In a message dated 06/04/2000 2:33:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<<
 This seems to assume an individualist conception of a culture (or a
 society) -- that a culture is merely the sum of its parts, and that
 therefore only "big parts" really count. This also makes relations merely
 accidents of a culture's or an individual's "essence." But if relations are
 real, if wherever and whenever we find ourselves we are always already
 caught up in an ensemble of social relations -- if we do not have but
 *are* our history, then it is impossible to say that any one "individual"
 is or is not "integral" to a culture. The question is meaningless. If X
 or Y (or Carlo) exists, than he/she is certainly "integral" to some
 culture -- that is, has no existence independentlyof  or in abstraction
 from that culture.

 Carrol

  >>

hmmmmm.  as in bigger is better, huh?  I don't think that was my assumption.
I actually called carlo and asked him if felt he was integral to american
culture, and he still hasn't stopped laughing.  if one wants to define
integral as being a part (any part) of a culture, then the question is
meaningless.  however, I don't think that was the spirit of the question that
Wei, and I think Carrol knows this.  (Wei was clearly speaking to American
culture.)  I think we can interpret integral as meaning necessary to the
completeness of the whole, or, at least having some measurable influence.
while all people may be "caught  up in the ensemble" of social relations, it
doesn't follow that each of them is necessary for either the existence of, or
the functioning of said ensemble, which to my mind makes them not integral.
and while it may be argued that no one can say for sure whether one is, or
one isn't, integral, this doesn't preclude one from having a damned good
idea.

jb....