Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to understand how the morphogenesis of society comes about through social relations, which are the connectors that mediate between agency and social structure. The generative mechanism that feeds social morphogenesis resides in the dynamic of the social relations networks that alter the social molecule constituting structures already in place. Social morphogenesis is a form of surplus of society with respect to itself. This surplus is produced through the relationality that agents/actors create in their interactions. We need a general theory of social relations that is able to show how the molecular structure of social relations in different contexts is altered. The morphogenetic surplus does not derive from structural effects as much as it is generated by ‘emergent relational effects’. Society increases (or decreases) its potential for surplus depending on processes of valorization (or devalorization) of social relations. Examples are given with reference to the crisis of the typically modern societal arrangements (lib/lab) and the birth of an after-modern society.
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Notes
- 1.
For Weber’s followers, meaning is a complex form of conscience that is elaborated by the subject in him/herself, taking into account his/her life experiences. It is thus a relation that a subject has with an ‘subjectively understood’ object; for this reason, no causal relation exists between subject and object. This is to say that the meaning of something (for example, having success in life) is not a relation that the subject elaborates on the basis of an objective reality but is a relation that the individual elaborates in him/herself from among the life experiences which a certain idea (for example, of being successful in life) evokes in him/herself.
- 2.
Georg Simmel (The Philosophy of Money, 1907) uses the term Wechselwirkung, which is usually translated into English with the terms ‘interaction, correlation, reciprocity, interdependency, interplay, reciprocation, reciprocal action’.
- 3.
‘Combined provisions’ is a juridical expression indicating that two norms must be interpreted and applied together in that the one is necessarily combined with the other.
- 4.
Here the entire sociology of Max Weber is decisive (in particular, his research on the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism).
- 5.
Here the entire sociology of Emile Durkheim is decisive (in particular, his theory of the division of labour).
- 6.
Here the entire sociology of Georg Simmel is decisive (in particular, in his works on the philosophy of money and social differentiation).
- 7.
For example, Azarian (2010: 326). In his definition, I believe, the social relation is absent, since it is reduced to what Ego expects from Alter and vice versa, i.e. to a double contingency of actions lacking an emergent connection. To me, social relations are something different from transactions between individual expectations. The trans-actional frame cannot account for the emergence of relational goods and/or evils.
- 8.
Although the choice of these four elements may resemble Parsons’ AGIL, my theory does not represent a rehabilitation of Parsons’ theory, which I have criticized in many publications. I find the choice of these elements useful to describe the requisites of a social action, but they should be understood as contingent – as Luhmann has taught – and chosen in their respective environments as I will discuss later on (Parsons sees only two environments, at the border of the values and the means, while I see a specific environment for each of them). These four elements constitute a heuristic device which, is not a pure metaphor (that is based upon a similitude), but possesses some similarity with reality, and therefore is an analogy, albeit weak (analogy being based upon similarity, not similitude). Luhmann arrived at the conclusion that we must abandon Parsons’ AGIL because it generalizes an exceptional solution, given the fact that elements can be indefinite and their relations highly indeterminate. I agree with him. But the fact is that, when system complexity cannot increase or is not working, as Luhmann presupposes (and today we witness precisely the failure of hyper-modernized societies to cope with exceeding complexity), the four elements become meaningful to explain what happens (because the ‘system’ must reduce complexity in a simplified way) (Donati 1991: chapter 4).
- 9.
Configuration in Norbert Elias’ (1978) meaning of the term.
- 10.
- 11.
Examples are what we call team reflexivity, group reflexivity, reflexivity of the we-relation that are not reducible to the single subjects but has its own dynamics (and story), being of different kinds at different moments.
- 12.
Here, ‘code’ means distinctive symbolic, communicative and operational ways of managing social relations – i.e. their constitutive ‘molecules’ – within each field (bureaucracies, markets, and networks).
- 13.
The arguments advanced here regarding social cooperation can be applied to any system of cooperative action: for example, even international cooperation or cooperation between states (European Union, Mercosur, etc.).
- 14.
This principle states that a nonprofit organization is prohibited from distributing its net earnings among individuals who oversee the organization; including board members, staff and directors. As to social cooperatives, it is usually extended to all the people who work in this kind of organizations.
- 15.
I discussed these in part III of Donati (2011b).
- 16.
The word concertation is used especially in European politics to define a modality of governance, It means cooperation, as among opposing factions (for instance trade unions, corporations and government), aimed at effecting a unified proposal or concerted action. Each actor accepts limitations on its freedom of action in order to give priority to a solidary solution.
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Donati, P. (2014). Morphogenic Society and the Structure of Social Relations. In: Archer, M. (eds) Late Modernity. Social Morphogenesis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_7
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