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Juicy Questions on Integral Theory applied to International Development

Last post 08-12-2007, 1:03 PM by Emine. 16 replies.
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  •  05-27-2007, 8:21 PM 23431 in reply to 23216

    Re: Juicy Questions on Integral Theory applied to International Development-Social Holons, Social Change

    Hello all,

     

    “Agency, Structure, Story: Heart, Brain, or Lungs?”

     

    While there was also mention of other essential body parts, these are the words re individuals and society that stick in my mind from our conversation with Ken last weekend at the Integral Friends and Community retreat. So I wanted to broaden the social change-individual change summary I gave earlier.

     

    The way I formulated it there lumped some moderns who claim “LR Structure is the key in the determination of society and individual” and the post-moderns who argue “LL Story/Culture is the key in the determination of society and individual” together as LL-LR “social context” and posited it against other moderns who hold that “individual agency is the key in the determination of society and individual”. In other words, I looked at a two way determination between society and individual.

     

    While the LL and LR do mesh with each other and the upper quadrants (ie tetra-mesh) -- or “make sense” for each individual member of the society, (including from an integral 3p perspective, for us,) -- there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the two quadrants. You can have similar social structures align with all sorts of different cultural stories as well as vice-versa (though, it seems to me, there will be some bounds/patterns to these when looked at from an integral perspective, given holarchical depth and the universality of deep structures of consciousness.) All in all, though, it seems important to underline the relative autonomy of each lower quadrant as well.

     

    So a more detailed integral look at individual and society would posit a 3-way co-determination/co-creation of individual (agency), culture (story), and social structure, where the weight of the past (history) acts on each quadrant pretty independently of the other quadrants. That individuals (agency) make society (change/determine LL stories and LR structures) and the society (LL stories and LR structures) partly make the individual, with Eros/creativity making the other part, still holds true, I think. But this does give us a finer and fuller integral story, with the dynamics between LL stories and LR social structures playing an additional role.

     

    I would love to hear from those of you better versed in postmodern analyses than I am in fleshing these out for an integral framework. For example, does this give us an explanation for how you can have prototypically orange governance structures like “free and democratic elections” or ministries in the LR and, say, prototypically amber content to these in the LL that result in the election of those candidates the local notable tells folks to vote for or the distribution of jobs and benefits on the basis of amber ethnic kinship rather than orange merit, etc.? Would these kinds of results stem from the relative autonomy of LR and LL? Am I even asking the most important or most interesting questions?

     

    Emine

  •  08-12-2007, 1:03 PM 27278 in reply to 23431

    Re: Juicy Questions on Integral Theory applied to International Development-Social Holons, Social Change

    Hi all!

    Continuing right along...., check this out! What do you think?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html?ex=1344139200&en=ee9b904001eb910b&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

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