Re: Defining/Describing LO LO3263

GMBrady@aol.com
Wed, 18 Oct 1995 17:16:44 -0400

Replying to LO3212 --

John Warfield asks several questions about my approach to the description
and analysis of groups, corporations, societies, cultures, etc., and
wishes me a speedy recovery so that I can respond. Thanks, John, but for
that purpose, wish me a slow recovery. I'm fine except I'm not supposed
to drive for two more weeks, which leaves me with too much time for those
who prefer succinct Email.

I'm still a little wary here. When you people check in from everywhere in
the world, performing in a wide variety of roles in institutions ranging
from the military-industrial complex to the county library, it seems
nearly impossible to "write to the audience." But...

John asks: (1) Who identified the four main analytical/descriptive
categories, who's reviewed, and are they in the literature?

For me, this approach began about 30 years ago, with an article by Carroll
Quigley (one of Clinton's professors at Georgetown). What he said, in
essence, was that, in trying to understand human affairs, nothing came
even close in explanatory power to the study of mental models,
particularly those unexamined assumptions and premises which are part of a
group's "collective unconscious." At the time, I was teaching a 200 level
undergraduate course I'd been assigned that was supposed to introduce and
survey the social sciences. I saw in Quigley's comment a possible way to
make the course more intellectually manageable by students, and began to
use that as a focus--economics driven by mental models; sociology
concerned with patterned behavior growing out of mental models; systematic
history as a tracing of the evolution of a group's mental model, political
science as...well, you get the idea.

Two or three years later, I found in my files a very old ATLANTIC article
by that fresh thinker about urban affairs, Jane Jacobs. She had taken on
the urban planners' post-war penchant for wholesale clearing of blighted
areas on what she said was the misguided assumption that one could
identify an area in need of demolition just by looking at it. The article
was so powerful that I knew I had to integrate its basic message about the
significance of the actual physical configuration of environments with
what I was doing, and it turned out to be a rather small step. We
configure the environment in ways suggested by our mental models, and the
configuration of the environment helps structure our mental models. Bang!
Two-component model.

I don't know when or why I realized the obvious, that, of course, actual
patterns of behavior constantly reflect assumptions imbedded in our mental
models, that, for example, the differences in what happens in various
societies when several individuals converge simultaneously on a drinking
fountain reflects important assumptions about authority, fairness, human
worth, etc.--key components of a sociocultural system's mental
model/collective unconscious. Bzzzzt! Three-component model.

About this time I picked up a book from my mailbox meant for someone else
on the FSU campus and missent to me--Pitirim Sorokin's SOCIOLOGICAL
THEORIES OF TODAY--and found in it, before I sent it on to its rightful
recipient--all sorts of reinforcement for this three-part model. (Despite
the title, Sorokin's concern was with macro phenomena, so his reviews and
criticisms were of just about everyone in the world who had ever
lived--historians, anthropologists, sociologists, etc.--who had an opinion
about the human condition, how to study it, and about the dynamics of
change.)

No doubt because it was too close, I came last to the realization that
humans were primarily what this was all about, that they were yet another
system component, and that the actual inherent characteristics of
members/participants/actors were important. (A human race composed of 6"
high people would relate systemically to Earth's environment far
differently than 60' high people. What's significant about the inherent
characteristics and differences of the members of various groups is, of
course, far more subtle than that, but significant nevertheless.) Bang!
Four-component model.

And, of course, all reality occurs in some sort of perceived time
dimension: Bang again. Five-component model.

I used to write about all this in fairly esoteric language, until a couple
of years ago it occurred to me that all I was talking about was what every
beginning high school journalism student had learned by the second week of
class, that in the description of reality, you need to identify who, what,
when, where, why. (As you might guess, pedants found this very
off-putting. Much too simple.) I defend myself by asking why nobody "saw"
gravity until 1666, or by quoting people like Ichheiser (1970) that
"nothing evades our attention as persistently as that which is taken for
granted."

That mental models/the collective unconscious is culture specific means,
of course, that every group has to studied on its own terms, pretty much
from the perspective of the degree of internal integration of its system
components. But then this is much complicated by the fact that such
systems overlap and "nest" in ways that are mind-blowingly complex. It
can, however, be done.

Who of real significant stature and reputation has reviewed and blessed
all this? Nobody I know of. It's mostly educator types who have seen it
because of the journals in which I publish, and reactions are totally
unpredictable. They either think it's the greatest thing to come down the
pike in generations, or that it's trash. I have a review of my first book
in my file with "This is almost pure schlock!" written diagonally, in
large script, across the last page.

John again: (2) "Given that a number of researchers agree that language is
both the key aspect of a culture, as well as one of the main indicators of
cultural values, how come this vital topic isn't specifically mentioned?"

Bingo! How'd you know how to go directly to such a troubling spot? I've
wrangled with students about this for years. Second part of the question
first: In trying to help students "get inside" their collective
unconscious, the kinds of discussions taking place here online about the
absence of certain words in various languages (e.g. "accountability") is
invaluable, and I make use of them as much as possible. This is one of
the beauties of multicultural classes.

First part of the question: The first use of "the model" (my students
write "The Model"), is simply to say, if you want to understand what's
going on here, or there, or anywhere, find out about this, and this, and
this. So, of course, the more specific "this" is, the better the model
works. Therefore, since language is of critical importance, the model
needs to call attention to it, and that's what triggered hours of class
discussion.

Let me give you a partial conceptual breakdown of the categories of the
model, with "language" making its appearance.

ENVIRONMENT

-geographics
-climate
-resources
-constructions
-wealth
-tools
-art
-symbols/language (Treated like a tool, sort of after the manner of Whorf)
-other societies
-waste\
-sounds/smells
(Not complete)

ACTORS

-number
-age
-sex
-inhereent physiological characteristics

ACTION (Patterns for)

-work
-worship
-educating
-making decisions
-owning
-playing
-distributing/exchanging wealth
-communicating
-controlling deviance
-expressing emotion
-socializing
-mobility
(Not complete)

ASSUMPTIONS, premises, beliefs, values, ideas, etc., about:

-the individual
-significant others
-time
-space
-physical reality
-the supernatural
-causation
-symbols
-the good life
-acceptable action
-purpose of existence

TIME

-location in
-duration
-frequency

(By the way, all of the above lie in sort of "a middle level of
generality" range. Any one of them can be broken down into component
concepts--e.g. patterns for communicating=time, frequency, duration,
audience, network, symbol type, feedback. These, in turn, can be broken
down still further--e.g. Network=mesh, star, broadcast.)

It's in the exploration of relationships BETWEEN each of the elements of
the model that all the concepts of general systems theory become useful.
For example---nah, you don't need examples. If I give the students a
starting point ("three strikes and you're out" legislation, a fool-proof
voice stress analyzer, a 20% decline in water availability, the closing of
a local plant, an 18" rise in average sea level, etc.) and tell them to do
a flow chart tracing possible consequences, when they get stuck, the model
says, "Well, what about this? and this? and this?"

And John again: (3) Has anyone ever used this schema to analyze even one
culture? Well, I have. And my students have--although time constraints
usually require a focus on selected aspects of the model. And, of course,
if it's being used for the study of a sub-culture such as a corporation or
a police force or the Elks Club, many of the categories aren't relevant.
Just for a quickie exercise for students, I'll often have them use the
model to brainstorm what they know about Massachusetts Bay Colony in about
1630, or Hell's Angels, or the local major employer. My "comprehensive"
statement of what I think general education should be about suggests areas
in which I think raw data ought to be acquired for the use of students. I
think I cranked it in the other day, but here it is again:

EACH OF US HAS ACQUIRED FROM OUR SOCIETY A CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF REALITY.
THE MOST IMPORTANT TASK OF GENERAL EDUCATION IS TO HELP US UNDERSTAND THAT
MODEL, THE MODELS OF THOSE WITH WHOM WE INTERACT, AND THE RANGE OF
ALTERNATIVE MODELS FROM WHICH WE MIGHT CHOOSE.

It's this that I'd like to see become a primary objective of general
education. Believing as I do that our institutional commitment to the
disciplines is overpowering, I think the only way to go is to establish,
in all schools above the elementary level, autonomous general education
departments. Freed of having to meet expectations for contributing to
students' general education--which they do a lousy job of anyway--the
mathematics, physics, language, art, and other departments would be freed
to work with their more select students. They could take them far beyond
present levels of performance.

Incidentally, writing that statement of objective above, it struck me
that, properly organized and working to an agreed-upon model, the Net
could pull together an enormous data bank for the study of the "models of
reality of those with whom we interact, and the range of alternative
models from which we might choose." It shouldn't say, "Here's information
about People A or People B, it should provide raw data which require
students to infer, hypothesize, synthesize, and use all the other mental
processes that are presently neglected because traditional schooling is so
concerned with the single cognitive process of recall.

Hope I haven't jammed your equipment.

--
Marion Brady
GMBrady@aol.com