Gregory - Bao

First post! Hope to see everyone else write soon!


The Chris Gregory reading on "Whatever happened to householding" brought up a rather interesting issue of conceptualization. While a general concept is one that is decided based historically on empirical evidence, a universal concept describes human nature without regard to culture or history. While it seems more practical to work to form general concepts, it also seems as though most people in multiple disciplines are also working to create universal theories and concepts to apply to their field. But is it really possible to create a universal theory that is really of any use? As Gregory mentions in the chapter in reference to the Becker theory in economics, the theory doesn't really say anything about the specific times, places, or institutions that helped organize economic development. If a universal theory transcends culture, history, and species, we really are unable to draw any other conclusions other than to say that there is a similarity that is shared. This would seem to really prevent any really true understanding of the social and environmental phenomena that surrounds human culture. For instance, in this course, we are attempting to study family and household; if we limit ourselves to one idea, we would be undermining our own attempts to truly understand the meanings behind these terms and the contexts in which we are considering them. I think that our goal should be to really understand the different institutions that play a role in householding, and whether these institutions promote a certain type of familial relationship and then from there continue to see how these relationships extend into other aspects of life such as business, leisure, etc. I am most assuredly on the side of the generalist in that I would prefer to use historical evidence to back up a theory. A universalist theory seems to be somewhat too ambitious and carries the risk of undermining the research and the theory itself.