I am not going to pursue this issue here.
My original concern was with how intellectuals defined the concept of role as the link between social structure and the actions of individuals, and how such definitions became problematic. That is a topic in my paper (which is not primarily about role theory as such, actually). But the English-speaking Left evidently has had very little to say about that issue (in Germany and Austria, for example, there was extensive discussion about "Rollentheorie", and indeed Habermas also took an interest in it). The English-speaking scholars use these terms such as "social structure" and "role" in a vague sort of way, but evidently rarely probe into their meaning much further. However, scholars such as Parsons and Levi-Strauss had a fairly precise idea about what they mean. Michael Perelman has emphasized the need to avoid invective, abuse and flares on PEN-L, and thus I intend to answer my detractors with silence. PEN-L is a useful resource where you might learn something you didn't know already, but at the point where you are spending lots of time answering leftist sneers, lies and jeers, it's more a drain of energy rather than a resource. J.
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