This was the work I wanted to do last week, but the writing took sooo long. This is the part where I get to keep it real. I ordered five articles through ILLIAD last week and got them within like 5 business days. They're all on gang characteristics, formation, and prison experience. I'm excited! So, this week is all about reading and working out exactly how to read the research through my theory of institutions. Some dimensions are not immediately obvious, but there are a lot of neat, important insights that my theory seems to account for well. I think I'll be able to start writing by the end of the week.
If you go back to my timeline, I'm about 2 weeks behind. It's a good thing I planned to take a week off. I still should take time off, but the timeline has to be compressed a bit. On the bright side, I'll be spending part of this week going over what I've written so far and streamlining it for the philosophy version of my thesis. That should help me see where I need to streamline this version as well.
The work load is really starting to bear down, especially as I'm trying to start working on a complete IDS portfolio and graduate school applications. But, this is the end of the Senior semester and I guess I can't expect anything less. In fact, I think I'll start on that portfolio thing now. Peace.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Current Work: Part 1
This week's writing is my take on what institutions are. I'm finally laying out what I've been thinking about for the past three months. Unfortunately, I feel so much like I'm being an armchair philosopher because it's all theory that I already know and can talk about on the theoretical level. I don't feel the impulse to pull together sources because so many people use the terms I'm talking about in much the same way I'm talking about them....But, I'm not really taking my ideas from them, nor am I necessarily talking about them in the same way they talk about them. When/If you read my paper, this part will probably seem like I'm just making all of this stuff off the top of my head. It does come from somewhere, I just can't cite people because I'm not getting my stuff directly from them. Plus, in describing what institutions are, I'm not being complete. I feel like there are other aspects within what I'm talking about (say, social structure) that I'm just forgetting to include. I want completeness because, in trying to describe something, not incorporating certain aspects can change the understanding what is being described. The bright spot in all of this is that I think the key points I'm trying to make still stand despite what I feel is a haphazard approach. I may not be able to fully justify my points by providing a full description of the situation, but I can't think of alternative situations that contradict the key tenants of my theory. After all of this very general talk about my apprehension, here's something concrete that will hopefully explicate it.
I argue that institutions are the particular arrangements of four components which make up what I call the social context. They are the structure, agents, discourse, and events. Each component is autonomous in that they operate on their own internal logics. But, they also influence one another. An institution is an institution because these components themselves are institutionalized into a distinctive arrangement which defines a particular institution as that institution and not some other one or other practice that is not an institution. To take the first component of the social context as my explicit example, I argue that structure is the organization of power through rules, material, and patterns of interaction. I don't feel like I have to cite any authors for this statement because so many talk about structure in general as a feature of society (hence the structure/agency problem that was my original thesis project). Furthermore, I haven't found anyone (that I'm satisfied with) who has talked about structure as simply rules, material, and patterns of interaction. However, these features seem endemic to talk about what structure is. Anthony Giddens for examples talks about "structuration" whereby social structure is the outcome of what I call "patterns of interaction." Foucault talks about the role of material things in structure (e.g. prisons, panopticism, clinics, etc). Rational choice theorists use "rules" to describe the situation within which actors must choose. In my theory, these are separate things which are all parts of social structure. But, I can't cite such inspirations because these authors simply do not use the terms in the way I'm using them. I think they may end up as footnotes. Also, I am not sure that structure is only composed of rules, material, and patterns of interaction. So, I'm worried that there's some fairly obvious part that I'm missing. Despite this blindness, I still think that I show how structure affects discourse, agents, and events and yet is still operates on its own logic. In this, I can feel that my paper is so far sufficient.
I argue that institutions are the particular arrangements of four components which make up what I call the social context. They are the structure, agents, discourse, and events. Each component is autonomous in that they operate on their own internal logics. But, they also influence one another. An institution is an institution because these components themselves are institutionalized into a distinctive arrangement which defines a particular institution as that institution and not some other one or other practice that is not an institution. To take the first component of the social context as my explicit example, I argue that structure is the organization of power through rules, material, and patterns of interaction. I don't feel like I have to cite any authors for this statement because so many talk about structure in general as a feature of society (hence the structure/agency problem that was my original thesis project). Furthermore, I haven't found anyone (that I'm satisfied with) who has talked about structure as simply rules, material, and patterns of interaction. However, these features seem endemic to talk about what structure is. Anthony Giddens for examples talks about "structuration" whereby social structure is the outcome of what I call "patterns of interaction." Foucault talks about the role of material things in structure (e.g. prisons, panopticism, clinics, etc). Rational choice theorists use "rules" to describe the situation within which actors must choose. In my theory, these are separate things which are all parts of social structure. But, I can't cite such inspirations because these authors simply do not use the terms in the way I'm using them. I think they may end up as footnotes. Also, I am not sure that structure is only composed of rules, material, and patterns of interaction. So, I'm worried that there's some fairly obvious part that I'm missing. Despite this blindness, I still think that I show how structure affects discourse, agents, and events and yet is still operates on its own logic. In this, I can feel that my paper is so far sufficient.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Institutionalizing Violence - the case of prison gangs
Since I'm doing my research one section at a time, the latter parts of my thesis are still subject to change. Right now, this is what I'm thinking.
I was originally going to do violence in general. That seemed too ambitious for such a short amount of time for research and, I'm still young, I can go there later. So, I decided to focus on prison violence. I wanted to look at the general forms of physical violence that have become "standards" in prison - rape and sexual abuse, officer beatings (both directions), etc. I thought I could take these from a general perspective and talk about how they became institutionalized. It's not that I thought this project impossible so much as disingenuous. Each of these has very different histories, serve different functions, and operate on different mechanisms. I still believe I can abstract enough away to encompass them into a single schema; however, this wouldn't really demonstrate the proper role of my theory of institutions. I think, if my theory is workable, that it's main role in explanation would not be for these general practices, but very specific practices with their own narratives. It's really a question of specificity - at what level of focus will my theory really be useful in effecting change. I don't believe that talking about general forms of prison violence will contribute much substantive help to resolving each of them (where they should be resolved).
What I want to do is to look at a more pressing and specific institution of violence in prisons - gang violence. Gang violence has become increasingly predominant in prisons over the past twenty-odd years as gang social structure was transplanted into prisons and gangs themselves became more violent. Applying my theory to this specific problem should produce a very grounded and detailed analysis of gangs and gang violence from which we can hopefully predict the emergence and development of gangs and find ways to prevent and deinstitutionalize their escalation to violence. This is one of the major thrusts that's so far sold me on this approach. I can give a very detailed analysis because I'm looking at something relatively specific and I believe I'll be able to offer germane suggestions for preventing and stopping this violence.
I lose the general analysis and the ability to transpose the analysis to other types of institutionalized violence; however, that's what theory is for. The theory itself should be clear enough that it can be taken from one instance of institutional behavior to the next. I shouldn't need to apply it to a general type of phenomenon to show that it can be applied to a range of cases. The application component, gang violence in this case, should merely show how the theory works empirically.
If I'm right in seeing the situation this way, then I've lost nothing in sharpening my focus.
I was originally going to do violence in general. That seemed too ambitious for such a short amount of time for research and, I'm still young, I can go there later. So, I decided to focus on prison violence. I wanted to look at the general forms of physical violence that have become "standards" in prison - rape and sexual abuse, officer beatings (both directions), etc. I thought I could take these from a general perspective and talk about how they became institutionalized. It's not that I thought this project impossible so much as disingenuous. Each of these has very different histories, serve different functions, and operate on different mechanisms. I still believe I can abstract enough away to encompass them into a single schema; however, this wouldn't really demonstrate the proper role of my theory of institutions. I think, if my theory is workable, that it's main role in explanation would not be for these general practices, but very specific practices with their own narratives. It's really a question of specificity - at what level of focus will my theory really be useful in effecting change. I don't believe that talking about general forms of prison violence will contribute much substantive help to resolving each of them (where they should be resolved).
What I want to do is to look at a more pressing and specific institution of violence in prisons - gang violence. Gang violence has become increasingly predominant in prisons over the past twenty-odd years as gang social structure was transplanted into prisons and gangs themselves became more violent. Applying my theory to this specific problem should produce a very grounded and detailed analysis of gangs and gang violence from which we can hopefully predict the emergence and development of gangs and find ways to prevent and deinstitutionalize their escalation to violence. This is one of the major thrusts that's so far sold me on this approach. I can give a very detailed analysis because I'm looking at something relatively specific and I believe I'll be able to offer germane suggestions for preventing and stopping this violence.
I lose the general analysis and the ability to transpose the analysis to other types of institutionalized violence; however, that's what theory is for. The theory itself should be clear enough that it can be taken from one instance of institutional behavior to the next. I shouldn't need to apply it to a general type of phenomenon to show that it can be applied to a range of cases. The application component, gang violence in this case, should merely show how the theory works empirically.
If I'm right in seeing the situation this way, then I've lost nothing in sharpening my focus.
Monday, October 1, 2007
The everyday
It seems I failed to make a post last week. It's easy to lose track of time when you spend so much of it looking at your watch. Studying for and taking the GRE didn't help either. Anyway...
Day to day, I'm setting a goal: one article or chapter a day minimum (for both the philosophy and IDS versions when the research starts to split). I like to break my research down into chunks and take each one as they come in paper. That's what my timeline says anyway. I'll be finishing my research as I finish the conclusion for the rough draft...then start over. It seems to be working so far though. Tittles!
Day to day, I'm setting a goal: one article or chapter a day minimum (for both the philosophy and IDS versions when the research starts to split). I like to break my research down into chunks and take each one as they come in paper. That's what my timeline says anyway. I'll be finishing my research as I finish the conclusion for the rough draft...then start over. It seems to be working so far though. Tittles!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)