What is development about?

“…weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways.”

Is habitus actually Karma? Bourdieu through the Indic and psychoanalitical lenses

As quoth the poet:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

                                      Philip Larkin

This is, sans doute, a poetic account of habitus transfer on the subjectivity level. I imagine, Bourdieu would be nodding approvingly.

Social studies only observe and comment on that state of affairs, with no suggestions as per how social change would occur here (aka the trap of Post-Structuralism). The Indic and psychoanalytical traditions, however, take it that there is a way out of it and beyond it, it just takes the right kind of concentration, awareness and effort. Whether psychotherapy or yoga and mediation, ultimately it is about trying to stop that karmic buck or to shed the luggage of life scripts passed on generation after generation.

Or, as good wise Karl would say, a technological change in the material base (relations of production +  mode of production)  would cause a shift in the superstructure of values and ways of biding time until we die.

Would you go  into a yoga retreat/psychotherapy or rather wait until post-industrial society changes your lifestyle?

Truth in a technological society

Science is ''the extension of civilisation's technological core. In the scientific sense, 'true' means that which has the chance of being employed in effective technological procedures.'' (Kolakowski 1966)

That makes a lot of sense wherever you look. Whatever/whoever has no technological/productive utility is cavalierly discarded as irrelevant: spirituality, the unemployed,  bees, depth psychology, clean air - until it too get commodified and sold like bottled water these days!

By the same token, things only get noticed when they become properly commodified/monetarised, that is, when a technology of extracting a monetary value becomes apparent, codified and replicable in a way understandable to low-level business management, the inadvertent foot-soldiers of capitalism. Thus, compassion is acknowledged when it can generate profit by way of charity. Love - when it can be sold through a bride catalogue. Whatever does not yield to technological measurement and then market commodification remains on the fringes, and that is truly a blessing!

Erratic excess vs. normalising discourse

Brian Massumi apparently made a claim that capitalism has already overcome the logic of totalising normality and adopted the logic of erratic excess: 

"The more varied, and even erratic, the better. Normality starts to lose its hold. The regularities start to loosen. This loosening is part of capitalism's dynamic."

I think normalisation goes hand in hand with erratic excess though, the latter legitimises the former. In fact, the latter happens within the limits of the illusion of choice offered by the former.

Besides, the Weberian rational bureaucracy was more a wishful project than a totalised reality. Anyone who has ever had to deal with it can confirm that it is mostly anything but rational.

I feel though that Baudrillard must have written that long time ago... :-)

A handy term at any rate, erratic excess...

History

History. Hi-story. A story souped up with scientoid belle-lettrism, highly educated stereotypes and a fat list of references to other hi-stories. Commonly peddled as the factual depiction of reality.

Bogus "science" alert!

Most published research findings are false. 

Ioannidis (2005) goes into a deep and nuanced argument to show how that keeps happening time after time again. However, more often thant not, it simply glares straight into your face.

For example, a recent article on the scholarly debate about the minutiae of the Neanderthal diet includes this passage.

"Many hunter-gatherers, including the Inuit, Cree and Blackfeet, eat the stomach contents of animals such as deer because they are good source of vitamin C and trace elements," said Stringer. "For example, among the Inuit, the stomach contents of an animal are considered a special delicacy with a consistency and a flavour that is not unlike cream cheese. At least, that is what I am told."

So first, we are told that the prime drive behind hunter-gatherers' consuming some very iffy foodstuffs is their anachronistically enlightened awareness of the health benefits of vitamin C. And then we discover that that insight is based on unconfirmed hearsay. Keeping in mind that 2/3 of what fieldwork informants tell you is a lie (source: H. Russell Bertrand, Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches), if this is not downright random inconsequential bogus nonsense peddled as scientific truth by an ostensibly liberal media outlet, then what is?

the culture of instant gratification