Omnipresence of remaindering and the remaindered in global society

Reintegration of a Remaindered World (Part #3)

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The economic practice of remaindering commodities, as noted above, offers a frame through which to consider the extent of analogous social practices and processes in a society characterized by progressive commodification.

A form of "remaindering" is evident in various forms of institutionalized "discounting" or marginalization, especially those of a progressive nature. It could be said to be most evident in slavery, as institutionalized in the past, and as currently practiced in the case of sale into bonded labour or the sex trade. The degree of loss of humanity of those so remaindered invites the provocative interpretation that they are then effectively human "remains" -- having been essentially "culled" or "killed off" by social processes.

It could be argued that the aspirations and expectations of many are effectively remaindered by social processes and the systematic breaking of political promises (Credibility Crunch engendered by Hope-mongering, 2008). As loss of hope, these processes suggest subtler forms of remaindering (Implication of Personal Despair in Planetary Despair, 2010).

In exploring the more general psychosocial implications of the economic template of "remainder" and "remaindering", it is interesting to note that although use of "remainder" is indeed more widely evident, the practice -- expressed through a verb -- is not (in marked contrast with the economic case). Thus although the existence of "social remainders" is recognized, the process of "social remaindering" -- which might be said to engender them -- is not (at least in that form). This is also the case with respect to widespread use of "remainder" in relation to subtler cognitive issues and the dynamic through which any such remainder is engendered.

The themes are reviewed separately in Annex 1 (Social Remainders from Psychosocial Remaindering: review of current usage and implications, 2011) within the following sections:

• Social remaindering and the socially remaindered
• Culturally "remaindered" and cultural "remaindering"
• Historically "remaindered" and historical "remaindering"
• Politically remaindered and political remaindering
• Strategic remaindering and remaindered strategies
• Moral and ethical remainder
• Philosophy and epistemology of remainder and incompleteness
• Theological remainder: "lost presence of the absent origin"
• Challenge of the "remaindered" and "remaindering" for religions

The often dramatic implications of the current economic crisis for human livelihoods have been usefully given a focus through presentation of the inequalities between the "1%" and the "99%". This focus has however obscured the extent to which the economic reality has been sustained by influential conceptual articulations within the academic and policy communities. Is it possible that a "1%" of those articulations has effectively discounted a "99%" -- a form of "remaindering" in its own right?

Curiously the operation of internet search engines (Google, etc) necessarily ranks results using special algorithms in order to facilitate selection of the highest ranked items -- increasing the probability that low-ranked items will be neglected and effectively "remaindered". This is indicative of the larger challenge resulting from information overload and the consequent tendency to treat an ever increasing proportion of social concerns as "irrelevant". This was a specific concern with respect to problem importance in the World Problems Project, given the sense in which the deliberate or unconscious neglect of issues important to some constituencies are similarly "remaindered".

Potentially more profound in its implications is the sense in which most people effectively live cognitively in a world of conceptual "cast-offs" -- frameworks and models engendered and abandoned by the cultural creatives of the past (including their own past selves). Given that little attempt is made to interrelate these cast-offs in any meaningful way, people are then obliged to live on a conceptual "scrap heap" through which they sift in quest for anything useful to the fabrication of their existential shelter and nourishment.

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