Archer M (2014) Late Modernity Trajectories towards Morphogenic Society

Prévia do material em texto

Social Morphogenesis
Late 
Modernity
Margaret S. Archer Editor
Trajectories towards 
Morphogenic Society
Late Modernity
For further volumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/11959
Social Morphogenesis
Series Editor:
MARGARET S. ARCHER
EPFL Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Aims and scope:
To focus upon ‘social morphogenesis’ as a general process of change is very different
from examining its particular results over the last quarter of a century. This series ventures
what the generative mechanisms are that produce such rapid change and discusses how this
differs from late modernity. Contributors examine if an intensification of morphogenesis
(positive feedback that results in a change in social form) and a corresponding reduction
in morphostasis (negative feedback that restores or reproduces the form of the social order)
best captures the process involved.
The series consists of 5 volumes derived from the Centre for Social Ontology’s annual
workshops “From Modernity to Morphogenesis” at the University of Lausanne, headed by
Margaret Archer.
http://www.springer.com/series/11959
Margaret S. Archer
Editor
Late Modernity
Trajectories towards Morphogenic Society
123
Editor
Margaret S. Archer
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland
This volume II follows the book “Social Morphogenesis”, edited by Margaret S. Archer,
which was the first book in a series published in 2013.
http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/book/978-94-007-6127-8
ISSN 2198-1604 ISSN 2198-1612 (electronic)
ISBN 978-3-319-03265-8 ISBN 978-3-319-03266-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014930984
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection
with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered
and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of
this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the
Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer.
Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations
are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of
publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for
any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein.
Printed on acid-free paper
Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/book/978-94-007-6127-8
www.springer.com
Independent Social Research
Foundation
Preface
Every year this group of collaborators meets for a week’s Workshop in Lausanne.
Each time we examine a particular aspect of the overall project: ‘From Modernity to
Morphogenic Society?’, which is generously supported by the Independent Social
Research Foundation as is the Centre d’Ontologie Sociale in its activities. We
are extremely grateful to the ISRF because long-term funding allows us to work
systematically on this theme.
The question mark is the most important part of this project. Instead of rushing to
proclaim the advent of a new social formation as so many have done, we can proceed
more slowly and examine the various theoretical and substantive issues involved in
societal transformation. Thus, we are exploring rather than endorsing the transition
from Modernity to Morphogenic society. Whether or not we conclude in favour of
this proposition will depend upon the outcome of our exchanges over the following
3 years.
Because this is our preferred method of working, we are also very grateful to
our publisher, Springer, whose editors support our rationale and have devoted this
closed series of books to our collective development of these ideas.
Each annual volume is intended to be self-contained as far as the reader is
concerned, although we hope that readers will become interested in how our internal
discussions and debates unfold.
Thus, the first volume Social Morphogenesis (2013) was broadly concerned
with differentiating the ‘morphogenetic approach’ as a framework for analysing the
processes of social change from ‘Morphogenic Society’ as a possible outcome – a
new global social formation.
In this volume, we take stock of Late Modernity and its potential trajectories.
Subsequent collective volumes will examine further central issues: the ‘generative
mechanisms’ at work today, not all which steer the social order in the same
direction; the problem of normative fragmentation and the increasing deficit in
social integration at a time of rapid and radical morphogenesis; and the most
important question of all, in what ways could a potential Morphogenic Society
constitute a ‘good society’.
v
vi Preface
Thanks are due, above all, to the ‘Group of Ten’ collaborators, coming from
varied theoretical backgrounds, who have engaged so productively together.
Maxilly-sur-Léman, France Margaret S. Archer
July 2013
Contents
1 Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which
Would Morphogenic Society Depend? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Margaret S. Archer
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power,
Technology, Resistance, Globalisation and the Good Society . . . . . . . . . . 21
Tony Lawson
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’
Society: Cultures, Structures, and Forms of Reflexivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Andrea Maccarini
4 Contemporary Mechanisms of Social Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Douglas V. Porpora
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity . . . . . . . . . . 93
Margaret S. Archer
6 On the Validity of Describing ‘Morphogenic Society’
as a System and Justifiability of Thinking About
It as a Social Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Wolfgang Hofkirchner
7 Morphogenic Society and the Structure of Social Relations . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Pierpaolo Donati
8 ‘Morphogenesis Unbound’ from the Dynamics
of Multilevel Networks: A Neo-structural Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Emmanuel Lazega
vii
viii Contents
9 Morphogenesis and Normativity: Problems the Former
Creates for the Latter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Ismaël Al-Amoudi
10 Morphogenesis and Cooperation in the International
Political System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Colin Wight
Contributors
Ismaël Al-Amoudi Cardiff Business School, University of Cardiff, Cardiff, United
Kingdom
Margaret S. Archer Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne,
Switzerland
Pierpaolo Donati Department of Sociology and Business Law, Università(pp. 160–162). Leiden:
Brill.
Heelas, P., Lash, S., & Morris, P. (Eds.). (1996). Detraditionalization. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley.
Latour, B. (2007). Reassembling the social. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Luhmann, N. (1976). The future cannot begin: Temporal structures in modern society. Social
Research, 43(1), 130–152.
Mattausch, J. (1989). A commitment to campaign: A sociological study of the campaign for nuclear
disarmament. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
20 M.S. Archer
Rosa, H. (2003). Social acceleration: Ethical and political consequences of a desynchronised
high-speed society. Constellations, 10, 1.
Rosa, H., & Scheuerman, W. E. (Eds.). (2009). High speed society: Social acceleration, power and
modernity. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Sayer, A. (2011). Why things matter to people. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Urry, J. (2003). Global complexity. Cambridge: Polity.
Walby, S. (2009). Globalization and inequalities: Complexity and contested modernities. London:
Sage.
Zamagni, S. (2011). The proximate and remotes causes of a crisis foretold: A view from Catholic
social thought. In J. T. Raga & M. A. Glendon (Eds.), Crisis in the global economy: Re-planning
the journey (pp. 322–323). Vatican City: Vatican Press.
Chapter 2
A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change?
Power, Technology, Resistance, Globalisation
and the Good Society
Tony Lawson
Society, it is often said and seemingly felt, is accelerating. According to James
Gleick (1999) in his “Faster: The Acceleration of just about everything” this
acceleration applies to love, life, speech, politics, work, TV, leisure and, well,
everything.
Gleick is not alone in this sort of apprehension. Summarising the literature on the
topic, in an article entitled “Social Acceleration: Ethical and Political Consequences
of a Desynchronised High-Speed Society”, Hartmut Rosa (2003) finds that “In
popular as well as scientific discourse about the current evolution of Western
societies, acceleration figures as the single most striking and important feature”
(p. 77). And along with William Scheuerman, Rosa later insists that “the concept
of social acceleration is an indispensable tool for contemporary social and political
analysis” (Rosa and Scheuerman 2009, p. 3).
But what exactly is social acceleration? Applied to the realm of social phenom-
ena the idea of acceleration must at best be a metaphor. But, still, what might
it mean? The change in question presumably refers in the main not to spatial
positioning but to something like the ways given things are done, or to the sorts
of things that are done. If acceleration is a relevant metaphor then directionality
is presumably involved, most likely a fairly consistent reduction in the time-gaps
between any such changes, where the changes are all of a kind.
Is this the sort of thing that is meant by accelerating social change? Perhaps. But
I suspect that even if so, and even if social life is in this sense accelerating, there
is more to ongoing developments. After all, acceleration, so understood, would not
necessarily be inconsistent with smooth and even predictable change; nor does it
follow from the notion itself that current time-gaps between significant changes
need, at this point in time, be especially short, unmanageable, overwhelming,
T. Lawson (�)
Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
e-mail: Tony.Lawson@econ.cam.ac.uk
M.S. Archer (ed.), Late Modernity: Trajectories towards Morphogenic
Society, Social Morphogenesis, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5__2,
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
21
mailto:Tony.Lawson@econ.cam.ac.uk
22 T. Lawson
threatening or otherwise especially destabilising. Yet, as we shall see, feeling
threatened, or feeling a need to take appropriate action, or, perhaps more commonly,
feeling overwhelmed by the nature of change, does seem to be a feature of the
current situation as observers experience it. Moreover, the phenomenon that is felt is
seemingly not confined to particular workplaces or other very specific communities
but is said to be fairly widespread.
That such acceleration is underway at all is a speculation that, as noted, is based
in large part on the intuitions of many commentators. I have to admit that I do
not myself actually share such intuitions; but then again nor do I experience the
opposite; I am just not sharing the same experiences. In other words, if social
acceleration is insufficient for on-going experiences I am wondering too if it
is actually necessary. The social world is certainly open, subject to continuous
transformation, conflicted and marked by significant uncertainty. But is it really
accelerating in the noted sense? Because many commentators clearly do feel that
the rate of societal change itself is somehow speeding up, I focus here on factors
that could give rise to such feelings. My question, indeed, is what kinds of changes
must be underway such that feelings of the speeding up of the rate of social change
are a commonplace result. My suspicion is that such feelings may be engendered by
a type of change that is underway as much any supposedly general acceleration of
social life.
This paper is written as a contribution to a project concerned with study-
ing social change. In particular, it is a project concerned with processes of
social morphogenesis, with changing social forms, turning especially on positive
feedback. Although notions of societal acceleration are not a necessary feature
of social morphogenesis so understood, the idea that society is accelerating, if
meaningful, is clearly an interesting, related and fundamental one to study in this
context.
However, the writing of it is somewhat unusual in that I embark upon it a little
uncertain even as to the real nature of the explanandum. Is the objective to explain
(or to address questions bearing upon) a speeding up of the rate of social change
or is it concerned only with widespread intuitions that there is such a development
underway? Of course the former acceleration, if in fact the case, would explain the
latter intuitions; but it may not be necessary. This essay is consequently somewhat
exploratory and speculative, though I do seek to examine various issues that I take
to be pertinent to the questions before us.
2.1 Instability and Loss of Control
A survey of the literature quickly reveals (or convinces this observer at least) that
there is no consensus on what the expression social acceleration means; indeed the
literature on the topic seems to offer almost no helpful definition at all. Additionally,
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 23
whatever social acceleration may be, attempts to achieve empirical measurements
of it, or of related notions, have not met with noted success.1
If there is a feature that regularly recurs in analyses of the topic, it is the detection
of a widespread felt loss of control and stability in life. It is the recording of a widely
experienced unexpected and unprecedented inability to acquire or maintain stability,
and in particular an inability to form time-resistant life plans or even medium term
projects (see e.g., Richard Sennett 1998).
Armin Nassehi (1993) writes that the present “loses its capacity for planning and
shaping”, where the “present of action [ : : : ]cannot shape this future because of the
dynamics, risks, and vast amount of simultaneity within the present, which it cannot
control at all”.2 Nassehi adds that whereas “Early modernity promised the capacity
to shape and control world and time and to initiate and historically legitimate future
progress [ : : : ] in late modernity, time itself has come to destroy the potential for
any form of social or substantial control, influence, or steering”.
Rosa talks of a “new situationalism” which “resembles premodern forms of
existence in which people had to cope with unforeseeable contingencies on a day-
to-day basis without being able to plan for the future”.This current situationalism
is designated ‘new’ in that the contingencies involved are no longer largely exoge-
nous to society but, to the contrary, an “endogenous product of social structures
themselves”. The situation is thus viewed as inconsistent with “the ideal of the
autonomous and reflective leading of a life [which] requires adopting long-term
commitments which bestow a sense of direction, priority, and ‘narratability’ to
life”.
If stability, facilitating a degree of control and planning in life, is seemingly
being undermined, thereby giving rise to feelings of social acceleration, it seems
appropriate and is likely essential, that before I go about questioning the cause of its
loss, I first enquire into its nature and how it arises in the first place where it does.
For, we will see, stability has always been a contingent achievement. So I turn first
of all to elaborate a little upon the nature of relevant aspects of social reality.
2.2 The Social Domain
I take the category social reality (or social world or domain or realm) to denote
the set or totality of all phenomena, if any, whose existence necessarily depends on
human interaction.
1Or as Rosa (2003) puts it: “However, empirically measuring (rates of) social change remains
an unresolved challenge” (p. 7). He adds: “There is little agreement in sociology as to what the
relevant indicators of change are and when alterations or variations actually constitute a genuine
or ‘basic’ social change”.
2Quoted in Rosa (2003, p. 22).
24 T. Lawson
It is clear that most putative examples of phenomena designated as social in
this manner – from language, to money and all other human artefacts qua social
objects to embodied personalities – are not only brought into being through human
interaction, but in part or whole remain dependent on human interaction for any
continuing existence.
Of course human artefacts usually have a (mind-independent) physicality, includ-
ing physical capacities, that once formed may be thought to continue in existence
largely independently of human interaction. But the specific (always social) iden-
tities of these objects always depend on use, and can be transformed even if or
when certain physical capacities remain the same throughout. Thus many of the
intrinsic physical capacities of a human construction may remain in place even
though the latter may serve first as a church or a barn and later as a family home
or a market place; its social identity is always dependent on human interaction and
interpretation.3
This is the case of all social phenomena; their continuing existence as specific
social items depends, whether in part or whole, upon their being reproduced through
human interaction. It follows that they, or aspects of them, are always inescapably
contingent as well as processual in nature. Because human interaction is always
potentially transformative in nature there is usually some change in continuity,
even for social phenomena that turn out to be relatively enduring; all such social
reproduction is liable simultaneously to involve some transformation. Each local
market, university, home, embodied personality, industrial dispute, football team or
game, grocer shop, factory, industrial region, etc., is, to the extent it is identified
as some entity that is reproduced over time, never identical in every detail from
one day/moment/event to the next. Change is not (or not just) something that
happens to such phenomena but rather is an essential feature of each instance in
this category.
So, if and where social stability occurs, it must, as already noted, usually be
seen as something of an achievement and as inherently contingent. But what precise
form does stability take, especially the form that concerns us here, one that affects
human plans and co-ordination? Here I briefly sketch certain relevant features of
social reality that I have defended at length elsewhere, which ultimately bear on the
question posed. The fundamental categories are those of social system, collective
practice, right and obligation.
3Thus although I agree with Margaret Archer (2014) that the object that we now call the Rosetta
Stone retained its dispositional capacity to be intelligible, including to serve as a translation
manual, throughout the period since it was first made, its identity was not that of a translation
manual during the period that it was used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien
(near the town of Rashid [Rosetta] in the Nile Delta), and nor even was it interpreted/constituted
as such when the stele of which it was originally a part was erected in 196 BC following the
coronation of King Ptolemy V (and inscribed with the decree that established the divine cult of the
new ruler).
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 25
2.2.1 Social Systems
By a system I simply mean a set of elements that have an integrity considered
together as a whole or totality, where the latter is composed out of the (clearly more
basic) elements, but, in contrast to an aggregate or a mere collection, is formed
via an organisation of the basic elements. The organising structure of any system
emerges simultaneously with the emergent totality that comprises the system as a
whole, and both renders the (organised) basic elements components of the system
and also accounts for any emergent causal powers of the emergent system or totality.
A further feature is that this organising structure connects a subset of components
to features of the environment; a system always exists in some context.
Consider the construction of a bridge. Here various items or materials may be
brought together to form components of a totality, including, perhaps, pieces of
wood, brick, stone, cast and/or wrought iron, mild, high-tensile and/or alloy steel,
aluminium, steel-reinforced and/or pre-stressed concrete, glass-reinforced plastic,
and so forth. These are organised or assembled,4 in a specific environment, and in
a manner such that the resulting totality allows the crossing of a space, perhaps
containing a river (whilst the resulting totality itself can survive potential stress
caused by such factors as bending, compression, impact, oscillation, pressure, ten-
sion, torsion, vibration; contraction, corrosion, erosion, expansion, fatigue, friction,
rain, river flow, sea-water, scouring, temperature changes, tidal flow, turbulence,
waves, wind erosion, wind gusts, wind pressure etc.).
The totality that is the bridge clearly emerges simultaneously with the organising
relational structure of the materials enlisted as components, and, significantly, the
latter organising structure makes a (causal) difference to the emergent causal powers
of the totality. Were the resulting bridge to be taken apart again and the various
materials assembled blindly, it is unlikely that any resulting outcome would possess
the causal properties of a bridge. The arrangement matters; it is a type of formal
causation (see Lawson 2012, 2013).
Over time, of course, the physical composition of the bridge has to be maintained,
and this is an activity that is typically quite separate from its use. As already
noted, however, aspects of all social phenomena, qua social phenomena, are not
only produced by human interaction, but continually reproduced by it. Most of
these, and certainly the more interesting, social systems are, qua social systems, not
only produced and reproduced by human interaction, but continually reproduced
precisely through the everyday human interactions which they facilitate. In these
4Of course, assembly is more than a matter of simply connecting the parts in an additive fashion.
Welding produces high temperatures, which produce expansion and distortion; so that management
of the cooling process is vital (poor quality control of welding may allow changes detrimental
to the properties of the metal). And the weight distribution of a structure can change during
assembly, requiring precautions such as adjustable jacking. Forcingtwo parts into alignment
produces unforeseen stresses that can lead to cracking.
26 T. Lawson
systems human individuals are amongst the components. And it is through the
sum total of their activities, qua components, that the system is (where it is)
reproduced.
Think in particular of local communities, firms, markets, seminars, financial
centres, workplaces, motorway networks, and so on. Each is an emergent form
of organisation or social system, possessing novel emergent causal powers at the
level of the emergent totality, albeit causal powers that can only ever be realised
through the actions of its organised members. Each system possesses an organising
structure that both facilitates certain individual actions of system components,
at least where these are human individuals, and is subsequently reproduced (or
transformed) through those very actions.5
All social systems can clearly be nested and/or overlapping. And, of course emer-
gent social systems typically include as components not merely human individuals
but also material constructs or artefacts that for the most part at least pre-existed
the systems in which they are positioned (even if the latter material elements were
designed and constructed – typically as systems – with precisely the intention of
their functioning as components of the larger totality).
At an abstract level, then, a relevant notion of social stability seems to mean
something like the relative durability of (always contingently reproduced, typically
nested or overlapping) social systems. Primarily this appears to occur in at least
two forms, the first of which relates to an environmentally closed, or system-in-
equilibrium, and the second of which relates to an environmentally open, or far-
from-equilibrium, system. Briefly put, an equilibrium system obtains when there
are no disturbances from the outside environment; a far-from-equilibrium system
in contrast requires perpetual inputs from the environment in order to endure and
be stable. Naturalistic examples of the former include the atom, and of the latter a
home fire or a garden bonfire, which needs constant inputs of oxygen and fuel, the
latter possibly varying in form.
Notice, that there is no reason in principle why a far-from-equilibrium system
cannot evolve in a relative stable fashion over time, due to a (possibly gradual)
transformation in its manner of organisation or/and to variation (possibly system-
atic) in the necessary stability-facilitating external inputs. If stability is to be found
in the social world it must clearly be of the latter far-from-equilibrium form.
2.2.2 Collective Practices
Fundamental to actually existing social-system stability, I elsewhere argue (see
especially Lawson 2012), is the prevalence of conventions or what I prefer to term
collective practices. A collective practice is simply a specific way of going on that is
5And of course even the bridge qua bridge (rather than some unidentified material object) is
continually reproduced through human interaction.
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 27
recognised within some identifiable community as the accepted way of proceeding
with regards to achieving a particular outcome. The idea of acceptance or collective
acceptance here implies no necessary approval. It is, rather, effectively a status,
carrying, and resting upon, community-wide recognition, and serving to constitute
a way of proceeding as the done way. Driving on a particular (fixed) side of the
road might be a simple example of a way of proceeding that is recognised within
a community. Notice that there is always a range of behaviours consistent with any
given collective practice.
Collective practices, however they originate, can be, and very often are (in being
so ‘accepted’), functional in the sense of serving to co-ordinate social interaction,
by indicating to all would-be (and/or permitted-to-be) participants within a specific
community, how, amongst various conceivable ways of proceeding to a certain end,
things are in fact done by members of a community. In this way they facilitate
relative stability and, thereby, a degree of predictability. For this reason the idea
of acceptance bound up with collective practices not only expresses the done thing
(or things), but usually also carries connotations of normativity. Indeed, collective
practices are often referred to just as norms.
Normativity arises because, or when, the noted indicative aspect of any collective
practice is also interpreted as stipulative, as indicating how an individual ought
to proceed. Collective practices, in order to facilitate coordination and stability,
etc., need to persist, and this usually requires that relevant individuals conform to
(various interacting sets of) them.
The normative aspect of collective practices thus gives rise to the notion of
obligation, a category that, along with the associated category of right, will be seen
to be central to the conception of reality being developed. Obligations are accepted
ways in which relevant community members are expected to proceed; rights are
accepted ways of going on in which relevant individuals may proceed. If we are
a part of, or wish to ‘enter’, or ‘join’, a community, then, when appropriate, we
are under the obligation to adhere to its norms or collective practices. At the same
time, when we are part of a community, we are permitted to enter into at least some
of the community’s collective practices and where this is so these must be seen as
rights. Parenthetically, expressions of the content of acceptances under their purely
indicative aspect, understood as stipulations, can be called social rules (see Lawson
1997a, chapter 12, 2003, chapter 2).
So social interaction is structurally organised, and is so through a generalised
reliance upon collective practices involving rights and obligations. The latter
ultimately are a reproduced condition of stability in social affairs.
Notice that the role of rights and obligations in structuring social life presupposes
the human capacities of being able to be trustworthy and to be trusting of others, of
being willing and able both to make and to keep promises and other commitments,
and to believe that others can and will also do so. It should be clear that these
human capacities are necessary conditions for the interactions involved to occur, for
obligations in particular to be efficacious. As such these capacities of trusting and
being trustworthy, etc., qualify for being considered as the glue of social reality, as
the adhesive that enables the organisational structure to achieve a degree of binding.
28 T. Lawson
2.2.3 Organisation in Process
So community life is organised; amongst other things it is organised or arranged by
way of emergent collective practices and their inherent rights and obligations that
structure human interaction. Taken together, human beings, their trusting capacities
and their interactions, along with the structural features of collective practices that
organise the interactions, amount to a social totality or set of totalities. And the latter
have causal powers. A motorway system for example, structured by rules of the
highway-code, has powers of co-ordinating motoring practices that are irreducible
to those of any of its various motoring components; and a language system has
powers to facilitate communication that are irreducible to those of any individual
communicator.
Collective practices, though providing structure, do however remain inescapably
processual in nature; it is important to avoid reification here. The network of
existing collective practices is a condition of individual practices, and the sum total
of individual practices, each a token of a collective practice, serves to reproduce
and/or transform the total network of collective practices. Collective practices are
both conditions and consequences of the individual practices they facilitate. Their
mode of being is precisely that of being reproduced and/ortransformed through the
individual practices or activities that they facilitate; they are inherently processual.
The overall conception then is one of organisation-in-process.
Thus although community stability is achieved through a reliance upon given
sets of collective practices along with associated rights and obligations, all stability
remains relative and contingent. Collective practices are indicative of how it is
possible to go on in ways that are currently accepted within a community, but it
is only through individuals participating in available collective practices that the
latter are reproduced (when they are). Equally, through such participation, whether
by design or by accident, practices or aspects of them are frequently (and sometimes
continuously) transformed.
2.2.4 Division of Practice, Process and Events
Within any community there is also a division of collective practice. It is accepted
that certain practices can be followed by some but not by others. In order to follow
some practices it is necessary to belong to a specific sub-group within a community.
In addition, practices that are accessible only to some community members are
always oriented to, and indeed are constituted in relation to (that is, are internally-
related to) different practices accessible only to others. Thus the collective practices
followed by students are constituted in relation to those followed by teachers;
those followed by employers, landlords/ladies, seminar presenters, sellers, etc.,
are constituted in relation to those followed, respectively, by employees, tenants,
seminar participants, buyers; and so forth. All collective practices then cohere and
interrelate with others, and are constitutively interdependent.
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 29
In all of this, the framework of acceptances remains fundamental. In any
community there are accepted ways of proceeding for each group, oriented to the
collective practices of other groups. Similarly, there are usually accepted ways
of allocating individuals to any particular group, processes of allocation that are
themselves each a form of collective practice. Thus the appointment of a particular
individual as a university professor, say in the UK, will proceed according to
university and nationally accepted ways of making such appointments, and so on.
2.2.5 Positions
A category bound up with these different groupings is that of social position.6
A position, or rather position occupancy, is an accepted status that confers a
6I am aware that where I use the category social position that of social role is employed by some
and notably by Margaret Archer (see especially Archer 1995, 2000). Although there is seemingly
little disagreement over the nature of the features of social reality that the competing terms are
used to designate, I stick with the term social position, not just (and not least) because this is the
terminology I have adopted throughout my contributions, but also because, on balance, I continue
to think it the more appropriate.
In the text I shall argue that associated with (the status that I am calling) social position are sets
of rights and obligations.
Archer’s reason for preferring the category role is that she associates the term position with
various groupings such as the downtrodden or poor or homeless or nouveaux riches where the
individuals included are not the bearers of any associated rights and obligations. These, Archer
argues, are heterogeneous categories that do not correspond to social identities, as outlined above.
I agree that the downtrodden, the poor, the homeless as well as nouveaux riches are not the sorts
of categories that indicate social status of a sort that carries associated rights and responsibilities
(though heterogeneity itself is not a problem per se; there are many types of UK citizen but still
UK citizenship brings [positional] rights and obligations). But I would not refer to these sorts of
categories (poor, downtrodden, homeless, etc) as social positions either. For sure, in describing
an individual as, say, poor one might interpret this statement as meaning that the income of the
individual is associated with a ‘position’ (or more likely a range of positions), on some considered-
to-be relevant income distribution, and so on. But here the word position has a different meaning,
and referring to being poor as a position is really an imprecise short hand.
Role too can be given different, including loose, meanings as in ‘accepting to take on the role
of X (or even a poor person) in some play’; or ‘acknowledging that everyone at the football club
played some role in the team’s defeat and relegation’; or X likes to act the role of a fool.
The reason I prefer the term position on balance is that it has the connotation of existing beyond
simply individual choice, being ultimately a community property. In all cases, even in the loose
usages just discussed, we speak easily of individuals taking on roles, whereas individuals are more
often said to be allocated to, placed in, or finding themselves in, positions. Although, individuals
may indeed chose to apply for, or work to achieve, certain positions, most cannot be taken on just
like that, whereas roles, it seems to me, do very often carry this individualistic connotation, and for
that reason does seem to me to express far more subjective and temporary designations. Ultimately
of course the meaning will be clear from, and perhaps determined only in, context. Anyway readers
should be aware that the category social position as utilised here is much the same as social role as
employed by Archer and others.
30 T. Lawson
social identity; to be allocated to a specific position is to acquire the social
identity of being so positioned. For example, an individual allocated to the position
university professor, acquires the social/positional identity of (is accepted within the
community as possessing the status of) university professor.
Rights and obligations are now clearly seen to be associated with positions and
thereby group membership within a wider community. If some positional practices
may be participated in by a specific set of appropriately positioned individuals,
being the content of positioned rights, a subset of those same practices should
be undertaken by these positioned individuals, being the subject of positioned
obligations.
Thus in the contemporary UK, an individual positioned as a university professor
may have the right to borrow books from several libraries, to work in an office at
all hours, to attend seminars in various departments. These rights are not available
to all members of the wider UK community. But the individual is typically not only
allowed, but additionally required, to give lectures and set and mark examinations,
etc; these are included amongst the employment obligations of the position.
Wherever positioned rights are to be found there are always accompanying and
matching obligations. Focussing on a given position, any rights from which the
occupier benefits are always accompanied by obligations. Indeed, a position is
essentially a locus of a set of specific rights and obligations, where occupants of an
accepted position are agents or bearers of these rights and obligations and typically
possess a status or identity associated with them.
But any given position is always constituted in relation to other positions. And
the rights of individuals in one group over individuals in another are matched by
obligations of the latter group members with respect to the former. If university
teachers have the rights to set exams, students have the obligation to sit them, just
as students have the right to expect the exams to be marked, and fairly, and teachers
have an obligation to undertake this. Even the rights of university professors to use
offices, and libraries etc, are matched to obligations of other positioned individuals
or groups to ensure there are processes in place serving to fund,facilitate and
maintain university offices, libraries, lecture halls, and so forth.
2.2.6 Power and Social Relations
If positional rights and obligations ultimately relate to ways in which certain
positioned individuals can influence the behaviours of others, it follows that rights
and obligations are in effect positional powers, respectively positive and negative
powers. For the agents of rights (positive powers) have the causal capacity inten-
tionally to get others, the subjects of those rights (those with relevant obligations,
or negative powers) to do something, whether or not the latter want to do that
something. Obligations give reasons for action, and power exists so long as the
‘subjects’ in question are willing (and able) to fulfil their obligations.
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 31
Now if individuals are organised through being positioned as components of a
system, and if the various positions are interrelated by way of connecting rights
and obligations, then it is the latter powers that most qualify as the content of the
category social relation. In other words a social relation just is (or is first and
foremost) an accepted set of (matching) rights and obligations holding between,
and connecting, two or more positions or occupants of positions. Social interaction
can be understood as the contingent actualisations of such social relations. And
because rights and obligations are forms of power, there is a sense in which all
social relations are power relations.
So a fundamental feature of modern social reality is a multitude of interrelating
multi- component collective practices, processes and events bound up with an
emergent structure of positional powers, comprising rights and obligations or social
relations, always in process.7 If relative stability is to be a feature of social reality
allowing a degree of control such that meaningful, reasonably time resistant, life
plans can be formed, this seems to suppose durability at the level of positions and
the associated positional rights, obligations and collective practices.
In all this, if to repeat, the glue that renders these social relations as binding as
they are is comprised of the human capacities to be trustworthy and to trust, to enter
into and to keep to commitments, and to accept that others are able and willing, to
do so as well.
2.3 Seeking the Source of Feelings of Significant
or Accelerating Social Change
On the basis of this conception, how might social instability emerge in a manner or
extent as to constitute, or at least impart a widespread impression of a significant
speeding up of the rate of social change?
Given the framework outlined above the answer is presumably through the play
of mechanisms that somehow work to undermine, in an unprecedented manner,
accepted positional collective practices and associated rights and obligations of a
sort that have grounded a degree of medium to long term planning of projects, and
so non-insignificant control in our lives.
What sort of mechanisms could bring about such a situation? It seems to
me that two in combination are likely largely responsible, or anyway carry this
potential. The first is the impulse imparted by perpetual technological change made
7Parenthetically, inanimate objects also, in effect, acquire their social identities (a feature discussed
in the introductory section on ‘The social domain’ above) through being positioned within a
social system. Various objects when suitably positioned take on the identity of cash, passports,
identity cards, deeds of ownership, wedding rings, and so forth. And once more this all depends on
community acceptance. Of course, when inanimate objects are so socially positioned, the capacities
or powers most closely associated with their positioning take the form not of rights and obligations
but of system functions.
32 T. Lawson
possible by continuous advances in science. The second is the relentless pursuit
of power (always over others) under capitalism, in particular by those who seek
novel opportunities in technological developments for advancing their power. Let
me briefly elaborate these suggested mechanisms for change, starting with the latter,
namely the (technologically grounded) pursuit of power.
2.3.1 Power and Its Pursuit
Unlike components of non-social systems, human individuals can reflect on their
own positioning or positional options (as components of systems) and seek to
change (or defend) them. It is thus a none-too surprising feature of the social realm
that much human endeavour is oriented to the pursuit and/or control/influence or
creation of system-positional powers over others.
Clearly if community sanctioned power (over others) mostly takes the form of
positional rights (and obligations), it follows that much of the intentional pursuit
of power in modern societies takes the form of human activities whereby those
involved seek either (1) to acquire occupancy of existing relatively powerful
positions, (2) to transform (or defend) the rights and obligations associated with
existing positions already occupied, or (3) to create and then occupy (or have
allocated to associates, etc.), novel positions with emergent associated rights.
All three forms of activity can conceivably be linked to questions of stability. But
before considering how, let me first elaborate a little on the nature of the latter path
of seeking to create novel sets of positions. The former paths both of individuals
seeking entry to established powerful positions, and also of positioned individuals
and groups concerned to improve/defend existing positional rights and obligations,
are familiar enough topics of social theory, especially within the literature on
industrial relations, human resource management, labour market and gender studies.
But the manner in which particular individuals and groups are able, often with
relative ease, to increase their power over others merely by creating novel positions
which they then frequently themselves occupy, perhaps deserves more attention.
It is also a path or strategy that is especially relevant to the mechanisms of social
destabilisation that I come eventually to discuss below.
This third path for increasing power is usually achieved via the process of
creating additional social systems, perhaps via the device of declaring novel ‘legal
entities’ or some such (for example, a firm or a new academic society based around
a journal), employing established procedures and/or collective practices of the
relevant community. The creation of these novel systems of formal entities tends
to disguise the fact that basically what is pursued and created is a new structure of
power relations. Indeed the creation of a novel system or entity is often, and perhaps
usually, derivative of, and subservient to (and tends to work either to legitimise or to
mask), the power aspirations of the individuals involved; the point of forming and
maintaining devices like companies and other formal bodies is precisely to establish
a novel structure of power relations between people.
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 33
Of course this has been the pattern throughout human history. Whether or not
it was the intention, empowerment through the formation of systems arguably
characterises the emergence of tribes, castes, nations, institutionalised religions,
political parties, trade unions, the institution of marriage, research groups, and pretty
much every other form of self-recognising social community.
Sometimes the objective of transforming the structure of power (over others) is
or has been explicitly stated. The formation of trade unions, for example, has always
been a self-conscious, and explicit attempt to alter the distribution of industrial
power between employer and employee, in order to reduce the disadvantages of
the latter. The formation of trade unions or combinations of waged employees, has
allowed the creation of positions of worker-representatives, with associated powers
for those so positioned to initiate programs of collective resistance or ‘industrial
disobedience’, with the result that workers are usually better able to defend
themselves against immediate threats to standards of pay and work conditions.
Possibly the most powerful emergent social system at any point in time takes the
form of a national or regional government, or an equivalent. The latter, through its
functionaries, usually has the capacity to control the land of the relevant community,
to monopolise ‘legalised’ violence, to print money, collect taxes, make laws, and so
forth. Of course no matter how powerful a specific community sub-system such as a
governmental body might be, it is dependent ultimately on members of the relevant
community adhering to, that is meeting the obligations that structure accepted
collective practices, which maintain the existing distribution of power, conditions
that, as current and recent events in, for example, the Middle East, North Africa and
Western Asia reveal, cannot always be taken for granted.
To return, however, to the more general point, modern societies are characterised
by social relations that are constituted in terms of positional rights and obligations,
representing forms of positional powers (always over others). The community based
opportunities available to us all depend upon the positional powers we can access.
Thus, not surprisingly, a significant feature of social life in modern communities
is the prevalence of activities oriented to getting access to, and/or transforming (or
just maintaining/defending), and/or creating novel forms of, positional powers (over
others). However we look at it, a feature of social reality is the continuous formation,
transformation, expansion and dissolution of social-systemic entities, with an atten-
dant continuous expansion, contraction, shaping and reshaping, reproduction and
transformation of the distribution of societal power, affecting us all at some level.
If perceptions of instability are rife these likely reflect in part the loss of expected
access to particular positions, say as salaried worker, or a mortgage holder, as well as
in part the emergence of novel opportunities in the form of unprecedented positions.
But it seems that the most likely source or ground of perceptions of such instability
is any loss of previously occupied positions and/or rights and obligations already
possessed that govern associated collective practices. For it is the reproduction of
given positions and associated collective practices, rights and obligations that most
immediately ground the forming of individual projects and life plans, and condition
the development of stable personal identities.
34 T. Lawson
But if this potentially destabilising loss is considered undesirable, how could it
occur? After all, the nature of rights and obligations are matters usually subject to
negotiation. So how could unwanted change occur, including the undermining of
rights of negotiation?
The traditional answer to any such question is usually held to be bound up
with the issue of developments in technology; for the latter clearly frequently do
afford opportunities for restructuring. However it is essential to avoid assuming a
technological determinism here, whereby opportunities afforded by technological
developments are automatically taken on board. Rather, the nature of technological
change and how it impacts (and on whom or on what) is something that always
warrants elaboration. Let me consider this issue.
2.4 The Question of Changes in Technology
The term technology can mean both (a) the study of arts, skills and crafts
involved in the making, modification, and usage, of methods, tools, machines,
techniques, systems or organisations to be positioned in a manner as to extend
human capabilities (usually by solving a problem, improving upon a pre-existing
solution to a problem, achieving a goal or performing a specific function), as well
as (b) the collection of appropriately positioned tools, machinery, modifications,
arrangements and procedures, resulting from such a study, and serving to extend
human capabilities. Here I mainly use the term according to the latter meaning.
Technology, so interpreted, and specifically the appearance of new forms can
affect social change in as much as it allows existing products and practices to be
transformed or ushers in new products and/or practices, requiring a transformation
in the nature of social systems or the emergence of new ones. The fact that
developments in technology so understood can carry the potential to bring about
a rapid change in society is hardly new and has been observed at least since
the Medieval Ages. Under capitalist competition, producers, qua capitalists, have
incentives to seek constantly to revolutionise aspects of their products or instruments
(techniques, processes, and organisation) of production either to steal an advantage
over others or merely to avoid falling behind. Marx and Engels (1848 [1975])
express the situation as follows:
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of produc-
tion, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary,
the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing
of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty
and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen
relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away,
all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into
air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his
real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 35
Many have read this passage as advancing a form of economic determinism.
It need not be so read, of course, if interpreted as describing only a definite
tendency, as I suspect it should be. There are always countervailing tendencies to
any given one, as Marx repeatedly emphasised, with countervailing tendencies to
that described in the above passage unpinning the very Marxian idea of uneven
development.
2.4.1 Technological Innovation
Consider how countervailing tendencies can arise. A fundamental feature of all
technological innovation and diffusion is a two stage process of first assembly
(or intrinsic organisation8) and second positioning (or enrolment within a wider
system). Let me consider each stage in turn.
Any technological product itself takes the form of an emergent system, whereby
existing products (mostly themselves also [technological] systems) with given
powers are assembled or organized. That is, they are essentially combined as
components of the novel system, and in a manner such that the novel emergent
system possesses emergent powers not possessed by any of its components. It is
easy to see that this is the form of cars, engines, mobiles, computers and ultimately
of all human contrivances (see Clive Lawson 2012).
The second stage in the process of technological innovation is the positioning
or enrolment of new technological products within community systems (again see
Clive Lawson 2012).
Where the latter community systems are already in place, enrolment will usually
involve a change in the practices of some individuals. Indeed technical change
is often designed precisely with the intention of reducing the reliance of various
production processes on fallible or non-fully controllable human beings.
Thus, in the workplace at least, the positioning or enrolment of new technology
tends usually to impinge upon existing rights and obligations of some, and perhaps
of very many, individuals or groups, where these rights and obligations havetypically resulted from various sets of negotiations. Proposed changes will thus
themselves very often be subject to negotiation. In these negotiations various revised
rights and obligations may be agreed; others will be contested in due course. Either
way, wherever positional powers are involved, some positioned individuals stand to
lose out (or at least perceive themselves to be liable to lose out) from impending
change, whatever its form. Consequently there is always the potential for change to
be resisted where the ability to do so exists or is developed. Thus, any actual change
will depend not just upon the causal capacities of new technological products, or
even upon the ingenuity with which they are handled, but also, and especially, with
how they are received in specific communities.
8A stage that Clive Lawson (2012) describes as one of ‘isolation’.
36 T. Lawson
A fundamental category of social interaction bound up with social change
and instability is thus that of resistance, not least in the context of processes of
positioning or enrolment of technology. Yet as far as I can see, outside industrial
relations research (and very often within it) the importance of resistance is overly
neglected.
Elsewhere I have contributed to the literature that seeks to document in detail
how changes in the workplace have been resisted at different times and places
with varying degrees of success (Lawson 1980, 1981, 1997a, chapter 18, 1997b).
Generally speaking, it is found that there are, as noted, almost always reasons for
some groups to resist the dissemination of any developments in technology and,
where resistance is feasible, there has been a tendency everywhere for it to be
manifested in some form. Of course which group has the power and/or incentive
to resist depends always on context. Even where it occurs in the workplace it may
not be the workforce itself that resists; it may even be undertaken by the owners
and/or management of a firm, as I have also explored elsewhere (Lawson 1981,
1997b).
2.5 So What Has Changed?
This then is the backdrop to the emergence of generalised perceptions or feelings of
social acceleration. Yet something must be significantly different for these feelings
of helplessness and so forth to have emerged. Specifically, if traditionally resistance
or its potential has been key to understanding the speed of social change, in
particular to preventing it happening faster than is deemed desirable, what explains
the observation that those affected by the current situation of social change widely
experience it as characterised by, or grounding, a generalised loss of autonomy and
control?
A fundamental ingredient of the answer, it seems to me, is that the most recent
spate of technological advance has taken the form of imparting to instruments of
production an unprecedented mobility, meaning ease of transportability, across con-
texts. This applies especially to information technology. In short, a very significant
feature of ongoing developments lies in the nature of new technology: it is, to repeat,
highly mobile across contexts, and these include continents.
Let me be clear what I am not saying. Specifically, if perhaps controversially,
I am not claiming that the capacities of technological objects that we regard as in
some way most essential (to the way any such objects come to be identified) are
somehow invariable in relation to context whilst the capacities of human beings that
are drawn upon in their positioned activities are not (even though some seem to
take a relative invariability of causal capacities in different contexts to be almost
definitional of technology).
As I say this claim may be controversial. Let me attempt to unpack and elaborate
it by way of considering the following reasonable sounding though contrary
position:
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 37
The capacities of artefacts, such as say hammers, chairs, televisions, and mobiles can
function in many different contexts, whereas those of, say, judges, princesses, witchdoctors
and cricketers are far more restricted; in short the capacities of artefacts are far more
impervious to, or invariable across, context than those of human individuals.
A sentence such as the italicised one, I believe, is, if perhaps consistent with
widespread apprehensions, not only wrong but masks several confusions. However,
a consideration of it usefully allows me to identify various factors that I take to be
significant to the issues under discussion.
First, it is clear that the causal powers of a (object positioned as) a hammer to
crack a nut, or of (an object positioned as) a chair to facilitate someone sitting down,
can be exercised in any context, whereas the causal powers of, say, a (individual
positioned as a) judge to imprison, or of a (individual positioned as a) princess to
act royally, are highly restricted to a specific community. It may seem then that we
have a real contrast between the positioning of people and of artefacts.
But a comparison of this sort is misleading, not least because a hammer and a
chair are not typical of artefacts. Certainly, a hammer and a chair are somewhat
different from, say, a television and a mobile in that the causal powers possessed
by the latter objects cannot be activated by a single user without the participation
of others. In the latter examples there has to be a network of providers of signals
and energy resources and so forth. Where such participation is involved there may
be resistance to the introduction of technological objects, even when the supporting
material (technological) conditions for the artefacts’ capacities are in place. The
Amish for example limit (or have limited) the use of such technological products as
televisions and mobiles in their communities.
If then we compare the social causal powers of, say, judges with those of more
typical artefacts such as televisions we find that in each case enlistment in commu-
nity systems is involved, that people and technological artefacts alike need to be
positioned, and in neither case need this be straightforward. Just as I earlier argued
that the allocation of individuals to positions is a matter of power play, so, I am
suggesting, is the enrolment of technological products, particularly within the work-
place. And the kinds of mechanisms involved in each case have a lot in common.
An appropriate human comparator to the causal power of a hammer to crack a
nut would be, say, the causal power of a human individual to use the hammer in this
manner, or to run and jump. The latter too are not especially tied to context, nor are
they typically subject to community negotiation.
Second, it may be thought that, whether or not their powers can be activated, a
hammer is a hammer, a chair is a chair and a television is a television whatever the
context whereas an individual is a judge in only in a specific context. So, once more,
it may seem that we have here a real contrast between the positioning of people and
of artefacts.
But again the claim is erroneous, particularly in the misleading manner in which
the former part of the suggested contrast is stated. For although the causal capacities
of an object to crack a nut, or to facilitate sitting down, may exist independently of
context, the identity of an object as hammer or as chair does depend on community
positioning. Whilst, say, a (object positioned as a) small sacred bronze statute may
38 T. Lawson
have the causal powers to crack a nut, or a larger object positioned as a work
of art may afford the possibility of being comfortably sat upon, there may well
be objections within any community in which the objects reside to their being
positioned/identified as hammers or chairs. However strange it may seem, the same
is true of an object initially designed to eventually serve as, say, a television. If
a boat transporting the latter object sinks and the object itself is washed up on an
isolated island (perhaps with no electricity)and used/positioned as, say, a household
ornament, then the latter is precisely what it is. Identity is always community
dependent, and turns on community positioning.9 In parallel, of course, whilst I
may be able to use a hammer or run and jump whatever the context, that does not
mean that my community is ready to identify me as a builder or an athlete.
Finally, and being careful to ensure that the two errors just noted are avoided, it
may yet be held that there is at least a real difference between the positioning of, on
the one hand, objects as televisions and mobiles, and, on the other hand, individuals
as judges and princesses, in that the former objects have the capacities that we
associate with televisions and mobiles whatever the context (i.e., however they are
actually identified and irrespective of whether the other enabling [technological]
conditions are in place), whereas the latter individuals do not have the capacities to
function as judges and princesses etc. except in specific communities.
But even this statement is not correct, and in particular the latter part of the
contrast is erroneous. For, in both cases where the relevant capacities are possessed,
they are so independent of context, backup conditions and identity. Here it is
essential to maintain a distinction between human capacities and positional powers.
Capacities can be impervious to context even where positional powers are not.
Human individuals gain powers in the forms of rights and obligations though being
allocated to community positions, or having the latter allocated to them.10 But the
capacities exercised in these positions, when drawing on rights etc, are typically
(though of course not always11) already held. Thus specific individuals are usually
found to posses the capacities to do the physical acts involved in, say, passing
sentences, being a figurehead, giving lectures, arresting people, or playing in a
team sport, before being appropriately positioned as a judge, princess, university
lecturer, police constable, Manchester United footballer, etc. But, without being
appropriately positioned, these individuals do not have the right to undertake the
9At first sight this claim may seem to be contradicted by the idea that museums often seek to
‘identify’ an object correctly. But this is not so. The museum is itself a part of some community. In
the context of this community, the object is positioned and so identified as a museum piece. Those
described as seeking to identify it are really seeking to determine how it was (possibly differently)
positioned in one (or perhaps in several different) formerly existing community(ies).
10Of course, some may so allocate themselves, through, say, invasion and replacing a current
incumbent, or creating a novel post and in effect allocating it to themselves (though often via a
ceremony where some other appointed person does the anointing etc).
11Some capacities may be realised only on the job, i.e., after being appropriately positioned. But
when these capacities were undeveloped they were so for all contexts, and once developed they
thereafter exist (to the extent they do endure) whatever the context.
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 39
relevant physical acts, or at least to perform them in a context where they would
carry specific meanings, and in particular they cannot call upon any required
(internally-related) obligatory co-actions of others.
It is the right to use the relevant capacities, or to use them in a specific context,
that comes with positioning. But where these capacities are possessed by particular
individuals, they are what they are whatever the context. However, if it is the right
to utilise these capacities that varies with context, as I have tried to indicate with
the examples elaborated above, this feature applies equally to using the capacities
of technological products. The positioning of any technological product, as with the
positioning of human individuals, involves a process of negotiation.
So with these clarifications (as I hope them to be) to hand, let me repeat my
claim regarding the feature of the new technological products that I believe does
mark them out as significant in the account I am providing.
It is this: the newly developed technological products are far more mobile than
before, mobile enough indeed to be easily moved around the globe, and now far
more so than their human counterparts. Although both technological products and
human beings have the causal capacities to move anywhere and have capacities that
can be utilised in any situation where the technologically supporting and positional
conditions are right, human beings, for many reasons – desires, contrasting local
work conditions, family obligations, immigration controls, nationalism, language
barriers, cultural grounding, fear, commitments in general – either chose not to be, or
are prevented from being, as mobile in fact as technological products have recently
become. There is little doubt that the developments in technology in question do
allow increased human mobility, a feature noticeable especially in the everyday life
world (a topic to which I turn below). But, for the reasons noted, people are not as
mobile as are recently developed technological products.
Fundamental to this mobility of technology, it seems to me, is the advent of the
microprocessor that commenced around 1980. Although the development of com-
puter technology had been underway since at least the 1940s, especially in the US
and Japan, it was the emergence of the microprocessor that allowed the accelerated
evolution and widespread take up of computers. The emerging technology bore huge
implications for numerous processes, not least those of calculation, (the activity
that we now call) word processing, graphic design, monitoring, controlling and
regulating, communication, monetary transmission, and storing and analysing data,
all leading, by the turn of the century, to the digital revolution in communications.
The unprecedented mobility of technology afforded by these specific develop-
ments is significant not least because it allows in turn a spur to the mobility of
capital per se. The third strategy for redistributing power noted above is to set up
novel (branches of) entities or systems so designed to empower those in control of
the novel systems. With mobile technology, capital or firms can now more easily
than ever before simply relocate to regions that have little or no history of worker
resistance. In this manner potential resistance in the form of renegotiations with
previous parties to agreements can simply be by-passed. Thus capital continually
relocates to parts of the world where resistance is absent or minimal (and regularly
threatens to do so further).
40 T. Lawson
These are developments that are often captured via notions of globalisation.
I stress, though, that if it makes sense to systematise developments under such
a heading, there is no suggestion here that these developments are coherent in
the sense of being co-ordinated, integrated and so forth. Just as developments in
new technological products are often the accidental results of experimental trial
and error – especially in terms of combining existing components and ideas (and
frequently recombining the results of those combinations), or the unexpected by-
products of some unrelated pursuits – so very often are their practical applications.
Whilst the former discoveries and developments are carried out in large part in uni-
versities and other research centres concerned with extending basic understanding,
applications occur mostly in quite unrelated centres of profit seeking activities. The
appearances of order or trends within the process, where they emerge, are usually a
posterior and contingent, outcomes.
However, not all applications of information technology occur in centres of
profit seeking activities. Reinforcing the effects of technological diffusion via profit
seeking activities,is an additional factor, identified by Margaret Archer (Chap. 5
in this volume), namely that scientists as producers of information technology
themselves have an incentive for its being diffused, and do act in various ways
to encourage that diffusion. If it is not so diffused it does not survive; like all the
more interesting forms of social phenomena it is reproduced through use. Of course,
some scientists are themselves motivated by profit making; however it is notable that
the group also includes those who favour free diffusion, including those seeking to
have it deployed for developing the cyber-commons, general licensing, peer2peer
reciprocity and the like.
It is also the case, of course, that whatever the mechanisms or goals underpinning
the tendencies for technology to be diffused, countervailing tendencies typically
emerge, especially where technological mobility is bound up with capital mobility.
In particular, wherever capital seeks to (re)locate there will usually be some
negotiations dependent on contexts, with local vested interests bearing on the
outcome.
Even so, no longer must capital typically negotiate with, or primarily with, a
workforce or its representatives concerned to protect rights and conditions that had
been hard won and shaped by many years of industrial struggle.
In short, capital can now, in a manner that was far more difficult before, locate
(or use suppliers located) in countries and regions with little history of industrial
resistance, and specifically without any significant achievement of hard wrought
workplace rights of practice to be defended. Countries like China, Brazil and India
spring easily to mind as places in which such developments are currently significant.
I repeat that even in such locations, local resistance or other obstacles to employer
authority, nevertheless usually emerge. In China, for example, where any opposition
to the establishment of workplace employee rights might, perhaps, be thought
extremely difficult to achieve, it is important to recognise that the labour process
consists not simply of the labouring conditions of indigenous firms but also those
of factories that are part of, or work for, major international companies such as
Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Motorola, etcetera. Although it is clear that work
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_5
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 41
conditions – levels of pay, work organisation and in-house living – maintained by
such companies, or by the Chinese suppliers to these overseas multinationals, are of
a standard (regularly resulting in workplace suicides) that is no longer typically
tolerated (and could not easily be negotiated) in countries with a significantly
longer experience of industrialization, as in Western Europe and North America,
the companies under the control of non-Chinese multinationals in particular, are
especially sensitive to any criticism that occasionally emanates from the West.
For example, when in early 2012 the New York Times carried stories drawing
attention to appalling work conditions that prevail, and in a matter of days social
activism sites Change.org and SumOfUs.org collected over 200,000 signatures for
petitions calling for improvements in the working conditions at Apple’s Foxconn
factory, Apple immediately responded by inviting the Fair Labor Association
(FLA) to conduct independent, third-party audits of factory conditions at Foxconn,
promising to make radical improvements following the FLA report. So, wherever
capital locates obstacles, constituting or facilitating forms of resistance, these can
appear from somewhere, and very often do. The application of technology usually
encounters obstacles to positioning of sorts.
But, of course, capital still achieves far greater control though locating in
newly industrialising countries like China. While there are reasons to distrust the
‘promises’ extracted from companies like Apple anyway,12 the sorts of improve-
ments to conditions currently proposed fall way short of the standards that have been
hard won over many decades in long-industrialised countries like Britain. Although
there are efforts by the current UK coalition government and other state agencies,
to roll back such rights and protections as have been achieved, these efforts are
occurring in contexts where expectations of reasonable work conditions are strong,
and, where feasible, are being be met with continued resistance.
The point, to repeat, is that in the circumstances, with capital being unprece-
dentedly mobile, it is far easier to relocate in places like China than to face up to
work-based resistance in most countries in the industrial West. Locating overseas is,
of course, precisely what Western based multinational companies have been doing.
12Indeed, a thorough investigation by China Labor Watch in 2012 (China Labour Watch is an
independent not-for-profit organization, founded in 2000, and based in New York, concerned with
investigating the conditions of factories in China that produce for some of the largest companies of
the U.S. and elsewhere) significant doubt was cast on the sincerity of these promises, concluding
that the “FLA’s report presents no new findings; all the problems that the FLA raised have
been raised in previous reports”. In other words, they warn that because “Apple failed to ensure
that many needed reforms would be made before, its new commitment should be treated with
scepticism”. The 2012 China Labour Watch report also found that problems reported were not
exclusive to Foxconn but “exist in virtually all other Apple supplier factories, and in many cases
are actually significantly more dire than at Foxconn”. Needless to say, the sorts of work conditions
uncovered in Apple’s supply chain by China Labor Watch and other observers are not restricted to
suppliers of Apple. For example, in 2011 China Labour Watch carried out three investigations of
the South Korean company Samsung Electronics. The investigation into eight factories revealed a
long and detailed “array of serious legal violations and labour abuses throughout” See http://www.
chinalaborwatch.org/pro/proshow-177.html.
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/pro/proshow-177.html
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/pro/proshow-177.html
42 T. Lawson
As these practices are exposed and criticised, and as workers in China and
elsewhere seek to develop effective means of resistance conditional upon their
central positioning in the productive process, the conditions of work will no doubt
improve. Yet, most of the world has yet to be industrialised. Africa, in particular,
awaits significant industrialisation. As long as capital can keep changing location
easily, and this acquired facility of mobility will presumably be maintained, then
lasting resistance will be difficult, and so certain conditions for social stability
remain undermined.
2.6 Governmental Resistance in the Face of Financial
Mobility and Financial Globalisation
Needless to say, the mobility of new technology affects not merely decisions as to
where to locate labour processes but also, and perhaps especially, the movement
of financial capital. This in turn undermines the abilities of governments either to
regulate financial practices or control the flows of funds. That is, technology-driven
developments in financial systems, those often systematised in terms of economic or
financial globalisation, notably the fiat dollar system, the ending of capital controls,
and the free entry and exit of the major banks or operators in other financial systems,
have undermined the capacity of most states to underwrite and control their own
financial systems.
In particular, the volatility of foreign exchange markets following the breakdown
of the Bretton Woods agreements, along with financial liberalisation, especially the
abandonment of credit controls and the opening up of national financial systems
to US operators, afforded an opportunity for a large and profitable expansion ofWall Street trading. Notably, from the mid 1980s these developments allowed
investment banks (traditionally companies that merely assisted other companies in
raising financial capital, through such means as the issuing of stocks and bonds)
increasingly to switch from trading securities on behalf of clients, to proprietary
trading, that is to actively trading various financial instruments with their own
money as opposed to their customers’ money, so as to make a profit for themselves.
Through a series of ‘financial innovations’, involving the creation of new
products and processes, institutional restructuring and oversight structures, Wall
Street investment banks have been largely able to escape regulatory constraints and
significantly to expand their activities and profits. A shadow banking system has
even emerged in London alongside the regulated sector, one that has eventually
pushed aside the local agencies and come to dominate the square mile.
The result has been unprecedented instability in financial practices throughout
the globe. Often this has been manifested by financial (or asset-price) bubbles. The
latter are situations where borrowing and investing are fuelled by expectations of
rising prices, only to be met by (a set of events causing) a reversal of expectations
and indeed price movements, a period in which the offloading of financial assets
(often very quickly) occurs, resulting in a movement typically known as a ‘crash’.
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 43
In recent times at least, it is conceivable, and even likely, that such bubbles
have been brought about intentionally. Large and powerful North Atlantic, and in
particular Wall Street, investment banks have repeatedly bought and sold financial
and real assets to create and exploit price shifts. The stimulation of asset-price
bubbles is a form of this ‘speculative arbitrage’. Wall Street investment banks have
been able to enter and influence specific markets, especially those emergent market
economies of Eastern Europe with small bond or stock markets, first making large
speculative profits and then bursting the bubbles by withdrawing.
With the later dot.com bubble, these same banks found that they could gain in
the same financial way from bubble bursting in home territory.
The ongoing crisis must be seen, I think, as but the most recent bursting of a
bubble, although this time with the banks themselves having been caught up in
the fall out. The bubble that resulted in the 2007 credit crunch is significant not
only for its size, but also for its nature. In previous over-lending, crises induced
by both the source and scale of the problems have been easy to identify, allowing
remedial steps of sorts to be taken. This was not to prove to be the case in
the recent crash, for reasons that I cannot detail here, but employing devices
made possible by developments in technology that put the operations in question
beyond any governmental control. I cannot elaborate upon these issues (but see
Lawson 2009); but merely note that financial capital mobility, made possible by
technological developments, and unprecedentedly outside the reach of national
government control or regulation, caused the widespread financial instability that
we continue to experience worldwide.
2.7 Everyday Breakdown in the Ability to Resist
The unprecedented mobility of technology affects every-day practices throughout
the wider community too. It was not so long ago that the technological devices
governing household leisure, including communication activities, were relatively
immobile. They were thus both under the control of household heads and, being
largely fixed in location, also played a fairly predictable and controlled role
in structuring the household system. Their properties were fixed and household
members invested in a knowledgeability of their functions with household routines
adapting accordingly and at a controlled pace.
With highly mobile new technology the latter form of control is impossible.
Indeed, with this emergent situation, users of technology have themselves become
somewhat more mobile in their usage of it. This has consequences even at the level
of community organisation. Individuals are now tied less than before to specific
locations determined by fixity of technologies. Thus communities become less
static, less structured by enduring traditions; instead they morph into, or are replaced
by, mobile and varying forms or versions of association.
In addition the mobility of the technology, and specifically of information
technology, allows the properties of related technologies (e.g., the number of
44 T. Lawson
programmes or applications of [or hosted by] computers and/or mobiles) to expand
rapidly. A result is that few individuals ever explore more than a small subset
of the possibilities afforded by their technological devices. As a consequence,
individuals appear to form a reduced and rather more contingent attachment to
their technological possessions, as new products come to be seen as disposable,
temporary and not worth the investment of time and other resources that would be
required to make them a well understood and stable part of the life world.13
All this certainly encourages an orientation of reflexivity towards the use of
technology.
This is in some contrast to the enduring reliance on long held tacit skills, as has
been the case, say, with traditional forms of reading, writing and communication
media in general, and many fundamental forms of leisure activity, perhaps especially
concerning audio and visual devices.
Such trends, to the extent they are indeed occurring, no doubt contribute to
the feeling that long term planning of lives is no longer feasible, or anyway
more difficult, that all aspects of life are becoming increasingly less predictable,
warranting ever-more reflexivity in all spheres of activity.
No doubt, it is important not to be overly dichotomous here; Archer (2003, 2007),
in particular maintains that we can still plan a life, whilst simultaneously contending
that reflexivity is progressively replacing routine action, shaping how we all make
our way through the world.14 But whatever the balance or appropriate nuances, the
trends identified do amount in total to a situation systematised and/or experienced
by many as a felt sense that the rate of social change is increasing, that society is
somehow accelerating.
13The issues I focus upon in this section at least, do not deal with phenomena that are at all
novel under capitalism. If there is any difference in recent developments it is seemingly that
the technological innovations under consideration have been of a nature as to impart a leap
in possibilities for individual mobility (simultaneously destabilising frameworks for organising
individuals), along with a qualitative decline in the possibilities for attachment to objects within
the life world. Certainly the trends in question have been observed before. Consider for example
the observations of John Dewey, writing the best part of a century ago:
How can a public be organised, we may ask, when literally it does not stay in place? Only
deep issues or those which can be made to appear such can find a common denominator
among all the shifting and unstable relationships. Attachment is a very different function
of life from affection. Affections will continue as long as the heart beats. But attachment
requires something more than organic causes. The very things which stimulate and intensify
affections may undermine attachments. For these are bred in tranquil stability; they are
nourished in constant relationships. Acceleration of mobility disturbs them at their root.
And without abiding attachments associations are too shifting and shaken to permit a public
readily to locate and identify itself (1927, pp. 140–1).
14According to Archer reflexivity works through an ‘internal conversation’, of which she identifies
three distinct forms. She thus argues for an ultimatelydegli
Studi di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Wolfgang Hofkirchner Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science,
Vienna, Austria
Tony Lawson Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Emmanuel Lazega Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po),
Département de Sociologie, Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Paris, France
Andrea Maccarini Department of Sociology, Università degli Studi di Padova,
Padova, Italy
Douglas V. Porpora Department of Culture and Communications, Drexel
University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Colin Wight Department of Government and International Relations, University
of Sydney, Darlington, NSW, Australia
ix
Chapter 1
Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On
Which Would Morphogenic Society Depend?
Margaret S. Archer
In the last two decades, Sociological reactions to ‘the current crisis’ and its
repercussions have prompted two main responses amongst social theorists.1 On
the one hand, some have simply embraced the overt – meaning empirically
observable – contributory factors and consequential outcomes as the concatenation
of contingency. In short, they have advanced a multi-factorial account without any
attempt to specify the principal factors involved, let alone the relations between
them. This was presaged 20 years ago in Beck’s portrayal of de-structuration in
the Risk Society (Beck 1992 [1986]) and in Giddens’ imagery of a ‘runaway’ or
‘juggernaut’ society reeking (dis)order (1990). Their common denominator was
that late modernity was uncontrollable and quintessentially kaleidoscopic in form.
This latter notion of ephemeral patterns projected seriatim onto the social canvas
prompted some who hung on to the notion of theorizing late modernity to reach out
to the natural sciences for a helping hand in the guise of ‘complexity theory’ (e.g.
Urry 2003; Walby 2009). In our last volume this was viewed as grasping at another
misleading metaphor, such as the ‘mechanical’, ‘organic’ and ‘cybernetic’ analogies
had been in the past (Archer 2013).
A more common reaction was to rename this tangle of contingencies ‘Liquid
Modernity’, where labile ‘flows’ comprehensively displaced and replaced the
determinate (not deterministic) influences of social structure and cultural systems
on tendential change or stability (Bauman 2000). As structure and culture were
pulverised under the tidal bore of liquidity, so was agency condemned to serial
1Leaving aside a tendency to retreat into global ethnographies that is marked worldwide in the
tables of contents of Journals.
M.S. Archer (�)
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CM 2 2275, Station 10,
CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
e-mail: margaret.archer@epfl.ch
M.S. Archer (ed.), Late Modernity: Trajectories towards Morphogenic
Society, Social Morphogenesis, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5__1,
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
1
mailto:margaret.archer@epfl.ch
2 M.S. Archer
self-reinvention. This spelt the thin end of the wedge for ‘humanity’ (Sayer 2011);
our liabilities to suffering and capacities for fulfilment ceased to provide a bottom
line2 or a boundary and the human agent could be assimilated to the sentient actant
(Latour 2007).
On the other hand, new uni-factoral theories were advanced, largely on an
empiricist basis, as reviewed in the previous volume (Archer 2013, p. 3). However,
there is a popular newcomer (theoretically compatible with ‘liquidity’), which gains
its appeal epistemologically, rather than ontologically. This is ‘acceleration theory’.
In it, the speed of change in late modernity, the faster pace of life, the impossibility
of sampling all the options on offer within a single lifetime are held to spread a
generalized anxiety, perplexity and disorientation among ordinary people recently
robbed of the stability needed for planning their lives. This malaise, felt by the many,
is held to merit examination even by those in this volume who personally do not
share it (Lawson, Chap. 2; Maccarini, Chap. 3; Archer, Chap. 5). However, as will
be seen, none of our contributors commit the epistemic fallacy of taking how matters
are felt to be for how they are. Instead, Lawson’s response is to move properly from
epistemology to ontology: ‘Because many commentators clearly do feel that the rate
of societal change itself is somehow speeding up, I focus here on factors that could
give rise to such feelings : : : what kinds of changes must be underway such that
feelings of the speeding up of the rate of social change are a commonplace result’
(Lawson, Chap. 2, p. 22).
Both the celebration of contingency and the importance attached to accelera-
tion are hostile to the morphogenetic approach, as a framework for explanation
that generically examines the sequence . This entails examining the
specific ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘whom’ and ‘how’ of particular changes or instances of
morphogenesis/morphostasis. Instead, both ‘liquidity’ and ‘acceleration’ theorists
eschew such specification and the ultimate aim of detecting underlying ‘generative
mechanisms’ in favour of talking metaphorically about ‘flows’ and ‘speed’. Thus,
both ignore the growing predominance of positive feedback over negative feedback
(morphogenesis over morphostasis) as the rock-bottom mechanism that makes
considering the advent of Morphogenic society (in multiple forms) worthy of being
entertained – the agnostic aim of this series of books.
1.1 A Brief Critical Excursion on Liquidity and Acceleration
What does the metaphor of ‘liquid society’ presume? In answering, it is helpful to
note that its antithesis would be full-blown social determinism in a context of ‘eter-
nal morphostasis’. The social order would move to the rhythm of its determinants.
2Such theorists would still protest, for example, against torture, but on much the same organic
grounds as they oppose cruelty to animals.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_5
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
1 Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which Would Morphogenic. . . 3
Since no-one would argue that determinism, morphostasis or perfect adaptation
characterize late modernity, liquidity must be defined against something other.
That other has been a portmanteau term labelled ‘traditionalism’ (see Heelas et al.
1996), into which are bundled approximations to the above: socially forceful, long
enduring and reproductory practices and beliefs. The trouble is the morphogenetic
(or M/M) approach does not fit into the trunk because it is clearly not traditionalistic.
Hence the lid does not shut. Instead, all three parts of the basic M/M sequence, as
summarized above, are challenged by the trope of indeterminate ‘flows’.
First, . What Bauman depicts in Liquid
Modernity is the most volatile version of morphogenesis alone. It derives from a
process that minimises or annuls the constraints imposed by structures at the start
of the morphogenetic cycle’s first phase (T1). Thus, it also annuls one of our core
shared precepts, namely that there is no de-contexturalized action; all actions take
place in a specific context or situation, shaped by prior actions and shaping posterior
ones.
Second, . In Liquid Modernity, instead of any
state of affairs being relationally contested by groups, defined by their vested or
objective interests (material or ideational), which lends both shape and solidarity
to confrontation, this is replaced by individual free style swimming. Such ‘pure
relations’ as Giddens allows perdure are not pre-formed by interests or ideas
and represent a search for an end that is scarcely defined and not contextually
conditioned. Therefore ‘they turn back on themselves and become an end unto
themselves (see Donati, Chap. 7, p. 169). In other words, agents act self-referentiallymore disaggregated or contextualised
approach to assessing the responses of human beings to instability, suggesting that it is a group
that she identifies as ‘communicative reflexives’ who find instability the most difficult to handle.
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 45
2.8 Conclusion
So, to return to the opening discussion, is society accelerating? Is there coherence to
the notion that the rate of social change is speeding up? And if so what lies behind it?
Though it is difficult to be categorical, the kinds of developments elaborated
above, if correct, are probably better described as expressing significant qualita-
tive changes in specific regions of the world, rather than an increasing rate of
(generalised) social change. Fundamental to it all are changes in the possibilities,
and indeed actualities, of capital mobility rendered feasible (along with other
developments, especially in the daily life world) of changes in the mobility of new
technology.
In further support of this assessment is a widely recorded additional experience
whereby time seems to pass too quickly. We, all of us, it is said or felt, lack enough
time to do properly even many of those things that used to be well done. Yet
advances in technology presumably free up time; they should thus allow us all to
do the things we want to do at a more leisurely pace.
The fact that so many actually experience the opposite scenario, points to
the problem lying more in the manner in which developments in technology are
impacting rather than their speed. The cause of it all, I am suggesting, is the
unprecedented undermining of previously enduring sets of positional obligations
and specifically rights that follows in the wake of the increased mobility of capital
according to mechanisms described above.
As such, the apparently widely felt sense of social acceleration may be more
a manifestation of a repeated loss of existing bases for any significant control or
planning experienced by so many, especially in the West. It is a loss that gives way to
a perpetual state of alertness to contingent developments, warranting a rather tiring
and time consuming increased reliance on processes of reflexivity and perpetual
explicit monitoring of conditions in which traditional relational structures are no
longer negotiable in the manner of former times.
Finally, I return to another motivating question (for the broader project with
which I am involved), namely inferring any implications of the above speculations,
should they be correct, regarding likely developments in the form of society.
I suppose the obvious conclusion is that the society of the near future, whether
or not there is a sense in which it is accelerating, is likely to (continue to) be
characterised by flux, reflexivity and uncertainty, and perhaps to a increasing extent.
However, looking to the longer term, the increased mobility of capital, under-
pinned by unprecedented mobility of technology, presumably provides an additional
spur to existing tendencies towards the ‘good society’ – to the kind of world in which
we all can flourish in our differences – or at least to a society in which capitalist
forms of oppression specifically can end.
For as long as large swathes of the globe are not industrialised, and with
capital everywhere becoming increasingly mobile, resistance to its excesses, not
least within the labour process, can be, and increasingly are being, met by
capital relocating to areas that lack any history of industrial resistance. But as
46 T. Lawson
capital becomes increasingly mobile, and its owners act on that mobility, these
developments presumably hasten the day when the globe is fully industrialised and
capital no longer has any new location to which it can run; the conditions are being
laid whereby owners of capital find they lose the ability to play off one group against
another with ease.
From this perspective, and despite the destruction it can often bring in its wake,
globalisation may be seen as a process that ultimately is laying the conditions for
eventual human emancipation.
Of course these speculations identify a tendency at best, and many forces can
be imagined as being capable of preventing the ‘good society’s’ actualisation. The
possibilities of societal evolution are always highly complex, and never predictable.
Even so, if the question posed is what sort of society might result from current
developments, then, at least on a good day, a vision of one in which generalised
human flourishing is at least feasible, does not seem necessarily out of the question.
Acknowledgments For helpful comments on an earlier draft I am grateful to Margaret Archer and
Clive Lawson. For generous financial support for this research I am indebted to the Independent
Social Research Foundation.
References
Archer, M. S. (1995). Realist social theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Archer, M. S. (2000). Being human: The problem of agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Archer, M. S. (2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Archer, M. S. (2007). Making our way through the world: Human reflexivity and social mobility.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Archer, M. S. (2014). The generative mechanism re-configuring late modernity. In M. S. Archer
(Ed.), Late modernity: Trajectories towards morphogenic society. New York: Springer.
Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. Ohio/New York: Swallow Press/Henry Holt &
Company.
Gleick, J. (1999). Faster: The acceleration of just about everything. New York: Pantheon Books.
Lawson, C. (2012, November). Technology and recombination. Paper presented at the Cambridge
realist workshop; forthcoming as Chapter 8 of Clive Lawson, Technology and isolation.
Lawson, T. (1980, March). On the nature of industrial decline in the UK. Cambridge Journal of
Economics, 4, 85–102, written jointly with Andrew Kilpatrick.
Lawson, T. (1981). Paternalism and labour market segmentation theory. In F. Wilkinson (Ed.),
Dynamics of labour market segmentation (pp. 47–66). London: Academic.
Lawson, T. (1997a). Economics and reality. London: Routledge.
Lawson, T. (1997b). Social relations, social reproduction and stylised facts. In P. Arestis (Ed.),
Essays in honour of Paul Davidson (Vol. 3, pp. 17–43). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Lawson, T. (2003). Reorienting economics. London: Routledge.
Lawson, T. (2009, July). The current economic crisis: Its nature and the course of academic
economics. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 33(4), 759–788.
Lawson, T. (2012). Ontology and the study of social reality: Emergence, organisation community,
power, social relations, corporations, artefacts and money. Cambridge Journal of Economics,
36(2), 345–387.
2 A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology. . . 47
Lawson, T. (2013). Emergence, morphogenesis, causal reduction and downward causation. In M.
S. Archer (Ed.), Social morphogenesis. New York: Springer.
Marx, K., & Engles, F. (1848 [1975]). Manifesto of the communist party. Peking: Foreign Language
Press.
Nassehi, A. (1993). Die Zeit der Gesellschaft. Auf dem Weg zu einer soziologischen Theorie der
Zeit. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Rosa, H. (2003). Social acceleration: Ethical and political consequences of a desynchronised high-
speed society. Constellations, 10(1), 3–33.
Rosa, H., & Scheuerman, W. E. (Eds.). (2009). High speed society: Social acceleration, power and
modernity. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new
capitalism. New York: Norton.
Chapter 3
The Emergent Social Qualities
of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures,
Structures, and Forms of Reflexivity
Andrea Maccarini
3.1 On the Way to a ‘Morphogenic Society’? Unbound
Morphogenesis and the Emergence of the New
How novel is, or is becoming, the society we inhabit? There is widespread
perception of itsnovelty in the comments of ordinary people and in the diagnoses
of social scientists, in the worried columns of mainstream pundits as well as in
the pamphlets of critics. The ground of these converging statements may lie in
everyday life experience or in particularly conspicuous parts of empirical evidence
concerning changes in lifestyle, mass culture, and the like. Thus, many people tend
to experience this society as ‘novel’. But we must ask, are human impressions, or
even some isolated, if macroscopic, empirical data to be trusted? How do we know?
How can social science really know? As we shall see, these questions raise important
issues, and have far-reaching implications.
Sociology has long highlighted the acceleration of social morphogenesis, with
the resulting increase in structural and cultural differentiation, and the extension,
intensification, and transformation of reflexivity in global society (Archer 2003,
2012). Late modern society faces the continuous need to question its own founda-
tions, which results in the endemic ‘crisis’ of most institutions, identities, habitus,
and forms of individual and collective action in their ‘modern’ configuration.
Social forms and relationships are continually created and destroyed, and a ‘logic
of opportunity’ is triggered. In this societal context, both structural and cultural
conditioning tend to produce ever new possibilities of action and experience for
persons and groups. While social theory seems to be unanimous in establishing
this theoretical background, the consequences to be drawn are far from clear.
A. Maccarini (�)
Department of Sociology, Università degli Studi di Padova,
Via 8 Febbraio, 2-35122 Padova, Italy
e-mail: andrea.maccarini@unipd.it
M.S. Archer (ed.), Late Modernity: Trajectories towards Morphogenic
Society, Social Morphogenesis, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5__3,
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
49
mailto:andrea.maccarini@unipd.it
50 A. Maccarini
What seems unquestionable to date is that the coming scenario should not be
confused with one of radical liberation, in which globalized individuals will be able
to go anywhere, cross every border, do what they please and pursue their interests
and ideals, building playfully contingent careers and life courses. The new societal
landscape clearly represents a risky, fluctuating environment for people, families,
and groups from which to draw their strategies and life plans.
Be that as it may, it remains highly uncertain (i) whether we already find
ourselves within a new society, and (ii) what its main substantive characteristics
are. In other terms, are we witnessing a change of society or only changes that take
place within society? And what would the (allegedly) new societal system look like?
These fundamental questions – though possibly naïve in their bold formulation –
lie at the core of most theoretical interpretations of current social dynamics. The
answers are, however, divergent if not fuzzy, according to the different ways culture,
structure, social processes, and reflexivity are conceived of. Some scholars take
a shortcut and go for metaphors generalizing from one or more single, striking
feature(s) of social life. Like all metaphors, these are tools designed to fumble for
something one still cannot bring into full light. High-speed, divergent (meaning
the end of co-evolution between interaction and society), multiply legitimated,
enhanced, liquid, are all names our society may be called – not ‘definitions’ of
it. These labels are usually based on some macro-phenomena, which are taken to
characterize the whole societal formation as a pars pro toto.
Instead of reiterating some fashionable catch-word or proceeding by sweeping
generalizations, we will follow a more winding road. Our démarche is inspired
by the morphogenetic approach,1 it involves identifying specific generative mech-
anisms and establishing their internal relations with particular institutional config-
urations and their related situational logics. The hypothesis that we might be on a
path leading to a ‘morphogenic’2 society may be confirmed or not, and different
conclusions may be drawn about where we stand along that track, but the answer is
going to lie at the end of a rather long study. Let me say a word about what part of
the job I am going to do in this chapter.
In a previous contribution (Maccarini 2013a), I maintained that the idea of
a morphogenic society could trigger some ‘boundary work’ necessary for and
conducive to the ongoing refinement of the M/M approach as a conceptual frame,
and I went on to note that such theoretical elaboration involved at least two big
issues, namely (a) the conceptualization of emergence, particularly of what can
be called ‘emergence of the new’ (Maccarini 2013b), which has to do with the
1The classical reference here is obviously Margaret S. Archer (1995). As I usually do, from now
on I will call it M/M, in order to maintain the principled symmetry between morphogenesis and
morphostasis as equally possible outcomes of social processes, whose likeliness depends on the
situational logics prevailing at given moments in time.
2From now on MS. This word use reflects a recent switch in Archer’s own phrasing, reserving the
term ‘morphogenetic’ for specific social changes and using ‘morphogenic’ for the transformation
of a social formation. This change is in order to prevent any possible confusion with morphogenesis
as one possible outcome of social processes. I will adopt this terminology here.
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 51
related problems of abrupt (i.e., catastrophic or dramatic) versus gradual change and
profound versus superficial change; (b) the possible meaning and role of regularity
within the M/M approach. I then discussed the latter, leaving the former to future
developments.
Furthermore, I asked what calling the current global society ‘morphogenic’
really meant. In other words, what are the substantive features of social forms and
dynamics, and the qualities of social life that fall within the range of this concept?
More precisely, which among them are intrinsically connected with, and should be
traced to its central mechanism of variety generating more variety, deriving from the
logic resulting from contingent compatibilities? That essay, however, was dedicated
to a discussion of the notion of social regularity and its implications for the idea of
a morphogenic society. Now it is time to take up the substantive issue. The present
considerations revolve around the following questions: are there any qualitatively
new structural (i.e. not purely contingent) features characterizing our society? In
other words, what are the social qualities of the most striking emergent phenomena?
And do they together amount to a wholly new societal formation? Further, how do
these observable social entities3 emerge from the womb of social morphogenesis?
Are they just a random-like bunch of ‘social innovations’, or are they mutually
related and inherently connected with an ‘engine’ that works to produce a consistent
societal formation? If this is the case, the dynamic ‘core’ of the ‘new’ society we are
after lies in the relationships between such a ‘motor’ and the qualitative features
of the social order it engenders. Thus, our intellectual enterprise should focus on
studying such complex relationships.
This questioning obviously raises general issues that lie well beyond the range
of the present chapter. To say there are ‘qualitatively new’ social phenomena
means there is something that tends to cross a threshold leading from one societal
framework to another. But such a threshold does not stand in a clear light, and
indeed the very meaning of ‘qualitative’ change is itself unclear. It is not easy even
to determine whether social theory has a concept for a change we may describe
as qualitative – i.e. leading from one socio-historical formation to another – that
can apply to our societal formation. Veryfew scholars and theoretical frameworks
answer this question in a way that goes beyond historical narratives. What really
distinguishes quantitative from qualitative change in the social realm? When is the
threshold crossed? How different must the emergent phenomena be, and how many
of them are required – in other terms, how many deviations from the main societal
framework are needed – for the idea of a ‘new society’ to be held as scientifically
legitimate? At the moment, qualitative change seems to come down to a matter
of equally qualitative judgement (that is, not quantifiable and not conceptually
rigorous).
3Following Archer’s word use, and skipping too committal ontological implications, here I take
the term ‘entity’ to mean nothing more than ‘something that exists’, something that takes place in
the world ‘out there’.
52 A. Maccarini
The path we follow to articulate a tentative answer leads to (i) identifying
generative mechanisms, and (ii) tracing emergent phenomena to such mechanisms,
then (iii) establishing their complex mutual connections and drawing a synthetic
picture, which finally leads us to conclude whether a new type of society is being
born or not.
I will take point (i) for granted, leaving it for other chapters in this volume
to disentangle the mechanisms identifiable on the ground of the institutional
configuration of contingent compatibilities and the related situational logic of
opportunity (themselves some sort of ‘macro-mechanisms’?). Instead, I will try to
pinpoint some relevant social emergents, explaining how they relate to the main
generative mechanism assumed. Indeed, I will claim that this relationship is the
most adequate way to account for such emergent entities. Reciprocally, mechanisms
are only consequential if we can detect the emergent phenomena they account for,
thereby determining what difference they make to social life, social change and its
possible direction.4 This covers point (ii) above. Moreover, I will try to highlight
the mutual relationship between at least some of these, which allows observers to
regard them as a part of a unique syndrome leading the current social dynamics to
one consistent societal outcome. This second step will constitute my contribution
to task (iii) above, which I will only tentatively begin to develop through a few
examples. A book-length treatment would be in order here, whereas I can only draw
a sketchy picture.
In Sect. 3.2, I will quickly point to things we have lost, or may be losing, that is
forms of social and individual life that seem to be disappearing. Because exercises in
social memory are not my core business, the main focus will be on the flipside of this
argument, that is the identification of social phenomena we are entitled to call new. I
will place them along a ‘scale of emergence’, interweaving levels of emergence with
the levels of social organization (interaction, organization, and society) to present a
landscape of social emergents.
Two of Archer’s key questions in her chapter (Chap. 5 in this volume) are (i)
whether, and how, the new social forms are mutually related (gel with one another),
and (ii) whether they display some directionality.
Two considerations are in order here. First, the two questions are strictly
related, because the very relatedness of innovative social forms could indicate some
direction – which does not deny that social order is always relationally contested,
and does not involve the simple-minded assumption that society and its change can
be grasped by reference to co-variant phenomena alone. One has to go all the way
down (and back) to their morphogenetic constitution. But at the end of the day, if
4This thesis has no empiricist legacy. What I mean is simply that there is always a huge number of
generative mechanisms at play within a given society, and although they may all be interesting –
depending on one’s research question – not all of them bear the same importance for social change
and societal morphogenesis.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_5
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 53
we cannot identify any kind of convergence among what remain, but only disparate
facts and trends, then it becomes difficult even to imagine a ‘new society’ – a
qualitative change of the social order in which we live. Second, I try to contribute to
answer those questions from a particular angle.
(i) Putting social emergents along a scale of emergence, I am highlighting what
impact they have, depending on where they emerge (i.e. on what level of social
organization);
(ii) I try to understand what they have to do with each other, if anything.
Based on such a picture, in Sects. 3.3 and 3.4 I will develop a few examples
of phenomena, which promise to be particularly relevant in characterizing the
coming ‘morphogenic’ society. I will thus advance some substantive claims as to
where such a society is heading. I pick the examples of human enhancement and
social acceleration, which are amongst the phenomena to be more consistently and
systematically considered within social theory, highlighting their mutual relations
and their connection with the generative mechanism of unbound morphogenesis
and the related situational logic.5
Finally, in Sect. 3.5 I will pull the threads together and articulate some provisional
answers to these questions. One crucial point I will be making concerns the still high
degree of contingency about the possible societal outcomes of the present dynamics.
We are probably well on the way to a societal or even a civilizational change, and it
is perhaps possible to indicate some major lines along which the ‘new’ morphogenic
society will be organized as an always contested, yet relatively ordered form.
Let me close this section with a quick note about the language employed.
Throughout this chapter essay I will often use the formula ‘morphogenic syndrome’,
to indicate a set of emergent phenomena that concur (according to the meaning
of the Greek word sun-dromos) in the emergence of a new societal formation –
maybe of a whole civilization. The point of calling them a syndrome is to keep
a symmetrical distance from both the idea that a morphogenic society is already
here to be described in full (in, so to speak, a ‘static’ way) and from the notion
that these convergent social facts are simply co-varying factors to be added to
one another within a regression model. Instead, it is (i) the way they emerge and
(ii) their mutual relationship, which should be the object of study by the realist-
morphogenetic social scientist. In other words, they need to be studied as a relational
bundle, or a set of social emergents whose relatedness and cumulative effects must
be unfolded through morphogenetic accounts – i.e. thick, theoretically selective
narratives.
5A further, related example concerns the possible development of a ‘post-democratic’ regime,
which I will have to leave for a future essay. Indeed, all social emergents indicated within the
‘scale’ are relevant topics that call for systematic treatment.
54 A. Maccarini
3.2 Things We Lost in the Fire and Things Emerging From
It: Symbols, Forms of Social Life, Types of Reflexivity
The cultural sensibility of contemporary society is often framed by the ‘things we
lost in the fire’.6 Forms of social life and of individuality we left behind, and that we
will rarely ever experience any more, surface to social memory with a haunting
question: are we loosing something of the very essence of the modern project?
That is also a way to ask, are we loosing something close to the inner core of our
collective identity, as well as of the ways we used to lead our individual lives? This
issue has been clear in modernization theory for a relatively long time,7 but is now
the subject of wide public debate, sometimes touching readers with the keen edge
of loss. I would not even attempt to come up with an exhaustive list of the features
of our ‘way of life’ that we believe we have lost, but somebrowsing through the
‘culture and lifestyle’ pages in national newspapers is rather instructive. Among
these losses are noted, for example, long holiday seasons with whole families
spending relaxed time together; freedom from connectedness and wild multitasking;
a certain stability and ‘human thickness’ of social relations (both in the couple
and in working environments); a more restricted array of available choices in all
spheres of life (e.g. education, spare time, etc.), which would thus look tamer, less
confusing, more predictable in outcomes, more accessible, and easier to interpret;
yet (simultaneously) a world perceived as richer in opportunities; higher levels of
individual and collective wealth; higher security in international relations; many
more children animating life in apartment blocks and courtyards; fewer traffic jams
in most major cities. The list could well continue, with its vein of melancholy. Going
through this purely illustrative catalogue, the first emotional reaction might be one
of painful agreement, possibly followed by some, more positive second-thoughts.
Paradox steps in immediately afterwards. How does it feel for the ‘live-with-the-
bomb’ generation to read that we now regretfully remember ‘safer times’, or for the
first affluent generation to hear that its children are relatively poorer,8 and so forth?
6For those interested in the multifarious sources of scholarly imagination, this title comes from a
2007 film directed by Susanne Bier. However, the film does not treat any big civilizational problem.
The fire in the title is the one that destroys a house, in which a family loses most material and
symbolic memories of its past life. In our context, the ‘fire’ is that of unbound morphogenesis, in
its creative-and-destructive dynamism.
7This explains the tendency of modernization theories to become ‘reconstructive’. As a witness
to this awareness, let me quote Pierpaolo Donati and Andrea M. Maccarini (1997). Among other
things, this introductory essay drew attention to the ironic fact that the only theories of modernity
and modernization that escaped the fate of becoming memory driven utopian thinking were those –
like Eisenstadt’s – leaning upon historical sociology (p. 10). The field of modernization theory is
quite extended, and references would be far too numerous to mention. A good synthesis of the
more recent debate within the ‘new’ domain of modernization theory can be found in Wolfgang
Knöbl (2007).
8While some of these references could claim widespread validity (e.g. unease at wild multitask-
ing or degraded working environments), others are somewhat country and culture dependent.
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 55
Important as collective emotions often are, we would first have to make sure that
more robust data exist to confirm such impressions. Because most, if not all, of
the above facts are measurable, we may assume that this can be done. For example,
there are indeed fewer children and more traffic in our (Italian) cities. Young couples
do experience less relational stability and a decreased purchasing power compared
with their parents, and so forth. An extended demonstration of all this lies well
beyond the range of this chapter, and is available in economic as well as sociological
literature.
The following task would be to qualify our conclusions. In other words, we
should then try to understand whether at least some of these things are mutually
related, and where all of this is leading us. In a nutshell, ‘underneath’ these
superficial facts, is there anything on a deeper, more fundamental layer of reality
that we are leaving behind? Are these ‘losses’ an indication that our social world,
our way of life, and our personal selfhood are going to be structurally different? Are
‘lost things’ lost forever? A given (type of) society may have a tendency to erase
some of the prior forms of life and behaviours, but isn’t it also true that ‘nothing is
ever lost’9?
Our study revolves around these sorts of questions, and it is here that the M/M
approach and the related thesis of an emerging ‘morphogenic society’ come into the
picture. The problem is to avoid all forms of unsophisticated evolutionism, while
grasping the profound changes our society is undergoing, to be distinguished from
the more contingent ones.
One way to proceed is to look at the flipside, that is, to identify ‘new’
phenomena emerging from the same ‘fire’ of unbound morphogenesis and its
logic of opportunity. Variety produces more variety, reflexivity becomes imperative
because of contextual incongruity and lack of normative consensus, and new social
facts, properties, processes, and entities emerge. I will now point to some of
these.
The specific way I develop my argument is meant to avoid two pitfalls, namely (a)
the risk of generalizing from one or a few ‘big novelties’ to an alleged ‘new society’,
and (b) of collecting a lot of emergents and regarding them as single, unrelated
elements that may add up to a plain list of new features characterizing the ‘new
society’ of ‘our times’. As a methodological tool, I propose to use a classification
To mention only two examples, anxiety about the risk of a nuclear catastrophe during the cold
war, on one hand, was never great enough to give rise to a significant social movement in Italy,
unlike many other Western countries, whilst the notion of the ‘first affluent generation’, on the
other hand, clearly applies to Italy’s post-war economic boom, but not – or in a quite different
way – to countries with a longer industrial history. This, however, should not detract from the
meaning the examples cited in the text have for my argument.
9This is the title of an interview with Robert Bellah conducted by Nathan Schneider, and published
in the blog ‘The Immanent Frame’. See http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2011/09/14/nothing-is-ever-lost/.
http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2011/09/14/nothing-is-ever-lost/
56 A. Maccarini
‘Families’ of emergents Requisites of emergence Relational thickness
Emergent actions 
(styles of action, norms,
routines, etc.)
- Property emergence 
- Irreducibility 1 (no linear causation)
Reciprocity effect – low:
no dialogical capacity, no
symbolical self-constitution, no
self-organization, no feedback
Emergent distributions 
(demographic 
distributions, social 
stratification, e.g. 
educational inequality)
- Property emergence
- Irreducibility 1 (no linear causation)
- downward causation (as constrain-
ing factor)
Reciprocity effect – lower
middle:
no dialogical capacity, partial
symbolical self-constitution,
rudimentary self-organization,
slow feedback
Emergent macro-
phenomena
(e.g. wars, economic 
cycles, forms of 
collective action, etc.)
- Property emergence 
- Irreducibility 2 (no explanatory
reduction)
- downward causation 1 (as
constraining factor)
Reciprocity effect – upper
middle:
no dialogical capacity, ongoing
symbolical self-constitution,
good self-organization, rapid
feedback
Emergent subjects 
(e.g. families, 
organizations, 
institutions and 
institutional complexes,
societies, civilizations) 
- Property emergence
- Irreducibility 2 (no explanatory
reduction)
- downward causation 2 (as
constraining factor and as
autonomous centre of
action)
Reciprocity effect – high:
dialogical capacity, high and
refined symbolical self-
constitution, complex self-
organization, rapid and strong
feedback
Fig. 3.1 The stratification of social emergence
of social phenomena that places them on different layers within an ontologically
stratified scale of emergence (see Fig. 3.1).10
This scheme would require a long commentary. Here I only briefly illustrate its
rationale and provide some examples concerning the various levels of emergence
featured in the scale.
The guiding idea lies in defining concepts in a non-categorical way, but as
continuous features that may occur with different intensity. As to the concept of
emergence, I propose to define it according to Clayton’s generalformulation. In this
context, it is traced to four basic characteristics11:
1. ontological monism, meaning that reality is ultimately constituted by one kind of
‘stuff’ (a complex ‘thing’, not to be taken to coincide with ‘matter’ as opposed
to ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’);
2. novelty of properties emerging from a less complex and/or less organized layer
of reality;
10This is a taxonomic tool elaborated in Andrea M. Maccarini (2013b, pp. 40–43), to which I refer
for a fuller explanation of its rationale. The version I present here is the same as the original, except
that I have added ‘norms’ in the first top left box, i.e. among ‘emergent actions’.
11For this definition see Philip Clayton (2004, pp. 4–6).
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 57
3. irreducibility of emergent phenomena/properties to the elements they emerged
from, that is to any of their properties and interactions;
4. downward causation of emergents.
My thesis, though, is that the requisites specified in this definition may be
acquired gradually. Furthermore, some requisites for emergence pertaining to
different, more or less ambitious versions of the concept – e.g. different meanings
attributed to irreducibility and to downward causation – are here subsumed within
the same taxonomic framework and treated not as theoretical alternatives, but
as empirical possibilities that may be instantiated (or not) in different cases,
corresponding to different ‘layers’ of social emergents. Social phenomena are thus
gathered in different ‘families’, according to their varying capacity to meet ever
more demanding requisites in order to qualify as emergents. The pivotal point
here is the reciprocity effect, which is used as a standard leading social facts
to ‘move’ upward or downward along the scale of emergence. Such a concept
has a clear Simmelian origin (Wechselwirkung), and refers to the articulation of
social relationships, resulting in properties and qualities that cannot be traced
back or reduced to the individuals enacting them.12 Here I articulate this ‘effect’
in four basic dimensions: dialogical capacity, symbolical self-constitution, self-
organization, and (type of) feedback.
Now, in Fig. 3.2, I cross the above scale of emergence with the three levels of
system organization, namely interaction, organization and society.
I then fill in the boxes with some emergent phenomena – social processes,
properties, institutions, etc. – placing them in the locus where they first tend to
emerge – which does not exclude their subsequent diffusion through other levels
and/or ontological layers.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but only an illustration of some
emergent properties that are probably going to have a big impact in changing
the very shape and structure of our societal formation, perhaps even of human
civilization.13
One further matter that calls for explanation is the presence of some empty boxes,
while others even have two items. To understand this, we should bear in mind that –
contrary to the scale of emergence we see in Fig. 3.1 – the table in Fig. 3.2 is
emphatically not a conceptual framework, but a chart meant for mapping empirical
observations. It is, therefore, possible that on certain levels of social organization
and at some given ontological layers of emergence we are simply unable to spot
relevant novelties, because social processes are not evenly distributed, and cannot
12The idea that the capacity to grasp this effect qualifies any social theory that wants to call itself
‘relational’, and a first formulation of such a theory, can be found in the seminal work by Pierpaolo
Donati (1991).
13For a quick overview about the use of the concept of ‘civilization’ as a category of macrosocio-
logical analysis see again Wolfgang (2007, pp. 62–70).
58 A. Maccarini
Levels of organization 
‘Families’ of emergents 
Interaction Organization Society 
Emergent actions 
(styles of action, norms,
routines, etc.)
Accelerated and 
functionalized life
course 
New organizational
styles 
New legal
frameworks and
routines (Court
decisions, decision
making processes,
etc.)
Emergent distributions 
(demographic distributions,
social stratification, e.g. 
educational inequality)
- ‘Demographic
winter’
- New forms of
poverty and
inequality (e.g. the
NEET youtha)
Emergent macro-phenomena
(e.g. wars, economic cycles, 
forms of collective action, etc.)
Human 
enhancement
techniques 
New temporal
structures:
(i) acceleration and
(ii) functionalization
(de-symbolization)
Emergent subjects 
(e.g. families, organizations, 
institutions and institutional
complexes, societies, 
civilizations) 
- Plural family
forms (e.g. QISMb)
- New types of
reflexivity and
identity (limitless,
‘bulimic’ self)
Polycratic 
constitutionalizing
bodies 
Post-democratic vs.
polycratic regimes 
aBritish term standing for those ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’
bThe acronym stands for ‘quasi-infertile serial monogamy’, and it is meant to describe a lifestyle and cultural syndrome
that is more and more widespread in the West, particularly in some countries and among some given ethnic groups
Fig. 3.2 Emergent phenomena in the transition towards a ‘morphogenic’ society
be lined up, as a well-ordered army. Using this map, one can start to look at analogies
and correspondences, and to hypothesize various paths in the diffusion of structural
and cultural change.
The key questions are about how these emergents – some of them? All of them? –
are mutually related, what influence they have on each other, and above all how they
are connected with the main mechanism(s) fostering unbound morphogenesis. In the
following sections I take two examples from the table and provide some answers to
these questions. I will consider the cases of ‘social acceleration’ and of ‘human
enhancement techniques’, which I regard as highly consequential for the emergence
of a ‘new’ societal formation.
Two clarifications are in order. First, this démarche does not mean that the items
I have picked are the most important among the entities listed above. No claims
are made about their relative significance for the possible emergence of a new
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 59
societal formation. For example, the pluralisation of family forms, or the closely
related demographic winter looming over parts of Western Europe, are obviously
crucial too. Thus, on the one hand, my choice is purely illustrative. On the other
hand, I chose elements whose connection with the morphogenetic ‘motor’ of social
transformation seemed particularly evident. The second clarification concerns the
way in which I develop my argument about the connection between such social
emergents and the generative mechanism(s) of unbound morphogenesis14 and the
logic of opportunity. The full account of how these social phenomena (i) emerge,
(ii) are mutually related, and because of this (iii) will probably produce complex
second- and third-order effects, would require book-length treatment, while I can
only provide a concise overview. So I will not present a full-blown narrative of their
morphogenesis, but will try to outline their mutual relations and their connections
with the generative mechanism of unbound morphogenesis. Given this limitation,
what is the nature of those connections? This is a matter of (i) logical implication,
and (ii) dispositional consistency.
For example, when it comes to acceleration and human enhancement, I will not
be able to spell out a fully satisfactory demonstration that the people and groups
involved share the same intentionality towards or full awareness of the connections
examined. The latter are a product of my observation. However, these two social
emergents (i) are logically entailed by one another, and by the morphogenetic
mechanism. Moreover, (ii) such implications can in principle be discovered by
social actors, and thereby occur in empirical reality. This is not what makes themreal, but actualization on the part of social actors is what will hugely increase
the diffusion of such innovations. Some empirically observable instances of these
implications could already be cited, while future investigations will reveal whether
or not theoretical and dispositional consistency are actually exploited by individual
and collective agency. In this respect, I do not produce fresh empirical data about
ongoing, interweaving morphogenesis, but use a method that is rather close to
what Niklas Luhmann called ‘theoretical variation’. The latter consists of reframing
existing observations and descriptions, and reconsidering their meaning, causes, and
consequences from the original vantage point of a different theoretical approach. If
this is the case, it goes without saying that at this stage the connections highlighted
must remain as ‘hypotheses’. What they do show is the productiveness of the M/M
approach for the interpretation of otherwise enigmatic social facts. Establishing the
relevant causal links with a higher degree of certainty will, however, require more
field work.
14Signifying an extreme state where morphogenesis is no longer restrained, stabilized or counter-
balanced by morphostasis.
60 A. Maccarini
3.3 Examples, I: Changing Temporal Structures:
Acceleration and Functionalization
Arguably, the consideration of society as a form of order to be understood in terms of
its temporal structures lies at the core of the self-representation of modernity.15 Such
a notion has two, partially related but essentially independent sources. The former
consists of the normative ideal of progressive modernism. In this context, modern
society has been a type of society that is defined through reference to the future. That
meant endorsing a self-representation revolving around an ideal state of society that
is situated in the future. The latter is to be found in systems theory, which takes
temporalization as the necessary consequence of growing complexity. An overly
(and increasingly) complex society presents its human constituents with a surplus
of possibilities of action and experience, exceeding anyone’s capacity to ‘live them’
simultaneously, and is necessarily unfolded through time.16
One emergent phenomenon in late modernity is the change of its temporal
structures. This change is in itself a multifarious process, involving different, though
mutually related transformations. These may be described by such notions as
homogeneity vs. fragmentation, multitasking, de-symbolization, functionalization
of time, temporal cycles in production and lifeworld, and many more.17 For the sake
of simplicity, let me consider acceleration as a single feature and see how it relates
to the idea of a ‘morphogenic society’.
There is widespread awareness about the acceleration of social life.18 Society
appears to accelerate in all its processes and aspects. Fast food, fast learning, fast
love, fast job change, everything is fast, and is about to become ever faster. Most
authors present this as a sweeping, silent revolution that is qualitatively changing
15It would be possible to counter that society has always been conceived of as a temporalized order.
What has changed is the kind of temporal imaginary involved – e.g. the notion of a ‘golden age’
could look at the past vs. the future, and social time could be regarded as cyclical vs. linear,
etc.. However, to say temporality ‘lies at the core’ of social (self)representations responds to this
possible objection, in that modern society even lacks a definition except for a self-projection in
(future) time.
16The literature on this theme is too large to be reviewed here. Parsons’s work should obviously be
included. For important considerations on both aspects of the temporalization of society see Niklas
Luhmann (1976, 1997, 1998).
17Once again, there is a vast literature on the subject. See for example Michael D. Young and Tom
Schuller (Eds.), (1988).
18The following discussion refers to the following texts: Hartmut Rosa and William E. Scheuerman
(Eds.), (2009); this text provides a brilliant anthology, some serious scholarship and a very
useful bibliography on the subject; Blumenberg (1986); Ronald G. Havelock (2011); this volume
has a positive take on the driving forces of acceleration, but still looks at things through the
monochromatic lens of ‘progress’. For an example of how the theme has attracted attention
in popular culture, see James Gleick (1999) Faster. A recent and very interesting theoretical
development, mainly concerning law and the issues of constitutionalism, can be found in Riccardo
Prandini (2012). See particularly chapter 5, Decostruzioni e ricostruzioni della cultura normativa
nell’epoca dell’accelerazione sociale, pp. 229–278.
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 61
society. However, they must admit that acceleration has been with us for a long time
now, at least since industrialization set in. Some even regard it as a very general
force driving human evolution as such, going far back in history or even pre-history.
Those hypotheses might seem or even be reasonable but the way they are treated
prevents more specific study and more conclusive arguments. If acceleration has
always been there, is there anything new about it, so why bother? Does it have to do
with social organization, and indeed, is it a fully social phenomenon, or should we
consider it to be rooted in deeper evolutionary processes? What are its causes and
characteristics, and where is it leading us?
My thesis is that these questions can only be answered adequately if the
dynamics of social acceleration are traced to the generative mechanism of social
morphogenesis. I also argue that such a missing link makes for the most serious
weaknesses to be found in this literature.
The first issue is one of definition. Most authors claim that the concept of
acceleration is an indispensable tool for the analysis of contemporary society,
but also readily acknowledge that it is still vague and ill-defined. Rosa and
Scheuerman’s definition sounds instructive at first glance:
The time we’re allowed to concentrate exclusively on one thing is progressively diminish-
ing: we are constantly interrupted by a stream of incoming messages, phone calls, television
and radio announcements ( : : : ). In what way, if any, are these phenomena interrelated? Do
they signify an acceleration of society per se, or are they instead illustrations of separate
processes of acceleration within society? Do they add up to a qualitative shift in the fabric
of contemporary society? (2009 pp. 1–29).
This ‘definition’ appears rather specific, since apparently it refers to the overlap-
ping time segments prevailing in much of our everyday life. The point being made
is that the shift of occupations and commitments that once unfolded in (relatively)
ordered sequences are now bunched together in simultaneous knots.
However, the authors then advance a much wider formulation. Acceleration
involves faster transportation and communication, a swifter pace of life (in the
domain of everyday life and the life course), and a faster rate of change (social and
cultural innovation), as well as shifting commitments, the continuous dismantling
of the lifeworld at an ever-faster velocity, and so on. Jobs, relations, forms of
practice, spouses and sexual partners, enter human experience and are dismissed
or left behind faster than they ever were.
It seems clear that acceleration tends to become a catch-all concept that covers
a wide range of phenomena, from acceleration proper to much more established
notions in the sociological tradition, such as contingency, normative instability,
and contextual incongruity. Although such themes may well be expected to be
interrelated, acceleration per se should not be confused with change, morphogen-
esis, or contingency. Of course, speed may result in increased contingency, and
contingency may call for rapid change and adaptation to ever shiftingsituations.
But these elements should be kept analytically distinct and the theory developed
in a conceptually parsimonious way. Some authors seem to appreciate this, but
62 A. Maccarini
confusion is still rife throughout this literature.19 One tentative way of putting this
would be to argue that acceleration can refer to many different social phenomena,
and not all of them are necessarily connected as if by the force of a ‘latent factor’.
Such a statement confronts the crucial issue of explanation.
It is interesting for us to look at the causes of acceleration. Here we find the
connection with our problem, and with the M/M approach. Moreover, it is on this
level that the often rich and stimulating descriptions to be found in so many essays
about acceleration reach their limits. Acceleration is often considered to be the
consequence of a transhistorical anthropological, or even biological principle. One
may even go all the way down to physics, since entropy entails an acceleration of
evolutionary processes. We may accept this as a general framework, but it leaves
most of the story untold. Even if we accepted the notion that acceleration responds
to a transhistorical imperative connected with survival and strategic advantage, its
historical unfolding remains to be studied, and a whole gamut of related questions
remains unanswered. Why is it taking place in some societies more than in others?
Why is it not developing as a linear function, but proceeds through leaps and
bounds, with advances and setbacks? Does acceleration have something like an
‘optimal balance’ from the viewpoint of human beings, their historical forms of
life, and the individual and common goods they produce, or is it simply bound to
increase forever? Furthermore, what forms of adaptation does it call for? In other
words, acceleration can still be symbolized, interpreted, and institutionalized in very
different ways, thereby producing different consequences. In a nutshell, the social
quality of an ‘accelerated’ society has little to do with broad evolutionary forces. In
this sense, the causes of acceleration in the very form we might experience it are not
exclusively exogenous, but mostly endogenous to different types of society.
Moreover, it is even possible to think that the opposite is true, i.e. that some social
instantiations of the ‘imperative of speed’ could come to impinge upon biologically
rooted features of our lives and identities, running the risk of throwing away –
among the ‘things we lost in the fire’ – structural characteristics that are typical
of our ‘being human’.
Thus, what are the origins and the driving forces of acceleration within society?
Various approaches come to the fore, respectively blaming technology, capitalism,
or secularization. In the first place, acceleration must be defined and measured
in such a way as to distinguish it from an all-too-common complaint made
by old romantic humanism against modern rationalization. Then, it is useful to
accept Rosa’s (2009) distinction between three dimensions of acceleration, namely
technology, rate of social change, and pace of everyday life. I agree with him when
he claims that these three aspects are likely to turn into components of a feedback
loop increasing acceleration. He also correctly maintains that the acceleration cycle
is not a closed, self-propelling process. However, the cause he sees behind this
19Ibid., pp. 5, 7, and 10 for the ongoing confusion. But see pp. 5–6, where Nietzsche and his idea
of the eternal repetition of the ever-same are brought up. In the latter quote Rosa and Scheuerman
seem to acknowledge that speed and change do not necessarily coincide.
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 63
feedback loop is nothing less than the whole ‘dynamic force of modernity’. This
in turn seems too general to be wrong. If acceleration is held to be the product
of a ‘big force’ ultimately coinciding with modernization itself, the search for a
latent factor that may hold all the various manifestations of acceleration together
results in a type of answer that seriously risks begging the question. In fact, one
may legitimately ask what the ‘motor’ of modernization is, and ‘acceleration’ might
be a possible answer! The causal loop does not seem to be productive. A game of
specification and generalization is established that ends up with a vicious circle.
An alternative proposal is to trace acceleration to the generative mechanism of
contingent complementarities and the resulting logic of opportunity. If acceleration
does not always occur at the same pace in all historical time spans that is because
it is linked to morphogenetic/morphostatic cycles, whose structural and cultural
emergent properties, institutional configurations, and situational logics produce
their own temporal structures and rhythms.
Let us be more detailed and indicate the points of contact, or to phrase it
differently, let us spell out the specific connections between acceleration and the
notion of a morphogenic society. This amounts to understanding where and how
most current explanations are too vague, while an M/M explanation allows for more
nuanced and adequate accounts of the social processes in question.
When looking for the driving forces of acceleration beyond the feedback cycle
itself, Rosa points to three primary factors, each lying behind the three dimensions
of social acceleration (2009, p. 89f.).
1. the economic motor, i.e. capitalism. This may at least partially account for
technological acceleration, but not for social change and the pace of life. Other
changes in the temporal structures of society as well as in the time rhythms
incorporated in our everyday life – for example the functionalization of time –
can be better explained by this factor than by acceleration itself;
2. the cultural motor: secularization is mentioned as the main force, insofar as it
heralds the idea of successful life as consisting of a life fulfilled in purely secular
terms, which implies no higher life after death. Therefore, fulfilment consists
of ‘realizing as many options as possible from the vast possibilities the world
has to offer. ( : : : ) [T]he world always seems to have more to offer than can be
experienced in a single lifetime’ (2009, pp. 90–1).
My first consideration is that this amounts to what Charles Taylor describes
as exclusive humanism, with its idea of the good life as purely mundane human
flourishing (2007). And the relevant cultural syndrome is indeed consistent with
social acceleration. But a further step is necessary. Because the cultural system
is never fully integrated,20 people can tap into these or other symbolic resources.
To live a multiplicity of lives within a single lifetime by taking up all the options
that would define them, means to make acceleration a functional equivalent to
20A classic locus for the critique of ‘the myth of cultural integration’ is in the well-known pages
by Margaret S. Archer (1988).
64 A. Maccarini
eternal life and the practical modern response to the problem of finitude and
death.21 But that is only one of the possible life paths to be followed, depending
on the morphogenesis of the self, which is no deterministic process.22 To sum
up, this cultural factor is only effective when it enters the morphogenetic engine.
Thus, only when the other necessary ingredients are present does it play its role
within the logic of opportunity. Insofar as they rely on this symbolic complex,
people are bound to instantiate the logic of opportunity in a particular way, and
would then qualify the morphogenic society – its social institutions, practices,
and lifestyles – in a purely immanent form. Once again, in order to understand
whether this happens or not, the full-blown M/M approach must be deployed,
reconstructing the whole cultural, structural and agential morphogenetic paths
taken.
3. the structural motor. Increasing complexity and contingency create an abundance
of options and possibilities.Again, this is true, but it is the relational setting of
structures, cultures, and acting groups – the form of their mutual relation, i.e. the
institutional configuration – that really accounts for the resulting dynamics and
the direction it takes.
Therefore, these ‘motors’ really need to be cast in a morphogenetic conceptual
framework in order to count as candidates for explaining the phenomenon in
question. It is their mutual relations, not their work in isolation or their aggregation
within a regression model, that triggers acceleration or deceleration. If contingent
compatibilities, the logic of opportunity, and the related, more specific mechanisms
like cultural diffusion (Archer Chap. 5 in this volume) did not constitute the
prevailing structural and cultural constellations, (a) complexity would grow at a
different pace, (b) other ideas could be selected by the dominant social groups, (c)
changes such as acceleration itself would remain confined to particular social groups
or niches, and the dynamics of diffusion could prompt separated ‘time spheres’
rather than a main trend towards acceleration.
The M/M approach is also relevant to the interpretation of the possible conse-
quences of social acceleration. Some of them can be quickly reviewed.
(a) Many authors tend to establish a connection between slowness and social
exclusion. If the main trend is that of acceleration, ‘the slow’ are those who stay
21Rosa (Ivi) rightly quotes Goethe’s Faust as an example of this attitude. What is new about it
today is that with Faust the search for fulfilment still took place through time (more precisely,
always wanting more time, or never being satisfied with the time one had), while the currently
emergent ‘bulimic self’ wants to translate temporal sequence into co-existing simultaneity, and a
linear, unique life course into full reversibility.
22In fact, many of our contemporaries experience their accelerated life course with profound
discomfort, even though they could surely be said to share a secular view of their own fulfillment.
In other words, the various steps from exclusive humanism, to the idea of flourishing, down to
acceleration, are hardly semi-automatic mechanisms, and cannot be understood without (i) an
adequate theory of culture, (ii) of personal reflexivity and (iii) of human fulfillment.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_5
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 65
outside the great stream of change, achievement, and opportunity. This image
certainly has an impact. Its plausibility rests in the association of slowness
with ‘those who can’t keep up the pace’, and are left behind, as some sort
of ‘collateral damage’ of our accelerating progress. But once again, macro-
impressionism needs more accurate social analysis. The connection can go in
this direction or not, depending on the mechanisms involved. Time and slowness
may also become luxury goods, while speed might well be the alienating
mark of exploitation. Among possible examples, consider the lifestyle that
is usually described as ‘downshifting’. It is not just a temporary rest before
getting back into the arena of high-speed society, but a ‘career turn’ and a
definitive choice, or at least one that is bound to characterize a significant part
of the life courses of those concerned. Being often preceded by a period of
‘accumulation of resources’, it is much more frequent among the well-to-do.
Its further qualification cannot be achieved without a study of the mechanisms
involved in the choice, including a study of reflexive deliberations. Even if a
systematic connection with what Archer has called the ‘communicative’ mode
of reflexivity appeared – which I think would not be the case in such situations –
it would still be hard to characterize this phenomenon as one of social
exclusion.
(b) If we refer to social acceleration in terms of the rate of change, one consequence
is the increase in the decay rates of the reliability of experiences and expecta-
tions and by the contraction of the time spans definable as the “present” (Lübbe
2009). This fact is part and parcel of the reflexive imperative, to which in turn
it adds the temporal dimension. Experiences and expectations are not reliable
because of contextual incongruity and also because of temporal acceleration.
The cause is the same, lying in contingent complementarities and the logic
of opportunity. People feel pressed to keep up with the speed of change they
experience in their social and technological world in order to avoid the loss
of potentially valuable options and connections. This indicates the connection
with the M/M approach and the related morphogenic mechanism. The more
unbound morphogenesis becomes, the more it produces more and more oppor-
tunities. The lack of normative guidelines due to rapid change and the fall of
normative consensus are both to be traced to increasing social differentiation
and contextual incongruity (shifting contexts and shattered lifeworlds) as forms
of structural conditioning which account for the reflexive imperative. But now
the problem becomes even more difficult to solve, because the contraction of
the present makes it difficult to tell which options will eventually turn out to
be valuable. Here again, the M/M approach is needed if we want to learn about
the various, contingent ways in which people will appropriate the opportunities
on the ground. How do we decide if a given option is valuable? The way the
contraction of the present exerts its influence upon us is still mediated by our
reflexive deliberations.
(c) All the previous points have to do with the issue of identity, which is a major
problem in the context of the social acceleration syndrome. As we have seen,
exclusive humanism, as part of the cultural system, and high-speed technical
66 A. Maccarini
and socio-economic structures (as structural elements), stand in a relationship of
contingent complementarity. They can create human enhancement (see Sect. 3.4
below) as an emergent culture, and forms of identity and reflexivity that
are internally (i.e. necessarily) related to such a configuration. It is true that
temporal structures and horizons become profoundly rooted in people’s habitus
through socialization, thereby (co-)producing forms of selfhood (Sennett 1998;
Gergen 2000).
Now the question is: how deep does this change promise to go? One of
Archer’s advances in articulating a theory of reflexivity has been the idea that
reflexivity itself does not come in one shape only, but in different ‘modes’
(2000, 2003). This gives us a clue about the possible assessment of change
in this respect. Acceleration surely has a huge impact upon our capacity to
consider ourselves in relation to the world, and vice versa. Rosa says that in
everyday life: “periodically (during crises or transitions in status) we compare
how we are doing against the (linear) temporal perspectives of the life course as
a whole, of our life plans and projects. Finally, we have to balance both against
the perceived images and needs of the epoch in which we find ourselves, against
the structurally based speeds, rhythms, and durations of collective historical
time. Social acceleration impacts on our resources to negotiate and reconcile
these perspectives. It risks undermining the capacity of social actors to integrate
distinct temporal perspectives and thereby develop a coherent sense of self as
well as those time-resistant priorities necessary for the exercise of autonomy”
(Rosa and Scheuerman 2009: 18 italics added).
This formulation is quite close to Archer’s notion of the continuous reflexive
process of discernment, deliberation and dedication through which the morpho-
genesis of the self produces the prioritization and dove-tailing work that lies
at the core of every life plan. The last sentence in the above citation means
that social acceleration risks bringing about forms of individuality that are quite
far from any concern oriented type of reflexivity,that is from one that selects
and harmonizes priorities on a principled ground. There may emerge types of
reflexivity that escape the concern oriented model.23 Acceleration would thus
be among the causes of such a (possible) transformation of reflexivity. Most
authors conclude that open, experimental, fragmentary, unstable individual
identity will be the ‘natural’ consequence of this transformation. The outcome
would be a provisional, situational identity, which has given up a conception of
the good life based on long-term commitments, duration, stability of character
and adherence to a time-resistant life plan. There is a clear critical thrust in this
position. Post-modern fragmentation is seen as a capitulation to the structural
imperatives of acceleration, through which individual and social autonomy are
23Here ‘types’ are clearly different from Archer’s ‘modes’ of reflexivity, indicating a possible,
wholly alternative form of reflexivity. One of them is what I call the ‘bulimic self’. I address this
issue in Andrea M. Maccarini, The Limitless. Reflexivity, Socialization, and Self-Identity in Late
Modern Europe (forthcoming).
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 67
called into question. If it is easy to show that this kind of identity is highly
problematic, the real challenge lies in the capacity to demonstrate that it has a
theoretically systematic and a really existing alternative among the European
population.
(d) The end result, in terms of the societal outcome, might be one of total
mobilization. Still, this would not be the last word about the ‘quality’ of
the potential morphogenic society. The non-simultaneity of the simultaneous
would bring about problems of synchronization. The synchrony might be lost,
so different social and institutional spheres might grow progressively out of
step with one another. Also, individuals, families and groups following very
different temporal rhythms might come to coexist in any given territory (indeed,
they already do), and dramatic temporal disjunctures might give rise to social
conflict. In Archer’s terms, this might be a radical scenario of contextual
incongruity (2012). This prompts a study of what social subjects, what forms
of ‘civil’ society, and what ‘time policy’ can allow multiple time perspectives
to coexist without destroying each other. The reflexive imperative, taken at the
inter-institutional level, means (among other things) the development of good
relations among temporal niches, preventing temporal ghettos and working for
synchronization. The challenge the morphogenic syndrome presents is that of a
society that is not only multicultural and multireligious, but also multi-temporal.
3.4 Examples, II: Human Enhancement Techniques
and the EU Legal Framework for Socio-cultural Change
The second example to be presented here lies at the intersection of law and
technology. The European Union is using the formula of ‘inclusive innovation’
as a way to spell out its ideological, legal, and policy framework for spurring and
steering socio-cultural change. It is interesting to study what it really means in the
case of such a major issue as that of human enhancement technologies (HET), that
are already regulated by law at the Union level. The emergence of an ad hoc legal
framework in itself represents a major emergent property within European society,
legitimating policies and structural changes occurring on other levels and in various
domains.
But first of all, what are the HET?24 In both legal and biomedical contexts, HET
are broadly defined as ‘any modification of the human body aimed at improving
performance and realized by scientific-technological means’. This definition is not
24Throughout this section I draw both the biomedical and the juridical information for my
discussion from the following sources: Simone Arnaldi and Francesca Marin (Eds), (2012);
Daniele Ruggiu, (2012); Sergio Gerotto, Giorgia Guerra, Alessia Muratorio, Arianna Neri, Elena
Pariotti, Mariassunta Piccinni, Daniele Ruggiu (2011); Jes Harfeld (2012).
68 A. Maccarini
dissimilar in its main lines from many others in the related literature. Jes Harfeld
lists a few other, more articulated attempts:
In his recent book, Allen Buchanan defines human enhancement as ‘a deliberate interven-
tion, applying biomedical science, which aims to improve an existing capacity that most
or all normal human being typically have, or to create a new capacity, by acting directly
on the body or brain’ (Buchanan 2011, p. 23). Fritz Allhoff, inspired in this context by
Norman Daniels (Daniels 2000), follows similar lines and describes human enhancement
as being ‘about boosting our capabilities beyond the species-typical level or statistically-
normal range of functioning for an individual’. He, furthermore, includes the caveat that
enhancement is to be understood as distinct from therapeutic treatments aimed at the
amelioration of disease and injury. Disease and injury are here understood as circumstances
which take the individual to a lower functional level than is species-typical’ (Allhoff et al.
2011: 8) (see also Harfeld 2012: 3).
Two things should be noted at the outset. First, HET may improve an existing
capacity, that is one that is typical of ‘normal’ individual of the human species,
as well as create a new capacity. Moreover, such an improvement is meant to
stretch those capabilities ‘beyond the species-typical level’. Second, as some authors
have noted, these definitions include ‘strong’ forms of human enhancement. The
latter concern not only ‘temporary’ enhancements (e.g. alleged ‘pharmacological
cognitive enhancers’ with supposedly low addiction potential), but also techniques
that have long-term effective or permanent results, such as genetic enhancements
and invasive brain-computer interfaces.
The great significance of this emergent phenomenon – a complex set of scientific
discoveries, and their technical applications – is hardly questionable. But what does
it have to do with our main argument?
Most current interpretations see it as a blatant manifestation of the forces of
individualization and market diffusion. It responds, therefore, to the requirements
of the ‘nested teleologies’ of neo-liberalism and posthumanism (Arnaldi 2012;
Grion 2012a, b). The latter advocates an anthropology and a teleology that are
fully compatible, and indeed converging, with those of neoliberalism, in that they
envision no social utopia, but only individual futures, to be regulated by market-like
societal spheres.25
Such ideological forces are surely involved, but the emergence of the HET
is more fruitfully explained and interpreted if structurally linked with the ‘mor-
phogenic syndrome’. A quotation from Rosa is instructive:
However, due to the self-propelling dynamic of the acceleration cycle, the promise of
acceleration is never fulfilled, for the very same techniques, methods, and inventions that
allow for an accelerated realization of options simultaneously increase the number of
options ( : : : ) at an exponential rate. ( : : : ) As a consequence, our share of the world, the
proportion of realized world options from potentially realizable ones, decreases (contrary
25The author (Ibid., p. 96) then goes on to characterize such an anthropology as one centred on
autonomous, rational, reflexive individuals, dedicated to the pursuit of their life plans. For what
truth there is in this image, it should be noted that all different kinds of reflexivity should not
be put under the same heading of neo-liberalism, and that ‘life plans’ do not amount to utility
functions.
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 69
to the original promise of acceleration) no matter how much we increase the pace of
life. And this is the cultural explanation for the paradoxical phenomenon of simultaneous
technological acceleration and increasing time scarcity (Rosa 2009: 90).
Now, acceleration sooner or later encounters some natural and/oranthropological
limits. There are things, Rosa notes, that cannot be accelerated in principle, at
least not beyond a given limit. Among them are the speed of perception and
processing in our brains and bodies. This is where human enhancement comes into
the picture. It represents the attempt to push those limits farther, and the search
for a response that always results in a further radicalization of the problem. It is
likely to result in a qualitative change of society and humanity alike. In other words,
human enhancement seems to be strictly linked with acceleration, and to the will to
establish a totally different way to ‘overcome the (human) limit’ (or even, to put it
differently, to overcome our being human as a limit). No more dynamics that take
time and leave something behind – we want to include it all.
To sum up, (a) acceleration and HET are mutually related. This also explains
why I chose to treat these two emergents together, highlighting their logical and
dispositional consistency. In some cases, such a link already finds some empirical
confirmation, though obviously partial. This happens when the connection is
ostensibly mediated by the agency of specific individual or collective actors.26
Furthermore, (b) HET are related to the main mechanisms of the morphogenic
syndrome. In the various dynamics involved in the technological diffusion of this
scientific discovery (e.g. the different, unpredicted uses of a discovery made for
other purposes) as well as in the legal processes and frameworks for the governance
of such a novelty, the logic of opportunity and unbound morphogenesis are quickly
revealed.
As to the legal framework, it is necessary to study both the main principles
which shape these legal provisions and the main decisions taken by the Courts,
which I can only do in a sketchy manner here. We know from the outset that such a
framework faces the challenge of a paradox: If law and the Courts are to prevent this
technique and all the related economic or political powers from manipulating human
beings in arbitrary ways, a discourse about human dignity and human rights must
be developed, as a defence of unconditionality in the realm of infinite possibilities.
However, such a law must regulate a domain in which the major goal is to overcome
the human as a limit. How can we regard the human as a limit to be overcome,
while simultaneously using the current definition and state of human nature as a
border that should not be crossed, i.e. as a normative criterion with which to steer
26For example, the documented abuse of drugs like Ritalin on the part of students in order to
quicken their studying time and enhance their intellectual performance clearly invites this kind of
interpretation, keeping the logics of acceleration and of HET together in one concrete action. With
this I do not mean to underestimate the huge complexity of the matter. This is probably not the
only connection entailed. I simply intend to establish that such a link is a legitimate one, i.e. to
demonstrate that it exists. No claim about its exclusive relevance is involved.
70 A. Maccarini
such a process? To put it in different words: what is normatively valid about our
‘species-typical’ performance – in most spheres of action?
The answer to this question is an important clue to what a ‘morphogenic society’
will look like, once it is accomplished. The point is whether the present, unbound
morphogenesis is translating into sheer contingency, and if this is the case, what
remains in the mainstream of social innovation processes that still allows for a space
for unconditionality. According to Prandini, this would be the role of the increasing
relevance of human rights in global society (Prandini 2012; Grion 2012a, b). How
are emerging legal frameworks doing in this respect?
A first practical tool is the distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic
HET. This distinction ideally draws the line between what is licit and what is not.
In this context, the more explicit rule dealing with ‘non-therapeutic enhancement’,
contained in Annex 1 of the Commission Recommendation on a Code of Conduct
for Responsible Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies Research (2008), seems to
be quite difficult to enforce. Point 4.1.16, aimed at introducing ‘prohibitions,
restrictions or limitations’, requires that ‘N&N research organizations should not
undertake research aiming for non-therapeutic enhancement of human beings
leading to addiction or solely for the illicit enhancement of the performance of the
human body’. Two limits are set here. The former is addiction. To refuse addiction
means to reject any change that may not be reversible, so we are fully within the
logic of opportunity: the range of opportunities must be kept open, while addiction
would result in its restriction. The latter is ‘illicit’ enhancement, which somewhat
begs the question in that it refers to positive law to draw a normative boundary.
On the other hand, the impact of the above distinction is not straightforward
and the enforcement of this rule poses huge difficulties. As Ruggiu has noted,
firstly, as far as relevant normative definitions are concerned, it is not easy to
distinguish between nontherapeutic and therapeutic HET. For example, it is not quite
clear whether research on anti-aging products should be considered to be aimed at
therapeutic or non-therapeutic enhancement. The same goes for prevention research.
Could gene enhancement for therapeutic purposes be admitted? And if not, what
is the difference with respect to traditional vaccines? Moreover, it may also prove
difficult to determine the cases when research is ‘solely’ (as against partially) aimed
at an ‘illicit’ enhancement of human body performance.
Secondly, the above distinction is also problematic as regards the effectiveness
of the rule, because enhancement properties and uses will often arise in connection
with research and products developed for other uses. The cases of Prozac and Ritalin
may be useful illustrations of these possible difficulties. The prohibition could then
be useless as to its expected practical effects.
We arrive at a similar conclusion if we examine the general principles adopted
by the Courts as the main guidelines for their rulings. The principles adopted
are the following: the duty to inform; the type of relations between technical
applications and the human body (read, reversibility vs. addiction); the kind of
purposes (therapeutic vs. non-therapeutic technologies); the balance of protection
and facilitation (freedom of research), and that between predictable risk and
anticipated benefit; individual choice (cost/benefit analysis and decision), with only
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 71
a weak reference to the social dimension, that is limited to mentioning the possible
damage to others not involved in research and public health at large.
To sum up, the pillars of European legislation and jurisprudence in this respect
are as follows:
(i) autonomy and freedom of choice (extended to gender reassignment);
(ii) the right to health (including pre-natal diagnosis);
(iii) freedom of research.
Finally, we should note that ‘soft law’ tools are among the emergent inventions
in this context. Since principles may be too rigid, and generic statements about
human rights or dignity may be lost in rhetoric, soft law tools are expected to be
very effective in specifying the individual circumstances affected by the coming
technological breakthroughs. Therefore, the governance framework is more and
more heavily influenced by the idea of soft law and flexibility. The latter is supposed
to connect scientific and technological developments and the judicial evolution on
human rights, thereby making the European courts keep pace with technological
development. However, even those technically refined solutions that lie in the
crisscrossing jurisprudence of different Courts at different territorial levels with
different specific typesor with temporary mutual references of convenience, producing an aggregate whose
actions are the equivalent of Brownian motion.
Third, . The coining of ‘elaboration’ to des-
ignate morphogenetic outcomes is intended to underline that change is a changing
of some preceding social state of affairs (Archer 1979); it is not ex nilhilo (Bhaskar
1979), because something is not made out of nothing. Usually, ‘elaboration’ means
that defenders of the status quo have to make concessions, whilst their opponents
must settle for compromises, but neither outcome makes sense without allowing that
the contesting agents have goals, themselves shaped by the initial (and temporally
morphostatic) context at T1. Conversely, Liquid Modernity requires adaptation and
openness on the part of actors/agents. Individuals must be ‘open’ to any outcome,
hoping that it will be positive but without any assurance of this (Donati, Chap. 7,
p. 169f.). What makes an outcome positive or negative, if it is neither anchored
in ideals nor interests nor durable personal identities? (Archer 2013, pp. 4–10).
Nothing remains other than the ephemeral whim of the serially self-reinvented
agent.
Yet, all that is solid does not dissolve in water, and chaos is not the necessary
outcome. As Al-Amoudi puts it ‘a purely morphogenic society is as absurd as
a language whose vocabulary would change faster than a sentence could be
uttered’ (Chap. 9, p. 197). Moderating the hyperbole of the liquidity notion means
acknowledging Realism’s tenet that all institutions and organizations etc. are only
‘relatively enduring’. Its implication is that some will remain comparatively stable
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_7
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_7
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_9
4 M.S. Archer
whilst others are undergoing ‘elaborative change’. This introduces two reference
points in the otherwise uniform sea of change: (i) that which (as yet) proves
relatively enduring and (ii) determinate changes in particular forms of organization,
belief and practice, which rarely alter overnight. As extreme examples, even the
French and Russian revolutions needed a couple of decades before their preliminary
re-institutionalization took shape. Without such points of reference, Al-Amoudi
appears correct that ‘it is unclear how Bauman envisages people making any kind
of decisions in a world where all institutions would be equally liquid.’ (Chap. 9,
p. 205).
Whilst ‘fluidity’ dominates above, ‘speed’ is the key trope in the second and
uni-factoral approach of Hartmut Rosa when he insists that ‘In popular as well as
scientific discourse about the evolution of Western societies, acceleration figures as
the single most striking and important feature’ (Rosa 2003, p. 77). This statement
hovers uneasily between epistemology and ontology; how things are taken to be is
consistently elided with how they are – a common feature in how metaphors gain
their often misleading powers of persuasion. As Lawson rightly insists, where social
phenomena are concerned, the idea of their acceleration must be metaphorical, if no
specification is given of what kinds of things are changing faster. It is similar to
stating that the speed of ‘flight’ has increased, without mentioning if this applies
to birds’ wings or aeroplanes’ engines. Thus Lawson re-frames the question: ‘what
sorts of changes must be underway such that feelings of the speeding up of the
rate of social change are a commonplace result’ and suspects that these may be
‘engendered by a type of change that is underway as much as any supposedly general
acceleration of social life’ (Chap. 2, p. 22).
In other words, we need to get away from the rhetorical collage that runs
together fast-food, fast-information, fast-love, and fast-travel etc., used to persuade
us about common feelings and then we must identify the generative mechanisms of
change with more precision than dubbing this causal power as nothing less than the
‘dynamic force of modernity’ (Rosa and Scheuerman 2009). Maccarini, who gives
the most detailed critique of the ‘acceleration thesis’ (Chap. 3), begins by firmly
distinguishing epistemology and ontology. He then questions the grounding of the
‘feeling’ in the ‘fact’ (made much of by Luhmann 1976) and important as the basis
of Rosa’s argument. Namely, that late Modernity presents its ‘human constituents
with a surplus of possibilities of action and experience, exceeding anyone’s capacity
to ‘live them’ simultaneously’ (Chap. 3, p. 60) or, as Rosa himself puts it, the
‘world always seems to have more to offer than can be experienced in a single life-
time’. In turn, such voracity for new experiences is held responsible for the sense
of pressurized multi-tasking. Maccarini notes that this presumes Charles Taylor’s
(critique of) secular humanism, in which taking up all the options becomes the
functional equivalent of eternal life.
Yet why should we accept that ‘humanity’ seeks to sample all the options?
As I have presented it in Volume I, the tendency for ‘variety to produce more
variety’ confronts agents and actors with a ‘situational logic of opportunity’. Having
opportunities presents them with a choice, and what we choose depends upon our
concerns – the things that matter to us or the ‘importance of what we care about’
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_9
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_3
1 Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which Would Morphogenic. . . 5
(Frankfurt 1988). Far from there being some felt obligation to taste everything and
far from these being the kind of experiences that we have to undergo before we
know if they matter, The Reflexive Imperative showed many students deliberately
turning their backs on a variety of University offerings, guided by their compass of
concerns (Archer 2007, 2012).3 There is no equivalent imperative to be bombarded
by communications and condemned to multitasking; in Europe some of us refuse
to give houseroom to a television, discipline the use of mobile phones if we have
one, and would not be seen dead on social media. These are choices to be made and
to those who will invoke ‘social pressure’, it is interesting to see young teenagers
recently sporting a new tee-shirt on the Lausanne métro reading ‘You won’t find me
on Facebook or Twitter: I have a life’.
Moreover, taking a historical step back, are speed and multitasking really novel
features of late Modernity? Did not payment by ‘piece-work’ in textile mills and
mines, from the late eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth centuries, place more
of a premium on ‘speed’? What counts as a more extreme form of multi-tasking
than a woman giving birth whilst working down a mine? Indeed, the historic picture
was the reverse, with the nobility courting ‘speed’: hunting and coursing, horse and
dog racing and eventually the beginnings of competitive sports. Significantly, those
Victorian ladies whose boredom and means encouraged some to hunt were known
as ‘fast’. In parallel today, ‘downsizing’ and ‘downshifting’ to a slower pace of life
are luxury options available only to the better-off.
The three of us who explicitly examine the ‘acceleration thesis’ are unanimous
in concluding that rather than further rhetorical montage and repeated assertions
that the rapidity of change eliminates the stability required for planning a life, a
generative mechanism is needed to account for the alleged ‘speeding up’. However,
the three motors responsible for acceleration adduced by Rosa (‘economic’ –
capitalism’s need to increase productivity; ‘cultural’ – more options on offer; and
‘structural’ – selection amidst increased complexity and contingency requires faster
processing) fail to convince as ‘key accelerators’. As Maccarini argues of the three,
‘it is their mutual relations, not their work in isolation or their aggregation within a
regressionof competence proves rather disappointing, for at least two
reasons. The first is cognitive: it is not even clear who has the competence (i.e.
who is the “expert”) to pronounce upon what is or is not ‘acceptable’ (if not by
reference to positive law, by simply declaring some uses of HET to be ‘illicit’, which
is hopelessly insufficient). It is not easy to identify the expertise that is necessary
and competent for the assessment. And the risk (vs. hazard) is not calculable,
because it requires a heavily problematic reference to the future and to unpredictable
consequences – a blatant example of the contraction of the present noted in Sect. 3.3.
The second reason is a normative one: the culture incorporated by the Courts – as
summarized in principles (i) to (iii) above – does not seem to express anything
more than the ‘classical’ modern notion of individual autonomy, rationality and
self-determination. Can this be a guideline to distinguish humanizing as against
de-humanizing morphogenetic processes in the present circumstances?
In sum, we could conclude as follows:
1. the law and the Courts are not specifying anything like a latent pattern of values,
even for human nature. Calculating probabilities is their only task, but without
an unconditional reference point this simply falls into a vacuum;
2. human dignity does not conjure up unanimous consensus, and amounts to
an abstract and unclear concept. The whole relation between ethics, law, and
technique lacks an ontology that can still bear an orientation to what is ‘human’,
and is therefore drifting far from the shore of any sound culture of human rights.
3. this is a demonstration that reason and nature cannot stop contingency any more
(Prandini 2012). They are no more ‘external’ to the very process of socio-cultural
morphogenesis and its unbound production of variety – of ever new opportunities
for action and experience. The EU Courts are unable to indicate any ‘hyper-
value’, because and insofar as they move within the culture of modernity. Such a
72 A. Maccarini
culture (that of the rational and autonomous individual with a basic right to self-
determination), cannot bear too much technique, and is indeed disrupted by it.27
Thus, once we have established the link between HET and the morphogenic
syndrome, and the mutual link with other emergents like acceleration, the big issue
is whether the structure of social relations still incorporates some ‘order’. In other
words, is morphogenesis shaking the foundations of classical modernity alone?
What will guarantee that the logic of opportunity – even if we imagine that it
manages to shake off all traces of market competition – is inherently ‘inclusive’?
And under what conditions is inclusiveness still a difference that makes a difference?
A ‘civilized’ aesthetic sensitivity will not do. Prandini himself is well aware
that emotions do not transcend culture, therefore sharing pain (cum-patire) is not
enough,28 because it is neither something cross-cultural, nor a common denominator
of diversity. However, it is itself the indication of one cultural path, or a Wegmark
possibly leading to a renewed humanistic culture. In this sense, emotions can be
useful, if we elaborate on them, particularly developing an idea of experience as
a social relation comprising emotion, individual interpretation, shared or received
meaning, and the production of a more or less effective (and durable) synthesis of
these factors. This process could be called the ‘cultivation’ of seminal experiences
which may be conducive to a culture of human dignity and human rights.29 But
ultimately, this whole work will not be able to bypass social and personal ontology.
Once certain emergent phenomena have been identified, and having established
their mutual relation, and their connection with the mechanisms of the morphogenic
syndrome, we are left with a puzzle concerning the structure of social relations and
the ‘humanistic quality’ of the coming age.
3.5 Conclusion. The ‘Enhanced Society’ and the ‘Big Bang’
of Social Relationships
It is very difficult, from our point in social space-time, to foresee any kind of
‘outcome’ for the transition phase that global society is undergoing. The new
equilibria characterizing the (possible) ‘morphogenic’ and reflexive society are
27Insofar as individual self-determination stands out as the (only) guiding value, it will be difficult
to come up with a culture that can effectively support human dignity and human rights in the face
of the current, ‘unbound’ changes and powers. To me, this is also the permanent ‘flaw in the code’
of even serious attempts, like that by Rodotà (2012).
28Among other things, future generations do not suffer, and never will – particularly if they never
come into existence. And some states of the human (e.g. some early phases of fetal life) can hardly
be associated with a significant capacity to suffer. But then again, what is the capacity to suffer that
we would regard as ‘significant’?
29This path is also followed in Andrea M. Maccarini, Moral Universals in a Polycontextural Society
(forthcoming).
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 73
beyond us as yet. However, there is something social analysis can grasp at to draw
the profile of the emerging social formation.
As we have seen, a state of total mobilization is very close to the notion
of unbound morphogenesis, and social acceleration has a manifest, not random-
like, systematic connection with the logic of opportunity. One issue is whether
or not this situation entails any possibility of successful reintegration, whether or
not it is possible for the coming morphogenic society to find a healthy balance
between change and stability, to establish new social, political and legal institutions
which could bring about a new social and temporal equilibrium. The morphogenic
society will thus involve a huge process of balancing, institution building, consti-
tutionalization, and processes through which new types of social subjects emerge
(structurally). Equally, it will (culturally) involve a profound rethinking of many
of the symbols and meanings that have shaped social life and personal identities
throughout modernity. This implies elaborating new solutions at different levels. As
regards time, will people and social groups adapt to the new temporal structures,
producing new forms of control?
More generally speaking, the reintegration of relationally unstable societies is
likely to depend on the development of social subjects creating their own time and
legitimating their own temporal perspectives in order to coexist with other, non-
synchronized spheres of social life. The reconciliation of work and family is one
crucial example. This is a key point for both social theory and social policy, to
which we will have to return.
Nevertheless, there is perhaps a deeper, very basic socio-cultural dynamics
flowing beneath the various phenomena I have been mentioning in this chapter. As
to its characterization, I can try to get closer to a tentative indication, by saying that
many of the present processes may be understood in terms of an enhanced society.
A full-blown explanation of this concept is impossible here. I can only begin to
explain what this means starting from the level of human agency. In a nutshell, I am
thinking of a societal environment in which the traditional life practices – including
those driving human and social development – appear as seriously flawed. This is
because the rhythm and complexity of social organization, together with the force
of global competition, increase and enhance all requisites, all existential needs, all
necessary skills, and every capacity required. These forces also require an enhanced
individual. What is needed is a human subject who is totally mobilized, independent,
adapted to quick decision making, enriched with any kind of competence, and
endowed with enlarged perspectives. Life in contemporary society emphasizes this
process of continuous,strenuous enhancement. Let us take a few, simple examples
at the level of agency and individuality. Families once used their social, economic,
and cultural capital to help their children through higher education, so that they
could find a job. Nowadays, the cutting edge has become the capacity to invent one.
We once had to learn at least another European language, while the competitive
advantage has now shifted to speaking Russian or Chinese. There is always one
latest innovation, one latest requirement, one further skill we do not have (yet), one
capability we cannot include within our identity or professional profile. In terms of
the life course, this situation results in a profound tension, that becomes evident in
74 A. Maccarini
its articulation, as well as in the educational efforts to give it an intentional structure
and directionality. Social assessment and social work or intervention also becomes
ever more difficult.
This tension is manifest in, indeed consists of, two different forms of reflection
that our culture applies to social life in all its expressions. We could express it
through the distinction between human flourishing vs. enhancement. This could
become one guiding ‘hyper-value’ for ‘unbound’ morphogenesis. Enhancement
means a continuous increase in flexibility and performance in every social domain.
The idea of ‘flourishing’, on the other hand, involves the resilient capacity to develop
enduring life plans and commitment to non-personal ideal and material concerns.
It entails a sense of well-being, development and self-realization that escapes the
narrow focus of utilitarian vs. expressive thinking. Moreover, it involves the idea
that the condition of being human still refers to some natural background, which
not only constitutes a limit to be changed, a border to be crossed, or a ‘species-
typical’ average to be overcome, but contains some good to be developed and lived
out. Many theoretical and practical concepts alike are involved in this profound
reconsideration. Just think of such concepts as autonomy and empowerment, with
their well-known significance in the realms of education or social work. What does
it mean to make someone autonomous? What is it that we should empower? For
example, articulating a new sense of human flourishing entails the crucial concern
to keep within the sphere of personal existence those possibilities of experience
that may generate commitments, motivations, and plans transcending material or
instrumental goals. These operations will not be the lonely enterprise of some writer
or armchair sociologist, but will require the cooperation of social science, social
groups, and of all those whose profession has to do with the regeneration, support,
and reconstruction of social relationships and social networks. The need to recon-
sider the symbols, meanings, and life practices through which – in Erik Erikson’s
words – every civilization drives human subjects to accomplish a particular form of
mature identity, that is its unique form of integrity, is the lesson we may draw as of
now.30
Our provisional conclusion is that the explosion of the inner core of social
relationships, and its outcomes, is not likely to be confronted by stepping back to the
past, nor rushing towards an undifferentiated ‘posthuman’ future. New fault lines,
new relational conflicts (that is, conflicts focussed upon the very nature of social
relations, their survival or demise), and new selection processes are emerging.
30It remains to be seen whether the response may lie in a relational self, and whether such a self
should be one that leads from essence to ‘sublimation’ – in all its ontological weight. See above all
Gergen (2009). See also his previous contribution (1996).
3 The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures. . . 75
References
Archer, M. S. (1988). Culture and agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Archer, M. S. (1995). Realist social theory. The morphogenetic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Archer, M. S. (2000). Being human. The problem of agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Archer, M. S. (2003). Structure, agency, and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Archer, M. S. (2012). The reflexive imperative in late modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Arnaldi, S. (2012). The end of history and the search for perfection. Conflicting teleologies of
transhumanism and (neo)liberal democracy. In L. Pellizzoni & M. Ylönen (Eds.), Neoliberalism
and technoscience. Critical assessments (pp. 93–116). Farnham: Ashgate.
Arnaldi, S., & Marin, F. (Eds). (2012). Deliverable 8.1. Epoch (Ethics in public policy making in
the case of human enhancement techniques).
Blumenberg, H. (1986). Lebenszeit und Weltzeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Clayton, P. (2004). Mind and emergence. From quantum to consciousness. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Donati, P. (1991). Teoria relazionale della società. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Donati, P., & Maccarini, A. M. (1997). Le “modernità multiple” nella sociologia di Shmuel
N. Eisenstadt: oltre il Moderno come contingenza. In Introduction to S. N. Eisenstadt (Ed.),
Modernità, modernizzazione e oltre (pp. 9–45). Roma: Armando.
Gergen, K. (1996). Technology and the self: From the essential to the sublime. In D. Grodin & T.
R. Lindlof (Eds.), Constructing the self in a mediated world. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Gergen, K. (2000). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic
Books.
Gergen, K. (2009). Relational being: Beyond self and community. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gerotto, S., Guerra, G., Muratorio, A., Neri, A., Pariotti, E., Piccinni, M., Ruggiu, D. (2011).
Ethical and regulatory challenges raised by synthetic biology, Deliverable 2 (Synthethics
project).
Gleick, J. (1999). Faster. The acceleration of just about everything. New York: Pantheon Books.
Grion, L. (2012a). Persi nel labirinto. Etica e antropologia alla prova del naturalismo. Milano-
Udine: Mimesis.
Grion, L., (a cura di). (2012b). La sfida postumanista. Colloqui sul significato della tecnica.
Bologna: Il Mulino.
Harfeld, J. (2012). Human enhancement and ethics. Structured overview on the state-of-the-art
academic debate(Epoch report 5.1).
Havelock, R. G. (2011). Acceleration. The forces driving human progress. Amherst: Prometheus
Books.
Knöbl, W. (2007). Die Kontingenz der Moderne. Wege in Europa, Asien und Amerika. Frank-
furt/New York: Campus Verlag.
Lübbe, H. (2009). The contraction of the present. In H. Rosa & W. E. Scheuerman (Eds.),
High-speed society. Social acceleration, power, and modernity (pp. 159–178). University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press.
Luhmann, N. (1976). The future cannot begin: Temporal structures in modern society. Social
Research, 43(1), 130–152.
Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Luhmann, N. (1998). Observations on modernity. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Maccarini, A. M. (2013a). The morphogenetic approach and the idea of a morphogenetic society.
The role of regularities. In M. S. Archer (Ed.), Social morphogenesis (pp. 39–60). New York:
Springer.
76 A. Maccarini
Maccarini, A. M. (2013b). A morphogenetic-relational account of social emergence. Processes and
forms. In M. S. Archer & A. M. Maccarini (Eds.), Engaging with the world. Agency, institutions,
historical formations (pp. 22–49). London: Routledge.
Prandini, R. (2012). Culture e processi “costituenti” della società riflessiva. Globalizzazione,
accelerazione e auto-regolazione sociale. Bologna: Bononia University Press.
Rodotà, S. (2012). Il diritto di avere diritti. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
Rosa, H. (2009). Social acceleration: Ethical and political consequences of a desynchronized
high-speed society. In H. Rosa & W. E. Scheuerman (Eds.), Social acceleration, power, and
modernity (pp. 77–111). University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Rosa, H., & Scheuerman, W. E. (Eds.).(2009). High-speed society. Social acceleration, power, and
modernity. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Ruggiu, D. (2012). Enhancement technologies and human rights. On the jurisprudence of the
European Court of Human Rights and of the Court of Justice of European Union. In Report
on models to incorporate ethical advice in regulation and to govern issues of enhancement
technologies, Deliverable 8.2 Epoch (Ethics in public policy making in the case of human
enhancement techniques, pp. 32–66),
Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new
capitalism. New York: Norton.
Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Young, M. D., & Schuller, T. (Eds.). (1988). The rhythms of society. London: Routledge.
Chapter 4
Contemporary Mechanisms of Social Change
Douglas V. Porpora
Social change once designated an important area of study in sociology. Courses
with that title were once popular. Of course, social change was then associated
with progressive politics and such social justice causes as the civil rights move-
ment. Still, within sociology, social change was always considered subsidiary –
an afterthought – to the stasis implied by the dominant functionalist approach
(Coser 1964; Dahrendorf 1959). With the fall of functionalism, social change, too,
disappeared as something sociologists specifically study.
It is worthwhile, however, to revisit the topic. We are living today in a world that
seems rapidly to be changing in multiple ways. Many of us remember when there
was no Internet, when, in fact, there were no personal computers, when “cut” and
“paste” were things we did literally, using white out, scissors, and tape. The multiple
ways our lives have changed over short span is truly remarkable.
What have been and continue to be the major mechanisms of change in society?
How are they affecting us and where might they be leading? These questions are
the topic this paper. They will be explored in critical realist fashion, which means
several things. The first thing meant is that the analysis always takes the form of and
presumes what Margaret Archer (1982, 1995) originally called the morphogenetic
approach but which we now call the MM approach, to designate that it is not only
social change (morphogenesis) but also social reproduction (morphostasis) to which
the approach was always equally addressed (see Porpora 2012).
Morphogenesis and morphostasis literally mean stability of and change in or
birth of form. As such, they connote the alternate outcomes of social reproduction
and social change. Archer took the terms over from social systems theory, which in
turn had borrowed them from biology.
D.V. Porpora (�)
Department of Culture and Communications, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
e-mail: porporad@drexel.edu
M.S. Archer (ed.), Late Modernity: Trajectories towards Morphogenic
Society, Social Morphogenesis, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5__4,
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
77
mailto:porporad@drexel.edu
78 D.V. Porpora
The MM approach departs, however, from the holism of social systems theory
to offer a distinct approach to the opposition between structure and agency. That
approach is rooted in what Archer calls analytical dualism. Most other approaches
current in sociology merely announce their supersession of the opposition while
privileging one term and suppressing the other. This characteristic was most salient
in the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens (1979, 1981, 1984) against which
Archer (1982, 1995) and I (Porpora 1989, 1993) both argued on similar grounds,
but it continues as well in the more current versions of practice theory, including
that of Pierre Bourdieu.
Whereas most other current approaches to sociology try to dissolve the distinc-
tion between structure and agency, analytical dualism affirms both as ontologically
distinct categories. Agency, rooted in human personhood is expressed most fully in
intentional action. Structure, on the hand, refers to relations among social positions,
which invest those positions with capacities, powers, liabilities, and interests.
As used above, relations represent an abstraction that seems too difficult for
most sociologists to retain. Following symbolic interactionism, when sociologists
think of relations they are more comfortable thinking of interactions. Thus, when
sociologists think, for example, of capitalist competition, they think solely of
capitalists actually engaged in the activity of competing against each other as if
it were just their habitus to do so.
But why, if we must put it that way, is such competitive activity the habitus
of capitalists? Because behind the activity lies the zero-sum structure of their
relationship: the more consumers frequent one producer, the less they frequent
another. Given that relation, which follows from the fundamental rules of property
governing the market system, is what Adam Smith referred to as the market’s
invisible hand. It creates for each capitalist a material interest in competing against
all rivals. That interest in turn motivates their behavior.
Thus, however unobservable, competition as an abstract relation stands behind
competition as an observable behavior. The abstract relation is what critical realism
means by structure, and we see here the value of separating analytically structure
and agency. It allows us to speak of cause and effect. The abstract relation is the
cause of the behavior.
As the causal feature accounting for the behavior, competition as a causal relation
is what critical realism means by a mechanism (Bhaskar 1998; Harré and Madden
1975; Gorski 2004, 2009). It is precisely why, as Marx put it, that the “bourgeoisie
cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and
thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.”
And, of course, it is hardly arbitrary that I cite this abstract relation of capitalist
competition as an example of a causal mechanism. Marx suggested that this relation
was one of the dominant mechanisms of social change. So it is even today. Thus, the
market mechanism, the invisible hand, this abstract relation that most sociologists
cannot grasp because it is an unobservable, this relation will be central to our
subsequent analysis.
Marx is relevant in yet another way for the MM approach is just a formalized
statement of Marx’s (2000) famous dictum that people make their own history
4 Contemporary Mechanisms of Social Change 79
but not under circumstances of their own making. As such the idea is really quite
simple, too simple for sociologists, who must complicate things by their various
supersessions of the structure-agency dichotomy. The idea first is that people
are creative actors, whose behavior cannot be captured by the universal, abstract
covering laws of positivism. It is for that reason in part that critical realism abandons
the covering law model of causality in favor of a powers view (Bhaskar 1975, 1998;
Porpora 1983).
But the affirmation of human creative activity is only preliminary to the MM
approach. At the heart of the approach is the other thing Marx says. Humans do not
exercise their creativity in a void. Human actors always, ineluctably practice their
creative agency from situated circumstances, social circumstances into which they
are born. Those situated circumstances enable them, constrain them, and in various
ways motivate them.
Social circumstances consist in large part of rules and relations and, indeed,
in many cases, the relations derive from the rules as do capitalist relations from
capitalist rules of private property (Porpora 1993). The one belongs to culture, the
other to structure. Both need to be examined together.
Because, together, rules and relations enable, constrain, and motivate behavior,
they are socially consequential. Because the rules and relations are sociallyconse-
quential, they are sites of struggle. As actors struggle over the rules and relations,
each from his or her own social position, they alter the rules and relations that bind
them. Voila: Society changes – and with that change comes a new set of social
circumstances from which actors act. One morphogenetic cycle ends and a new
one begins. The scheme is simple really but completely lost without the analytical
dualism that underlies it.
Without that dualism, most current sociology loses the MM understanding as
well. We will not lose it here. It will guide our analysis. What will further guide
our analysis is what else follows from CR’s powers view of causality. Abandoning
the covering law model of causal explanation, we will focus instead on multiple,
simultaneously operating mechanisms that interfere with or reinforce each other in
various ways. As a result, we will have to approach their simultaneous operation in
terms of conjunctures, the causal consequences of which unfold in narrative fashion
(Steinmetz 2005).
To make our task easier, we approach these mechanisms in an order that best
allows a layering effect, that is, to show how each mechanism builds on or relates
to previous ones. In the discussion of the original version of this paper at our
conference, Ismael Al-Amoudi pointed out that after my discussion of capitalism,
the other mechanisms I identify appeared less as mechanisms than as mere surface
effects, important as they may be in that capacity. It was a good point, and in this
version, I have tried to address that consideration, making clearer how these effects
are mechanisms as well.
I make no claim to exhaustively identify the various mechanisms or processes
productive of social change today. Neither are the processes I identify all at the
same level. In fact, arguably, they are all generated or at least reinforced by the
working out of capitalist relations. Hence my starting there.
80 D.V. Porpora
4.1 Capitalism
As I said above, the relation of capitalist competition is the core mechanism
driving the capitalist system and what accounts for the constant change the
system undergoes. The instability of capitalism is distinctly unrecognized by those
of a Libertarian bent. Like Marxists, Libertarians oppose big business and the
close relation it enjoys with government. Like Marxists, Libertarians believe that
economic power converts itself into political power.
What distinguishes Libertarians from Marxists is the Libertarians’ mistaken
assumption that if capitalism could be reset and allowed to function on its own
without interference, it would stay put as a stable system. Libertarians fail to see
what Marx saw: That capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, that it is
capitalist competition itself that eliminates competition and with it private property
for most individuals in society.
Competitive capitalism naturally evolves into monopoly capitalism, and, left to
itself, capitalism would just as naturally end up the same way as a Monopoly game.
It is after all government regulation in the form of anti-trust legislation that prevents
things from going further. Even so, the progression from competitive to monopoly
or oligopoly capitalism could not be stopped, and by all accounts we are in a period
of Late Capitalism in which, certainly, economic power has converted itself into
political power.
Change has not ceased in late capitalism and outward form is not the only change
that has taken and continues to take place. Because capitalists compete with each
other to offer lower prices to consumers for the same goods, they, as individual
actors, seek creative new ways to make things less expensively. It is this positional
interest that motors the technological innovation for which capitalism was praised
even by Marx.
As technology changes, so does the division of labor. In Taylorist fashion, the
simplest jobs, the jobs easiest to mechanize, disappear (Braverman 1998). It is true
that other jobs are created. There must be, for example, people to design, build, and
operate the new machines. If the machines are computer-aided, then there must also
be other people to program the computers.
Technological innovation is not of course the only way for capitalists to make
things less expensively. They can also move operations to where labor is cheaper
and environmental protections sparer. And competitors originating in those other
places likewise can outcompete firms that need to pay their workers more or protect
them more or provide better protection for the environment.
Either way, especially with the advances in transportation and communication
that have made the world smaller, vast geographical shifts have occurred in
operations. Thus, at the end of World War II, the U.S. supplied 50 % of the world’s
steel and virtually all of its advanced electronics. Today, the U.S. provides only 7 %
of the world’s steel, while one town in China now makes half of the world’s i-phones
(Blackburn 2011).
4 Contemporary Mechanisms of Social Change 81
The period of deindustrialization in the more advanced countries is well-known,
leading to books like The End of Organized Capitalism (Lash and Urry 1987). It is
not only organization, however, that has changed. The resulting deindustrialization
of many formerly manufacturing cities – like my own Philadelphia – is well known,
turning them into what in the U.S. has been called the “rust belt.”
It has been more in terms of workers than output that the U.S. in particular has
deindustrialized. Although the mix has changed, the manufacturing output of the
U.S. has not actually declined. What has declined is the manufacturing workforce,
which accounted for 35 % of American jobs in the 1950s but under 20 % today.
Since the lost manufacturing jobs were at least semi-skilled and often unionized,
they paid fairly well. Their disappearance has left entire communities without the
established career routes that youth once followed without much reflection. A young
man simply expected to follow his father into the factory or the mine. With the
well-trod career path erased, reflexivity becomes, as Archer (2012) now maintains,
positively imperative.
The imperative for reflexivity in the modern world goes well beyond this one site
if only because routine life paths are being disrupted or annulled in multiple ways.
The loss of manufacturing jobs was certainly one condition exerting a downward
pressure on U.S. wages. There were, however, other mechanisms at work to the same
effect. At the same time, for example, that American workers were first experiencing
declining job opportunities and declining wages, they were hit with the OPEC
oil boycott that resulted not just in spiking gasoline prices but prices generally.
Thus, together with depressed earnings, workers were also experiencing increased
consumer costs. The resulting juxtaposition was since named “stagflation.”
It is no coincidence that at this time women began massively to enter the labor
force. In the 1950s, it threatened a middle class man’s masculinity for his wife
to go out to work. By the 1970s, however, masculine pride was being bypassed
by necessity. Even with families increasingly reliant on two income-earners, total
household income was just holding steady.
Now, not only are women having to engage in the same career reflexivity as
men, but even to get to this point, there clearly had to have been an important, joint
reflexive moment among both the men and the women in a marriage about what
legitimately was the role of a husband and a wife. Of course, that reflection lasted
more than a moment. Fueled by the attendant second-wave feminism, that reflexive
moment is still with us. Today, when women in the U.S. still earn significantly less
than men for the same work, we are still reflexively negotiating the consequences of
upheavals that capitalism routinely produces. Actually, if one is a true conservative,
one ought to be strongly opposed to capitalism, which constantly changes theway
things are.
Capitalism, Marx told us, is crisis-prone, and crises themselves are major sources
of change. The post-war series of capitalist crises began in the early 1970s. If the
U.S. stood like a colossus after the Second World War, it was because in contrast
with most of the other industrialized nations, the U.S. had come through the war
82 D.V. Porpora
industrially unscathed. The world markets thus open to the U.S. furnished a post-war
boom that lasted decades and made at least two generations of Americans believe
that in America, life was destined to become ever better.
By 1970, however, the post-war boom had exhausted itself. Much of the world
had rebuilt, reducing overseas markets for American goods. Becoming exhausted
as well was even the American consumer market for such durable goods as cars
and washing machines and televisions. Aggregate demand thus began to flag.
Coincidentally, with the rising organic composition of capital, investments in
manufacturing paid diminishing returns.
With declining investment opportunities, there took place a major renegotiation
of what regulationist theorists call the regime of accumulation – long-standing
accords between capital and labor which determine how corporate revenues are
distributed (Jessop and Sum 2006). Specifically, to re-secure corporate profitability,
the balance of labor law was tilted more in favor of capital. Weakened, unions went
into decline.
Within many of the core countries of the world system, a new post-industrial
society was coming into being (Dahrendorf 1959). It would be a society in which
real wages actually fell. To compensate, it would increasingly no longer even be
enough for families to front two wage-earners. Instead, there began a period of rising
debt as families simply borrowed to meet their needs.
Nor was debt limited to consumers. With productive investments drying up,
corporate giants were using their profits to buy up each other in a frenzied
period that came to be termed “casino capitalism” (Strange 1997). When cor-
porate profits were insufficient for such ends, corporations too were increasingly
borrowing.
The 1980s onward marked the rise of finance capital, meaning that more and
more corporate profits were being invested not in manufacturing or other productive
enterprises but in financial speculation. A whole new bevy of financial instru-
ments were being developed: derivatives, mortgage-backed securities, structured
investment vehicles, and credit-default swaps (Lim and Lim 2010; Foster and
Magdoff 2009). In America, the Garn-St Germain Act, passed under President
Ronald Reagan, allowed savings and loan associations to diversify into such riskier
ventures. The result a short time later was widespread bankruptcies among these
organizations.
Undeterred, commercial banks sought the same release from restrictions. That
release was granted under President Bill Clinton. Replacing the Glass-Steagall Act,
the Grahm-Leach Bliley Act of 1999 henceforth allowed commercial banks to
trade and underwrite all kinds of securities. The result was the emergence of an
unregulated, shadow banking system in highly leveraged debt and securities (Lim
and Lim 2010; Foster and Magdoff 2009).
The problem was compounded by the rising concentration of income and wealth
among the tiniest fraction of top income-earners. Morality aside, the growing
inequality spelled disaster. With the non-wealthy strapped for income, aggregate
demand lagged. That lag in turn restricted the range of sound investment oppor-
tunities. The banks, however, flush with dollars from the rich, had to invest that
4 Contemporary Mechanisms of Social Change 83
capital somewhere. If sound investments were absent, the money went increasingly
into investments that were less sound. The ensuing financial collapse was almost
inevitable.
Today, as a result, the world capitalist system is mired in recession, from which
deliverance will not be easy. From whence will sufficient new jobs come? Jobs
that pay a decent wage? For decades, Europe has been struggling with high rates
of underemployment, and now the U.S. seems destined to follow suit. The burden
on government-provided safety nets is worsened by the lack of tax income to pay
for it. Struggling to make ends meet, the public resists any tax increases so that
government borrowing becomes the more politically sustainable alternative. It is an
alternative, however, that increases deficits and with them an increasing allocation
of tax dollars just to interest payments. The room for government maneuverability
thereby narrows. Such is the world we now face.
4.2 Information, Globalization, Flows, and Networks
In terms Marx suggested, capitalism has so utterly revolutionized its own starting
forces and relations of production that many incline now to attaching new labels
to our current era: Information Society (Drucker 1969; Toffler 1980), Programmed
Society (Touraine 1971), Network Society (Castells 1988), Globalization (Appadu-
rai 2001; Robertson 1992). Each such label captures an element of what makes the
current order new. Each identifies a new mechanism of change.
With regard to information, much has changed and will likely continue to change
along an accelerating trajectory. Wikipedia reports that whereas in 1986, the world’s
total informational storage capacity was approximately 2.6 exabytes (one exabyte
representing some 1018 bytes), that figure now is close to 300 exabytes. Similarly,
with the rapid rise of telecommunications, the world’s capacity to exchange this
information has likewise expanded exponentially, from 281 petabytes (one petabyte
representing some 1015 bytes) in 1986 to 65 exabytes today.
What has resulted is a new post-industrial phase of capitalism characterized
by the rise of so-called knowledge work: education, research, marketing, media,
research, information, technology, and design. It is as some have suggested a new
knowledge economy, where immaterial ideas rather than material things become the
objects of human manipulation. The manipulation in other words becomes symbolic
rather than physical. As such, it deals with representation, conceptualization, values,
and persuasion (Drucker 1969; Reich 1992; Toffler 1980).
The growing role of information is not just an effect but a mechanism in its own
right that produces its own effects. For one thing, it has drastically transformed
the division of labor, so rationalizing production that in the core countries at least,
many former manufacturing jobs have been eliminated. The eliminated jobs were
once held by semi-skilled or even unskilled laborers. It is true that digitalization
has also created new jobs but not as many as were lost and not jobs accessible to
less educated workers. Calls have thus come from multiple directions, urging both
84 D.V. Porpora
youth and their educational institutions to orient themselves better to knowledge
production. Those, it is said, who cannot make the transition from manufacturing to
knowledge skills will be left behind.
Again, to use Marxian terms, in this new informational phase of production,
science and knowledge become the key forces of production. Thus, science in
service to capitalist competition is what Margaret Archer cites in this volume as
what she believes is now the central motor of morphogenesis.
For Alain Touraine (1977), what makes our current phase so new is the advent of
global reflexivity. Given the capacity of knowledge to encompass an entire, complex
whole, society can now wield its own self-knowledge for the first time to act as a
whole back onto itself. To the extent that Touraine is correct, the self-programming
so achieved is itself a perpetual morphogenetic change-machine.
Whatever the merits of Touraine’s perspective, the expansion of information
produces still other effects. For one thing, the greater ease of communication affords
giant corporations the ability to manage and coordinate far-flung operations. It
enables banks to monitor and manipulate enormousamounts of currency transac-
tions across the globe.
Reflecting on these developments, Manuel Castells (1988) and Jan van Dijk
(1999) have proposed Network Society as the most apt label for our current pass.
On this view, electronically mediated network connections are now the central
social mechanism operating in society. At the level of the individual actor, first
the Internet and then the new digital media greatly expanded the people with
whom each of us can be connected, so much so that in a well-known book,
Kenneth Gergen (2000) argued that our very selfhood is being saturated by a
profusion of networked connections that constitute a kind of hyper-sociality. From
that starting point, there has been increased academic attention to our new digital
subjectivities.
Castells, with more macro-social interest, calls our attention to what he calls
the space of flows, the organization of “time-sharing social practices.” Given, the
coordination of far-flung functions that the flows enable, in central hubs, where the
connections meet, elites become more detached from their own specific locales and
more oriented to the flow. This emphasis on flow has given rise to a new Mobilities
Paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006), which rejects what it sees as social science’s past
penchant for static structures in favor of new attention to movement, movement of
people, movement of information, movement of capital, and so forth.
As Colin Wight notes in his contribution to this volume, the still most cited
and encompassing name for all these phenomena is globalization. The term seems
to go back at least to Roland Robertson (1992), who spoke of it in reference
to “the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of
the world as a whole.” Since then, all agree that world compression means the
intensification of global networks and relations so that what is distant becomes ever
more consequential on the local.
Of course, it is not only international networks that are intensifying but, as
a result, global culture as well. One evident consequence of that process is the
worldwide dissemination of human rights discourse. Even if human rights are not
4 Contemporary Mechanisms of Social Change 85
universally observed, they are at least now universally invoked. In this and other
ways, we can begin to speak for the first time of a growing global consciousness
(Appiah 2007).
Other aspects of this growing global culture are not perhaps so benign. Global-
ization also means the profusion worldwide of consumerism and the displacement
of smaller-scale, local production by international, corporate giants. It means the
dissemination worldwide of fast food and a corporate homogenization of culture
that has been called McDonaldization (Barber 1996; Ritzer 2010). It means as well
tensions between workforces as corporations can more easily shift jobs from one
locale to another. Workforces themselves are on the move, chasing jobs, in a new
era of greater immigration, diaspora, and softer, more porous national borders.
The national penetration by international forces undermines national control
of local state governments. Although Americans, for example, may attribute their
economic health to their sitting president, it has much more to do with conditions
elsewhere such as the continuing financial crisis in Europe. And of course with the
world so interconnected, the great financial crises of the twenty-first century have
been global in their ramifications.
The process of globalization is not, however, uncontested. National states attempt
to contest it as do a profusion of new social movement organizations such as the
global justice movement and the various national “occupy” organizations. Basically
anti-capitalist in orientation, these movements oddly share an enemy with all
varieties of religious fundamentalism – Christian, Moslem and so on – that equally,
though on different grounds, oppose globalization.
Again Colin Wight’s contribution to this volume explores the growing profusion
of international organizations that likewise have arisen in response to and as efforts
to manage and control globalization. On the postmodern left, against Wight’s
more positive perspective on growing international governance, there is the more
negative vision of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s (2001) Empire. According
to Empire, the growing international order is a Foucauldian worldscape of extra-
national power relations disciplining the world to a universal cosmopolitanism. My
own sensibilities are much closer to Wight’s; I personally find Hardt and Negri’s
take rather overheated. Regardless, what is important to see here is how in response
to large overarching social effects like globalization, human agency responds with
counter-mechanisms that operate at the same time. Where we finally end up will be
the result of numerous morphogenetic/morphostatic cycles.
4.3 World Inter-state Dynamics
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended a long post-war period of bi-
polarity in the international system that expressed itself as cold war struggle. That
struggle manifested itself both in the overarching specter of mutual, assured, nuclear
destruction, and in the more concrete, ensuing chess-game played out with the
world’s other nations, sometimes taking the form of outright invasion (e.g., the
86 D.V. Porpora
Soviets in Hungary and Afghanistan, the Americans in Vietnam and Granada) or
other subtle forms of subversion (the U.S. overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile)
or the more recent “overt covert war” of the U.S. against the Sandinista government
in Nicaragua.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, this entire dynamic changed. The U.S.
was left as the world’s single superpower with a military twice the size of that of all
the rest of the world together. This global state is an objective relational property,
independent of actors’ perceptions. As such, it affords both objective enablements
and constraints that make the relation itself a causal mechanism. To the extent that
actors perceive the enablements and constraints, they can act on them – not in any
predetermined way but with the creativity that is intrinsic to human agency.
The Americans did perceive the new state of the world, although they did
not act on it with particular creativity. Instead, the dominant bloc saw America’s
new uncontested preeminence as an objective opportunity to consolidate America’s
global hegemony. There followed the Project for a New American Century, the goal
of which was to accomplish that end. When George W. Bush moved into the White
House, this bloc moved in along with him. They comprised much of his cabinet.
A basic principle of the Project was to act quickly, while America’s power was
yet uncontested, to squelch any rising potential for future contestation, even at a
regional level. As Saddam Hussein constituted just such a threat, the Project targeted
Saddam Hussein for removal as early as 1992. It was under President William
Jefferson Clinton in fact that there passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which made
regime change in Iraq the guiding policy of the United States. Arguably, September
11 constituted just the pretext to pursue that objective.
Unfortunately for U.S. hegemonic aspirations, things did not turn out as planned.
The Bush administration’s faith in U.S. military might proved overblown. Once
again, as in Vietnam and elsewhere, it was discovered that even the utmost
technological power can be successfully resisted by human will. Although now the
U.S. has finally extricated itself from Iraq, it left behind hopes for any new American
century. Instead, together with a standard Republican reduction of taxes, the war
contributed greatly to a greatly expanded federal debt, which in return reduced
governmental corrective options when the U.S. entered the 2008 recession. The
American public’s tolerance for war meanwhile is currently exhausted. Thus, when
the turmoil in Libya had to be met with international force, the U.S. involvementwas restrained. For the time being, it remains unclear just how much America will
be able to project its power abroad.
Nor has the situation remained static. Although the U.S. may remain the world’s
only superpower, multiple poles of power are nonetheless rising: China, India,
Brazil, not to mention the European Union. Relationally, the political world is
reconfiguring. It just remains unclear how. On the right, there is talk of a clash
of civilizations, and, indeed, the war on terror does continue as an organizing
metanarrative pitting newly ascendant Islamic resentment against western imperi-
alism. Certainly, this dynamic will remain a force as long as the issue of Palestine
remains unsolved. With a two-state solution to the question all now but extinguished
by Likud and it’s Likudnik American backers, Israel must decide whether it be
4 Contemporary Mechanisms of Social Change 87
an apartheid or secular state. As long as the situation there remains unjustly
resolved, the resulting unrest will continue to be a causal mechanism churning world
consciousness and, hence, wider unrest.
4.4 The Environment and Its Effects
I saved for last the largest elephant in the room, what in this new century is sure
to produce the most profound changes in our ways of life. The effects are already
manifest. Whereas Nietzsche’s mad man went about asking whether the earth did
not feel colder, it is now clear that our current existence will end by fire.
Global warming is an effect of many factors, but many, it is now clear are
humanly produced. Human population growth is one cause as presumably the
human effect would be much smaller if there were fewer of us. But it is not
population per se that is the cause but population multiplied by per capita energy
use, which varies by society. In such terms, when overconsumption and corporate
pollution are factored in, it is arguably the first not the third world that is most
overpopulated, most contributory to global warming (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1991).
But again, global warming is not just an effect but a causal mechanism in its
own right, a causal mechanism productive of multiple effects. The immediate effect
of global warming is more extreme storms and more erratic weather. As the U.S.
breadbasket in 2012 experienced its worst drought since the dust bowl, dramatic
changes in arability are also in the offing.
The most looming threat of global warming, however, is sea rise. The great ice
sheets at both poles are melting rapidly, and with rising sea levels, many populated
areas are threatened by flooding. That prospect in turn augers major movements of
people and breakdowns in social order. The prospect is so potentially destabilizing
as to have elicited an entire National Security Report on environmental change from
the U.S. Department of Defense (CNA Corporation 2007).
The ensuing chaos is a threat to both economic and political systems. With major
areas likely to be declared disaster zones, it is hard to imagine the functioning of
normal markets. Goods likely will need to be distributed from haves to have-nots
via the command economy of government action. And if that condition persists for
long, it is hard to see it happening under traditional democracy. Instead as the haves
grow resentful of the flow of aid, the pressure will be toward some form of martial
law, which, over time, could institutionalize into one or another form of dictatorship.
Changing climate and rising sea level are of course not the only deleterious
consequences associated with the environment. With global warming, there will
be widespread redistributions of flora and fauna and already there are growing
problems associated with the availability of potable water and a more worldwide
spread of tropical diseases. All will exert more pressures on governments to act
decisively in ways that cannot always depend on the will of the people or the
extended time it takes them to articulate their will democratically.
88 D.V. Porpora
As noted, many of these environmental problems can themselves be traced
back to the processes of world capitalism and the consumer society it produces.
The pressures of capitalist competition produce the corporate predilection for
“externalizing” costs to the environment. Unless in other words there are rules
fining corporate processes for pollution, corporations, threatened by competitors,
will opt to plough more earnings back into securing competitive advantage than
in protecting the environment, especially where such spending offers no advantage
competitively.
Capitalism, moreover, predicated on continuous growth, promotes a consumer
culture where labor-saving technology leads to the production of more things rather
than less time spent working. We thus get the condition of overdevelopment, where
first world countries enjoy far more of the world’s resources than is justifiably
sustainable.
The consumer culture is not only something the capitalist system needs. It
becomes something that people are loathe to forego. They therefore resist envi-
ronmental curbs on manufacturing or any systematic responses in the direction of
down-sizing life style simplification. In a way, therefore, paradoxically, one of the
major mechanisms of change is the conservative force of popular inertia and vested
interest, which promote the preservation of mechanisms productive of continuous
change.
4.5 Conclusion
According to the analysis presented here, the current source of social change is not
singular but multiple. Change derives from a conjuncture of different mechanisms,
some but not all of which can be traced back to capitalist relations. Capitalist
competition, as I argued, leads corporations to externalize when they can costs
to the environment, resulting in pollution that, among other things, results in
global warming. Because as well capitalism is healthy only when it is growing,
the stress capitalist consumption places on the earth is likewise also always
growing. Again a portion of that stress manifests itself as contributions to global
warming.
The problem is not simply that capitalism is a mechanism that produces
global warming but also that capitalism simultaneously rewards with power and
influence those whose interests are threatened by the most straightforward efforts
to ameliorate that effect. The inertial force of such vested interests thus creates
morphostasis when it is morphogenesis that is urgently needed.
At the same time, however, where there is political will, the very forces of
capitalism can themselves be corralled in service to a solution. Most signally is
a protocol that is called “cap and trade,” which legally caps industrial pollution at
certain levels and allows companies that operate below the caps to trade their excess
allowance with those who have gone beyond what is allowed. What cap and trade
does is to re-internalize into the market mechanism the costs of dirty and the rewards
4 Contemporary Mechanisms of Social Change 89
of green production. With costs and benefits thus reintroduced into the market, so
are incentives toward greener production.
Of course, in practice, matters have not worked out so straightforwardly.
Although a cap and trade protocol successfully helped the U.S. reduce its problem
with acid rain and although some element of emissions trading is built into the Kyoto
Protocol, American economic interests still prevailed against U.S. ratification of the
treaty. Still, cap and trade and the Kyoto protocol both illustrate how in MM fashion
at a later time, human agency can be brought to bear on the structural effects of its
own prior agency.
Although world inter-state relations certainly cannot all be explained in terms of
capitalism, just as certainly does capitalism exert profound effects on them. That is
to say, much of interstate relations is rooted in economic interests, whether those
interests concern markets or strategic commodities like oil. Indeed, the very north –
south split that continues to define the current inter-stateorder – was fundamentally
shaped by the exigencies of capitalism as linked with the European imperialism
with which it co-originated. Even today, it goes without saying, national strategic
interests are often at rock bottom economic.
Environmental effects, whether they are due to capitalism or not, will likewise
destabilize international relations. As climatic conditions change, former net food
suppliers may find they are now net buyers with all the attendant changes in
relative power that may bring. As water levels rise, low-lying countries may become
increasingly dependent, and, even now, there are political skirmishes over whether
forest preservation is the responsibility of more than just the nation in which the
forests reside.
Scrooge asked the Ghost of Christmas future whether the dark shadows por-
tended what must be or only what might be without altered action. As Scrooge
realized, little must be, but to avoid dark consequences, we must act – and act
collectively. Again, the groping toward international governance that Colin Wight’s
chapter describes is salutary; we must hope that this counter-mechanism eventually
reins in the deleterious forces that require joint action by all nations. In order to
do so, we will need to work through our “lib/lab” dilemma described by Pierpaolo
Donati’s chapter.
We come finally to the relation of capitalism to what is variously given names
like the network society or information age. When I originally wrote this article,
I naturally had not yet seen Margaret Archer’s take on the generative mechanism
that she believes is most important behind the social change in late modernity:
The synergy she sees between capitalist competition and the diffusion of modern
science. I must say I am quite persuaded by the force of her narrative that these
two together, sometimes pulling in different ways, indeed represent a powerful new
morphogenetic force best understood as an emergent unity.
It is often said that the social sciences cannot be predictive. That is actually an
overstatement. It is true that the social sciences cannot predict in a positivist manner
that depends on invariant or even statistical laws, but then many of the predictions
of the natural sciences do not take that form either. Instead, they often take the form
of predicting not new events but new entities like the Higgs boson. Of course, in
90 D.V. Porpora
the social sciences we are not predicting new entities either. Nor can any kind of
statistical bounds be placed on our predictions for the unfolding of history. There is
no determinism.
What we can do, however, is extrapolate in a looser way futures that might
logically ensue from the constellation of forces that are present now. National
militaries do this all the time, playing and replaying various scenarios. It may be
that we will ever be surprised by what Hegel called the “cunning of reason,” but our
responses will be better even then for having played through alternative possibilities.
If it works for the military, there is no reason why social science should not do so
as well.
References
Appadurai, A. (2001). Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press.
Appiah, A. K. (2007). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. New York: Norton.
Archer, M. (1982). Morphogenesis versus structuration: On combining structure and action. British
Journal of Sociology, 33(4), 455–483.
Archer, M. (1995). Realist social theory: The morphogenetic approach. New York: Cambridge.
Archer, M. (2012). The reflexive imperative in late modernity. New York: Cambridge.
Barber, B. (1996). Jihad vs. Mcworld: Terrorism’s challenge to democracy. New York: Ballantine
Books.
Bhaskar, R. (1975). A realist theory of science. London: Leeds Books.
Bhaskar, R. (1998). The possibility of naturalism: A philosophical critique of the contemporary
human sciences. New York: Routledge.
Blackburn, B. (2011). Clothing ‘Made in America’: Should U.S. manufacture more clothes?
ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/MadeInAmerica/made-america-clothes-clothing-
made-usa/story?id=13108258#.UB7HBEI1aFJ
Braverman, H. (1998). Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth
century. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Castells, M. (1988). The rise of the network society. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
CNA Corporation. (2007). National security and the thread of climate change. Alexandra, Va:
CNA Corporation.
Coser, L. (1964). The functions of social conflict: An examination of the concept of social conflict
and its use in empirical sociological research. New York: The Free Press.
Dahrendorf, R. (1959). Class and class conflict in industrial society. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Drucker, P. (1969). The age of discontinuity. London: Heinemann.
Ehrlich, P., & Ehrlich, H. (1991). The population explosion. New York: Touchstone.
Foster, J. B., & Magdoff, F. (2009). The great financial crisis: Causes and consequences. New
York: Monthly Review Press.
Gergen, K. (2000). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic
Books.
Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Giddens, A. (1981). A contemporary critique of historical materialism. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gorski, P. (2004). The poverty of deductivism: A constructive realist model of sociological
explanation. Sociological Methodology, 34(1), 1–33.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/MadeInAmerica/made-america-clothes-clothing-made-usa/story?id=13108258#.UB7HBEI1aFJ
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/MadeInAmerica/made-america-clothes-clothing-made-usa/story?id=13108258#.UB7HBEI1aFJ
4 Contemporary Mechanisms of Social Change 91
Gorski, P. (2009). Social ‘mechanisms’ and comparative historical sociology: A critical realist
proposal. In P. Hedstrom & B. Wittrock (Eds.), Frontiers of sociology (pp. 147–196). Boston:
Brill.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2001). Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Harré, R., & Madden, E. (1975). Causal powers. Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield.
Jessop, B., & Sum, N.-L. (2006). Beyond the regulationist approach: Putting capitalist economies
in their place. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publications.
Lash, S., & Urry, J. (1987). The end of organized capitalism. Madison: University of Wisconsin.
Lim, M. M.-H., & Lim, C. (2010). Nowhere to hide: The great financial crisis and challenges for
Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Marx, K. (2000). The eighteenth brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In D. McClellan (Ed.), Karl Marx:
Selected writings. New York: Oxford.
Porpora, D. (1983). On the prospects for a nomothetic theory of social structure. Journal for the
Theory of Social Behaviour, 13, 243–264.
Porpora, D. (1989). Four concepts of social structure. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour,
19, 195–212.
Porpora, D. (1993). Cultural rules and material relations. Sociological Theory, 11, 212–229.
Porpora, D. (2012). Social change as morphogenesis. In M. Archer (Ed.), Social morphogenesis.
New York: Springer.
Reich, R. (1992). The work of nations: Preparing ourselves for twenty-first century capitalism.
New York: Vintage.
Ritzer, G. (2010). The McDonaldization of society. New York: Sage.
Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization: Social theory and global culture. New York: Sage.
Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning, 38(2),
207–226.
Steinmetz, G. (2005). The politics of method in the human sciences: Positivism and its epistemo-
logical others. Durham: Duke University Press.
Strange, S. (1997). Casino capitalism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Toffler, A. (1980). The third wave. New York: Bantam.
Touraine, A. (1971). The post-industrial society: Tomorrow’s social history: Classes, conflicts and
culture in the programmed society. New York: Random House.
Touraine, A. (1977). The self-production of society. Chicago: The Universityof Chicago Press.
Van Dijk, J. (1999). The network society: Social aspects of new media. New York: Sage.
Chapter 5
The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring
Late Modernity
Margaret S. Archer
5.1 Introduction
Accounts of ‘industrialization’ and of ‘globalization’ were responses to
unprecedented social novelty and both attempted – in very divergent ways – to
answer the question of the day: ‘What’s going on and where is it leading?’ The
biggest difference between them is that 250 years later, there are no redoubts
providing shelter from the brunt of change even in the less developed parts of the
world. Today, there is general unease that things are in a mess, such a complicated
mess that critique has quavered and utopianism withered. In their place are facile and
conflicting proclamations of New Ages by social scientists. If ‘humankind cannot
bear very much reality’ (T.S. Eliot), perhaps the most unbearable aspect is the long
drawn out state of ‘transition’, without any assurance of eventual ‘transformation’.
This is not a re-assuring chapter but rather an attempt to disentangle the
generative mechanisms at work, their interplay and their inevitable interweaving
with contingency in the open system that is global society. That the present state of
affairs is indeed complicated does not mean that it becomes more comprehensible
or tractable by borrowing ‘complexity theory’ from the natural sciences (any more
than the ‘organic analogy’ helped to explain the lineaments of industrial society).
Nor can its complications be understood or explained by sweeping them under a
portmanteau term such as ‘detraditionalization’, which falsely homogenises past
diversity by calling it all ‘tradition’ (see Heelas et al. 1996). Nor can it be explained
by grasping at some overt empirical patterning of events and holding one factor
responsible for it: be it Structural (global capitalism), Agential (institutionalized
individualism), or Cultural (information society) (Archer 2013a).
M.S. Archer (�)
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CM 2 2275, Station 10,
CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
e-mail: margaret.archer@epfl.ch
M.S. Archer (ed.), Late Modernity: Trajectories towards Morphogenic
Society, Social Morphogenesis, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5__5,
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
93
mailto:margaret.archer@epfl.ch
94 M.S. Archer
It is only by drawing upon a stratified social ontology and advancing generative
mechanisms that causality is no longer wrongly seen as an empirical relation
between events, even a complicated series of events. Instead, when Critical Realism
‘speaks of causal mechanisms, then it speaks of what makes things work. Generally,
that involves a reference to some kind of causal structure’ (Porpora 2011). Gorski
offers a succinct definition of generative mechanisms ‘as emergent causal powers
of related entities within a system’ (2009). In turn, ‘related entities’ are defined
as ‘entities and relationships that are necessary to the recurring effects of the
mechanism in question’.1
He rightly insists that ‘relational entities’ may also be non-observables, but ‘they
must have a physical substrate’. In other words, to describe capitalism as relationally
‘competitive’ is anchored in the substrata of relationships between the positions of
owner and worker and other owners and workers (their relations of production).
Porpora (1989) had already furnished the general concept of ‘structure’ as referring
to relationships between (pre-established) social positions: such as manager/worker;
teacher/pupil or landlord/tenant. In parallel, I have maintained (Archer 1988)
that ‘Culture’ refers to relationships between (pre-established) ideational positions
(beliefs, theories, ideologies, propositions), whose substratum is ultimately the
universal archive in which they are lodged and from which they can be accessed.2
Were a generative mechanism to be correctly identified, were other processes
found to be at play that deflected, distorted or suspended the causal powers of the
first, and could the intervention of unrelated contingencies be specified, we would
possess the basic elements needed to answer the key questions.
1. What underlies and unifies ordinary people’s experiences of different dis-
junctions in their lives (new jobs, skills, locations; novel practices; the loss
of taken-for-granted normativity and routine action; and the unprecedented
extension of the ‘reflexive imperative’ to all). These may be encountered and
understood as discrete occurrences. But, the objective of an account couched in
terms of generative mechanisms is to reveal how they are interconnected.
2. Is the generative mechanism held principally responsible for recent rapid social
change one whose tendency is to produce a social order that heralds a new social
formation; one where Morphogenic society supersedes Modernity?
3. ‘Social morphogenesis’ may indeed be increasing exponentially. Yet, if the
social order is generically neither ‘self-governing’ nor ‘self-organizing’ but is
rather a ‘relationally contested system’, what if anything prevents contestation
from merely prolonging ‘modernity’s mess’ without promise of finalism or re-
integration – systemic or social?
1To talk about ‘entities’ entails neither physicalism nor substantialism: ‘entia’ in Latin refer simply
to what exists, thus including non-observables such as ‘beliefs’, ‘preferences’ or ‘theories’. Impor-
tantly, for the argument I am going to advance, this entails that ‘culture’, though ‘insubstantial’,
stands alongside ‘structure’ as a real social entity.
2For a recent defence of this position against my co-author, see Archer and Dave Elder-Vass (2011).
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 95
‘Social morphogenesis’ is an umbrella concept, whereas any generative mecha-
nism is a particular that needs identifying, describing and explaining – by its own
analytical history of emergence. If we want to talk seriously about ‘Morphogenic
Society’ this can only be in terms of specific mechanisms that are potentially
important enough to have a global societal impact. Otherwise, it could rightly be
objected that positive feedback and morphogenesis have always been with us, even
before the first spark ignited the first fire. The amplification of an effect by its
own influence on the process that gave rise to it is hardly the preserve of trans-
modernity. Equally, it could also be countered that morphostasis is still with us or,
in Maccarini’s words, that everything ‘was not lost in the fire’ of recent change
(Chap. 3 in this volume). Such enduring negative feedback would or could be held
to offset the results of the positive feedback, which introduces new variety and
encourages still greater variety because the growing pool of complementary entities
that can be combined – to morphogenetic effect.
To focus upon ‘social morphogenesis’ as a general process of change is very
different from examining its particular results over the last quarter of a century.
Instead, explaining where we are right now means concentrating upon the outcomes
of morphogenesis; upon the specific changes produced and upon whether or not the
new social forms elaborated do gel with one another and have some directionality.
These are its knock-on effects. Yet, equally important are its knock-out effects,
of eliminating those morphostatic processes that previously ‘counterbalanced’
morphogenetic changes by continuing to preserve a degree of contextual continuity
for agents and actors in their everyday social lives.
To explain both these ‘arrivals’ and ‘departures’ it is necessary to draw upon three
orders of emergent properties that exert causal influence through conditioning social
action and its outcomes at different levels. There is nothing sacrosanct about this
number because new strata can be added whenever the emergent powers pertaining
to a given stratum can be substantiated on the causal criterion. The three coincide
with what are conventionally knownas the micro-, meso- and macro-levels: dealing
respectively with the situated action of persons or small groups, because there is no
such thing as ‘contextless’ action; with ‘social institutions’, the conventional label
for organizations with a particular remit, such as government, health, education etc.
at the meso-level; and with the relation between structure and culture at the most
macroscopic level.
This stratified ontology of the social order, despite being ever revisable, is
unacceptable to many social theorists. Particular resistance is encountered from
those who claim to have ‘transcended’ the ‘micro–macro problem’ by one form
of conflation or another (Archer 1995, 4–13; Porpora, Chap. 4 in this volume).
Currently it is popular to clear the middle ground and then to use some variant
on ‘actor-based modelling’, that supposedly reveals the macroscopic to be the
aggregate product of the microscopic.3 I have criticised this manoeuvre by ‘flat
3This is the case for Actor-Network theory, most versions of Complexity theory in the social
sciences and it reaches its climacteric in a work such as that of Elliott and Lemert (2006), The
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_4
96 M.S. Archer
ontologists’ before (Archer 2013a, b) and will not repeat it because the rest of this
chapter is my critique.4 The tentative propositions advanced in it do depend on using
all three strata. The argument starts at the macro-level, but with the reminder that
each stratum is activity-dependent on that or those beneath it and that downwards
causation (Lawson 2013) and upwards causation are continuous and intertwined.
5.2 Relations Between Structure and Culture (Macro-level)
In the following Fig. 5.1, the magnified section shows culture and structure in a
mutually morphogenetic relationship. Changes in culture amplify those in structure
and vice versa through positive feedback. This contrasts with the archetypical
picture of early societies where the morphostatic stability of the one reinforced that
of the other. Modernity stands between the two. The question is, where does Late
Modernity take its place? More specifically, has rapid change over the last quarter
of a century brought the social order to resemble Fig. 5.1 more closely? Because
Fig. 5.1 represents the most macro-societal level, it does not deny that there may
CULTURAL DOMAIN 
Cultural conditioning
T1
T3
T4
T2T3
T4
T2
T1
Socio-Cultural interaction
Cultural elaboration
TimeMorphogenetic 
cycles 
STRUCTURAL DOMAIN 
Structural conditioning
Social interaction
Structural elaboration
Fig. 5.1 Morphogenesis: culture and structure are mutually reinforcing (Source: Archer
1988: 304)
New Individualism: The Emotional Costs of Globalization, who leave no room between ‘global
forces’ out there and psychic life ‘in here’. I owe this last example to Mark Carrigan.
4It should be noted is that although working in terms of strata and the relations between them
is, in principle, uncontroversial for Critical Realists, it is nonetheless the case that most realist
social theorists have remained preoccupied with the question of how structural or cultural emergent
properties can exert a causal influence upon agents full stop.
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 97
well be many negative feedback loops working for morphostasis at lower strata.
Nevertheless, the diagram does presume that they are overridden in the societal
outcome.
One implication is that I do not regard ‘society’ as anything other (or more than
or additional to) the relations between ‘structure’ and ‘culture’. It is the resultant
of relations between relations, all of which are constantly activity-dependent.
What particular kind of resultant this is depends upon the dominant relationship
forged between the cultural and the structural orders. Since both components are
necessarily heterogeneous, various relations are possible and would remain so even
supposing untramelled morphogenesis on both ‘sides’. That is why the question of
the ‘good society’ never disappears.
A great deal clearly turns upon how these two macro-components are conceptu-
alized. In an earlier work, ‘culture as a whole is taken to refer to all intelligibilia, that
is, to any item that has the dispositional capacity of being understood by someone’
(Archer 1988: xvi). This means, for example, that the Rosetta Stone, when lost,
buried and used as building material, retained this capacity (to act as a translation
manual). In other words, intelligibilia do not depend upon a current knowing subject.
All such items are lodged in what I used to call the Universal Library but now have
to re-name the Universal Archive. Cultural components are differentiated from the
structural by their primarily ideational constitution whereas structures are primarily
materially based.
Cultures are made up of entia such as beliefs, theories, value systems, mathe-
matical theorems, and novels etc. There are different logical relations between these
constituents themselves, each of which causally influences socio-cultural action and
its outcomes. This is because by taking up a given body of ideas and asserting them,
a group defines its ideal interests. These, as Weber’s ‘switchman’ similie underlined,
are not reducible to that group’s material interests, although related to them.5 In
other words, structural factors play a significant role in what is adopted from the
cultural system and the ends to which it is put.
To uphold a body of ideas is to become involved with the logical relations
between them and with others. This embroils those who assert or assent to any
ideational corpus in a particular situational logic of action. Where there is high
coherence amongst the ideas available, as in early and Ancient societies, the
situational logic is that of protection, meaning ideational innovations are repulsed
and cultural morphostasis is reinforced – altering mainly to increase in density.
In early modernity this logic was one of correction, namely reconciling logical
inconsistencies through syncretic refinement in order to enhance the coherence
and viability of the ideas supported (as in the historically elaborated doctrines
of liberal economic philosophy). Throughout later modernity different materially
5Max Weber, ‘Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet very
frequently the ‘world images’ that have been created by ‘ideas’ have, like switchmen, determined
the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest.’ Cited in H. H. Gerth
and C. Wright Mills (1967), From Max Weber, p. 280.
98 M.S. Archer
based interest groups drew selectively upon the cultural system to legitimate and
advance their ends, unleashing the situational logic of elimination between their
ideas and those of subordinate groups (as in ‘the great age of Ideology’ that
intensified subsequent class conflict).
Finally, during late modernity the rarest historical form of situational logic comes
to prevail because of the exponential addition of new items and novel sources of
ideational variety, vastly exceeding the pool of ideas available in any of the three
preceding forms.6 Precisely because of the newness of these ideas, existing material
interest groups have no (defensive or promotive) positions prises towards them.
This results in the loosest situational logic of opportunity where socio-cultural
action is concerned and, for the first time in history, it is becoming predominant.
The prizes go to those who will explore and can manipulate novel contingent
‘cultural compatibilities’ to their advantage. Which agents and actors do so, the
interests they seek to serve, and their relations with other groups that are similarly
involved are what shapes the precise nature of the outcome. Thus, the ‘contingent
complementarity’ alone is the form of cultural system uncompromisingly related to
morphogenesis.
‘Contingent complementarities’ came to prominencemodel, that triggers acceleration or deceleration.’ (Chap. 3, p. 64). Instead
of the ‘unitary logic’ that Rosa holds to underpin these motors of modernization,
Archer argues that ‘the process responsible for current morphogenesis needs to
accentuate relationality, rather than multi-variate analysis; contestation rather than
co-variance; and malintegration, rather than functional differentiation’ (Chap. 5,
p. 107). Indeed, Maccarini inverts the argument in which the speed of change
starred as the prime mover by maintaining that the proper identification of a
generative mechanism would also account for historical surges, lags and what
could be called the social distribution of speed – as a penalty or a premium.
Thus, if ‘acceleration does not always occur at the same pace in all historical
time spans that is because it is linked to morphogenetic/morphostatic cycles,
3Just as the previous study, Making our Way through the World (2007) Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, showed the intentional rejection of opportunities for social mobility by some.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_5
6 M.S. Archer
whose structural and cultural emergent properties, institutional configurations and
situational logics produce their own temporal structures and rhythms.’ (Chap. 3,
p. 63).
1.2 The Retreat of Morphostasis and the Advance
of Morphogenesis
In a nutshell, this subheading may seem to summarize the state of affairs to which
the advent of a Morphogenic society would conform. However, there are two
important caveats to enter.
The first is a warning against naïve nominalism. Because any social phenomenon
(institution, role, group, belief or practice) continues to bear the same name, it
cannot automatically be regarded as being ‘the same’ and therefore exemplifying
morphostasis and thus providing the continuous stability some regard as indispens-
able in all forms of planning.
Such nominalism is especially tempting with regard to the two old Leviathans:
the market and the state. Capitalism is still (rightly) called capitalism – despite the
ebb and flow of adjectival qualifiers – yet as Marx realized and as Porpora illustrates,
it has to be creatively competitive and thus subject to change and hence is shackled
to both morphostasis and morphogenesis.4 Morphostatically, capitalism continues
to be based upon private property and wages to be defined by market exchange,
even as these alter in form; just as its logic of action remains competitive and its
outcome is unchangingly zero-sum, though now on a world canvas. Furthermore, its
relative durability cannot be attributed to the collective clairvoyance of capitalists
nor to the undoubted processes of marketization, commodification and manipulated
consumerism. Granting that all of these are at work, it remains ‘paradoxically’ the
case that ‘one of the major mechanisms of change is the conservative force of pop-
ular inertia and vested interest (in not downsizing their life-styles) which preserves
the need for continuous change.’ (Porpora, Chap. 4, p. 88). In other words, a central
institution – the economy – is neither purely morphogenetic nor morphostatic.
Since parallel arguments can be made about the state, morphogenesis and
morphostasis can also be at work within major social institutions, just as they can
within and between meso-level organizations, as Lazega (Chap. 8) illustrates for
science laboratories. For those who hold that some morphostatically maintained
stability is necessary for life plans to be formed, these elements may suffice.
However, they are not the only sources, as will be seen.
The second caveat is to alert or remind us that nearly all of the most novel
morphogenetic social innovations will also themselves need to be institutionalized,
to some degree. In other words, ‘new variety’ is not exclusively morphogenetic, it
4In Porpora’s words, ‘Competition as an abstract relation [continually] stands behind competition
as observable behaviour’ (Chap. 4, p. 78).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_4
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_8
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_4
1 Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which Would Morphogenic. . . 7
necessarily spawns certain novel morphostatic elements. This is as true of Wikipedia
with its ‘hundreds of pages of rules now’5 as it is for some of Lazega’s successful
research centres which can ‘hoard’ or monopolize opportunities, and as it was found
to be by one of my young activist interviewees who discovered she could have a
full-time career within Greenpeace. Certainly, this provided sufficient ‘stability’ for
her to formulate a life plan, starting with an internship in the organization. In turn,
this caveat is of great importance when we come to the contributions of Donati,
Hofkirchner and Wight, all of whom venture to discuss macroscopic morphogenesis
and to project it forwards in a form that simultaneously generates an equally new
form of ‘stabilization’.
However, some contributors, who are far from resistant to the intensification
of morphogenesis in late Modernity, are also attracted by the notion of itemizing
‘what was saved from the fire’. In other words, what forms of negative feedback
nevertheless persist? Clearly, this relates to the first caveat because it asks what
has been salvaged from the past and transmitted into the present as resilient and
on-going morphostasis. Were the list to be long and convincing, it would indicate
the state of affairs that I have termed ‘morphogenesis bound’. That is where
the generation of new ‘variety’ is restrained and slowed down by the durability
of past practices, beliefs, and interests, which remain sufficiently attractive to
marshal enough support to protect and to prolong them despite and among the
morphogenetic changes underway.
Conversely, ‘morphogenesis unbound’ would reflect a state of affairs in which
‘variety fostering more variety’ is untrammelled by enduring morphostatic pro-
cesses that moderate the rate, quantity and quality of novel changes produced
by positive feedback. To repeat, were the ‘dead hand of the past’ to lose its
grip, this does not necessarily spell chaos because new forms of stabilization can
emerge in the process of morphogenesis itself, namely that some changes and
new developments are found to be so beneficial that planning is associated with
forwarding them.
Thus, ‘stability’ and ‘stabilization’ must be distinguished and not used inter-
changeably, because the durability of ‘old’ morphostasis is not the sole platform
making planning feasible (and distinguishing it from betting). This will be discussed
further later on.
1.3 Does ‘Stability’ Derive from the Survival
of Morphostatic Elements?
Before examining the list of elements considered to have ‘survived the fire’, it
is worth underlining that no form of ‘morphostasis’ constitutes a default option;
its endurance is just as activity-dependent as any morphogenetic trajectory.
5A verbal statement made by Jimmy Wales at the Plenary meeting of the Pontifical Academy of
Social Sciences, 2012.
8 M.S. Archer
The difference is that whereas agential support for ‘morphostasis’ depends upon the
continuing defence of pre-established vested interests, that for ‘morphogenesis’ is
advanced by the objective interests of agents who are beneficiaries of novel benefits
that have no history, only the promise of a future.6
The most detailed attention to morphogenesis ‘bound’ or ‘unbound’ and their
conjoint activity-dependence is provided by Lazega (Chap. 8) in the setting of
cancer research teams, which in principle are committed to progressive morpho-
genesis and the logic of generating new opportunities (of cure or remission). As
funded research Centres that vary in reputation and with internal hierarchies, where
success is highly dependent upon personal repute in the field, this is a structurally
differentiated domain rather than anin the late twentieth cen-
tury. During the last 25 years the incidence of new cultural items has been
unprecedented and raises the following questions:
– Where did they come from, that is, what accounted for this flurry of innovation?
– How did they gel with the existing structural array of vested interests?
– Who seized upon (some of) this cultural novelty and to what ends?
– Was the resulting state of affairs conducive to nascent Morphogenic Society?
5.2.1 Cultural and Structural Relations in Late Modernity
I will work through this list in a sketchy manner, but I hope in sufficient detail
to establish the basic argument, namely that a considerable transfer and fusion
of ideas took place between Culture and Structure, representing the inception
of a novel synergy between the ideas and the interest groups first involved.
However, the divergent interests of these groups meant that although both were
intensively morphogenetic, they pulled in different directions. Whilst the one sought
to appropriate ideational novelty to reinforce their prior material interests, the other
tried to induce the new social relations inherent in the synergy to promote universal
interests. In turn, the fact that entrenched structural vested interests – although
themselves morphing – have prevailed to date accounts for the ‘mess we are in’,
especially in the developed world. Finally, such intense morphogenesis does not yet
constitute a Morphogenic Society, but neither does it nullify this potential form of
societal transformation.
6Consider this, for example, in relation to our own discipline.
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 99
5.2.1.1 The Cultural Provenance of Novelty
The contributory cultural components were themselves intertwined but space
precludes their proper analysis. Instead of presenting the analytical histories of
their emergence, six factors will simply be listed historically. First, was the proven
military utility during the Second World War of what had previously been ‘pure’
science. This continued to prove itself as applied science during the Cold War
and the Space Race. Second, was educational expansion, which entrenched more
science courses at universities, although the growth in university enrollment was
more closely associated with boosting economic growth in Europe. Third, came
the related proliferation of new ‘hybrid’ disciplines and specialisms (such as
bio-chemistry, astro-physics, genetic engineering). Fourth, was the allied growth
of international professional associations of academic specialists and unenforced
academic migration (from Visiting Professorships to the later Erasmus and Junior
Year abroad programmes). Fifth, were effects upon the media, especially publishing,
not only of academic Journals but also the arrival of paperback books, alongside
the domestic spread of TV in the 1950s. Significantly, television was given an
‘educational mission’ at the beginning, but became more populist by the decade.
Sixth, were the proliferating social movements (for nuclear disarmament, anti-
apartheid, feminism, green environmentalism and sustainable development), ones
that drew upon other available cultural items – often encountered at university –
producing different contributions that augmented counter-culture and were to fuel
the on-going ‘relational contestation’ reshaping the global social order.
All six processes of growth (some of them morphogenetic) pre-dated 1980, at
least in their inception. Some were mutually compatible, but others involved forms
of contestation. Very broadly, culture can be viewed as a novel source of ‘contingent
complementarities’, intensifying as such from the end of the war but peaking from
the 1980s onwards. If that is the case, the crucial questions posed at the end of the
last section concern the relationship between the cluster of institutions that made up
‘social structure’ during the same period – and which of them drew what from the
enlarging cultural pool of ideas.
5.2.1.2 The Structural Precursors of Synergy
After the Second World War, the developed democracies in the European nation
states, their institutional configurations and particularly their economies were
manifestations of enduring contestation based upon ‘constraining contradictions’
and dating back to the (French) political revolution and the (British) industrial
revolution. After centuries of conflict, with elites attempting to limit political
participation in order to be able to regulate the people and the popular classes
seeking to extend their democratic access in order to regulate the elites, the post war
formula of social democracy, citizenship and variants upon the welfare state was a
compromise in which mutual regulation took the revolutionary edge off enduring
class divisions.
100 M.S. Archer
In the post war economies, after two centuries of struggle between entrepreneurs
trying to control wages, hours and conditions and workers responding with Lud-
dism, syndicalism, unionization, strikes and lock-outs, there was still unfinished
business on both sides. Capitalism remained unwaveringly and necessarily com-
petitive, holding itself threatened as national unionized workforces flexed their
organized muscles. After various showdowns, the progressive incorporation of the
unions into political parties and industrial management itself was the compromise
that inserted the ‘neo’ into capitalism.
This compromise derived from their mutual regulation, because in both the
polity and the economy, the state of opposition mattered to the governing elites
and vice versa, just as the state of managerial control mattered to organized labour
and vice versa. That was the case whilst ever the nation state remained the ‘outer
skin’ bounding – at least to a significant extent – a ‘society’. It diminished as
this boundary reduced in importance with increasing ‘globalization’. However,
‘globalization’ is merely a portmanteau term for a great variety of interrelated
changes and is not itself a causal generative mechanism. Instead, and in quest of
a real generative mechanism, it seems important to begin with how pursuit of the
situational logic of competition increasingly promoted multi-national corporations
(for production rather than trade) as a means of sloughing off the compromises
inherent in the ‘constraining contradiction’7 in which the market was embedded.8
The delinking of the economy from the confines of the nation state is vital,
because with it, the source of mutual regulation based on the state of the national
workforce mattering to corporate economic leadership and vice versa largely
disappeared. Because the managerial elite no longer depended upon one (mainly)
national workforce, their concern vanished about whether or not multinational
practices were endorsed without resistance in any particular country, which in the
past had meant accepting conciliatory regulation. Instead, enterprises moved parts
of their operations to employ personnel throughout the world. Thus, corporate
management loosed itself from the constraint that the need for legitimacy had
previously imposed, now that there was no determinate population of indispensable
employees who were also its national legitimators. Correspondingly, economic
power had less and less need to transform itself into authority. If the local workforce
resisted, this was not met by durable concessions but by re-locating operations.
7I have maintained that structural and cultural formations can be described and analysed in the
same terms because the same four types of second-order emergent properties obtain in culture
as in structure, despite their substantive differences (‘necessary complementarities’, ‘necessary
incompatibilities’, ‘contingent incompatibilities’ and ‘contingent complementarities’). Moreover,
these ‘generate parallel forms of situational logics’ (Archer 1995: 217–8).
8It should be noted that I date the rise of multinational enterprises from the late 1960s and 1970s,
which is rather earlier than doesTony Lawson (Chap. 2 in this volume). In consequence, I attach
more importance to their combination with other (cultural) developments in the 1980s.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 101
5.2.1.3 Towards the Synergy That Intensified Morphogenesis
In other words, corporate multinationals had freed themselves to pursue the
situational logic of competition intrinsic to capitalism. However, simultaneously,
such enterprises also had new requirements: for the speediest communication,
for comparative cost/benefit data analysis on productivity, and for administrative
logistics. The same requirements were redoubled in the burgeoning finance market,
especially after the Bretton Woods restrictions on foreign exchange dealing were
abandoned. Both developments paved the way for a new synergy between Structure
and Culture.
A culture that is independently generating an enlarged pool of ‘contingent
complementarities’ also opens up innumerable new opportunities – such is its
situational logic – that may be seized upon by external parties to enhance their
practices. That Information Technology was the source of the transfer of knowledge
between the economy and the universities9 is in line with my argument elsewhere
that technology acts as the indispensable bridge between pure science and concrete
practice (Archer 2000: 154–190). The synergy that developed accentuated only
those cultural items that seemed profitable and were congruent with gaining profit in
the market. All the same, it worked to re-double morphogenesis in both the structural
and cultural domains. To understand and explain how this came about, it is necessary
to examine the institutions involved.
5.3 Institutional Synergy (Meso-level)
The key institutions in question are the neo-capitalist market and university science,
constituting elements of structure and of culture respectively. Historical accounts
are plentiful but space precludes developing them into two analytical histories of
emergence that would fully account for their symbiosis in the last quarter of a
century. Synergy is generally defined as things working together to produce a result
not independently obtainable, deriving directly from the Greek ‘synergia’. However,
in the present argument it does not carry the frequent connotation of the results being
‘co-operative effects’; most of the relevant actors and agents were too self-interested
for that. Nevertheless, the two became increasingly symbiotic. This is novel because
their interrelationship was the exception rather than the rule until the last decades of
the twentieth century.
In general, the state (or public) educational systems emerging in the developed
world (Archer 1979 [2013]) were inhospitable to vocal industrial demands for
technical training. For example, the highly centralized French system consistently
privileged State requirements, confining science to certain Grandes Ecoles. It sought
to restrict any vocational instruction to the primary level, and later intellectualised
9Michael J. Mulkay (1972) recounts the growth of scientific knowledge exclusively in terms of
developments within the universities.
102 M.S. Archer
‘special education’, then ‘modern studies’ and again the technical baccalauréat,
after its creation in 1946. As Antoine Prost epitomised the situation in 1967: ‘French
schooling disdains to train the producer. Its rationalism turns into intellectualism’
(1968: 340 my trans.). In Bourdieu’s words, students were regarded ‘as apprentice
professors and not as professional apprentices’ (1964 my trans.).
Similarly, in the decentralized English system, burgeoning forms of technical
instruction were accommodated by confining them to lower, inferior and generally
terminal levels of schooling. The 1918 Act, which confirmed the hegemony of the
academic Grammar School, restricted technical schools to the elementary level,
an inferior status that the 1944 Act confirmed. Consequently, historians have
maintained that the science upon which the industrial revolution was based was
available 100 years earlier but its application waited upon self-trained inventors with
practical experience (such as Watt, Crompton and Arkwright) to translate it into the
technology of the mill and factory (Jewkes et al. 1969). Eiffel and Brunel were the
exceptions, both being civil engineers who were personally intrigued by technical
challenges.
Thus, neither in France nor England did a strong practical, real or technical
definition of instruction develop because it was never a priority of the most
powerful interest groups contesting educational control, as was also the case in
most of Europe. Pure science attained a place in universities towards the end of
the nineteenth century, but applied science gained no foothold in higher education
from which it could act as its practical translator, by demonstrating its practical
advantages through introducing new industrial technology.
The significant exceptions were Federal states (Germany, whose Technische
Hochschule formed part of the university sector, and Switzerland’s two Polytech-
niques, later to contribute in CERN’s development of the World Wide Web). The
biggest exception of all was obviously the U.S. Some latter day systems theorists
have associated Federalism with subsidiarity as a mode of institutional governance
‘between anarchy and Leviathan’, benefitting ‘functioning social units’ by avoiding
both the lack of coordination promoted by decentralization and the over-control
of centralization (Wilke 2003). Leaving aside the question of its equation with
subsidiarity, the relative autonomy that federalism gave to university development
and the readier incorporation of the sciences into universities undoubtedly played a
part in the ‘social digitalization’10 that eventually advanced societal morphogenesis.
What distinguished this recent 25 year development from the 250 year ‘slow
movement’(Forbes 1958: 148) of the Industrial Revolution?
5.3.1 How (Morphogenetic) Synergy Came About
By definition, synergy involves at least two parties and their contributions. In turn,
this entails accounting for the participants, their motives and their interactions as
10I term I use to avoid committing to the Information Age or Knowledge society.
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 103
well as their outcomes. Castells’ summary stands as a valid generalization: ‘What
characterizes the current technological revolution is not the centrality of knowledge
and information, but the application of such knowledge and information : : : in a
cumulative feedback loop between innovation and the uses of innovation’ (2010
[2000]: 31 my italics). However, his actualist account is a painstaking empirical
description of the process and its results rather than an identification of its generative
mechanism.
My argument hinges on the fact that in the beginning, industry was not a key
player. The foundations of the ‘digital revolution’ – micro-electronics, computers
and telecommunications – were first laid in the U.S. between the military and
university science, with the Second World War as their midwife and the Cold
War as nanny. The serious kick-start was the Russian launch of the Sputnik in
1957, prompting the US Defense Department’s ARPA (Advanced Research Projects
Agency) to enter the communications field and the development of the first computer
network in 1969 (Abbate 1999). Significantly, its first four nodes were established at
universities, three of them in California. In turn, this enabled ‘establishment science’
and ‘countercultural innovation’ (Himannen 2001) to vaunt the relative autonomy of
scientific culture for different reasons: what it had delivered for national security and
what it could supply to civil society. Significantly, when CERN produced the World
Wide Web (1990), it was based not on ARPA’s military funding and specifications
but on the ‘hacker’s model’ of horizontal informational links, althoughagain its first
sites were in scientific Research Centres.11
The Silicon Valley story (sub-titled ‘Where new industry married new science’)
does not need retelling (Rogers and Larsen 1984; Malone 1985). The locale owed its
origins to Stanford University’s Industrial Park (1951), to which micro-electronics
firms were attracted by the growing pool of technical skills available and by the
ready collaboration of those such as Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and
other drop-outs inventing in garages because without capital to form companies.
However, the narrative of the 1970s needs supplementing by an analytical account
of Silicon synergy that involves more than happenstance and magnetism. Castells
may be descriptively correct in concluding that it was ‘by this interface between
macro-research programs and large markets developed by the state, on the one hand,
and decentralized innovation stimulated by a culture of technological creativity
and role models of fast personal success, on the other hand, that new information
technologies came to blossom’ (2010: 69), but the generative mechanism is still
missing.
‘Working together’ as a definition of synergy is not sufficiently precise. People
and organizations can do so for wildly different reasons. Because doing so freely is
not entailed, even colonization could qualify. So too could alliances of convenience
against a third party (e.g. electoral coalitions), the division of labour (e.g. Adam
11Castells writes: ‘In fact, it seems that the emergence of a new technological system in the 1970s
must be traced to the autonomous dynamics of technological discovery and diffusion, including
synergistic effects between various key technologies.’ (2010: 59–60).
104 M.S. Archer
Smith’s pin-makers) or the market exchange of equivalents, because all conform
to producing a result independently unobtainable by the parties involved. Corning’s
‘Synergism Hypothesis’ suffers from being even broader, because synergistic effects
(largely in the animal world) may ‘arise from linear or additive phenomena. Larger
size, frequently the result of an aggregation of similar units, may provide a collective
advantage’ (1998: 4).
To adduce a generative mechanism is to narrow down synergy to that sub-
section of ‘working together’ that gives rise to relatively durable relational emergent
properties. It is only if these are real emergents, yielding objective benefits to both
parties (not necessarily equally or symmetrically) and which are believed by both
to be unattainable in any other way (or less advantageously under their current
circumstances), that the relations involved have some durability rather than being
ephemeral matters of convenience. It is not essential that the parties have mutual
respect or forge good collective relations. What is essential is that both parties orient
themselves to the relational properties (goods or evils) that they generate together.
The division of labour is a good illustration: work became more monotonous and
stultifying (as Adam Smith was aware),12 but the increased productivity and profits
benefitted factory owners and enabled those with ‘only their labour power to sell’ to
at least be able to sell it – and to start thinking about how to negotiate wage increases
as profitability grew. In other words, there are both ontological and epistemological
conditions attaching to relational generative mechanisms in the social order.
Thus, more is involved here than a simple universal formula such as ‘scientific
innovation requires capitalization and industry needs new marketable ideas’. Firstly,
neither may be met (most of the inventions advancing the industrial revolution were
bought cheap leaving their inventors to die poor) and secondly, neither may be true
(in the 1960s and early 1970s industry was extending its multi-national markets,
cutting its unit labour costs, gaining cheaper raw materials in a boom period, none
of which depended upon new scientific ideas) (Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et
d’Informations Internationales 1992).
The relations constituting generative mechanisms must be internal or necessary
ones. In the present case of ‘working together’, no necessity attaches to the
contingencies of ‘garage geeks seeking big bucks’ and ‘voracious corporate bosses
spotting winners’. In any case, many of the former failed as did many of the latter
(recall the dot.com boom and then doom). In fact, the necessary relations in question
are so simple in this case that they are easy to miss and tempting to obfuscate:
internal relations turned upon the need for market enterprises to be competitive and
for ‘digital science’ to gain diffusion. This way of putting it also allows the two
‘parties’ to have divergent interests and goals whilst still working in synergy; just
like the pin-makers and the owner of the pin factory.
12Adam Smith (1904), ‘The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations,
of which the effects are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same : : : generally becomes
as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.’ Wealth of Nations, (Cannan
ed.), vol 2, bk 5, ch. 1, p. 267.
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 105
5.3.2 The Divergent Interests Involved in Synergy
Collaboration, rather than co-operation or co-ordination, is required if the two
parties pursue their own agendas; their endorsement of collective goals is far
from essential for synergy and was not the case here. On the one hand, for-
profit enterprises are by definition in zero-sum competition with one another and
their global expansion was a competitive manoeuvre, one aided by the business-
led move for financial deregulation that succeeded in the early 1970s. There is
nothing novel in market history about maintaining, for instance, that if one old-
established electronics corporation decided to invest heavily in micro-electronics,
others are induced to do so in order not to be overtaken (and many who held back
did go under). With corporate amalgamation attaining global proportions, when IT
began to develop its civilian potential its adoption or non-adoption was no longer a
competitive option.
Conversely, new hardware and software developments by engineers and scientists
had not only made access to communication and information unimaginably faster,
but they had pulled off the trick of turning something abundant, whose value does
not diminish with use, into a temporarily scarce commodity. This form of scarcity
vanished as firms equipped and re-equipped their new computing departments and
pioneered ingenious ways in which they could be profitably used in ‘information
mining’ itself. However, digital science and the fast-turnover in software had its
own requirement – diffusion. Otherwise, there would be no next funding grant or
venture capital, meaning the innovation could stay in the garage and the parental
loan remain unpaid. The important point is not about geeks rushing to found small
companies without a qualm about joining neo-capitalism, which plenty did. It is
rather that the need for diffusion was general, and equally strong amongst opponents
of the for-profit market.
Diffusion costs, it has overheads and these become very large if the proponent,
for example, rejects advertising revenue, and frighteningly large the more successful
it becomes. Here is Jimmy Wales today (21.11.2012), trying to raise AC10 per capita
user per year, sufficient to maintain Wikipedia. That represents AC 540 million of
overheads last year on the figures given. For those seeking to advance the cyber-
commons against the for-profit sector and to foster a civil economy based on
crowdsourcing, collaboration with ‘the enemy’ was inevitable. For example, on
the P2P (peer to peer) web site, most videos and audios have to be accessed via
Google and its You Tube subsidiary. Here is Michel Bauwens, who has battled with
diffusion’s overheads from the start, counselling:
Use the existing infrastructures for immaterialexchange for personal and social
autonomy
We started by creating an infrastructure that allowed for peer to peer communication. Out
of this striving came the internet and its end to end principle, web 2.0 and its possibilities
for participation, and social media allowing for intense relational interaction, and tools such
as wikis which allow for the collaborative construction of knowledge.
106 M.S. Archer
The creation of this infrastructure was a combination of efforts of civil society forces,
governments and public funding, and private R&D and commercial deployments. It’s
an imperfect world full of governmental control, corporate platforms, but also many
capabilities for p2p interaction that did not exist before : : : They have become civilisational
achievements that are just as necessary for p2p-commoners [as for] for the powers that be
(accessed 21.11.2012).
The generative mechanism of late modernity is thus constituted by market
competition and the diffusion of applied science needing to ‘work together’. The
internal effects were profoundly morphogenetic for both elements, fostering further
synergy. Their collaboration transformed the market itself in the developed world,
facilitating further multinational advances. As their target sites quickly adopted and
became highly proficient in using the same digital science, international market
competition accelerated with India, China and Brazil and other counties that caught
up fast. These countries turned the game plan of multinational trade through 180ı,
given their lower production costs.
In turn, this precipitated the surge of finance capitalism in the West, which was
even more dependent upon information technology. After all, London had been a
‘financial capital’ since the end of the nineteenth century but grew more in the
last decade than during the rest of the twentieth century. The ‘Roaring nineties’
(Stiglitz 2005) not only witnessed the desertion of the real economy (epitomized
by the rust belt of Detroit and the wasteland of the British West Midlands), but the
intensification of entirely speculative investment.
The generative mechanism continued to be robustly supported by further ‘digital
science’ for harvesting and analyzing informational abundance. The development of
social interaction sites was probably the least technically demanding but was hugely
consequential because of its fast and democratic appeal. Effectively, it harnessed
‘free’ global communication to form a virtual gesellschaft for ‘all those lonely
people’, who came from everywhere, were going anywhere or getting nowhere.
Yet, without the advertising revenue, these might have remained the ‘boys’ toys’
of Harvard students. One key point is that the ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ of Mark
Zuckerberg and his ilk was not nurtured by the market but in university. The
other is the inflated price at which Facebook was floated on the stock exchange.
Although this immediately slumped, it was not another dot.com disaster because it
did offer an asset – if only targeted advertising space – to economic competitors.
Diffusion was ensured when corporate competitors became convinced that it would
be damaging not to be ‘seen on f’ and, to some, that here were billions of volunteers
freely offering themselves for commercial ‘data mining’. Undoubtedly, many young
people with small businesses were playing his own game back at its founder – but
this is one way that synergy spreads.
Certainly, those highly proficient in IT were and remain divided, but that does not
prevent the take up of an opportunity by others when it is out in the open. Opposition
grew from protagonists of the cyber-Commons, of General Licensing, of Openflows
etc. who operate their own sites. However, the point is that they were also part and
parcel of the same synergistic and morphogenetic changes, assuming a relationship
similar to that of the early socialists to factory production. Indeed, the co-operative
movement has been recreated in virtual reality.
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 107
I have restricted myself to a perfunctory account of the rapid progress of this
form of synergy and its internal transformations, all of which depended upon the
swift succession of positive feedback cycles and all of which led to new variety
fostering further variety. Yet, it is necessary to secure the generative mechanism
itself, because several have suggested that an accelerated pace of change alone,
‘driven by the logic of acceleration’ is all that is needed to account for the above
(Rosa 2003). Hartmut Rosa maintains that ‘we should apply the term “acceleration
society” to a society if, and only if, technological acceleration and the growing
scarcity of time (i.e. an acceleration of the “pace of life”) occur simultaneously,
i.e. if growth rates outgrow acceleration rates’ (p. 10). However, firstly, talking
about growth should strictly refer to the output of more of the same, for growth
is not morphogenesis. Yet, the two are elided: ‘technological acceleration is prone
to go hand in hand with the acceleration of change in the form of changing social
structures or patterns’. However, these latter changes are not matters of growth.
Furthermore, if acceleration in one domain is associated with acceleration in
another, it does not follow from this correlation that (a) acceleration is an indepen-
dent variable, or (b) that we do not need to ask for the causes of acceleration itself.
However, when Rosa does the latter, and looks for the ‘driving forces of acceleration
beyond the feedback cycle itself’, he finds ‘three (analytically independent) primary
factors that can be identified as the external “key-accelerators”’ (p. 11). These are
detailed as the ‘economic motor’ (capitalism’s need to increase production (growth)
as well as productivity (output per unit time); the ‘cultural motor’ (more of the
options on offer can be experienced the faster we live); and the ‘structural motor’
(intensified functional differentiation increases both complexity and contingency, so
selecting between options spells accelerated processing). Hence, three ‘variables’
are held responsible for ‘acceleration’, begging the question about the relationship
between the three factors held responsible for it. We need to know how they work
together not that they work simultaneously.
Instead, Rosa concludes with the statement that ‘social acceleration reveals the
unitary logic underlying all four dimensions of modernization’ (p. 27). Because I
disagree that there is a ‘unitary logic’ – maintaining exactly the opposite – I want to
examine further the consequences of the generative mechanism I am advancing.
Because of regarding the social order as a relationally contested organization
rather than a self-governing or self-organizing one, the process responsible for
current social morphogenesis needs to accentuate relationality, rather than multi-
variate analysis; contestation rather than co-variance; and malintegration, rather
than functional differentiation in the organization of Late modernity.
5.3.3 Effects on Other Social Institutions
The pre-eminence of politics was a dominant feature of modernity, whereas in Late
modernity, ‘the nation-state may have crossed the zenith of its power to define
the rules of the game – in relation not only to the economic subsystem but to
108 M.S. Archer
every subsystem in society’ (Wilke 2013: 207). The reason is the development of
transnational decision-making bodies such as the EU; one consequence being that
turn-out in national elections plummets as voters recognize that the nation state is
not the prime seat of policy making. However, although national governments have
indeed lost power, they retain more than enough to influence subsystems and to have
had an impact on the global economy.
The macro-level synergy discussed in the last section represented two different
logics of action (of structural competition and of cultural opportunity) that pulled
in two different directions. In theory,governments could have fulfilled their
Hobbesian role of providing public protection by different responses to the two.
They could have behaved morphostatically towards one, thus dampening it, and
morphogenetically towards the other, thus amplifying it. They had a choice of siding
with either competition or opportunity, so why did polities throughout the developed
world consistently throw in their lot with the economy and generalize competition
to every social institution accessible to their control? Moreover, if governments did
so, why did opposition parties not do the opposite?
On the one hand, the promise of plenty, when translated into national affluence,
also solves plenty of political problems, particularly when European manufacturing
had already lost its global hegemony. States in the developed world buttressed the
banking sector, positively through accepting rising national debt and negatively
by non-intervention. They boosted the retail market by expanding employment in
public administration and services, thus increasing consumer spending, especially
as public services became the main employers in geographical areas whose real
economies had declined fastest. They also began dismantling the Welfare State, with
public-private ‘partnerships’ subtracting from the costs to central government.
On the other hand, to have endorsed the logic of opportunity would have
entailed an innovative coordination of flexible openings (new forms of training,
sponsorship of novel endeavors, investment in community projects, encouraging
experimentation with alternative currencies etc.) all without precedent, rule book or
guarantee of practical or political success. Seeking the political authority to balance
encouragement and openness with revision and correction in what Merton (1973)
termed a framework of ‘organized skepticism’ is not that on which most career
politicians would stake their futures or see as an electoral clarion call. Yet there was
no returning to government based on Luhmann’s (1982) formula where normatively
institutionalized structures secure the complementarity of expectations.
The collusion between the state and the market throughout the developed world
spelt political centrism since the main priority of governments became securing
their countries within the global economy. Political centrism displaced the previous
oscillation between ‘lib’/‘lab’ politics (Donati 1983, 1991; Donati and Colozzi
2006): in part because of the ‘the internalization of a prevalent, neo-liberal, ‘logic
of no alternative’, by social democratic actors themselves’ (Bailey 2009: 16), given
the transition to a service-based economy, following shrinkage of the traditional
working class and leaving insufficient voters seeking to challenge market operations
(Kitschelt 1994). In equal part, it was because the centre-right had gained its main
economic point and now had to try to establish its electoral base amongst the service
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 109
classes, dubbed with names such as ‘middle England’. Politics was now about daily
tactics rather than strategic differences and governments were more responsive to
scandals than to the pursuit of policy.
Yet politics without normativity is in trouble. There is neither the ‘complemen-
tarity of expectations’ (i.e. a general cultural consensus on core values) nor the
institutionalization of opposed expectations, making ‘who governs’ of concern to
national populations and stimulating their political participation. It is in this context
that formal democracies concluded their unholy alliance with the press and mass
media. Not as in the post-war period, with particular newspapers overtly supporting
one party or another, but by consorting with the popular press, which was more than
willing to play at the ‘politics of personalities’; and such personalization distracted
from broader socio-economic issues.
Distraction became the media’s mission, with its creation of ‘celebrities’ and its
collusion with them about disclosures of their ‘private’ lives. As per capita viewing
hours for television came close to equaling those of the statutory working week,
there was no need for George Orwell’s picture in 1984 of the coercive dispensing of
‘trank’ (tranquilizer), it was consumed voluntarily. With media-made ‘icons’ came
their life styles, representing a normalization of practices that would have affronted
the post-war electorate. The message was that normatively anything goes so long
as it is verbalized with political correctitude. Distraction is a huge political bonus,
enabling parties to get on with ‘business as usual’, despite a shrinking electoral
mandate.13
Simultaneously, political centrism transferred the ‘logic of competition’ to those
social institutions remaining most dependent upon government funding: education,
health, welfare, public transport and even sport, through the blanket imposition
of performance indicators, League Tables, Evaluation and ranked Assessment
criteria.14 Government became governance by bureaucratic regulation with the
proliferation of Regulators for public utilities, educational inspection, energy and
so forth. Each new scandal provoked the same response: re-regulate the failing
Regulators, but don’t blame us.
5.4 The Diffusion of Opportunity (Micro-level)
In all of this, what has happened to the potential for Morphogenic society and its
situational logic of opportunity? The above paragraphs, accentuating the increased
influence and scope of the neo-liberal situational logic of competition, also contain
the most common representation of the current state of affairs and reinforce the
13Note the disproportionate attention given to individual murders and abductions by ‘respectable’
media channels (BBC Radio 4 News), serving much the same purpose of public distraction as the
first gruesome news-sheets in the nineteenth century.
14The irony is that those least dependent upon state funding were so because they had embraced
the market.
110 M.S. Archer
message that ‘there is no alternative’ for the social order. Yet, there is another
side to the story precisely because the generative mechanism continues to promote
synergy, despite it serving two ultimately incongruent ends. It is the part that TINA’s
supporters would prefer to edit out.
This concerns the other face of the generative mechanism; the quest for diffusion
by innovators, who continue to come from the universities, and some of whom
are decidedly counter-cultural. The TINA story is a ‘top-down’ narrative dealing
with (often incomprehensible) doings in high places. Conversely, the dynamics
of ‘diffusion’ require a ‘bottom-up’ account. This resonates with our quotidian
experiences – ones shared with ordinary lay agents – that the contexts of action are
shifting daily under our feet and their taken-for-grantedness has been made obsolete,
along with habitual or routine action.
It is this that accounts for the ‘Reflexive Imperative’, namely that agency in
general has to think (individually and collectively) about its ‘concerns’ in relation
to its shifting social contexts and vice versa, in order to deliberate reflexively about
courses of action likely to result in a satisfying modus vivendi (Archer 2012). Their
own concerns are the only compass agents have.
5.4.1 The Positive Role of Meta-reflexivity and Countervailing
Restraints
Without reference to reflexivity we cannot account for what different people do
when faced with contextual constraints and enablements, because all those in the
same position do not do the same thing (Archer 2003: Chap. 4). Micro-level
reflexivity forms the crucial agential link with the macroscopic and meso-level
changes in structure and culture examined above as constituting the generative
mechanism of change in late modernity. The results of this mechanism also reshape
the context for the formation of reflexivity in young subjects, the environment
in which they will live and work, and try variously to evade, to extend or to
subvert.It is a context that now precludes ‘socialization’ being a process of
‘internalization’ (given the demise of consensual normativity and its replacement
by ‘mixed messages’) or of acquiring a dispositional habitus that fosters positional
reproduction (given the proliferation of novel positions newly becoming available)
(Archer 2012: Chap. 3).
In terms of the generative mechanism put forward here, the importance attached
to reflexivity contrasts with ‘acceleration theory’ whose advocates presume ‘rapid
change’ is antipathetic to its exercise, leading instead to agential impotence,
disorientation and an inability to make life plans. The readiest way of explaining
this disaccord is that in the phrase ‘the rapidity of change’, those like Rosa attend to
its speed alone, whereas I accentuate not only its rapidity but also the new variety
constitutive of social change in late modernity. Rapidity plus variety represents an
entirely new agential context: the morphogenesis of neo-capitalism does not. Even
in its most speculative excesses, the finance market both encourages and rewards
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 111
the same ‘Autonomous reflexive’ mode in which agents approximate to competitive
Rational Actors pursing their individual preference schedules. The internships
through which they are recruited represent ‘speculation’ as a courageous adventure
that is rewarded accordingly; unpredictability certainly means you can lose more,
but also gain much more, and no recruitment crisis hangs over the banking sector.
However, new variety (novel jobs, skills, openings) – especially those opportu-
nities now introduced through the synergy of the generative mechanism advanced –
present choices for which neither natal backgrounds nor formal education (strug-
gling to keep up) can prepare. The young confront ‘contextual incongruity’ between
their background and their foreground, and that invites critical scrutiny of both.
For subjects already disengaged from their families (in response to the tensions
and mixed messages experienced) the same scrutiny is turned on the opportunities
available. This is the cradle of Meta-reflexivity; of the practice by young subjects
of surveying all accessible openings in the light of their nascent concerns and
considering the things that matter to them in relation to what they can do about
them. This makes them both self-critics and socially critical.
In other words, the dominant mode of reflexivity practised has a history (Archer
2007: Chap. 1). The Reflexive Imperative entails a change in modality, not simply
an extension or intensification of reflexive practice. One key feature of the rise of
Meta-reflexivity is that its young educated practitioners are critics of both market
and state, preferring to make use of the new occupational opportunities becoming
increasingly available in civil society, the civil economy and the Third Sector in
general. As such, they provide aggregate reinforcement for the initiatives of the
‘diffusionists’, driving them forward through positive reinforcement. Moreover, this
reinforcement does not derive from the aggregation of individual actions alone.
Meta-reflexives are also those most drawn into social movements – for justice,
peace, environmental issues, regeneration of local areas and global support for
migrant humanity – in which collective reflexivity can develop through orientation
to the relational goods already generated but having a long way to go to attain the
Common Good. Conversely, it is the Autonomous reflexives who are ‘minimalist
citizens’ (Archer 2007: Chap. 5), individualists with little political involvement,
non-participants in social movements and people trusting in corporate enterprise
to exercise corporate social responsibility.
If this were all there was to the picture – and given that Autonomous and Meta-
reflexives seem to be proportionately at parity15 – it would appear that the two
parties to the generative mechanism attract roughly similar support and therefore
that societal transition will take time and is not guaranteed. Yet, the canvas is even
more complicated in two respects. Firstly, ‘Communicative reflexivity’, in which
decision-making is shared with ‘similars and familiars’, gives every indication of
shrinking as mobility of all kinds reduces the ‘contextual continuity’ necessary
for its development and practice. In turn, the substantial contribution it made to
15This statements is based upon such a small and non-representative sample (Archer 2012) that it
requires replication.
112 M.S. Archer
social integration in the relatively recent past diminishes, thus augmenting one of
the major problems of late modernity. Secondly, ‘Fractured reflexivity’, disabling
subjects from devising purposeful courses of action, augments the ranks of ‘passive
agents’, suffering only distress and disorientation in their internal conversations.
Passive agency – those to whom things happen rather than them exercising
any governance in their own lives – would, if its proportions increase, be a major
countervailing influence against fast and decisive social transformation. Indeed, the
proliferation of marketized social media and apps for mobiles seem to infiltrate
the time/space available for the uninhibited practice of reflexivity. In that case, a
growing tract of the population would become expressive rather than reflexive, and
self-preoccupied without possessing self-identity. If this phenomenon is increasing,
it re-poses one of the problems generic to the advent of a Morphogenic social
formation, namely how to integrate variety as inclusive diversity.
5.4.2 The Diffusionists’ Achievements and the Crisis
of Market and State
The interplay between Meta-reflexives and the opportunities becoming available
in organizations at the meso-level are mutually reinforcing. Hence the need for
a quick overview of the latter, or what Hofkirchner calls the ‘Commons’. The
‘diffusionists’ best known achievement is Wikipedia, launched as an open source
in 2001 and based upon revisable voluntary contributions. Its policy has been to
refuse advertising because contradictory to impartiality. It has therefore successfully
withstood the for-profit market (although the Wikidata Project is partly funded
by Google). Wikipedia is run on a ‘bottom-up self-direction’ policy and offers
23 million articles in 285 languages that are freely useable. In 2005, Nature
conducted a comparative peer review of test articles appearing in Wikipedia and
the Encyclopedia Britannica, concluding that they were of comparable accuracy.
In support of the ‘commons’ movement, there was a 24 h shutdown protesting
against two pieces of US legislation in 2012: the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ and the
‘Protect IP Act’. The cultural ‘wing’ of the generative mechanism was becoming
more oppositional towards the barriers impeding open Opportunity.
One barrier that could not be imposed concerned the global diffusion, imitation
and adaptation of projects that successfully implemented the situational logic of
opportunity and turned their backs upon competition. Specifically, these are ones
that valorise alternative currencies and operate in terms of socially useful-value
rather than exchange value. For example, Food Banks (as well as Solidarity and
Time Banks) were significant in Italy, where legislation – the ‘Good Samaritan
Act’ – was passed in their support (Vittadini 2008), as it had been in the USA.
There are now more than 300 in Britain and are making progress in Eastern Europe
and Latin America. Free-Cycle, mainly of domestic goods, clothing and tools have
spread to the small towns of Europe. Charity shops take advantage of reduced rents
on High Streets where commercial enterprises have failed. Micro-credit, pioneered
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 113
by the Grameen Bank has migrated to the developed world, enabling the poorer to
avoid commercial banking and ‘loan sharks’ alike. There are many other examples,
but all sharea second common denominator: that of re-building social integration
and re-animating local neighborhoods (Donati and Colozzi 2007).
Lest these instances appear small scale, the Ecoislands project is global. Starting
from the Isle of Wight in Britain, the island plans to become self-sustainable
in renewable energy by 2020 and fully sustainable by 2030 through signing the
Ecoislands Accord (2012). In 2012 it held its first Global summit under the banner of
‘saving our world one island at a time’ (2012). Undeniably, the project is dependent
on pump-priming support from the market and state, which raises problems about
its independence. However, what has changed here is that the protagonists of
Opportunity have led and the old Leviathans have followed, without being able to
insert competition with its winners and losers.
More ambitiously, new agencies in numerous countries such as Brazil are
attempting to create financial markets for social enterprise as initiatives in horizontal
subsidiarity. Such alternative investment markets envisage a stock exchange for non-
profit social enterprises and community interest companies using shares and debt
bonds as their financial instruments. In principle, these are not competing as high
yield investments. On the contrary, they are an opportunity for gratuitousness where
the shareholder, unlike the regular contributor to a Charity, retains a say, a vote and
a real involvement. However, whilst adopted in theory, these are not even the aims
of the proposed British Social Stock Exchange, which seeks to sign up for-profit
enterprises and overtly has an eye to the pension funds as investors.16
Such ‘colonization’ by market and state is indisputable. The market turns
many activities that have been successfully pioneered by voluntary initiative into
business ventures (as in chains of Care Homes), floated on the stock market. This
makes them party to the ‘logic of competition’. Similarly, ‘green’ and ‘organic’
have been profitably assimilated into marketing strategies. Attempts to create the
‘cyber commons’ through Peer2Peer exchanges were promptly appropriated by
Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams 2008) as a method for corporations to harvest
technical solutions for free – euphemistically called ‘dispersed production’. The
trick consists in taking over voluntary innovations (micro-credit, for example) and
simply turning them into for-profit. In direct parallel, the state absorbs voluntary
initiatives (in schooling, health, mental care or palliative medicine), not only passing
on some of the bill to them, at least for start-up costs, but also then throttling
voluntary action with bureaucratic regulation.17
16The proposed Social Stock Exchange UK is defined as for-profit and indicates ‘colonization’
from the time of its conception: ‘The Big Society Investment Fund was set up by the Big Lottery
Fund under the Dormant Accounts Act to make early investments prior to the establishment of Big
Society Capital (previously known as the Big Society Bank)’ (2012).
17Trivial but telling, my younger son and his wife had to undergo a ‘home inspection’ before being
allowed to rescue a mature cat with three legs.
114 M.S. Archer
As a response, counter-institutionalization is understandable. It consists in
performing the trick the other way round. Charities become charitable enterprises,
losing their relational character in the process. This was already presaged several
decades ago by the commercialized ‘plate dinner’, where the self-promotional
photo-call became the chief motive. More recently, employing commercial fund-
raisers.com has become standard (competitive) practice as has media promotion,
employment of lobbyists and ‘celebrity’ representation.
5.5 Conclusion
Where does this leave the three questions that were posed at the start of this
chapter? The generative mechanism discussed seems sufficiently robust to account
for the experience of disjunctions in daily life and the absence of shared normative
guidelines for action. The interplay between economic competition and techno-
logical diffusion has fuelled intensified morphogenesis throughout the gamut of
social institutions. Simultaneously it augmented the cultural system by the rapid
addition of new items, thus extending the range of ‘contingent complementarities’
available for exploration. Hence, the two constituents of the generative mechanism
have themselves undergone morphogenesis and their synergy has extended this to
the rest of the social order through its knock-on and knock-out effects.
Although these do potentially contain the seeds of a new social formation, they
do not yet announce the advent of Morphogenic society. This is because, despite
these two crucial parts of ‘structure’ and of ‘culture’ both being forces promoting
morphogenetic change, nevertheless, the difference between their situational logics
of action means that they pull or steer in different societal directions. The for-
profit market sector would basically extend the logic of competition throughout
the social order and neo-liberalism has introduced the principles of marketization,
commodification and productivity in such incongruent domains as hospitals, schools
or universities. Performance indicators are generic bureaucratic expressions of the
situational logic of competition. Conversely, the scientific community’s logic of
opportunity is hostile to bureaucratic regulation and restricted access; it fosters
spin-off groups pursuing their own agendas and does not evaluate breakthroughs
by reference to economic profitability. Some also feel driven to engage in cyber
whistle-blowing as an effective form of opposition, including its institutionalization
in Wikileaks.
At this point, it would be possible to conclude that there are two sources of mor-
phogenesis whose aggregate effect is to make the social order more morphogenetic.
However, this would be to drift into a version of the multi-variate ‘acceleration’
theory already examined. Moreover, Morphogenic society, which is a qualitative
notion, cannot simply be defined by the quantitative sum of occurrent changes
deriving from positive feedback – always supposing that these could be measured.
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 115
Instead, it is crucial to accentuate that the two situational logics of action are in
mutual opposition. If either had supreme hegemony over the state of social affairs,
the two would result in very different social orders. In fact, neither is in that position;
rather, they co-exist, as do the forms of morphogenetic change they introduce. This
is the contemporary manifestation of the social as a relationally contested order.
However, the generative mechanism of ‘(structured) competition’ in synergy with
‘(cultural) diffusion’ does not result in the chaos of uncontrolled contingency. It is
empiricism that cannot resist the temptation of interpreting modernity’s ‘mess’ in
that way. In fact, the generative mechanism of ‘competition-diffusion’ is extremely
morphogenetic, but what it does is to moderate the effects of both situational logics
of action.
On the one hand, unbridled economic competition is hampered by the ‘dif-
fusionists’ steady breaching of intellectual property rights, on which the former
depends, by their expansion of the cyber-commons, by their facilitating new social
movements promoting socially useful-value over exchange value, and by them
articulating the values for harnessing new opportunities to the common good rather
than embroiling them in the zero-sum logic of competition. On the other hand,
‘diffusionism’ is restrained by the equally steady colonization of the initiatives it
has promoted and their incorporation into the for-profit sector. The latter currently
blocks the way towards Morphogenic society; simultaneously, the former makes a
return to ‘business as usual’ increasingly difficult after the economic crisis provoked
by competitive excess.
The internal relations of dependency between the two parties do notindicate
imminent social transformation. The most likely scenario in the immediate future
is that we will have to live with gradualism and even encourage it. Terms and
practices such as ‘corporate social responsibility’ and ‘social enterprise’ have been
placed on the agenda of competitive and for-profit enterprises, which are now aware
they will be held to account. Cyber-diffusion is adding new variety to the Third,
voluntary or social-private sector and fostering its expansion, diversification and
new aspirations for effecting global transformation. Although it is undoubtedly
subject to colonization and incorporation, it can nevertheless exert some influence
from within and respond with further new initiatives from without. This conclusion
seems in broad agreement with Donati’s (Chap. 7 in this volume), namely that what
he terms the ‘state/market binomial’ is already giving way to a triadic relationship
between state-market-and-Third sector, transforming both the dynamics between
them and their social outcomes.
Perhaps we should look at ‘diffusionist’ agencies as the research and develop-
ment department for a future civil society and civil economy. Their interim task is to
make the ‘logic of opportunity’ more wide-reaching within economic activity and
to demonstrate that incremental increases in socially useful value and augmentation
of the commons are contributions to the common good that are genuinely beneficial
to all – thus illustrating that win-win outcomes are realistic goals for the social
order. That alone grounds optimism about gradualism leading to the transformation
of global society.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_7
116 M.S. Archer
References
Abbate, J. (1999). Inventing the internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Archer, M. S. (1979 [2013]). Social origins of educational systems. London/Beverly Hills: Sage.
Archer, M. S. (1988). Culture and agency: The place of culture in social theory. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Archer, M. S. (1995). Realist social theory: The morphogenetic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Archer, M. S. (2000). Being human: The problem of agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Archer, M. S. (2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Archer, M. S. (2007). Making our way through the world: Human reflexivity and social mobility.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Archer, M. S. (2012). The reflexive imperative in late modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Archer, M. S. (2013a). Introduction. In M. S. Archer (Ed.), Social morphogenesis (Vol. 1, pp.
1–22). New York: Springer.
Archer, M. S. (2013b). Morphogenetic society: Self-government and self-organization as mislead-
ing metaphors. In M. S. Archer (Ed.), Social morphogenesis (Vol. I). New York: Springer.
Archer, M. S., & Elder-Vass, D. (2011). Cultural system or norm circles?: An exchange. European
Journal of Social Theory, 14, 1–23.
Bailey, D. J. (2009). The political economy of European social democracy. Abingdon: Routledge.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. P. (1964). Les Héritiers, les étudiants et la culture. Paris: Minuit.
Castells, M. (2010 [2000]). The information age: Economy, society and culture (The rise of the
network society, Vol. 1). Malden/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales. (1992). L’Economie Mondiale
1990–2000: l’impératif de la croissance. Paris: Economica.
Corning, P. A. (1998). The synergism hypothesis: On the concept of synergy and it’s role in the
evolution of complex systems. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 21(2), 133–172.
Donati, P. (1983). Introduzione alla sociologia relazionale. Milan: Franco Angeli.
Donati, P. (1991). Teoria relazionale della società. Milan: Franco Angeli.
Donati, P., & Colozzi, I. (Eds.). (2006). Il Paradigma Relazionale nelle Scienze Sociali: le
prospettive sociologiche. Bologna: Mulino.
Donati, P., & Colozzi, I. (Eds.). (2007). Terzo settore, mondi vitali e capital sociale in Italia. Milan:
Franco Angeli.
Ecoislands Accord. (2012). http://www.ecoislands.org/about-us/our-vision/. Accessed Nov 2012.
Elliott, A., & Lemert, C. (2006). The new individualism: The emotional costs of globalization.
Abingdon: Routledge.
Forbes, R. J. (1958). Power to 1850. In C. Singer et al. (Eds.), A history of technology (The
industrial revolution, c. 1750 to c. 1850, Vol. 4). Oxford: Clarendon.
Gerth, H. H., & Wright Mills, C. (1967). From Max Weber. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Gorski, P. (2009). Social “mechanisms” and comparative-historical sociology: A critical realist
proposal. In P. Hedström & B. Wittrock (Eds.), Frontiers of sociology (pp. 160–162). Leiden:
Brill.
Heelas, P., Lash, S., & Morris, P. (Eds.). (1996). Detraditionalization. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley.
Himannen, P. (2001). The hackers’ ethic and the spirit of informationalism. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Jewkes, J., Sawers, D., & Stillerman, R. (1969). The sources of invention. New York: W.W. Norton.
Kitschelt, H. (1994). The transformation of European social democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Lawson, T. (2013). Emergence and morphogenesis: Causal reduction and downward causation. In
M. S. Archer (Ed.), Social morphogenesis (Vol. I). New York: Springer.
http://www.ecoislands.org/about-us/our-vision/
5 The Generative Mechanism Re-configuring Late Modernity 117
Luhmann, N. (1982). The differentiation of society. New York: Colombia University Press.
Malone, M. S. (1985). The big score: The billion-dollar story of silicon valley. Garden City:
Doubleday.
Merton, R. K. (1973). The normative structure of science. In R. K. Merton (Ed.), The sociology of
science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mulkay, M. J. (1972). The social process of innovation. London: Macmillan.
Porpora, D. V. (1989). Four concepts of social structure. Journal for the Theory of Social
Behaviour, 19, 195–212.
Porpora, D. V. (2011). Recovering causality. In A. Maccarini, E. Morandi, & R. Prandini (Eds.),
Sociological realism (pp. 160–161). Abingdon: Routledge.
Prost, A. (1968). L’Enseignement en France, 1800–1967. Paris: Armand Colin.
Rogers, E. M., & Larsen, J. K. (1984). Silicon valley fever: Growth of high technology culture.
New York: Basic Books.
Rosa, H. (2003). Social acceleration: Ethical and political consequences of a desynchronized high-
speed society. Constellations, 10(1), 1–33.
Smith, A. (1904). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations (Cannan edition).
London: Methuen.
Social Stock Exchange UK. (2012). http://www.socialenterpriselive.com/section/social-
investment/money/20111228/uk. Accessed Nov 2012.
Stiglitz, J. (2005). The roaring nineties. New York/London: W.W. Norton.
Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. (2008). Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything.
London: Atlantic Books.
Vittadini, G. (2008). Organizations acting in a subsidiary way in civil society (the case of the ‘Food
Bank’). In M. S. Archer & P. Donati (Eds.), Pursuing the common good: How solidarity and
subsidiarity can work together. Vatican City: Vatican Press.
Wilke, H. (2003). Heterotopia. Studien zur Krisis der Ordnung moderner Gesellschaft. Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp.
Wilke, H. (2013). Complex governance and Europe’s model of subsidiarity. In M. S. Archer
& A. Maccarini (Eds.), Engaging with the world: Agency, institutions, historical formations.
Abingdon: Routledge.
http://www.socialenterpriselive.com/section/social-investment/money/20111228/uk
http://www.socialenterpriselive.com/section/social-investment/money/20111228/uk
Chapter 6
On the Validity of Describing ‘Morphogenic
Society’ as a System and Justifiability
of Thinking About It as a Social Formation
Wolfgang Hofkirchner
What we were invited to speculate about at the 2013 Workshop was the possible
advent of a “Morphogenic Society”. This would be characterised by several
tendencies connected to increasedsocial “morphogenesis” as distinct from social
“morphostasis”, the predominance of which is diminishing. While on the superficial
level the phenomenon of social acceleration – as Andrea Maccarini puts it (see
Chap. 3) – finds empirical evidence in technological innovations, the rate of change,
and the pace of life, the task of social science is to find out how this phenomenon
can be explained by theoretical considerations regarding the core mechanism of
social “morphogenesis”. Archer (see Chap. 5) identifies that generative mechanism
effective in late modernity as synergy between two developments that, nonetheless,
head in different directions: competition, on the one hand, of capitalist market
enterprises; and diffusion of relational goods, on the other, demanded by digital
university science. Thus the commons enters the picture which, from the perspective
of Pierpaolo Donati’s “Relational Sociology” (2011) approach, is a relational
good. Together with it comes reflexivity that “makes the black box [of subjects –
W.H.] non-trivial” (Donati, see Chap. 7); reflexivity opens up opportunities for
relating oneself in different ways to the commons and Archer’s “meta-reflexives” –
individuals who value the commons highly – seem to be gaining strength and,
eventually, as a collectivity could help to shift the balance in favour of the
diffusionists’ side.
This chapter deals with the question whether or not the above developments
amount to a new quality that justifies subsuming it under a social formation in its
own right. In systems theoretical terms, a social formation can be regarded as a
historical type of society that is distinctive from other historical types because of
the particular shape of its systemic make-up.
W. Hofkirchner (�)
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science, Paulanergasse 13/5, 1040 Vienna, Austria
e-mail: wolfgang.hofkirchner@tuwien.ac.at
M.S. Archer (ed.), Late Modernity: Trajectories towards Morphogenic
Society, Social Morphogenesis, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5__6,
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
119
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_5
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_7
mailto:wolfgang.hofkirchner@tuwien.ac.at
120 W. Hofkirchner
6.1 Systems and Social Formations
Before discussing the qualitative change of the systemic make-up of societies,
clarification is needed as to what is understood by the systemic make-up of society,
which, in turn, requires an understanding of society as a system.
6.1.1 What Is a System?
According to Evolutionary Systems Theory, a system is defined as “a collection of
1. elements E that interact such that
2. relations R emerge that – because of providing synergistic effects – dominate
their interaction in
3. a dynamics D” (Hofkirchner 2013a, 105 – italics removed, W.H.).
Dynamics D is known as self-organisation (Hofkirchner 2013b). It is a feed-
forward and a feedback loop between two different system levels, known as the
micro- and the macro-level. The micro-level is populated by the elements E that
show a certain behaviour and interact with each other; on the macro-level the
relations R are found that give the system stability in that they make the elements
behave and interact in a way that makes them work as one single system. E bring
forth R through their behaviour and interaction and R constrains and enables further
behaviour and interaction of E.
6.1.2 What Is a Social System?
Pre-social, or pre-human, systems are self-organising. Living systems are self-
organising as are material systems, if they are not mechanical. However, social,
or human, systems are self-organising too. Material, living, and social systems
differ with regard to their mode of self-organisation. Social self-organisation is
characterised by so-called “re-creation”. Social systems and processes change their
form in a directed way and transcend themselves, re-invent themselves, create
themselves – that is what the Austrian philosopher Jantsch meant by the term
“re-creation” (Jantsch 1987). Social self-organisation goes beyond biotic self-
organisation, which, in turn, goes beyond physico-chemical self-organisation.
Actors who are social, or human, agents and who show agency inhabit the micro-
level of social systems. They can be individual or collective actors (in the latter case
they form a social subsystem, which is itself a social system). The macro-level is the
home of social relations. Social relations are the product of actors. Social relations
build the structure of the social system. That structure can be said to exert downward
causation on the actors’ actions and interaction (Hofkirchner 2013b; Lawson 2013).
6 On the Validity of Describing ‘Morphogenic Society’ as a System. . . 121
The rationale of every system is synergy. Because agents when producing a
system produce synergetic effects, that is, effects they could not produce when in
isolation, systems have a strong incentive to proliferate (Corning 2003). In social
systems synergism takes on the form of some social good. Actors contribute together
to the good and are common beneficiaries of that good – the good is a common good,
it is a commons.
Since the commons is an emergent quality, it cannot be fully traced down to the
quantity of the contribution of each actor. There is a leap in quality that is not fully
determined by the initial conditions (which play the role of boundary conditions
that are necessary, but not sufficient conditions). The same holds the other way
round: there is less-than-strict determinism in top-down emergence. Accordingly,
the commons does not have the same impact on every actor; a quantity of the
commons used by one actor may yield a different qualitative result than the same
quantity yields in the case of another actor. The actors have a share in the added
value when producing it and they share the added value when using it; but the share
the actors have does not account for the added value produced nor does the added
value produced account for how much the actors share. This problem of the lack of
reciprocal accountability between costs by, and benefits for, individual actors is an
argument against measurements of transactions and exchanges between individual
or aggregate actors as the basis of measures to balance their rights and duties in
a justifiable way; individual input to, and individual output from, the commons is
rather a matter of collective action. And for that reason, the only principle of a
humane organisation of production and usage of the commons that can be supported
is, in general, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”.
6.1.3 What Is the Systemic Make-Up of Society?
Social systems form a multiplex which makes up a societal system. Just as Colin
Wight considers individual actors populating social systems on any superordinate,
intermediate, or subordinate level, and structures doing the same (see Chap. 10), the
following considerations apply this idea in a particular way.
One social actor participates in different social systems at the same time. Social
systems can be ordered along a specification hierarchy (Hofkirchner et al. 2007):
• techno-eco-social systems are the basis of that hierarchy; in techno-eco-social
systems, actors produce scientific-technological innovations that enhance and
augment human self-actuation; they act and interact in their role of technicians
and scientists and as users of technological and scientific achievements all of
which are societal achievements; next are
• eco-social systems; actors produce adaptations to, or of, the natural environment
that support human self-preservation (and scientific-technological innovations
are transformed nature and thus form part of these adaptations); the actors act and
interact in their role as performers of a metabolism that is biotically grounded but
societally realised; eco-social systems are the basis of
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_10122 W. Hofkirchner
• social systems in a narrow sense; social actors produce and provide products
that make sense for human self-actualisation (and biotic and physico-chemical
adaptations form part of these sense-making products); basically, social systems
in a narrow sense come in three varieties along an even more differentiated
specification hierarchy: they come
– as economic systems; economic actors produce resources to be allocated for
the sake of the actors’ self-realisation (and interior and exterior human life-
support conditions form part of these resources);
– as political systems; political actors produce decisions to regulate the actors’
self-determination (and the decision to produce certain resources and to
allocate them in a certain way forms part of these decisions); finally, at the
topmost level,
– as cultural systems; cultural actors produce rules to define the actors’ self-
expression (and political decisions form part of the application of these rules
concerning the whole of social life).
In each of these social systems the macro-level in question is characterised by the
production and provision of a commons (Hofkirchner 2013c). The more you move
to the highest level system, the more ideational and the less material that shared good
is. But there is no ideational good without a material basis. In turn, every material
good is a materialisation of an ideational good. As every ideational good exists in
the form of a relation – namely, it connects actors in that it connects them to (an idea
they share about) the social system – every good is a relational good (Donati 2010),
regardless whether it is more or less embodied in matter. These commons can be
specified as follows:
• on the level of the techno-eco-social system, the common good is science and
technology or, more precisely, societal relations that condition the material – the
natural ways and means – of human activities, physical tools and procedures;
• on the level of the eco-social system, the common good is the whole human
nature and the whole natural environment or, more precisely, societal relations
that condition the material ‘what’ and the material ‘who’ – the natural object and
the natural subject – of human activities, the ecology and the bodies;
• in social systems in the narrow sense, the common good is the inclusive
community of actors or, more precisely, the societal relations that condition the
ideational ‘who, what and how’ – the social subject, the social object, and the
social ways and means – of human activities that include the material and natural
ones but go beyond mere physicality; it is the sphere that allows for the unfolding
of individual ingeniousness, the space that society provides for it; it is
– the field of resources in the economy or, more precisely, the societal relations
that condition the distribution of means for a good life;
– the agora in the polity or, more precisely, the societal relations that condition
the decision process on the conduct of a good life; and
– the realm of values in culture or, more precisely, the societal relations that
condition the process of defining what (a) good is in a good life.
6 On the Validity of Describing ‘Morphogenic Society’ as a System. . . 123
6.1.4 What Is the Shape of the Systemic Make-Up?
The societal relations that condition the production and provision of these common
goods vary historically. Particular modes of producing and providing common
goods shape the whole make-up of societies, so much so that societies can be
qualitatively distinguished according to a pattern that connects the social systems
they comprise.
The shape is the attunement of the historical-concrete quality of one social
system to the qualities of any other social system in the make-up of society. Some
feature that is dominant in one social system tends to reinforce, if not develop,
its pre-conditions in the system on the next lower level and to work as the pre-
conditions for the rise of another feature that, in turn, works as its reinforcement in
the system on the next higher level. In this vein, the level-specific societal relations
align themselves and shape the whole edifice of society according to one particular
quality. They form an integrated totality of differentiated social systems from culture
through polity, economy, and ecology to science and technology – they form a
particular social formation. This takes time. Every social formation is a formation in
process: “the new system is permanently on the point of being formed” (Hofkirchner
2013b, 132).
This process, however, is only the follow-up of another process that paved the
way for it. First came the emergence of something new under the dominance of the
old. A social invention was made and competed against other social inventions. The
new quality was one among other qualities. Only if it could take hold, was a turning
point reached. Only then does the social invention become a social innovation, only
then the new begins to dominate the old and another societal build-up starts to
establish itself, which is the emergence of a new social formation. The turning point
marks the change from one social formation to another.
These changes might be grand in scale or incremental, and dependent on the
granularity of the underlying processes that yield emergents.
6.2 Open Contradictions in Late Modernity
After having clarified that the shape of the systemic make-up which has to do
with modes of commons production and provision as a criterion for distinguishing
social formations, current tendencies in societal development can be analysed and
discussed.
One of these tendencies seems to be closely connected to a special mode of
human reflexivity Archer calls “meta-reflexivity” (2003, 2007, 2012). For, in the
interpretation adopted here, only meta-reflexives appear to be able to exercise
reciprocity, solidarity and subsidiarity and to establish new bonds in civil society
and the so-called third sector such that the state and the market are counterbalanced
(Archer and Donati 2008). However, whether meta-reflexives will turn out to be the
124 W. Hofkirchner
agents of change for the better and form the vanguard of new relationships between
humans and society (and nature – and technology – as well), remains to be seen in
the future.
The argument that social scientists are forced to face, even when surprised by the
turn of events, is that you cannot forecast future developments; the best you can do
is to specify certain limits to what will happen, if you know what can happen at all.
Doug Porpora speaks, in that context, of tendential predictions (Porpora, Chap. 4).
The crises of recent years exaggerated the conflict between the ideology of
endless opportunities and the experience of a reality with restricted opportunities
and a lack of generally binding ideals. The Arab Spring and concomitant movements
like those of the ‘Indignados’ in Spain or ‘Occupy’ worldwide can be interpreted
as upheavals of the frustrated “materialists” rather than expressions of autonomy-
oriented “post-materialists”. The motives by which they were and still are moved
are “concern for the job, the starting of a family, securing status, and the future at
large”1 (Kraushaar 2012, 209 – my translation.). In spite of that, these protests have
been fostering the germ of growing political awareness, reflecting the economic
background, and of a will to change “that not only aims at the improvement of
individual positions but also focuses on the political and economic structures and
discourses and aims at changing more than one’s own situation for longer periods”2
(Heinzlmaier 2013, 56 – my translation). So far this germ has not developed.
What remains, however, is the following: “In the aftermath of a revolution ideas
so far exclusively associated with marginal madmen are in a breath promoted to an
accepted foundation of the discourse”3 (Graeber 2012, 176 – my translation).
In that vein, insight into the causes of the crises may haveempty canvas (i.e. what goes on is manifestly
context-dependent). What is explored by examining the micro-level networks of
collaboration between individual scientists and the meso-level collaboration of the
Centres themselves is explicitly linked to examining ‘morphogenesis unbound’.
Specifically, this would mean scientific actors creating new relations beyond the
boundary of their employer organization and thus expanding their own opportunities
(of increased repute) beyond the limitations imposed by their current employment
structure. Equally, morphogenesis unbound would apply in the same way to the
Centres themselves.
Both scientists and their Centres behave strategically, and some strategies are
more effective than others. Opportunities are created by the exploitation of ‘pools
of contingent complementarities’ and the most effective personal strategy is one in
which the scientists keep a foot inside their own Centre whilst forming networks of
individual collaboration outside them. Thus, some combine structure and culture
in new ways prior to setting up new organizations, representing morphogenesis
unbound.
However, qua organizations, the Centres can ‘catch-up’ with other kinds of
scientists they employ (but who followed different strategies), appropriating and
hoarding the opportunities they created, thus ‘binding’ their morphogenetic initia-
tives to the prior structural context. Failure to do so will produce ‘lags’ (between the
research initiatives of thrusting scientists and the sclerosis of the Centre’s research
programme) that facilitate the scientists’ emancipation from and creation of a new
emergent structure. Thus the lag between the two levels (micro- and macro-) is held
to be the main activity-dependent source of morphogenesis, increasingly unbound
by the existing structure. Lazega volunteers that recuperating such innovative
scientists is something that is facilitated when a new product can be ‘immobilized’
by a protective patent and that this ‘lag’ and morphostatic ‘drag’ would likely be less
pronounced in less well-protected fields such as the arts or religious movements.
Where the salvage list is concerned, it is remarkably difficult to supply an
uncontroversial one dated circa post 1980. Certainly, the capitalist market remains
and continues its morphostatic confirmation of natal socio-economic status but
the nature of market operations has been damagingly daring in its morphogenetic
6I have previously listed ‘vested interests’ as largely falling victim to the fire (2013).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_8
1 Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which Would Morphogenic. . . 9
seizing of multinational markets and invention of new opportunities and instruments
for finance capital. Indisputably, the state remains despite having ceded many
erstwhile powers to supra-national agencies, despite having taken ‘welfare’ out of
its European title, and despite having cut its links with the promotion of social
democracy. It is very difficult to see how the last 20 years of drift towards political
‘centrism’, a politics without commitment whose policies vacillate with the daily
tactics for remaining in power, add stability to anyone’s life, particularly amidst
austerity. Obviously, natural language endures but syntactically deteriorates in
the face of mass entertainment and morphs considerably with new technologies
for communication. The Cultural System (as opposed to Socio-Cultural relations)
(Archer 1988) remains because it is fire-proof and it is perhaps even bomb-proof
now, given cloud archiving.
The growing cultural archive is extremely important, not because it provides
‘stability’, but, on the contrary, because it hosts innumerable ‘contingent comple-
mentarities’ (items co-existing at any time that are complementary to one another),
ever-open to creative exploration and these are growing exponentially as new items
are added to it, given the sui generis tendency of morphogenesis for ‘variety to foster
variety’. Porpora puts together two metrics that appear to substantiate this qualitative
thesis: ‘Wikipedia reports that whereas in 1986, the world’s total informational
storage capacity was approximately 2.6 exabytes (one exabyte representing some
1018 bytes), that figure now is close to 300 exabytes. Similarly, with the rapid
rise of telecommunications, the world’s capacity to exchange this information has
likewise expanded exponentially, from 281 petabytes (one petabyte representing
some 1015 bytes) in 1986 to 65 exabytes today.’ (Chap. 4, p. 83). If the methodology
involved is respectable, this tells us that our information (knowledge) outstrips our
communication by almost 5–1. Nothing rides on the accuracy of these figures,
although they confirm the expected growth of information logged-in and may well
indicate that this corpus contains ever more numerous complementary items than
we notice, think about and communicate to others. In any case, the Cultural System
is the site of considerable morphogenesis, not a locus of stability, particularly for
those of us who deny the assertion that what is cultural is by its nature ‘shared’ (see
Archer and Elder-Vass 2011).
I find it difficult to extend this list non-trivially. Conversely, the list of ‘losses’,
when considered objectively in relation to ‘stability’ are considerable and cannot
be reduced to differences in evaluation. In our first volume, I gave the following
illustrative list to point to the profound qualitative changes potentially involved
as morphogenesis becomes increasingly unbound: ‘loss of inter-generational con-
textual continuity, of habitual and routine action, of vested (but not objective)
interests, of traditional social classes, of cultural capital, of lasting norms, of a
stable role array, of representative political parties, and of institutionalized forms
of geographical belonging’ (2013, p. 12). All of these require investigation and
substantiation. For example, my trilogy of books on ‘reflexivity’ shows not only an
increase in its practise, as habitual action becomes decreasingly suited to a rapidly
changing context of decision-making, but also a corresponding change in the dom-
inant mode of reflexive deliberation practised. In this volume, Al-Amoudi provides
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_4
10 M.S. Archer
a convincing analytical account of the decline in normativity that has accompanied
morphogenesis over the last decades, without it being fully unbound. Were it fully
unbound and without endogenous forms of stabilization, then Bauman’s problem
would surface in full force, namely how can people make ‘any kind of decisions
in a world where all institutions would be equally liquid’? (Chap. 9, p. 205). Thus
Al-Amoudi seeks a mid-way point between Maccarini’s7 morphostatic elements
that ‘survived the fire’ and represent enduring stability with his acknowledgement
of an intensification of morphogenesis through the exploitation of ‘contingent
complementarities’ that results in new variety.
That ‘variety fosters more variety’ is perfectly compatible with endorsing
this ‘mid-way point’ as characterizing the situation today, without commitment
to it being any more than temporary. In other words, the problems created by
the current intensity of morphogenesis for current normativity may themselves
undergo intensification in the near future (which does not mean they ultimately
defy solution). In any case, the major normative problems identified are eminently
susceptible of empirical investigation now and by longitudinal study. In summary,
and with some additional commentary these are the following:
Firstly, a weakening of inter-generational solidarity, as dual career employment
becomes more necessary and desired by many it results in extended out-sourcing
for child-care and that of the elderly. As more engage in this practice, less shame
attaches to ‘bailing out’ of previous moral responsibilities towards the young and
the old. Indeed, one could go further and suggest thatproliferated. Discourses
may have realised that the current crises are expressions of a progressive enclosure
of all the common goods that are generated and utilised by actors in the whole range
of social systems that make up society. Battles over reclaiming the commons may be
more easily identified than before – by the people and the social scientists as well –
on every level (Hofkirchner 2013c):
• on the science and technology battlefield, there is the struggle for science as
a “communist”, universal, disinterested and organised skeptical endeavour as
Robert K. Merton put it 1942 in “The normative structure of science” (1973,
267–278), for technology assessment and for designing meaningful technology
as against military-industrial-complex funded research and development;
1“die Sorge um den Arbeitsplatz, die Gründung einer Familie, der Statuserwerb und die Zukunft
insgesamt.”
2“der sich nicht nur die Verbesserung der individuellen Position zum Ziel setzt, sondern der die
politischen und ökonomischen Strukturen und Diskurse ins Visier nimmt und längerfristig mehr
verändern möchte als bloß die eigene Situation.”
3“Im Gefolge einer Revolution werden Vorstellungen, die man bis dahin ausschließlich mit rand-
ständigen Spinnern verbunden hatte, im Handumdrehen zur akzeptierten Basis der Diskussion.”
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_4
6 On the Validity of Describing ‘Morphogenic Society’ as a System. . . 125
• on the battlefield of external and internal nature, there is the struggle for a
cautious treatment of the bio-physical bases of human life against their extensive
and intensive colonisation;
• on the battlefield of sociality at large, there is the struggle for inclusion against
exclusion, which
– on the resources battlefield, differentiates into the struggle for unalienated
working conditions and a fair share for all against the erosion of the labour
force, against the pressure exerted by financial capital, against corruption,
against the Matthew principle (the rich-get-richer mechanisms) inherent in
capitalist economies, etc.;
– on the agora battlefield, differentiates into the struggle for participative
democracy against right-wing, technocratic or populist authoritarian rule; and
– on the battlefield of the community of values, differentiates into the struggle
for inclusive definitions of selves having in mind unity through diversity as
against parochial ways of living, nationalism and fundamentalist ideologies.
From the perspective of “information society”, the spread of, and penetration of
society by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) under the current
conditions of capitalism, means that all these struggles are subject to a specific
informational turn (Hofkirchner 2013c):
• there is an antagonism of the informed productivity of productive forces,
on the one hand, and ICT-reinforced or -induced vulnerability of a society’s
infrastructure, on the other, that is inflicted upon the science and technology
commons;
• there is an antagonism of informed reproductivity of work that reproduces the
natural initial conditions needed for another cycle of production, on the one hand,
and ICT-supported degradation of nature, on the other, that is inflicted upon the
commons of external as well as internal nature;
• there is an antagonism between informed world netizenship, on the one hand,
and the digital divide of several orders, on the other, that is inflicted upon the
commons of sociality, including
– an antagonism between unfettered information, on the one hand, and intellec-
tual proprietarisation, commodification and commercialisation of information,
on the other, inflicted upon the resources commons of the economy;
– an antagonism between empowerment of all by information, on the one hand,
and surveillance and information warfare, on the other, inflicted upon the
agora commons of politics; and
– an antagonism of wisdom through information, on the one hand, and media
‘disinfotainment’ that hinders the development of global consciousness and
global conscience, on the other, that is inflicted upon the value and lifestyle
commons of culture.
If these insights had been propagated, then antagonisms would have been
propelled onto a higher level.
126 W. Hofkirchner
Summing up this argument, the emergence of meta-reflexivity is part and parcel
of the societal contradictions rooted in the progressive enclosure of the commons.
These contradictions in societal relations form one single pattern, which makes them
candidates for either qualifying current society as one single social formation or as
a sequence of several stages, each of which is a more sophisticated version of the
one before. And this will remain the case as long as the fight for reclaiming the
commons is confronted by further attempts to further enclose it. The question of
when, if at all, the side promoting real humanistic progress in these antagonisms
will effectively come to counterbalance and eventually outbalance the other side,
has to be left open. What can be stated is that the existence and proliferation of
meta-reflexivity is the sine qua non of a more fundamental revolution than the ones
witnessed so far, given the premise that it is concerned with the commons.
6.3 The Formation of the Global Sustainable
Information Society
The antagonisms listed above serve as “mechanisms” that drive the evolution of
social systems, society, social formations. “Evolution signifies the cumulative aspect
of change in the sequence of historical formations, whereas revolutions signify
disruptive social change. In sociological terms revolutions transform society, they
turn the social order upside down. That is, they mark qualitative changes in the
societal system in the course of its evolution. Revolutions change the fundamental
form of the societal system, they constitute a system that differs in quality from
the previous system” (Hofkirchner 2013b, 131). And it has to be added that any
change qua qualitative leap is a revolution. As already pointed out in Sect. 6.1, the
revolution is the starting point of a process by which “the whole existing societal
system is worked through and adapted accordingly to form the new system. In terms
of a stage model [ : : : ], this means that the lower stages, insofar as they build the
basis of the new stage, are reworked so as to fit the emerging quality of the new
whole” (Hofkirchner 2013a, 246–247).
In these “evo-revo” process (Hofkirchner 2013b) morphogenetic and morpho-
static processes are inextricably intertwined (see Fig. 6.1). While the genesis of a
new form of society, of the new social formation, is represented by the revolution as
a marker of qualitative change, which is a transformation; stasis is represented by the
quantitative development of the new social formation, and the attuning to it of one
social system after the other, which assures the reproduction of society according to
the new quality. Both genetic and static moments, both revolutions and the unfolding
of social formations, both transformations and reproduction of the transformed add
up to social evolution. Since that evolution comprises different historical-concrete
developments, it equals a sequence of changes of form, a metamorphosis (though
not in the rather deterministic sense employed in the life sciences). And evolution
6 On the Validity of Describing ‘Morphogenic Society’ as a System. . . 127
development n+1
("stasis" n+1)
revolution n+1
("genesis" of
form n+1) result of history
stratification as
("Geschichte"
as "Ge-schichte")
revolution n
("genesis" of
form n)
evolution of societies ("metamorphosis")
social
formation n+1
social
formation n
development n
("stasis" n)
stratum n+1
stratum n
Fig. 6.1 Stage model of social formations
space of trajectories
possible
space of trajectories
impossible
now
(=crisis)
amplified
fluctuations
Fig. 6.2 Bifurcation of historical opportunities
yields a stratified structure, since old forms do not completely vanish but remain
encapsulated,the ‘demographic winter’ is
produced by an increasing percentage of couples rejecting the traditional norm tying
marriage to reproduction in favour of their privately defined personal utilities.
Secondly, normative problems are posed by new technological forms of commu-
nication that existing norms and conventions can neither address nor regulate. These
include the incitement to parade ‘intimate’ forms of self-presentation on social
media, that feed the novel practice of cyber-bullying, blackmailing and are currently
spiking in ‘slut-branding’. In general, the moral parameters of ‘hacking’ are volatile,
as epitomised in today’s ambivalence towards ‘whistle blowers’ (treasonable or
criminal versus those unveiling what a democratic populace needs to know) and
towards Wikileaks as a quasi-institutionalized source of revelations.
Thirdly, the predominance of morphogenesis makes existing solutions to the
current crisis (both national and supra-national) more contestable, in speed and
geographical range. The spread of the Occupy movements to most European capitals
is now being matched by mass protests in Brazil (starting from raised bus fares in
Sao Paulo) and in Istanbul (beginning from a dispute over uses of a public park).
Their common denominator is that in the past, opposition to hierarchical decisions
was painfully slow to organize, e.g. the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(Mattausch 1989). Crucially, it entailed an accumulation of grievances before these
could impact on the central decision making arena, but also a simultaneous dilution
of demands to make necessary alliances possible (Archer 1979, Fig. IV, p. 273).
7This is a position that Maccarini usefully spells out but does not personally endorse.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_9
1 Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which Would Morphogenic. . . 11
The opposite is now the case; protests are readily organized (through social media)
and, once mobilized, there is accretion of other discontents and a fast elastication of
the oppositional agenda.
Fourthly, Al-Amoudi details the increasing use of arbitration to settle normative
disputes rather than juridical process. In high-tech issues, juries are held to lack
the necessary expertise; arbitration protects confidentiality; and it allows the more
powerful to impose their choice of arbitrators on less powerful plaintiffs. In short,
the growth of arbitrage derives from the morphogenetic ‘complexity of novel
products, processes and practices’ (Chap. 9, p. 214), where case-law or legal
precedent would be largely non-applicable.
Fifthly, there is the problematization of forms of ‘oppression and inequality’ that
had previously been condoned and had remained morphostatic. ‘Gay marriage’,
now legalised in 13 countries (May 2013), has been the most contentious instance.
However, generically, this can be seen as the novel tendency for ‘human rights’ to
prevail over prior statutory rights.8
Significantly, in his own study of Occupy Geneva, Al-Amoudi found the same
rapid development of new norms within the tented movement as has been described
for Wikipedia. In moving on to examine the generative mechanisms advanced
to account for morphogenesis since 1980, these findings prompt one to examine
whether this rapid change based on positive feedback produces its own processes of
‘stabilization’, and if so, how?
1.4 Venturing Generative Mechanisms
Overall, contributors appear convinced that the existence and exploration of ‘con-
tingent complementarities’ (ideational or usually in combination with material
interests and enterprises promoting them) both kick-start morphogenesis and are
then amplified by it. However, it is one thing for the philosophy of social science
to advance and defend the notion of generative mechanisms (Gorski 2009), but a
further and necessary task for social scientists is to adduce specific mechanisms
accounting for particular instances.
Two of us do venture particulars that seem promising answers to which ‘contin-
gent complementary’ could explain the morphogenetic take-off circa 1980 (Lawson,
Chap. 2 and Archer, Chap. 5). However, although it is essential to identify the
causal powers responsible for any given instance of morphogenesis (including the
countervailing powers also shaping actual outcomes), these need not be substantive
and empirical particulars as they are in the above two chapters. Instead, they can
fulfil the specification requirement by identifying a gamut of qualitative changes
8See for example, the recent British decision that they trump military rights and soldiers may
invoke a breach of human rights where the provision of inadequate equipment or transport is
concerned.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_9
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_5
12 M.S. Archer
representing a newcomer to the history of social formations. This is the path taken
by Hofkirchner (Chap. 6) and Donati (Chap. 7). Because of their broader canvases,
they also make bolder contributions to the issue of ‘stabilization’ and hence to a
preliminary assessment of how realistic it is to envisage transition to a Morphogenic
Society.
As explicit Critical Realists, it is unsurprising that the accounts proffered by
Lawson (Chap. 2) and Archer (Chap. 5) both emphasise agential power-play,
identifying the key to the re-shaping of late modernity in relational contestation
between proponents and opponents of the changes that hold potential for societal
transformation. In making this central to the generative mechanisms they advance,
their two accounts are quite similar, they are substantive and thus open to empirical
critique, and they are probably stronger than Hofkirchner and Donati in offering
precise answers to the ‘how’ question about recent change. Conversely, and
precisely because of their substantive focus, they are both weaker than Hofkichner
and Donati about ‘where we are going’ and ‘what could stabilise it’. However,
all four contributions are unanimous that late Modernity has not yet given way to
something we could call global Morphogenic Society. At most, we all view the
present conjuncture and crisis as ‘transitional’ and it seems worthwhile to focus
upon our similarities and differences in terms of what could turn ‘transition’ into
‘transformation’.
Lawson’s generative mechanism consists in the interplay between (i) the perpet-
ual technological change made possible by continuous advances in science, and,
(ii) capitalists ‘who seek in technological developments novel opportunities for
advancing their power’ (Chap. 2, p. 32). What is generative about this conjunction
is that contestation and resistance are decreasingly concerned with struggles over
occupancy of existing positions and the rights and obligations associated with them,
but, rather, with the creation and occupation of novel positions with associated
emergent rights especially associated to the mechanisms of social destabilisation.
What is novel is the link-up with new technology and its ensuing immunity to past
forms of resistance by those who consider themselves not to be its beneficiaries.
Instead, capitalism’s inherent thrust for new markets is massively augmented by
the unprecedented mobility of technological products with two results: the novel
boost given to multinational enterprises in locations that evade organized worker-
resistance, thus assuring high profit margins, plus the variety introduced by the
technologically assisted finance capital mobility, outside the reach of national
government control. Together they culminate in an unprecedented undermining
of previously enduring sets of positional obligations and rights. As such, Lawson
holds them responsible for the sense of social acceleration as a manifestation ‘of a
repeated loss of existing bases for any significant control or planning experienced
by so many’ (Chap. 2, p. 45).
Archer broadly accepts his argument but, because she accords much greater
relative autonomyto ‘culture’ in relation to ‘structure’, the generative mechanism
she proffers is bipartisan. It is the new morphogenetic synergy established in the
1980s between ‘university’ science and the innovative thrust of capitalist enterprise
that furnishes the ‘novel leap’ because technology systematically related the two in
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_6
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_7
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_5
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
1 Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which Would Morphogenic. . . 13
a manner that the previous practices of educational systems had largely kept apart.
In short, Archer deals with two groups of agents/actors, and the realization of their
synergistic cooperation, without homogenizing their aims or actions and despite
celebrity cases of financially motivated complicity. Lawson does acknowledge both
the existence of the ‘scientist producers’ of information technology and accepts
that they have a special interest, i.e. ‘an incentive in its being diffused, and do
act in various ways to encourage that diffusion’ (Chap. 2, p. 40), including their
development of the cyber-commons. However, this is held to be an ‘additional
factor’ with ‘reinforcing effects’ on the trajectory he sketches. What I call the
techno-scientific ‘diffusionists’ are not recognized as distinctive group (agreed, not
one embracing them all), with aims, ideals and forms of organizational innovation
that directly oppose those of capitalism’s new captains.
Thus, Archer highlights that the ‘contingent complementarity’ can be exploited
in different ways, to different ends and in pursuit of different values, which
financially innovative capitalism meets with a novel type of resistance (unrelated
to the now impotent form forged by past industrial relations). In synergy, the
diffusionists and the finance capitalists together promote morphogenesis but of
different kinds that pull society in entirely different directions.
These differences culminate in equally different answers to ‘where is late Moder-
nity going?’ and what can stabilize the morphogenetic scenario that Lawson and
Archer address. In the near future, he foresees global society being ‘characterized
by flux, reflexivity and uncertainty, perhaps to an increasing extent’ (Chap. 2, p. 45)
and I agree, but not for the same reasons. Lawson suggests that in the longer term his
generative mechanism itself will provide an ‘additional spur’ to tendencies towards
the ‘good society’ because capital will lose places to run and the capacity of playing
one group off against another, leaving globalization as a process that will ultimately
foster human fulfilment and emancipation.
Here, I find myself closer to Hofkirchner and Donati in general. Specifically, if
‘stability’ is equated with lasting obligations and rights associated with relatively
fixed positions, this seems to me more of a formula for resignation than for control
and planning. Contingency is a necessary part of human life in an open system,9
but the growing pool of ‘contingent compatibilities’ can indeed furnish a basis for
planning by seizing upon one as an opportunity to develop into a life-plan (that need
not be monadic or individualistic), which neither depends on competing/defeating
others nor has to overcome the resistance of entrenched rights, interests or power.
I look to two stabilizing factors that do not work by perpetuating elements of
past ‘stability’ or establishing enduring rights and duties associated with (new)
positions. The first source of ‘stabilization’ is our human ability to have ‘concerns’
and to accept that they must be prioritized, whilst other things that matter to us
are accommodated and subordinated to them if not eliminated. If this is the case
9For example, the great plague destabilized fourteenth century feudalism when one third of the
European population died, producing a shortage of agricultural labour and a reduction in income
for landowners.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
14 M.S. Archer
today – and none of my small group of subjects who grew up since 1980 found
difficulty in detailing their three main life concerns (Archer 2012) – it seems
dubious to define human fulfilment in Rosa’s terms of ‘realizing as many options as
possible from the vast possibilities the world has to offer’ (2009). However, the
drawback to considering this human ability as an anchorage is that it presumes
that humanity remains unchanged in kind. Yet, Maccarini’s discussion (Chap. 3)
of human enhancement technology (HET), already underway, puts a big question
mark over my assumption, as it does over Hofkirchner’s and Donati’s.
Second, is the discovery that the modality of Meta-reflexivity (entailing social as
well as self-critique) in on the increase amongst educated young people. However,
so too is Fractured reflexivity (subjects incapable of designing purposeful courses
of action). Within it, the appearance of a sub-group who were termed Expressive
reflexives is troubling. These subjects respond to daily events on the basis of their
‘gut-feelings’, but nonetheless accumulate the incoherent results of these responses
over time. Possibly, these ‘failed planners’ are on the increase too. Were that the
case, it could impact negatively on the current reflexive pursuit of ‘relational goods’
outside both market and state.10 This is the key point at which there is a direct link
with Chaps. 6 and 7.
1.5 Endogenous Processes of ‘Stabilization’
As had been seen, those who hold ‘stability’ indispensable to any form of plan-
ning have understood this as a need for some degree of contextual continuity,
that is, for the endurance of sufficient morphostasis to underwrite it, especially
when morphogenesis becomes pronounced. The implication is that fully ‘unbound
morphogenesis’ could never be. The alternative – not always recognized – is that
there are forms of ‘stabilization’ produced by morphogenesis itself that furnish an
equally adequate (and more consonant) basis for planning activities.
Arguments for this are advanced by both Hofkirchner and Donati; the former in
abstract theoretical terms and the latter supplying more sociological detail. Neither
author maintains this is now the case or will become the case after late modernity,
only that a Morphogenic society providing its own processes of ‘stabilization’ is a
possible future. At rock bottom, both of their arguments converge upon a conception
of a future Morphogenic society where the generation of the emergent ‘Commons’
(Hofkirchner) or ‘relational goods’ (Donati), are sufficiently desirable to promote
their own defence. In other words, they prompt their own ‘stabilization’ (which does
not mean they remain unchanging) because they solicit increasing agential support
through feed-forward rather than negative feedback (morphostasis). Feed-forward
10It remains to be fully established that personal Meta-reflexivity is the most propitious for
collective reflexivity valuing ‘relational goods’ most highly, although the tendency works in that
direction. See Archer 2012.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_6
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_7
1 Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which Would Morphogenic. . . 15
is illustrated by ‘free giving’, which solicits and reinforces reciprocity; someone or
some group has to venture first in order to initiate this felicific upward spiral (Donati
2003). Reciprocity carries its own collective reward, entailing both an objective
benefit and a subjective orientation towards it. In case this seems too abstract or
idealistic, it is even more striking that Colin Wight (Chap. 10) provides an illustra-
tion of the shift from competition to co-operation, in – of all unlikely candidates –
the normativitycoming to govern the circumstances and conduct of war.
Hofkirchner, as a theorist who endorses the self-organization of the social order
is not handicapped in conceiving of the re-creation of social systems (their self-
transcendence) from the combination of agential actions at the micro-level. In
turn, the emergent systemic relations act back upon agency through downwards
causation, thus initiating a process by which ‘the whole existing social system is
worked through and adapted accordingly to form the new system’ (Chap. 6, p. 126).
At a stroke, it appears that the explosive potential of the disjunction between ‘system
integration’ and ‘social integration’ has vanished. But, Hofkirchner’s argument is
more complex and it is more accurate to say that it has the potential for being
defused.
His approach is not based upon evolutionary functional adaptation; on the
contrary, he maintains that ‘[a]ntagonisms in societal relations with respect to
the commons are the engine of change’ (Chap. 6, p. 127) and that, for example,
the introduction of supra-nationally regulated financial capitalism to ‘resolve’ the
present crisis would simply be an attempt to prolong capitalism.11 In outlining the
conditions for the advent of a ‘Global Sustainable Information Society;’ (as opposed
to nuclear extinction) these rest upon a scenario in which ‘[b]oth information and
self-organization are underpinned by a common logic – the logic of the “third”’
(Chap. 6, p. 131), which is shared in their own terms by Donati and Archer, and
ultimately constitutes the basis of ‘stabilization’.
In simplified terms, agents orient courses of action not to their own egocentric
interests, not to their group’s (competitive) vested interests, but to the full actual-
ization of the system’s common goods that are already ‘good enough’ (meaning
better than in the past) to encourage the intensification of shared common goals.
In a nutshell, the common orientation towards society’s commons is the source
of ‘stabilization’ which, because ‘good’ is always the enemy of ‘best’, is not
condemned to ‘stability’ or reliance upon morphostasis: ‘Any build-up of social
order is the build-up of something third. All actors contribute to the emergence of
that order that grants their interactions stable relations : : : The new structure plays
the role of the “third”, the actors assume the roles of the “first” (ego) and the
“second” (alter)’ (Chap. 6, p. 133, my italics).
11His argument that ‘As long as social systems could externalize the negative effects, their self-
organization was compatible with the enclosure of the commons; now that they are interconnected
as they are, the enclosure of the commons is not tenable any more’ (Chap. 6, p. 130) gives some
ballast to Lawson’s conclusion (Chap. 2) about the effects of global finitude in denying capitalism
a future.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_10
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_6
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_6
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_6
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_6
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_6
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
16 M.S. Archer
There is no inevitability here, only a possible morphogenic future and one
that ‘works only via the actors being [epistemologically] aware of the Third’,
Meta-reflexive about its development, and co-operative in its realization (Chap. 6,
p. 139). But all three of these activities depend upon ‘stabilization’ sufficient
to make them possible. The account is a compelling overview but raises some
sociological questions: how amidst the dominance of economic competitiveness and
bureaucratic regulation by the state does the co-operative ‘third’ originate? How
does co-operation raise its head, let alone become consensual and rise from the
ashes of normativity’s decline as described by Al-Amoudi? Does working in terms
of the micro-actors and the macro-system alone (and concentrating mainly upon
‘information’) hamper giving answers to the above? This is where Donati, as the
founder of ‘Relational Sociology’, provides clarification.
Relations and relationality are central at all levels of Donati’s analysis: ‘Social
morphogenesis begins with relations, and it is through relations that new social
forms are generated. It is through social relations that compatibilities, contradic-
tions, and complementarities between the elements that compose the relation are,
or are not realized in varying ways and degrees’ (Chap. 7, p. 150). Consequently,
he maintains that because interactions always take place in a relational context,
relations cannot be reduced to their communicative or informational content alone
since the former is the context of the latter. Moreover, Donati explicitly includes an
institutional meso-level, absent in Hofkirchner’s theorizing, that is crucial for his
own generative mechanism.
In shorthand, he argues that the domination of the social order by the state-market
binomial (or ‘lib/lab’), within a cultural matrix of individualism, is progressively
challenged by groups evaluating and instigating projects according to the superor-
dinate importance attaching to emergent ‘relational goods’. From morphogenesis,
Donati argues that a new variety of ends and means for the relation is produced,
agents/actors need to select them and try to generate new combinations and
interdependencies among the selected varieties so as to stabilize an emergent
relation. How does a stabilizing selection occur in practice and on what basis are
evaluations favouring the emergent tertium made? In a word, Donati’s answer is
experientially: the selection of variety to be chosen is evaluated on the basis of
the meaningful experiences that the agent can obtain in contrast to what can be
offered by other types of relations. The ‘other types’ stand for relations governed
by ‘competition’ (with its necessary losers), and political command (where the
majority are losers). Conversely, a relational tertium recommends itself because of
its potential to produce ‘win-win’ outcomes, leaving no-one out, because it works in
terms of the common good (micro-, meso-, and macro-) rather than the ‘total good’
of economics or the ‘general good’ of politics.12
12Stefano Zamagi (2011), uses the following metaphor to differentiate between the Total Good and
the Common Good: ‘The total of an addition remains positive even if some of its entries cancel
one another out. Indeed, if the objective is the maximization of the total good, it may be convenient
to nullify the good (or welfare) of some, if the gains of others more than offset the losses of the
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_6
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_7
1 Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which Would Morphogenic. . . 17
With considerable compression, I simply want to signal the principal stages of his
argument in the following sequence: .
No less concisely, the ultimate base for the emergence of ‘relational goods’ is
one that begins from a cultural change of values, grounded in ‘contingent com-
plementarities’ (new opportunities for the social order to be combined otherwise)
and prompted by the concerns endorsed by Meta-reflexives (the non-fungibility
of human relations). Stabilization derives from the manifest benefits – themselves
relational – generated and evidenced by ‘relational initiatives’ (for example, in child
care, family oriented social work or co-operative production). These produce Added
Social Value in terms of trust, co-operation, reciprocity in comparison with the
same activities executed on the basis of bureaucratic regulation or the exchange
of equivalents. Such ‘stabilization’ suppliesthe key basis for choice and planning,
be it the life of a couple or choosing the kind of employment to seek or to shun.
What changes is that agential actions are reflexively oriented to the tertium (to the
relational goods themselves – produced in various forms from the dyad to global
society). Correspondingly, agents and actors withhold their support from relational
evils.
In terms of social transformation, what Donati points to ‘is that a societal
morphogenesis is in fact being produced, which leads the Third Sector to emerge
in such a way as to change the lib/lab structure’. (Chap. 7, p. 164). Nevertheless, it
is a process of gradualism, in which there are slow gains, frequent reverses and no
triumphalism; in this it is close to Archer’s conclusions. On the one hand, slow
progress is made because the two Leviathans continue to increase the deficit in
social solidarity, as highlighted in the current crisis. Rather than economic fixes that
fail (quantitative easing and austerity measures) or a further rolling back of welfare
benefits, Donati holds that the growth of the Third Sector will gradually precipitate
further morphogenesis such that ‘the state has to adopt a social governance style
of action, implying more civic participation in designing and implementing its
plans, instead of using a pure authoritative style; and the market has to consider the
relational dimensions of its modes of production and consumption, implying, among
other things, an active, symmetrical and non-instrumental role for the non-profit
sector within it. The triangulation of state-market-third-sector gradually produces
(at T4) an elaborated structure.’ (Chap. 7, p. 166).
Reverses are common, as Donati illustrates by the dilemma faced by co-operative
ventures, trapped between ‘system requirements’, entailing market competition,
former. In a multiplication, this is clearly not possible because even if only one entry is zero, so
is the result of the product.’ ‘The proximate and remotes causes of a crisis foretold: A view from
Catholic Social Thought’, in José T. Raga and Mary Ann Glendon (eds.), Crisis in the Global
Economy: Re-Planning the Journey, Vatican City, 2011, pp. 322–3.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_7
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_7
18 M.S. Archer
and ‘social integration’ requirements, involving pro-social ends. Failure to meet
the former means the enterprise fails, yet being too good at competition means
abandoning the primacy attaching to sociality with the co-operative venture then
becoming part of the market. What he advocates for the gamut of pro-social
undertakings is that they not only hold tight to their values and norms pro-
motive of social integration, but devise means of making system integration
relational, i.e. inserting the pro-social into both the means of production and
its ends.
In a sense, this is an updated version of the ‘revised sequence’ put forward
by J.K. Galbraith (1967), where the firm serves its employees rather than them
serving market competition, although it has nothing else in common with his ‘New
Industrial State’. On the one hand, it appears to confront Porpora’s view that despite
its mutations to date, capitalism of its nature remains necessarily competitive. On
the other hand, it could be countered that what is being advocated is a process
of internal deconstruction of capitalism as known and its reconstitution as a civil
economy.
However, let us recall that the whole of the above scenario stems from an initial
change in values, or what Donati calls the ‘guiding distinction’ of a social formation.
Many would withhold such autonomous powers from the cultural domain, dubbing
their protagonists utopian. However, Colin Wight (Chap. 10) gives considerable
pause to such instant dismissals by his bold argument about the normativity of
international relations, and especially the resort to war. These, he maintains, have
shifted towards transnational co-operation after the Cold War, a thesis which
subsumes the counterfactuals springing readily to mind. If correct, this would
constitute the most important and novel source of ‘stabilization’. Wight succinctly
summarizes his own case, one that properly acknowledges all elements of SAC
(structure, culture and agency) in his account of normative change:
Military cooperation with smaller armies, which are technologically dependent, reinforces
the need to cooperate in terms of development, research and design. The global financial cri-
sis actually feeds this process of positive feedback, by restricting access to funds and hence
inducing more cooperation. The increasing recognition of the global nature of all problems
also fosters cooperation rather than competition. States are socialized into this cooperative
environment through prevailing norms and the influence of international organizations. In
this way cooperation fosters cooperation rather than competition, and cooperation produces
a commitment to the values and norms of non-violence and cooperation, which leads to
more socialization and hence more cooperation. It is a genuine positive feedback loop.
(Chap. 10, p. 237)
Moreover, his contribution gives more credible reasons for the loss of nation
state powers than those found in the corpus of works on globalization. If these can
be sustained, then this old Leviathan may not ‘wither away’, but cease blocking the
way to the development of a more robust civil society.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_10
10
1 Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which Would Morphogenic. . . 19
1.6 Conclusion
In one sense, this book can be regarded as a ground clearing operation – above
all in demonstrating that the endurance of past morphostatic mechanisms is not a
necessary condition of necessary ‘stability’ because morphogenesis introduces its
own endogenous modes of ‘stabilization’. This appears to warrant our exploration
of ‘morphogenesis unbound’ from morphostasis. In another sense, because no-one is
as yet prepared to proclaim the advent of global Morphogenic society – for reasons
exceeding the unavoidable intervention of contingency in open systems of which
the social order is forever a member – we need to compare, contrast, and creatively
consolidate the partial and partially contestable generative mechanisms that we have
tentatively begun to venture in this text. And that will be the task of Volume III.
References
Archer, M. S. (1979 [2013]). Social origins of educational systems. London/Beverly Hills: Sage.
Archer, M. S. (1988). Culture and agency: The place of culture in social theory. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Archer, M. S. (2007). Making our way through the world: Human reflexivity and social mobility.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Archer, M. S. (2012). The reflexive imperative in late modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Archer, M. S. (2013). Morphogenic society: Self-government and self-organization as misleading
metaphors. In M. S. Archer (Ed.), Social morphogenesis (Vol. 1, pp. 145–164). New York:
Springer.
Archer, M. S., & Elder-Vass, D. (2011). Cultural system or norm circles?: An exchange. European
Journal of Social Theory, 14, 1–23.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Beck, U. (1992 [1986]). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.
Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of naturalism. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, Ch. 2.
Donati, P. (2003). Giving and social relations: The culture of free giving and its differentiation
today. International Review of Sociology, 13(2), 243–272.
Frankfurt, H. G. (1988). The importance of what we care about. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Galbraith, J. K. (1967). The new industrial state. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Gorski, P. (2009). Social “mechanisms” and comparative-historical sociology: A critical realist
proposal. In P. Hedström & B. Wittrock (Eds.), Frontiers of sociology