Two examples:
- saw a tweet on the idea that black cowboys (and other minorities) were written out of the cowboy narrative. The inference was that writers were prejudiced. That would be what I'd label a "particular cause". But I believe there's a general tendency when people make generalizations about a group of people: outliers are ignored,
- people leaving their farms. A general cause is well-known--ever since the Industrial Revolution started, or before, people have left the country for the city. A particular cause is people screwing black farmers out of their land.
In some cases, the "general" versus "particular" may be simply a case of different levels of analysis. No doubt many people left the farm for many different reasons. Many, including my parents, died while their children had a mix of motives to not try to farm. Dairy farmers these days are leaving the farm because they're losing too much money. But then the question becomes why? It could be a black family who was denied the bank loan to expand from 100 cows to 1,000 cows. Or it could be a management decision back in the day not to expand, or a lack of decisions to expand.
No comments:
Post a Comment