Interaction Rescaled: How Monastic Debate Became a Diasporic Pedagogy

Abstract

Rather than assume the relevance of a priori scalar distinctions (micro-, macro-, meso-), this article examines scale as an emergent dimension of sociospatial practice in educational institutions. Focusing on Buddhist debate at Tibetan monasteries in India, I describe how this educational practice has been placed as a rite of institution within the perimeter of Sera Monastery in India and rescaled into a more expansive diasporic pedagogy by reformers like the Dalai Lama. [interaction, scale, language, religious education, reproduction] Does Interaction Have a Scale?There is a damning phrase Erving Goffman used in the twilight of his career that confirmed, for his critics at least, just how blinkered his whole project was. That phrase, "the interaction order," was the title of his 1982 presidential address to the American Sociological Association and was proposed as a distillation of decades of writing on face-to-face encounters, encounters that transpire in "environments in which two or more individuals are physically in one another's response presence" (Goffman 1983:3). In this deliberately cribbed micro-sociology, scale was used conceptually and rhetorically to separate interaction from mainstream sociology, to constitute it as an object-not unlike the way many disciplines have tried to carve out a distinctive domain by purifying their object of knowledge from competing disciplinary logics (cf. Latour 1993b; e.g., Saussure's [1983] efforts to define la langue as the core of language and foundation for disciplinary linguistics against encroaching fields like psychology, history, and sociology). Whatever disciplinary motivations may have inspired this downscaling of interaction-this was, after all, an address to his field in his role as president-and apart from any analytic purchase this rhetoric of scaling may have had for audiences in the early 1980s, it is now clear that this has had unfortunate consequences, both conceptual and empirical.Although it is still a reflex to speak of and even celebrate the "local," "situated" nature of face-to-face interaction, many have been troubled by these qualities and are no longer content to treat "the interaction order" as if it were some watertight chamber of activity insulated from macrosocial dynamics and pressures.So what do they do? Some marvel at what they take to be the scalar hybridity and heterogeneity of discursive interaction, like the way resources and materials associated with distinct spatial and temporal scales converge and are melded in the crucible of face-to-face encounters. In face-to-face interaction they discover sherds of larger structures-discourses, language ideologies, categories of identity, master tropes and narratives. Others, working more from the inside out, concede that interaction is micro but then add up tokens of it, charting "larger-scale" trajectories of interaction-like the way identity seems to crystallize and sediment longitudinally over lots of discrete, situated events. Still others have tired of the coarse "micro-macro" distinction...

Introduction: Scales analysis, and its uses and prospects in educational linguistics

“…There has been a bias in educational linguistics (especially salient in approaches adopting conversation analysis) that the proper unit of analysis is the local, physically immediate. However, as Lempert (2012) and Blommaert (2013) have argued, talk is constituted by features that are not immediately visible or predictable. Scales enable us to consider the unit of analysis as layered, interpreting meanings that might be conveyed at different scales of consideration for the subjects involved.…”

“…In this sense, it is a passive backdrop to meaning negotiation and construction. However, object-oriented ontologies have made linguists sensitive to the fact that the material world is agentive (as in the increasing influence of the thinking of those like Latour in educational linguistics -see Kell, 2010Kell, , 2013Lempert, 2012). Similarly, spatial paradigms of those like de Certeau (1984) and Bourdieu (1977) have also made linguists sensitive to the spatiotemporal influences on texts and talk and contingent semiotic repertoires of language users (see Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015).…”

“…While the definition of scales as a category of practice rather than a category of analysis (as articulated above) answers the ontological and epistemological dilemmas (and it has received uptake from others in educational linguistics, such as Lempert, 2012), we should consider how it answers other methodological problems in educational linguistics.…”

“…But scalar analysis enables us to address frames in more layered ways. Furthermore, scales enable us to invoke non-visible and non-immediate features that Gofffman left out because of his prioritization of the local (see Lempert (2012) for a critique).…”

“…Contextualization cues comport well with our definition of scales as a category of practice, attendant to the ways they are invoked and constructed by participants. Lempert (2012) works hard to demonstrate the rescaling practices of his subjects by drawing from linguistic cues, physical practices, material resources, and institutional changes. We need more attention to demonstrating how processes of scaling and rescaling take place rather than employing them as a category of analysis without problematization.…”