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roachboy · 03-25-2011, 08:25 AM

"leadership" is the stuff of management literature.

it's not useful as a category for historical or social analysis. it's prescriptive---it's about elaborating norms to guide the captains of industry in their efforts to appear in control.

from any sociological viewpoint, that control is limited to specific registers and says nothing at all about anything that makes any given firm actually operate---"leadership" is theater, not analysis. you won't understand the organization of production by looking at "leadership". you won't understand capital flows by looking at "leadership." you won't understand anything at all about the material operation of a firm by looking at it.

what you will understand is image management. and that's an aspect of the operation of firms---but a limited one. you have to do some editing to conflate that register with the whole.
and it's not even a metonym---a part that can coherently stand in for the whole.
it's just a register of activity.

if it is the case---and it is----that looking to "leadership" in the case of a firm only tells you about normative assumptions that obtain within a particular register of that firm's operations and nothing whatever about 98% (metaphorically speaking) of the material realities and their organization that constitute what a firm actually **is** sociologically....then why on earth would you rely on that framework to talk about something as diffuse and complex as a military action?

nb: if you read my posts, you'd also know that i think every last one of your assumptions about what's happening in libya is wrong empirically. i've provided information both in this thread and others to that effect.

what you're arguing, in effect, is that the massacre should have been allowed to continue.

i think that's obscene.

03-25-2011, 08:25 AM	#120 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	"leadership" is the stuff of management literature. it's not useful as a category for historical or social analysis. it's prescriptive---it's about elaborating norms to guide the captains of industry in their efforts to appear in control. from any sociological viewpoint, that control is limited to specific registers and says nothing at all about anything that makes any given firm actually operate---"leadership" is theater, not analysis. you won't understand the organization of production by looking at "leadership". you won't understand capital flows by looking at "leadership." you won't understand anything at all about the material operation of a firm by looking at it. what you will understand is image management. and that's an aspect of the operation of firms---but a limited one. you have to do some editing to conflate that register with the whole. and it's not even a metonym---a part that can coherently stand in for the whole. it's just a register of activity. if it is the case---and it is----that looking to "leadership" in the case of a firm only tells you about normative assumptions that obtain within a particular register of that firm's operations and nothing whatever about 98% (metaphorically speaking) of the material realities and their organization that constitute what a firm actually is sociologically....then why on earth would you rely on that framework to talk about something as diffuse and complex as a military action? nb: if you read my posts, you'd also know that i think every last one of your assumptions about what's happening in libya is wrong empirically. i've provided information both in this thread and others to that effect. what you're arguing, in effect, is that the massacre should have been allowed to continue. i think that's obscene. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 03-25-2011 at 08:29 AM..