The Socio-Economic Surplus. Calling Attention to the Shaggy Elephant
Saturday, September 13th, 2008 Posted in Asymmetrical Relationship, Money, Surplus Value | No Comments »The socio-economic surplus is all the goods and services we produce over our basic needs. It has a hefty feel, a weight like the large bull elephant everyone ignores at a garden party. A huge animal hidden in ...
The Money Game
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 Posted in Asymmetrical Relationship, Culture, Money, Surplus Value | No Comments »Money exchanges have the same socio-cultural shell as any other game. Rules govern the action. When we find a certain result like the accumulation of a surplus, we track back to the covering frame of law, consensus, and agency. And ...
When One Gender Dominates Another
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 Posted in Analysis, Asymmetrical Relationship, Anti-Experiment, Murder, Gender | No Comments »On one side the established law and the generally accepted conventional way. On the other snippets of action sequences like the OJ Murder Case that project other patterns. If we make the leap from case to category, place ...
The Violent Encounter
Thursday, January 10th, 2008 Posted in Asymmetrical Relationship, Violence | No Comments »A transitive action: One person or side acts violently against another. Then what does alter do? This is the initial phase of Parson's unit act--the beginning of interaction. So violence is a particular kind of verb, a doing of ...
Variations on the Spectator-Player Relationship. Part III
Saturday, September 29th, 2007 Posted in Concepts, Encounter, Asymmetrical Relationship | No Comments »Come on in. Expect to be startled and provoked. You have started down a yellow brick road to brains, brawn and love. Oz or bust. We've been on our way for several weeks, a rag-tag band of, as far as I ...
The Flexible Spectator-Player Relationship. Part II
Thursday, September 27th, 2007 Posted in Unit Act, Encounter, Asymmetrical Relationship | 2 Comments »The Spectator-Player model covers a broad range of experience. There are three tests for inclusion in this class: (1) Two actors in an encounter-relationship. (Note that the type of actor is not fixed; it can be one person or ...
Spectator-Player Relationship. Part I
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 Posted in Unit Act, Encounter, Asymmetrical Relationship | No Comments »Say a card game with seven players around a table. No chairs left. An eighth man, excluded from the central action, patrols the perimeter, watching and listening and gabbing. He is the kibitzer, the spectator, the gadfly, the superfluous person. ...