BDS

Let's call the whole thing off, eh? (To continue the Cole Porter allusion). There's no doubt that culture and society are intertwined, but I'm not sure they're "mutually entailed" (whatever that means). The neo-Marxist "dialectic" which suggests that the "economic infrastructure" holds some sort of tyranny over cultural institutions is, in my opinion, naive and simplistic. The "Culture and Personality" school of anthropology ("Culture is personality writ large" -- Ruth Benedict) was effectively debunked by cross cultural studies. No, a distant, powerful father did not lead inevitably to a distant, powerful male God. My guess is that the same is true for culture and society. No, poverty does not lead inevitably to crime. No, single parent families do not lead inevitably to failure (I'll bet those movie stars' kids do just fine.). My guess: socially engineered changes tend not to effect the desired cultural changes. No, the eradication of poverty will not necessarily eliminate gangs, or hostility. Or if it does, it will take several generations for it to do so.

jbernier

Marxists, of course, do not have a monopoly on the concept of the dialectic. I am solidly dialectical in my thinking but certainly not Marxist in any sort of traditional sense (definitely not in the sense of economic determinism).

I agree that that Benedict style "Culture and personality" is highly problematic. However that is not the only way in which one can look at the relationship between cultural context and personhood. I think that French ethnology and sociologie has done some excellent work in this area (although I would tend to shy away from the world-historical perspectives of some of the earlier members of this school). For instance, I still think that Mauss' work on the category of the person is some of the best work done in this area.

I did not argue that. I merely said that one needs to look at the social conditions in which "criminal" behaviour is produced in order to understand what is going on there. You read that as "poverty leads inevitably to crime." I, however, said no such thing.

Again, who is arguing for either social engineering or that the elimination of poverty will mean the elimination of crime?

All I am saying is that if one wants to understand a legal system one needs to look at the Big Picture - that includes economy, that includes bureaucratic structure, that includes ideas...indeed, they are inseparable. This is not either/or; this is both and/or.

BDS

True, true. I wasn't arguing, merely expressing my point of view. "Causes" of complicated behaviors are always difficult to determine. But what we (by "we" I mean we moderns, influenced by a scientific background) mean by "cause" is a "handle we can manipulate". In other words, we're looking for the equivalent of a "variable" in a scientific experiment. Unfortunately, many people (not you, of course, jbernier) confuse statistical variables with experimental variables, and suggest solutions to problems based on this mistake. As you sugest, however, the different "variables" are insuperable from the context within which one finds them, so social programs cannot alter the variable without altering a myriad of other factors as well.

I'm sure there are sophisticated ways of looking at culture and personhood, with which I am only vaguely familiar.

Lugubert

I just found this thread, and haven't been able to digest it all yet. In the meantime, some official Swedish statistics:

USA had the highest number of imprisoned persons in the world (per 100 000)
‎(685), followed by Russia (670), and Cayman Islands‎ ‎(UK) with their 37 000 inhabitants ‎(665) and Byelorussia (555). More than 60 per cent of all countries had a value of 150‎ or less. In Europe, the variation was from ‎30 (Kosovo) to 665 (Russia). For Sweden, it was 70 on 1 October 2001; Denmark, Finland and Norway all had 60‎ and Iceland 40.

BDS

I'm not sure what these stats mean, but if I were a criminal, I'd consider moving to Kosovo. Either there's no competition, or the cops can't catch anyone.