Hello:
Bob Parks send this very stimulating response to some of my
comments, and suggests that if I think it appropriate I should forward
it....
Here it is...
--
James C. Mancuso Dept. of Psychology
15 Oakwood Place University at Albany
Delmar, NY 12054 1400 Washington Ave.
Tel: (518)439-4416 Albany, NY 12222
Mailto:mancusoj@capital.net
http://www.crisny.org/not-for-profit/soi
A website related to Italian-American Affairs
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Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 12:21:10 -0500
To: mancusoj@capital.net
From: Bob Parks <bobp@lightlink.com>
Subject: Re: Dissertation
Jim,
Thanks for the very stimulating posting on your construction of
"construct" and "conflict". I've been lurking till I have time to get
back to my own mapping of ideologies as constructs. I won't have time
until June to contribute effectively to the dialogue, but I did want to
comment on a couple of your points.
> From that point, I would proceed to establish what I intend to
signify by the >term <italic>conflict</italic>, knowing that each
person's construction will be unique!!! >And, certainly, we would
need to exercise a great deal of intersubjective >exploration in order
to "map out" any dialogue partner's construction of >conflict.
This comment focuses for me the apparent paradox of naming our
constructs with words that have both technical and vernacular meanings,
while investigating the "construct" itself, rather than the language
used to designate it. In other words, whe have our own construct of the
topic of research, and generally assumer the participants in our
studies will take the term to mean "roughly" the same things. But
actually, our research paradigm suggests we shouldn't make that
assumption that others use words the same way. It appears to me that
all PCP research should systematically COMPARE our technical constucts
(such as "conflict") with the constructs generated by participants in
the study. So far, I haven't seen anyone in PCP suggest to me a
systematic way to do this.
In my own case (which I mentioned here a month or so ago), I want to
study the concepts of equality and community, which have a very
important normative traditions in philosophy and law. Regardless of
what people actually mean by these words, there are good (though
disputed) reasons for meaning one thing rather than another. (Or, we
could say with the developmentalists, different kinds of reasons may be
given at different stages of social/intellectual development). What I
want to do is to map peoples constructions of equality and community
against the "expert" constructions and the poles suggested by these
terms.
With Q-methodology, there is apparently a procedure for establishing
the set of statements that are sorted by subjects. Perhaps what I'm
looking for is a way to compare a set of constructs extracted from the
literature in political philosophy (which is my own training) with
citizens' constructs.
I'm afraid I'm still too much of a novice in PCP to recognize how this
quandary is handled. Your comments are very suggestive, Jim. I'm just
asking for more.
Also, your last comments were intriguing, since I am grounded in the
critical theory/Marxist tradition. You said:
> Consider (and this is only one of the examples I could give to
demonstrate why >I regard this construct as superimportant in one's
personal construct system) >-- those of us who have been schooled in
Marxist and Post-Marxist >interpretations of history have been very
attuned to the framing of history in >terms of class struggle. At
base, however, class struggle represents a grand >example of what I
reference when I speak of <italic>conflict</italic>. That is, the base
of >class struggle is a matter of "whose construct system shall
prevail!" Then, >when we introduce the idea that one can, by whatever
means, determine whose >construct system best maps out "reality," we
have a grand field of battle. And >the term <italic>battle</italic> is
intended to be literal -- How many deaths are owed to >efforts to
affirm that one or another construct system better maps out
>"reality???"
First, I would like to note that Marx would agree with much of your
statement. But with the proviso that we recognize that the task is not
so much to dispel our or others' illusions, but to abandon the
conditions which require illusiions. (I'll cite the passage if someone
is interested.)
> Can we find a constructivist social scientist who can convince
scholars that >the effort to maintain the stability and integrety of
one's construct >system (Choice Corollary) has been far more
important in determining the >course of human history than has been
economics?? Enough of Adam Smith >and Karl Marx -- forward with
Giambattista Vico and George Kelly!!!
Second, Lukacs remind us that "economics" itself is an historical
construct. The Greek "economos" means "household", which is where
production occurred in ancient societies. In modern capitalist
societies, economics stands for the construction of household as site
of consumption, with the socialized/private capital of the corporation
left as the new "site" of production. The construction of "economics"
leaves out the damage done to our environment, while "politics" is the
place where we try to repair this damage. The point I'm trying to make
is that we may be able to go forward with both Marx and Kelly. Perhaps
the task is to find ways of coordinating these theoretical constructs
in the social-historical world, with the constructs that Kelly allows
us to map in people's everyday life. I feel a great deal of excitement
if I could get some psychologists to work with a social scientist in
coordinating our terminologies. I"ve been trying to absorb Kelly, but
Jim is one of the first I've heard venture into the language of
socio-historical constructions.
On my desk now is a book by William Frawley, on "Vygotsky and Cognitive
Science", arguing that these approaches to mind are reconcilable and
even need each other. Let me encourage the same thought among those who
plow the fields of PCP. I'd like to find ways to show that PCP and
historical-political construct development are not only reconcilable,
but essential to each other.
Bob Parks
PS... It appears that replying to your email sends this back to you
instead of the PCP list. If you think it appropriate, please forward to
the list.
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