First Meeting (Tue 12-12-2006)
The meeting discussed the Grid/Group typology introduced by Mary Douglas in Chapter nine of her book “in the active voice”; ‘Cultural bias’. The typology opposes the dimension of individuation to that of social incorporation. ‘Grid’ refers to the rules to which individuals are subject in the course of their interactions whereas ‘Group’ is defined in terms of the members that constitute it as a social body, the potential boundaries that exist among them, ways in which every individual identify herself as being part of the Group and the kind of social relations that emerge out of these perceptions.
The typology features four quadrants, each defining a specific cosmology. Group A rests upon individualistic, competitive premises. B (insulated) is based on fatalist presumptions, and thus imposes rules and regulations which no one has the desire to change. Group D emphasises a strong sense of belonging to the higher body, whilst Group C bounds this sense of community with a set of segregated roles.
We agreed that groups cannot be studied individually; individuals try to contrast their position in a certain category only with regards to others. This is what Mary Douglas refers to as the “social-accounting approach”: that is the constant effort to justify one’s view to other people in a given cosmology. We also accepted that, contrary to various other social theories which attempt to simplify human relations in order to theorise society, Cultural Theory tries to capture the complexity of society and provide more orderly explanations of social control than post-structuralist models.
A number of grey areas were identified at the meeting:
1/ The question Mary Douglas tries to answer is how to allow for individual choice when one opts for a theory of social construction (i.e a theory that emphasizes the primacy of context)? She argues that individuals transform their environments by making decisions, and that the more decisions they make the more social relations are likely to emerge. The separation between social context and cosmology aims at showing that social context does not necessarily determine how people behave. Although she argues that decisions are rational, and cosmologies define ways of justifying oneself to others, she remains unclear on how the individual chooses to adhere to a certain cosmology. The idea of separating social context (consciousness) and cosmology seems very problematic in empirical terms as well. For example, if we think about colonies as examples of ‘B’ type cosmologies (i.e. many restrictions and low sense of belonging to the group), rebellion must reflect the consciousness of the entire group, not only individual subjects.
2/ On the issue of power: The conception of power is also unclear to us. Indeed, Mary Douglas is explicit on the fact that this typology is not a preamble to a theory of power, yet she places emphasis on the individual side through the idea of personal empowerment and ways in which the individual moves forward by subjecting other people. The same observation applies to the question of free will. Cultural Theory appears to be concerned with control and downplays change and action by presupposing social and individual consciousness. Thus, things do not seem ‘messy and moving’ in this typology. The question then is: what kind of human consciousness and change does Mary Douglas advocate and how does she account for individual freedom?
3/ Why do certain categories produce contradictory outcomes? For example, in quadrant A one would expect gender equality to prevail, yet nothing propels a gender equality situation in this category (or in anywhere else on the grid) and there is usually a set of contradictions between the desire for equality and the manifestation of inequality that pushes this group to adjust itself constantly
4/ A particular example of the concept of the hermit (someone who is placed at the bottom left corner of the typology) puzzled us: solitary nuns. Can these be considered as hermits? Aren’t they bound by ‘silent’ social relations? In other words, is linguistic interaction a necessary condition of social communication?
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In the forthcoming meeting (Tuesday 19th, 10.a.m.) we will discuss another text by Mary Douglas; “Natural Symbols”.
December 12th, 2006 at 7.43 pm
"The question then is: what kind of human consciousness and change does Mary Douglas advocate and how does she account for individual freedom?"
This is a question I have been playing with for a while now, without a satisfactory answer. Rephrased, I ask, "why would someone want to choose differently than their social context would suggest?" So, for instance, if someone is in a high grid high group (C) setting, say a government official, why would they make a decision based on a set of preferences characteristic of low grid low group (A), such as deregulating an industry?
Another example may be the colonies we talked about earlier. Those who arecolonised are subjected to strict rules they have no means to change, which would seem to place them in a high grid context. How do they get out of this situation? It involves some of those who are colonised actually taking action to change the system, which to me means they moved out of the B quadrant and into one of the others.
The ability for people to choose differently than their context suggests is the key to maintaining individual free will in a cultural theory framework. But another key aspect of the framework is it's predictive capability: given a certain set of social relations, you would expect a person to behave in a certain way. How does Cultural Theory combine these contradictory assertions? Steve, Mike, any thoughts?
December 13th, 2006 at 1.25 am
I assume that some of the points above can be answered by thinking social context as social construction. There is a 'real world' out there, but just people are seeing it in different ways. By thinking in this way, people may face the contradiction between the 'real world' and their 'percieved world, and people needs to change thier way of perception, i.e. cosmology and therefore thier social context (As it is a social construction, this change has to happen if you change your way of perception.). Then my question is: if social context is contructed and subjective, can anyone try to study a perticular society or social group? For example, even thoough my focus is a NGO, the people work in that NGO may not perceive it as thier social context. Their social context is a smaller level, e.g. thier own deparment. In other words, the NGO may not relevant level of analysis in this case. And another question is: is there any possibility that two people in the same social group construct thier social context in different way? In the example of a NGO above, though, two person share thier social context, one person think that his social context is egaritarian but another think it is hierarchical. This seems to be very unstable situation for me.
December 13th, 2006 at 9.37 am
On the question of power, Douglas has not always been fully aware of ramifications of what she proposed. CT is a theory of power as it actually describes how power is constituted and organized through social accountability. It is a pity that she disowned that idea at an early (premature) stage in the development of hte theory, as political science, which invokes "power" a great deal actually has no theory of power. This will become clearer as the group gets onto texts such as Thompson's "Cultural Theory as Political Science".
December 13th, 2006 at 12.33 pm
Sorry I couldn't be there. Your query "How is CT a theory of change?" is a frequent one (as too is "How does it take account of power?"). Chapter 4 - "ringing the changes" - of Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky (1990) "Cultural Theory" (Boulder; West View) explains this, especially in the last section headed "Change is essential to stability". You won't find the answer in the Douglas texts, because they are about the method (or heuristic device, as MD called it), not the theory that provides an explanation for why the method is so sucessful. The power question is more difficult to answer, because it entails the asumption that social scientists can handle power, which CT says they can't! They just assume it (in the same way economists assume a tin-opener). In CT, power is an EMERGENT property of the interaction between the four solidarities (as is depicted graphically in terms of a third dimension, "grip"). If you want to get into these sort of questions i can sort out the references for you. Also, if you haven't already got it, there is a "top 10" reading list that Marco Verweij and Steve Ney use when teaching CT. marco will send it to you if you ask him. His email is <marcoverweij@smu.edu.sg>
December 13th, 2006 at 2.56 pm
Koichi, I think one answer to your comment is given by Douglas when she says, "the relvant level of analysis is that at which people find it necessary to explain to each other why they behave as they do" (p.201). When you get into your data collection, you need to figure out at which level your interviewees are being held accountable and/or justifying their positions. It may very well be the whole company, or the department, or their peers. Similarly, to answer your second question, I could see two people in an office, who hold similar positions in a company, to hold very different 'cosmologies'. One may be completely disenfranchised with the system and therefore espouse the fatalistic (B) cosmology. The other may be an aspiring manager, seeking to understand the hierarchical system and move up it's ladder, thus representing more of a hierarchical (C) cosmology. Why one chooses one way and the other the other way, I assume is the free will bit. But I think what Cultural Theory is trying to say that the same person, placed in a similar context in the future, will likely choose to voice the cosmology they choose previously.
Does that make sense?
December 13th, 2006 at 4.11 pm
If you get onto some of the articles Steve mentioned you might like to look at this one too; Michael Thompson (1992) The dynamics of cultural theory and their implications for the enterprise culture. in Shaun Hargreaves Heap and Angus Ross (eds) "Understanding The Enterprise Culture", Edinburgh; edinburgh University Press.