar
> >hwsholar@xxxxxxxx
> >
>
>
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>
==
"I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." Michel Foucault
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com