Campsteading by Derek Brereton

Author:Derek Brereton [Brereton, Derek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General, Sociology, Rural
ISBN: 9781351572767
Google: 8h03DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-25T02:09:04+00:00

Archer’s model of practice and morphogenesis

Margaret Archer’s formulation of practice theory is easily the most cogent. Some practice theorists, such as Sherry Ortner and Pierre Bourdieu, mistakenly (and circularly) make the starting point the interaction of structure and practice, rather than structure and agency, as it properly should be. Anthony Giddens and Zigmunt Bauman mistakenly conflate structure and agency in the notion of “structuration,” making it impossible to discern the influence of one from the other. Marshall Sahlins unwittingly leaves open the possibility that practices might be utterly divorced from the substrate of reality against which they must inevitably exert their thrust, for, as he says, “Reality has no obligation to conform to our notions of it.” He seems unaware that utterly detached “practice” would be utterly impractical, and could never have evolved.28

Archer conveniently uses T1,T2, and T3 to indicate the features of the model pertaining to any event. That is, conditions at time one are drawn upon by agents at time two to produce change or continuity at time three. This is morphogenesis.

Archer’s model of practice, therefore, is preferable for three reasons. First, it is rooted in a fully conceptualized notion of the real, as philosophically articulated by Roy Bhaskar.29 Second, it is rooted in human psychophysical development.30 Any infant’s relation to the social and natural worlds is practical first. Third, her notion of practice informs her own model of social dynamics, called morphogenesis. Like both “structure” and “function,” the term “morphogenesis” is borrowed from biology. As noted above, Archer has developed this model in works linking the philosophically real, with the socioculturally human, via the mutual coefficient of agency and structure. The model roots practice in the body’s experiential encounter with real, consequential, social and natural dimensions of the world.31 This basal practical encounter is existentially prior to linguistic learning, or the linguistic expression of experience, in every way: logically, evolutionarily, developmentally, and socioculturally. Thus, Archer follows Merleau-Ponty in asserting the primacy of corporeal practice over linguistic forms.

Archer stresses the priority of concretely embodied experience, a corporeality which never gives way, never yields primacy, to public social relations.32 The first reality for the human creature is thoroughly concrete. In this context it is also apt to say that the first reality for the campsteader is concretely natural, and that this fact is crucial in identity formation. This, in turn, affects campstead longevity, family composition, and landscape morphogenics. Thus, Archer shows that consciousness is a lived involvement in a series of concrete situations,33 and the human psyche is not closed in on itself. Rather, it is open to the world and other minds, as those other minds are open to it.34

Archer’s endorsement of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ineluctable embodiment, as well as peoples’ inescapably incorporated relations with the environment, together ground her own notion of the inner sense of self, and its continuous nature.35 Each human self, regardless of sociohistorical background, normally considers itself to be the same self from one moment to the next. Temporal continuity is an ontic feature of selfhood, another (correct) assumption made spontaneously by all peoples.

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