Margaret Archer's theory on the "inner conversation"

[Liz Challinor]

My way of protesting to shutting this group down is to start a new discussion. Is anybody familiar with the work of Margaret Archer, a critical realist who does not appear to have had any significant impact in anthropology? I have been interested in how her theory on the "inner conversation" may contribute towards phenomenological approaches in ethnographic research. Although her distinction between personal and social identity appears to be problematic for social anthropologists, I think she has an interesting argument about how personal identity reflects upon social identity:

 The “I” may be distressed to learn that its “me” is considered to speak with the wrong accent, to be of a disfavoured colour or gender, and that nothing that “I” can immediately do will change matters…As a reflexive monitor, the “I” may squirm inwardly to distance itself from the disfavoured “me”: whether it can eventually do so will depend upon intra-personal, inter-personal and societal factors… (Archer 2000:264).

What do you think?

 

[Keith Hart]

I haven't given up on this conversation, but these are far from trivial issues and I am concurrently writing inside several of them which is not the best place to be for a quick response to big questions. I have downloaded Being Human onto my Kindle along with McGilchrist's Master and Emissary from Boris's thread elsewhere. I can't tell if or when I will be back, but I am certainly grateful to you both for forcing this new avanue of exploration on me.