Hanzi Freinacht on the Validity of Stage Theories

Discussion

Hanzi Freinacht:

"The problem is that stage development is “real” (in the sense that these theories describe and explicate the data in manners that none of their denunciators can match, not even close). Sure, there are holes to poke with difficult-to-explain exceptions. There are critical perspectives to reincorporate, from postcolonialism, to feminism, to situationist psychology, to indigenous perspectives, to Deleuzian rhizome-perspectives, to animal rights, to skill theories, to the sociology of knowledge of whose purpose the theories serve… The list goes on. This is an egalitarian ethos I share.

But the bottom line is that none of this actually disproves the simple fact that people (and other organisms) do develop in discernible stages. The stage-theory resistors make up, by a wide margin, the dominant position in the field; it’s dangerous for your career to believe in stages, it’s safe not to. But they are as wrong, and as dangerous, as the development stage fetishists. Just as you can’t say something is right because it happens to be the case, so you can never deduce an “is” from an “ought”. Humans “ought” not to develop in stages, because it’s colonial (or take your critical pick), thus stage theory “is” not true. Now that’s a serious fallacy.

So how do we know stage theory is roughly true? Here are the questions that nobody, strangely enough, seems to have brought up on Nora Bateson’s thread – perhaps because it’s a too risky minority position?

• How do you explain the great explanatory and predictive power of stage theories?
• How come the different researchers from different fields come up with roughly the same stages… with roughly the same characteristics… with roughly the same distribution of people at each stage?
• Do you have better ways of explaining all that data? On this, there is silence. (And, where there is empirical and theoretical silence, moral condemnation tends to become louder.)
• How come the stages, when studied empirically, line up with equal spaces, and nothing in between them? (Will attach paper in the comments.)
• How come all other things seem to be sequentially ordered, where every relational property always has prerequisites for its emergence?
• Last but not least, if it is “better” not to believe in stages than to do so (despite evidence), are not the resistors creating a stage hierarchy of their own, where they feel that they have considered the issue farther and deeper? How can they defend even their own position without an implicit stage hierarchy?

Now, that’s for why the resistors are *analytically* wrong. If you can come up with theories that better suit the data (I’m experimenting with such work myself, gravitating towards a model that is paradoxically both stage and non-stage based, but longer story), feel free to present them! Just as you’re free to present a better theory of why things fall than gravity.

Silence. Silence. Silence.

As for why the resistors are *ethically* wrong, ‘ere goes. Sure, you can deny the truth-value of stage theories, but does that *really* make you the rebel (in vast and safe majority) good guy? Try these on:

• Stage theory helps non-judgment: if someone has a crude opinion (Trump supporter, ethnocentrism, mainstream consumerist capitalism, etc.), it’s due to a lack of the privilege that supports growth, not to an inherent flaw of the person. Remove the developmental perspectives, and you’re back where Hillary Clinton started: “The basket of the deplorables!”
• Stage theory support equality: by seeing that some people have had more opportunities to develop, one can develop programs to support those who are psycho-socially underprivileged. If you’re, as many of the resistors would have it, shamed and ostracized for your research into measuring this, the weak, not the strong, suffer for it.
• Stage theory binds cultures together: without stage perspectives, people mistake cultural spheres for having immutable qualities that cannot be reconciled (the Arab world, the West, etc.). With a developmental perspective, you can see that stages cut across cultures and offer venues of mutually beneficial exchange.
• No direction: Okay, so no more measuring of deep, inner progress. Fine, but then we’re left with lowest common denominators such as GDP growth, which is killing the planet. Stage theory shows a deeper direction: more inwards, more nuanced, more multiperspectival, more integrated, more differentiated, in greater resonance. You can argue for those things without stage theories, but you just swept away the path towards it. Society loses a sense of direction at the very moment we need it the most.
• More multiperspectival: stage theories allow for different truths claims to hold at different stages without resorting to analytical violence; you can show how things fit together and how one thing leads to another.
• Less Western-centric: the profound relativism that we’re left with in the vacuum of no-stage-theory is a distinctly Western phenomenon, one that presses itself upon and violently uproots cultures around the world, because their developmental traits are not seen, heard, and respected.
• Better for kids and animals: with a developmental perspectives, one can better see the unique needs of kids and animals and serve them in ways that are conducive to their dignity, health, and, where appropriate, growth. For instance, Eriksonian stages are key to supporting children in fulfilling their specific needs.

As I’m keen to pointing out, stage theories aren’t everything. There are other as vital aspects, including context, culture, and relationality. But that doesn’t make them into nothing.

So take arms against developmental fetishists and elitism, by all means! But do not fall for the fad of throwing the babies out with the bathwater. Not only are you making an analytical mistake; you’re letting down the babies."

(https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1199720657209567&id=100015149321507)

Source

Hanzi Freinacht is reacting to a tweet by Nora Bateson: https://www.facebook.com/norabateson/posts/10159038460440860