Abstract
This chapter studies some of the contemporary problems created by social morphogenesis for normativity. It reflects on situations where morphogenetic mechanisms (conducive to structural transformation) dominate, without ever suppressing entirely, morphostatic ones (bringing structural stability). The questions addressed are twofold: what are the anticipated implications of morphogenesis for those premiums and penalties associated with breaking norms? And what are the historically specific, if socially widespread, manifestations of this change?
The argument proceeds by distinguishing the sequential and concurrent dimensions of morphogenesis. The spread of sequential morphogenesis erodes the normativity of those institutions that are relatively more liquid than others and creates a premium for people following the latest normative tendency. Concurrent morphogenesis creates free-riding advantages by multiplying the number of escape routes, by allowing cheating through multiple memberships, and by offering facile legalist justifications.
The concrete implications of these general mechanisms are traced in five key points: the commodification of relations of solidarity; the multiplication of novel normative problems; the increasing complexity of normative discussions; the multiplication of arbitrators; and society’s general attitude towards marginal groups.
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Notes
- 1.
Think for instance of the widespread injunction, in the early twenty-first century, to ‘reestablish morality in public life’.
- 2.
As Habermas has it: ‘Cultural traditions have their own, vulnerable, conditions of reproduction. They remain “living” as long as they take shape in an unplanned, nature-like manner, or are shaped with hermeneutic consciousness. (Whereby hermeneutics, as the scholarly interpretation and application of tradition, has the peculiarity of breaking down the nature-like character of tradition as it is handed on and, nevertheless, of retaining it at a reflective level.) [2] The critical appropriation of tradition destroys this nature-like character in discourse. (Whereby the peculiarity of critique consists in its double function [3]: to dissolve analytically, or in a critique of ideology, validity claims that cannot be discursively redeemed; but, at the same time, to release the semantic potentials of the tradition.) [4] To this extent, critique is no less a form of appropriating tradition than hermeneutics. In both cases appropriated cultural contents retain their imperative force, that is, they guarantee the continuity of a history through which individuals and groups can identify with themselves and with one another. A cultural tradition loses precisely this force as soon as it is objectivistically prepared and strategically employed. In both cases conditions for the reproduction of cultural traditions are damaged, and the tradition is undermined. This can be seen in the museum-effect of a hedonistic historicism, as well as in the wear and tear that results from the exploitation of cultural contents for administrative or market purposes. Apparently, traditions can retain legitimizing force only as long as they are not torn out of interpretive systems that guarantee continuity and identity.’ (Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, ch. 6, accessed www.vanuatu.usp.ac.fj/courses/LA332_Jurisprudence/Articles/Habermas.htm).
- 3.
This argument is developed in Sect. 9.3.1 infra.
- 4.
While today’s common usage of the word ‘problems’ treats them as undesirable developments, this paper understands ‘problems’ in the primitive sense of ‘A difficult or demanding question’ (Oxford English Dictionary, see also Aristotles Topics I, iv).
- 5.
For the time being, I attempt to draw the argument without reference to the (valid) notion of a common good,
- 6.
The arguments developed by Blaur, Kripke, Winch and Wittgenstein rely precisely on mental experiments that posit such languages before contrasting them sharply with common practices of language. Thus they seek to demonstrate, by this contraposition, that language is not a private matter.
- 7.
The fact that butchers, electronics shopkeepers and hairdressers need different tools or stocks of raw materials is arguably indicative of a fundamental difference between the ideas that populate the cultural domain and the material relations that constitute the social domain of reality. This argument does not invalidate the point about the impossibility of pure social morphogenesis. It does, however, indicate some of the limitations that apply to the social domain without applying equally stringently to the cultural domain (for a case for material relations, see Porpora 1993).
- 8.
I am grateful to Catherine Karela who brought my attention on this point.
- 9.
This paper was written with the vocabulary of Lawson’s writings. In Archer’s vocabulary, this sentence should be rephrased, using the word ‘role’ instead of ‘position’.
- 10.
If this hypothesis is correct, then recent (voluntary) immigrants should be more inclined to communicative reflexivity during the first years than afterwards (see also the works of Radu Cinpoeş for studies of Romanian immigrants’ reflexivity towards the British society).
- 11.
This conception is obviously in contradiction with the view, held by most contemporary policy-makers, according to which it is the overall rate of unemployment that determines the overall household confidence index. Such a confusion between causes and consequences leads them to fight the rate of unemployment by ‘fluidifying’ labour markets, which in turn leads to increased distrust of employees towards their employers and lower, rather than higher, rates of consumption! A reasoning articulated in terms of generative organisations and first person perceptions would have avoided this pitfall.
- 12.
Cf. Weber’s characterisation of the state as the monopolist of legitimate violence (Weber 1919).
- 13.
We can think of banks here, but of equal importance is the expansion of commodities. Money is increasingly usable to purchase caring activities for infants and for the elderly.
- 14.
Hochschild characterises emotional labour as a form of labour which ‘requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others … This kind of labour calls for a coordination of mind and feeling, and it sometimes draws on a source of self that we honor as deep and integral to our individuality’ (Hochschild 1983, p. 7).
- 15.
The farewell video posted by Amanda Todd can be viewed on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej7afkypUsc (accessed on 19th December 2012).
- 16.
Whether Marx should be treated as a direct heir of Enlightenment and universal rationality is an open question that does not affect our argument’s validity.
- 17.
- 18.
Other reasons include the confidentiality of arbitrations (which avoids public shame or even amendments to existing laws) and the fact that powerful actors are typically in a position to impose their choice of arbitrators upon less powerful partners.
- 19.
For an overview of the development of family therapy, see for instance Nichols (2012).
- 20.
The first sites appearing when searching ‘parenting advice’ on Google (on 18th December 2012) include: Raising Children (Australia), WebMD (USA), Parenting.org (USA), DrPhil (USA), Parenting.com (USA), Familyeducation.com (USA), Parentsconnect (USA). European websites include: netmums.co.uk (UK), family.fr (France), Bebe-bebe.com (Switzerland).
- 21.
The Law of the Twelve Tables (449–390 BC) specified that ‘a father shall have the right of life and death over his son born in lawful marriage, and shall also have the power to render him independent, after he has been sold three times’.
- 22.
Cf. the consideration of homosexuality as perversion in Freud’s works or the punishment reserved to Sodom and Ghomora in the Bible.
- 23.
Cf. Twain’s Huckleberry Finn or the discussions held by the Church to determine whether black people had a soul.
- 24.
Cf. women acquiring voting rights about one century after their male counterparts: France (1944), UK (1918) and Switzerland, where I am writing this chapter (1959).
- 25.
Cf. Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris and Féval’s Le Bossu.
- 26.
Cf. the classic, anonymous, Lazarillo de Tormes.
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Al-Amoudi, I. (2014). Morphogenesis and Normativity: Problems the Former Creates for the Latter. In: Archer, M. (eds) Late Modernity. Social Morphogenesis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_9
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