Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society: Explorations in Social Morphogenesis [1st ed.] 978-3-030-13623-9, 978-3-030-13624-6

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii
Introduction: Unbound Morphogenesis in a Closed World (Andrea M. Maccarini)....Pages 1-13
Front Matter ....Pages 15-15
Analysing the Morphogenic Society. Regularities and Social Ontology (Andrea M. Maccarini)....Pages 17-41
After Late Modernity? The Morphogenetic Approach as Hermeneutics of Transition (Andrea M. Maccarini)....Pages 43-71
Front Matter ....Pages 73-73
Openness and Closure in Turbulent Times: Adaptive Responses to Unbound Morphogenesis (Andrea M. Maccarini)....Pages 75-113
The Logic of Opportunity and Its Normative (Dis)contents (Andrea M. Maccarini)....Pages 115-151
War and Violence in the Morphogenic Society (Andrea M. Maccarini)....Pages 153-183
Formations of the Secular. Transcendence in a Closed World (Andrea M. Maccarini)....Pages 185-215
Front Matter ....Pages 217-217
The Pressure on the Human. Education, Self, and Character in the New Social Order (Andrea M. Maccarini)....Pages 219-251
The Contingency of Human Flourishing. Good Life After Modernity (Andrea M. Maccarini)....Pages 253-281
Conclusion. A Glimpse on Morphogenic Futures (Andrea M. Maccarini)....Pages 283-287

Citation preview

Andrea M. Maccarini

Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society Explorations in Social Morphogenesis

Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society

Andrea M. Maccarini

Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society Explorations in Social Morphogenesis

123

Andrea M. Maccarini Department of Political Science Law and International Studies University of Padova Padova, Italy

ISBN 978-3-030-13623-9 ISBN 978-3-030-13624-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13624-6

(eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931534 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 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. 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. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Sara, my companion in life and thought. Et tuum est quod habeo

Preface

This book has a relatively long story, about which I would like to inform readers. As an intellectual enterprise, the idea of writing a volume that would elaborate on sociological theory, discussing some of its central problems and the most fruitful approaches, had appealed to me for years. However, notes and drafts lay patiently waiting amid the ordinary chaos of academic life. The opportunity came with the invitation to participate in the workshops launched by the Center for Social Ontology, led by Margaret Archer and supported by the Independent Social Research Foundation. For five consecutive years starting in 2012, an international group of scholars met in various European cities. The product of those meetings was five volumes, published by Springer from 2013 to 2017. Our work revolved around an explorative hypothesis about macro-social change, namely that of an emergent ‘morphogenic society’. Such a conceptualization prompted our debates, which were extremely rich and stimulating, and provided a unitary vantage point for me to confront the issues I wanted to deal with. After that book series came to a close, I felt it was the right time to articulate my own reflection in more systematic fashion, developing the theoretical discussion further and treating some other issues within the theoretical framework that had grown in the course of the ‘social morphogenesis’ project. Thus, the basic idea was to start from the problems and materials of the CSO seminars, deepening and expanding my understanding of the processes and structures that are characterizing global society. This involved working in two directions: elaborate on the conceptual framework, discussing it in dialogue with other paradigms and authors, and test its capacity to produce instructive insights into various societal dynamics. This initially resulted in a candidly enormous project. So, I limited its range to a few essential issues and illustrative phenomena. But the outcome still looked like a big job. The most serious problem was that it involved treating a wide variety of themes, each with its own specialized literature. Therefore, much as I tried to provide an adequate overview of each relevant topic, it was clearly impossible to offer exhaustive accounts. Moreover, in some chapters I could fall back on my own

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theoretical and empirical work, while in others I could only be described as an interested outsider. What I hope is that the selections made in my reconstructions are consistent enough with the specific aims of my main argument. As a consequence of all this, the crucial question concerned what my own personal contribution could be. In other words, what the value added of the volume would really be. With these issues still in mind, I made my decisions and started working. The result is a book which falls short of a full-blown study providing decisive evidence for each of the claims advanced and the arguments presented. I do illustrate my arguments with data and examples, but there is no ad hoc field research or exhaustive documentation underpinning my theses about the various topics covered in the volume. The book comes closer to a ‘position essay’, in which a certain view is stated, explored, critically compared and connected to other theories, but admittedly not ‘demonstrated’ in the most ambitious sense of the word. The chapters develop a consistent line of analysis and build a convergent theoretical narrative about contemporary society. At the same time, each of them has an independent motivating theme. I have tried to avoid excessive repetition of the main tenets of the conceptual framework underlying the whole volume and have left just a bit of it in each chapter, in order to make the connections between substantive problems and theoretical approach more evident. Therefore, the book can also be read in bits, provided readers already have sufficient background knowledge of the so-called morphogenetic approach to social theory. Although the book is divided into three parts, each with a respective theme to address and (hopefully) clear mutual connections, different reading itineraries may be followed that do not necessarily coincide with the sequential organization of the volume. To sum up, my personal contribution is meant to be twofold. First, I defend a theoretical perspective and try to indicate what it means to sociological theory in general. Second, I aim to open ‘corridors between paradigms’, looking at the possible convergence, mutual translation and integration among theories that the substantive topics themselves evoke. I am well aware that the insights emerging from the various chapters are hardly amenable to a unitary ‘big formula’ to define future society. An acute sense of the ridiculous, and a healthy relation to (im)perfection, helped me avoid to expect that as a possible outcome of this book. I just hope that the present work can inspire further study in social theory, as well as in the various special research fields it covers—besides being criticized, as I surely expect. These considerations did not dispel all my doubts or remove all perplexities, but at least provided a justification I found fair enough to carry on with the projected book. It will be for readers to decide if alternative uses of my time and energies would have better served the interests of social science. Moreover, I have often wondered what this book might mean in a wider context, beyond the technicalities of social theory. Looking at the bigger picture, just as I was writing a volume about an open, dynamic society guided by the logic of opportunity, I witnessed nothing less than the risk of disruption of Europe and the West as distinct forms of civilization. Especially, Europe is developing into an

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ageing society with weak identity and social cohesion, in which countries shy away from mutual solidarity, only to bend upon their own problems—that they obviously cannot face on their own. For a European who was born and raised in Northern Italy, coming of age in the years of the fall of the Berlin Wall (an event he joyfully celebrated at the Goethe-Institut Mailand, where he was learning his German), and for whom the British and the American culture have been crucial factors in his personal as well as scholarly education, this experience is poignantly painful. Si parva licet componere magnis, I sometimes feel like Alexis de Tocqueville in Carl Schmitt’s description— that is, historically defeated on all accounts. Although I made every effort to avoid writing the umpteenth pretentious, sweeping canvas about the ‘decline and fall’ of just about everything, this concern may surface here and there in the text, taking its toll with occasional caustic comments or pessimistic examples. I apologize in advance, and hope I have managed to limit this to few lines. In any case, this twilight feeling is not the intention underlying the volume. Finally, I want to express my sincere gratitude to all the people who have helped this book to see the light. First, let me thank the distinguished colleagues who participated in the CSO project about the morphogenic society and were co-authors of the related volumes: Maggie Archer, who was the creative and energetic inspirer of the enterprise, Ismael Al-Amoudi, Mark Carrigan, Pierpaolo Donati, Kate Forbes-Pitt, Philip Gorski, Wolfgang Hofkirchner, John Latsis, Tony Lawson, Emmanuel Lazega, Jamie Morgan, Douglas Porpora, William Sun and Colin Wight. In the bureaucratic horror of the contemporary university system, this group has been a badly needed refuge where I could celebrate my concern for social science together with other fellow believers. Our conversations have been a major source of inspiration for me over the years and resonate throughout this volume, although the single voices may be hard to identify. Sincere thanks to the colleagues and friends who provided longer or shorter escapes from the academic routine over the years, and much needed opportunities for reflection and study. Above all, I am grateful to Prof. Charles L. Glenn and Prof. Hans Joas. Their support was much appreciated, as well as the opportunity to establish a fruitful scientific dialogue. I also want to thank Saul Engelbourg, Professor Emeritus of History at Boston University, whom I met during a precious sabbatical year spent at BU and who encouraged my intellectual pursuit in various ways. Although this book probably does not cover topics of his major interest, I am happy to acknowledge his positive contribution to my intellectual efforts. Other colleagues have been travel companions throughout many years of work, and they would be too numerous to mention. Let me thank Riccardo Prandini for all the conversations and the unfinished plans. Aren’t they the best food for thought, and a graphic expression of the human, not just scholarly, condition? I also thank Matteo Bortolini, a good companion in savoury sociological reflections, particularly, but not exclusively about secularization theory. Many thanks to Giovanni Grandi, for the pleasure of intellectual exchange we share as often as possible and never take for granted.

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All these colleagues have always displayed the hallmark of intellectual friendship, being unfailingly supportive, but by no means uncritical. For this I am very thankful. At the University of Padova, I thank the fellow sociologists of my department for sharing with me the duties of ordinary academic life. Special thanks to my Department Head, Elena Pariotti, whose relentless activity has made our academic environment more hospitable to my studies. I hope she will like to know that her efforts are not unrelated to the scientific productivity of her colleagues. Last but not least, I am grateful to Daria Panebianco and Martina Visentin for the support they give to my research—and look forward to reading theirs. As provisional versions of some chapters were presented on several occasions, thanks are due to all the colleagues and the students whose comments allowed me to improve my arguments on many accounts. Chapter 6 was originally discussed at the IACR annual conference in Turin, July 2017. It was also the topic of a class I taught in Padova in the academic year 2017/18. I presented the main argument of Chap. 7 at a workshop on religious pluralism and education organized by the Lanza Foundation in Padova, in May 2018. Part of Chap. 8 has been discussed at the midterm conference of the Italian Sociological Association, Section of Education, which took place in Naples in October 2016, and then at a later stage in a workshop held in Turin for the Fondazione per la Scuola, Compagnia di San Paolo, in July 2018. On a personal note, let me thank my family. It might sound bizarre, but the lively circus of my home in Padova, with its numerous crew and frantic rhythms, could also provide an unexpectedly quiet niche for a lone writer to inhabit and has been a perfect working environment that allowed me to stay focussed throughout this enterprise. The same must be said of my in-laws’ house on the Italian Alps that has served as a lovely intellectual retirement for so many years. If this book has been written, it is also thanks to that refuge, and to the friends I have there. Places are beautiful and important for what they allow to happen. A final thought goes to Lina. She knew nothing about sociology, and she surely was no Calvinist, but her grit and her work ethic would have struck Max Weber. Like Lucinda Matlock from the Spoon River Anthology, at ninety-six she had lived enough, that is all, and passed to a sweet repose. Padova, Italy September 2018

Andrea M. Maccarini

Contents

1

Introduction: Unbound Morphogenesis in a Closed World . 1.1 Locked and Unchained . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Approach and Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Morphogenetic Approach: Debates and Extensions

Analysing the Morphogenic Society. Regularities and Social Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Social Morphogenesis from Meta-Theory to Forms of Social Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Morphogenesis and Regularity: Making Friends with Old Enemies? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Duration, Pace, Trajectory, Turning Points, Transitions, and Cycles. New Bricks for the Morphogenetic Fabric . . 2.4 Regularities and Social Ontologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

After Late Modernity? The Morphogenetic Approach as Hermeneutics of Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 The Attractions and Discontents of Historical Diagnosis . . . . 3.2 After (Functionalist) Modernization Theory: Contingency Beyond ‘Master Trends’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Socio-Historical Patterns and Logics of Development: Conceptual Alternatives in the Era of Contingency . . . . . . . . 3.4 The Morphogenetic Approach as Hermeneutics of Transition: Chance, Plans, Agency and Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part II 4

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An Outline of the Morphogenic Society

Openness and Closure in Turbulent Times: Adaptive Responses to Unbound Morphogenesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Unbound Morphogenesis and the Emergence of the New . . . 4.2 On the Concept of Social Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Things We Lost in the Fire and Things Emerging from It: A Landscape of Social Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Changing Temporal Structures: Social Acceleration . . . . . . . 4.5 Enclaves and Vortexes as ‘Morphogenic Environments’: A Thesis and Its Working Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Relational Conjunctures and Morphogenic Environments . . . 4.7 Conclusion. Openness, Closure, and the Big Bang of Social Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Logic of Opportunity and Its Normative (Dis)contents . 5.1 Introduction: Social Norms and Social Morphogenesis . . 5.2 Normative Tensions in a Morphogenic Society: Foci, Challenges and Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Morphogenic Society, Morphological Rights: The Logic of Opportunity and Its Ontological (Dis)Contents . . . . . . 5.4 The Quest for Universalism in the Morphogenic Society . 5.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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War and Violence in the Morphogenic Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Introduction: The New Connection Between War and Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 The Mystery of War: What Social Science Knows . . . . . . . 6.3 ‘Who Now Reads Spencer?’ War and Modernity Revisited . 6.4 Sociological Analysis of War: The Morphogenetic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Transforming War and the Transformative Power of War . . 6.6 Conclusion. Mobilizing, Expanding, Delimiting War . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Formations of the Secular. Transcendence in a Closed World 7.1 The Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Axiality: An Old New Tool for Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Pluralism, Contingency, and Axiality in a Morphogenic Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Conclusion: Axial Morphogenesis and Axial Catastrophes . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

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Humanity Counts. Anthropological Consequences of Unbound Morphogenesis

The Pressure on the Human. Education, Self, and Character in the New Social Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Unbound Morphogenesis and the Issue of Education . . . . 8.2 Education and the Management of Excess . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 The Social Mechanisms of Excess and the Critique of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 Concern, Character and Skills: Facing the Challenges . . . . 8.5 The Morphogenesis of Character: Towards Theoretical Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Contingency of Human Flourishing. Good Life After Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 A Missing Link and the Semantics of Decadence . . . . . 9.2 Modernity’s Compromise of Happiness, and Beyond . . 9.3 Responses to the Challenge: Emergent Visions of the Human Good in the Morphogenic Society . . . . . 9.4 Being (Fulfilled as) Human in the Morphogenic Society References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10 Conclusion. A Glimpse on Morphogenic Futures 10.1 Lost in Dystopias? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 Morphogenesis as Transitional Moment . . . . 10.3 What Remains to Be Done . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Unbound Morphogenesis in a Closed World

“The full blown Morphogenic Society would be one in which the production, exploration and exploitation of ‘contingent compatibilities’ constitutes novel opportunities (jobs, roles, modus vivendi) whose take-up follows a situational logic of opportunity (the new being found more attractively advantageous than the old) and meets with little opposition because no vested interests have yet been consolidated on this novel terrain”. Archer (2017: 10). “A total metamorphosis of history has taken place. The essential fact is: There is no longer anything outside. The world is closed. The unity of the earth has arrived. New perils and new opportunities are revealed”. Jaspers (1953: 127). “One aspect of globalization is intrinsically transformative: human actions expand until they fill up the earth and rebound back on us. This is a boomerang effect whereby actions launched by human beings hit up against the limits of the earth and then return to hit them hard and change them” Mann (2013: 3).

Keywords Social morphogenesis · Logic of opportunity · Closed world · Emergent structures

1.1 Locked and Unchained Social change in global society is producing an amazing mix of openness and closure. On one hand, boundaries are blurred and established values, institutions, and forms of life are exposed to growing volatility. True, the world of the Cold War had already presented us with globalization, complexity and risk. However, there was always a power, a culture, an identity, a sense of who we were and what we wanted to be—something to root for. In late modernity, it seems that the powers of globalization are unchained, social dynamics accelerate, and all solidity is gone. Vertigo is the resulting malaise (Young 2007). On the other hand, a similar malaise is brought © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. M. Maccarini, Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13624-6_1

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1 Introduction: Unbound Morphogenesis in a Closed World

about by a sense of saturation of physical as well as symbolical and communicative space (Gergen 2000). This condition is causing a haunting sense of loss, historical discontinuity and decline among the Western public. The passions and feelings of non-Western inhabitants of the global world are not as well-known to Western sociologists, which could make a huge difference. Be that as it may, frightened reactions emerge in policies and in popular mood. New barriers are erected and new differences constructed, new securities are longed for. Part of the Western cultural and political élites drowns this tendency in contempt, another part is using it to its advantage, revitalizing nationalist myths we thought had faded from late modern skies. Social theory has gone along with these developments. Basically, most scholarly representations of society have long become ones of flux and mobility, destabilization and catastrophe. In some cases, they entered a ‘post-societal’ phase (Urry 2000). Overall, as various authors have noted, globalization theory—compared to modernization theory—could be characterized as hopeless, in that it is lacking any positive vision for the future of society. The aspect of saturation and the lack of space, however, has been less explored in its manifold manifestations and implications. In sum—like most other narratives available today—the social sciences can hardly provide a unifying key to make sense of our current societal and civilizational horizon. This book approaches such a deep change in a specific way. Its main argument is based on two guiding insights, which are oriented to the issues mentioned above as the hallmark of late modern predicament. They could be summarized as follows: (1) social morphogenesis becomes unbound, which means that the structural and cultural processes producing social novelty are increasingly detached from morphostatic constraints. The societal formation that emerges from these dynamics can be called a morphogenetic society (from now on MS); (2) the world is closed, in a physical as well as symbolical sense, since there are no longer places to discover or space untouched by the impact of human agency. Together, these features constitute a paradoxical condition, leaving late modern people locked in a closed societal frame and unchained in their opportunities for choice and action. These theoretical insights work as a generative conceptual core, with the aim to identify the tracks along which the developmental path of global society is unfolding. The main thesis of this book is that the social phenomena illustrated in the various chapters—e.g. social acceleration, the saturation of social space and time with information, communication, and social relations, the emergence of human enhancement techniques, etc.—can be traced back to these basic factors and to their complex interactions. Let me briefly illustrate these points, clarifying their meaning and relevance. (1) The idea of an MS may sound somewhat puzzling. Indeed, the very notion of ‘morphogenesis’ needs some clarification. Such a concept lies at the core of an

1.1 Locked and Unchained

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approach to social theory, which bears this very name.1 In a nutshell, its main contribution consists in offering a conceptual frame to be used in sociological analysis, whereby the continuous creation-and-transformation of social and cultural forms (morpho-genesis) is modelled as a contingent, though structured process over time. If this is the case, what does it mean to call a given type of society ‘morphogenetic’? Isn’t society as such inherently morphogenetic? To understand this point it is necessary to distinguish among three different meanings of the term ‘morphogenesis’. The first two meanings reflect the shift between two different theoretical levels, namely meta-theory and theory, or in other words, between formal and substantive theory: (i) At the meta-theoretical level, the term morphogenesis indicates an analytical framework to study social processes. ‘The social’ can only be conceived of as a process that consists of the continuous transformation of structures, cultures, and social groups through the diachronic, cyclical connection of structural conditioning-interaction-structural elaboration or reproduction. In these cycles, structure and agency emerge, interweave and redefine one another. In this sense, all societies are intrinsically morphogenetic; (ii) At the substantive level, morphogenesis refers to one of the possible outcomes of such a process, namely to structural elaboration, i.e. transformation, as against morphostasis—that is, social reproduction. In this perspective, whether or not a given social situation over a given time span can be called ‘morphogenetic’ can only be decided through empirical sociological analysis; Now, with speculations about an emerging morphogenetic society, a third meaning is added. Although it still works on a substantive level, the latter differs from meaning (ii) in several respects: (iii) the notion of MS implies that: (a) morphogenesis (vs. morphostasis) does not refer to the outcome of one M/M cycle, but to a whole type of society, a whole form of social order … (b) … which characterizes the (relatively) enduring state of structures, cultures, and social groups, not just in a few spots or sub-systems, but as the main framework of society. This means that the structural, cultural, and agential conditions that make change more likely than reproduction are obtaining on a large scale—i.e. for the whole society and not only in some particular areas or subsystems. In addition, they will be around for some time, characterizing not just one or two M/M cycles, but a longer historical period. Thus, the idea of a MS basically means that morphogenesis prevails over morphostasis everywhere and for a relatively long chain of M/M cycles. 1 Of

course, reference goes to Margaret Archer’s ‘morphogenetic approach’ to social theory. In this volume, it will often be called the ‘M/M’ approach, to emphasize the principled equivalence of morphogenesis and morphostasis. See Archer (1995, 2011) for an analytic illustration of the explanatory model. On these I draw in the present discussion.

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1 Introduction: Unbound Morphogenesis in a Closed World

Relationships of… compatibility

incompatibility

Outcome:

which condition a situational logic of…

necessary

Conservation

Compromise

Morphostasis

contingent

Opportunity

Elimination

Morphogenesis

Fig. 1.1 Institutional configurations and situational logics

(c) The idea of MS has a further implication. One of the main features of the M/M explanatory format must be highlighted here, which will play an important role throughout the present book. At point (i) above I recalled that the model involves diachronic cycles, constituted by the moments of structural/cultural conditioning, interaction (which entails agency), and the resulting structural elaboration or reproduction. Now, structural conditioning is not just understood as the generic pressure of habits or established norms. The way it works, and the outcomes encouraged, are modelled in a systematic scheme, based on the relations between relevant structures, and their emergent properties. The various possible combinations are called institutional configurations, each of which fosters a corresponding situational logic. The latter represent the directions in which structural conditioning pushes—the strategies social actors are most likely to assume, because of the specific ways in which their interests and identities converge or diverge. In other words, structural relations reveal how opportunity costs are distributed. Morphogenesis and morphostasis are emergent effects of these dynamics. Figure 1.1 presents a general overview.2 For example, if two countries, organizations, or social groups need one another, while being otherwise opposed, the tendency will be for them to reach some compromise. Consider the case in which different social classes, cultural, economic or political élites, ethnic or religious groups are endowed with conflicting interests and incompatible identities, but control different sets of material or symbolical resources, or possess particular skills, which are necessary for both to survive and thrive within a relatively peaceful and wealthy social order. The structural constraint will pro2 Culture

and structure work in an analogous, though specific way. See Archer (1988, 1995) for a full-blown exposition. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, I will not detail my illustration here.

1.1 Locked and Unchained

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duce strategies converging on some viable compromise. Resisting the structural drift is possible—since the M/M is no deterministic model—but requires effort and has fewer chances of success, at least in the short run. With this said, let us go back to our main point. As I recalled in one of the quotes that open the present chapter, the idea of the MS contemplates a situation in which “the production, exploration and exploitation of ‘contingent compatibilities’ constitutes novel opportunities (jobs, roles, modus vivendi) whose take-up follows a situational logic of opportunity (the new being found more attractively advantageous than the old) and meets with little opposition because no vested interests have yet been consolidated on this novel terrain” (Archer 2017: 10). Now, the point is that contingent compatibilities are not the only institutional configuration resulting in morphogenesis instead of morphostasis. Contingent incompatibilities also lie on the morphogenetic side, but their dynamics is one of mutual elimination, not of enhanced opportunities for combinatorial games. And even compromise, which is mainly morphostatic, might allow limited change, paving the way for further, more dramatic transformation in the long run. Therefore, the notion of MS refers not just to morphogenesis, but to a particular kind of morphogenetic processes among others. These are the main object of our investigation, which wants to explore how they are developing, and under what conditions they really prevail over other mechanisms. Throughout this volume, I will use the term morphogenic to distinguish this third meaning from the other two, for which morphogenetic will be employed.3 With these clarifications in mind, we can now further illustrate what it means that society becomes morphogenic. According to Archer, the MS is a type of social order that follows modern society in its classical form, introducing major changes with respect to its main structures and cultures, as well as to people’s experience and life course. More precisely, Archer (2013) spells out the main features of the MS as follows: (a) (b) (c) (d)

Morphogenesis is less restrained by morphostasis; The generative mechanism for variety to stimulate more variety starts to engage; Those features of modernity preserving contextual continuity weaken quickly; Contextual incongruity for (nearly) all prompts reflexivity of (nearly) all. Its main effects are:

(i) The situational logic of opportunity pre-dominates; (ii) Prizes go to those who can reflexively manipulate contingent cultural and structural compatibilities; (iii) The modes of reflexivity themselves change; 3 The

question may be raised about the possible relation of both the approach and the MS thesis with the classical Marxian contribution—or with some recent Marxist perspective. This question is surely important, but would require a longer treatment than I can possibly offer here. One short answer would be to assert that the M/M approach is far from any conceptual frame revolving around the distinction between (economic) structure and (symbolical) infrastructure. In this respect, it could be labelled as a ‘non-Marxist critical theory’. The volatility and combinatorial complexity of the MS, in turn, does not depend solely or mainly on the economic system—although capitalism is obviously a case in point. But I readily admit that the issue should be covered in more detail.

6

1 Introduction: Unbound Morphogenesis in a Closed World

(iv) Civil Society transforms under the joint pressure of the two increasingly dominant modalities of reflexivity. In one of the latest contributions on this theme (2017: 1–28), Archer has proposed a further articulate definition, which is worth a practically literal account here: 1. Morphogenetic processes increasingly predominate over morphostatic ones. Positive feedback exceeds negative feedback, meaning that ‘change’ prevails over mechanisms restoring ‘stasis’; 2. A great leap forward takes place in late modernity; one based upon ‘variety fosters greater variety’, in ideas, techniques, skills, products and life-styles. As morphogenetic change gathers in momentum and penetration, there is a shift away from the Competitive situational logic typical of modernity, with its zero-sum production of winners and losers in almost every field. Instead, a new situational logic of Opportunity engages based upon the option of generating further novel variety through innovative syntheses; 3. This tendency intensifies dramatically when Structure and Culture both become morphogenetic and enter into synergy with the other, rather than reinforcing one another’s morphostatic consequences. Synergy grows because the pool of ‘contingent compatibilities’ is enlarged as novel items are added. As the variety of new items increases, so does the probability of ‘pairs’ being complementary. This prompts innovation and change; 4. When Morphogenesis becomes predominant, shared Normativity can no longer serve as a basis for social order. Laws, rules, norms and conventions become increasingly disparate and often divisively contested. In response to the normative crisis, resort is increasingly made to a-normative forms of regulation, to reinforcing a ‘Macro-Moral Disconnect’ (Porpora), and to expelling morality from public life. Behavioural regulation prevails over the encouragement of cooperation or redistributive measures. 5. The ‘new’ is not automatically commensurate with the ‘good’. Some forms of synergy are predominantly beneficent, such as the systematic use of pain-killers in palliative medicine; others are the reverse, for example, digital crime and the Dark Net. A Morphogenic social formation could promote human flourishing or Eudaimonia and the Common Good, or not. 6. Note: The logic of unbound morphogenesis is still not dominating all social processes, but it is spreading unevenly throughout global society, generating ‘regions’ where it is more intensely realized and recognised, and giving rise to qualitatively different social forms in response to its pressure. In this later definition, the emphasis falls on normative issues and on the implications of the MS for the ‘good life’. Archer is concerned to clarify that unbound morphogenesis involves serious problems with regard to the kind of normative constraints institutionalized. Further, she points out that the outcomes of the MS may be conducive to the common good or not. In sum, she is careful to qualify the sociological status of the idea of MS in the face of possible optimistic or idealistic misunderstandings. Moreover, the processual character of the morphogenic syndrome

1.1 Locked and Unchained

7

is highlighted (point 6), thereby stressing its contingency and disorderly emergence. The image thus results clearer and more explicitly balanced. This view has far-reaching implications, and prompts discussion on many accounts. For example, is there really such a thing as an MS? Is it already with us, or are we just on our way to its development? Is it possible to draw an unequivocal outline of its profile? Many theorists would agree that the speed rate of mechanisms of social change is rocketing. Therefore, the idea of ‘unbound’ or ‘unmitigated’ morphogenesis is partly consistent with those theories that highlight how modernity itself, at least in its later stage of development, entails some kind of meta-transition, bringing not from one steady state to another, but to the continuous fluctuation of unbound contingency.4 Yet, in spite of such partial similarities, the M/M approach rejects most of these images of society. What are the decisive differences? A further issue regards the relation between the idea of a MS and modernization theory. It seems fair to say that the idea of MS does not in itself entail any prediction about its capacity to cope with complexity, the shape of its major institutional complexes, or the predominance of civilizing versus de-civilizing forces. But what is its vision of the common good, if any? These questions represent the leitmotiv underlying the analyses presented in the following chapters of this volume. (2) The notion of a closed world represents a complex insight, one that has not been systematically tackled by social theory. It emerges in various research fields, involves multiple inflections and has a high potential of abstraction, generalization and re-specification. Let me try to convey its possible meaning for the present book. In a basic sense, the idea is invoked of a world without an ‘outside’. I venture to use this odd expression, which is surely not a glorious contribution to the English language, as a translation of the German phrase Welt ohne Extern (Luhmann 1996). In Niklas Luhmann’s theory, it indicates a social formation which loses all references beyond its inner structures and processes. It is meant to address both the self-referential closure of social systems and the transformation of social, political, and cosmological concepts in modern philosophy that is related to such a condition. Luhmann’s insight is indeed thought-provoking, in that it links a basic structural trend—the self-referential turn, which in his perspective might be dubbed the fundamental metabolism of modern societies—with some crucial aspects of its deep cultural self-understanding. This prepares a further generalization of the concept. The task to integrate it systematically within sociological theory is, however, still arduous. What I can do is lay out a few basic coordinates, and indicate how these identify a set of factors that are crucially important for the structural and cultural dynamic of the MS. To begin with, its meanings include both the material and the symbolical domain. I am not referring to a language game, or to an epistemological turn. The concept 4 Bauman’s

well-known idea of a ‘liquid’ society also fits into this mould, as well as John Urry’s theory of ‘mobilities’. These themes will be taken up again in chapter three.

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1 Introduction: Unbound Morphogenesis in a Closed World

indicates a structural and cultural condition typical of global society. In such a condition, there is no outer, unknown space for humans to explore, one that is still not reached, integrated within and charted by previously set human rules and communicative, symbolical or material infrastructures. In the geographical domain, we now know what lands, climates, peoples and cultures are to be found beyond the oceans, what is on the highest mountains, at the poles, and even in the Mercer lake.5 In the symbolical realm, it has become hard to find real novelty in the production of original ideas—e.g. in philosophy and even in music scores. There is a deep impression of saturation. In some sense, there is no more unmarked space.6 Moreover, the concept is strictly connected with human agency and its powers. In Jaspers’ quote at the outset of this Introduction, it is described as the effect of the quantitative expansion of humanity over the globe. And when Michael Mann speaks of a predicament “whereby actions launched by human beings hit up against the limits of the earth and then return to hit them hard and change them” (2013: 3), he is updating such a view in terms of the powerful impact of human agency upon the planet. In the context of his work, this thesis mainly concerns military power—who or what would remain untouched by large-scale nuclear or biological warfare? Where could we really fly from a world pandemic?—as well as pollution and climate change (Ibid.: 361–364). The huge difficulties in getting rid of waste and rubbish are a graphic example of the impossibility of externalization. I would add other factors beyond war and climate, but the crucial idea is that these shocks are anthropogenic, resulting from human actions. Such a magnified impact of human actions is both cause and effect of some sort of ‘shrinking’ of the world, impacting on the possibilities of human action. In a material sense, there is no more ‘free land’ where people might imagine to migrate, escaping threats or a bleak past, re-shaping both their personal and collective life, and thereby inventing some brand new forms of life. The American imaginary may be the quintessential modern example of such a feat, which helps understand how important this possibility has been for human societies.7 What all these aspects have in common, and somehow reveal, is a grand closure of the horizon of human action, vision and perspective. The loss of such a social and cultural resource may turn out to be much more consequential than social science has seen to date, both for material and for social-psychological reasons. In a generalized 5 Mercer

Lake is a subglacial lake in Antarctica, which is covered by an ice sheet about 3500 ft thick. It has been regarded as one of the most uncontaminated places on the planet. On 28 December 2018, the Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) team announced they had reached Mercer Lake. Its waters are now being filtered and studied for the analysis of micro-organisms and other features of scientific interest. 6 I only cautiously thread around this concept, because the formal meaning it has in Spencer Brown’s work (1969)—and then in Luhmann’s systems theory—must not be hastily coupled with the trend I am describing, although it certainly resonates with it. This connection must be developed further. 7 Not only for modernity, of course. For a nice literary example about antiquity, see Purves (2006) on Odysseus’s journey. The new situation is also revealed in the shifting meanings of ‘adventure’, and in the thought and practices of those who dedicate their life to it—explorers, alpinists, all sorts of travellers. The empirical study of these forms of life makes an interesting piece of cultural sociology.

1.1 Locked and Unchained

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sense, it has to do with the lack of a space to roam, in which we may throw something, anchor something, erase or forget something, from which something may be received, in which one may mirror or transcend oneself. The whole world is charted, increasingly tamed-and-prepared to operate within integrated systems of enhanced exploitation, production, observation, control and surveillance. From a different angle, this is also the deep feeling that underlies the notion of the Anthropocene. Such a change is marked by the keen awareness that the planet is no longer an unquestioned foundation for the life of the human species, but a ‘spaceship earth’, i.e. a delicate set of hyper-complex mechanisms that it is fully in our power to disrupt. This means that we are responsible for it, which in turn constitutes an overwhelming cognitive, normative, and psychological task. No ‘externalization’ is possible, everything would “return to hit us hard”. The world is closed. Notably, such a closure may be a temporary state. Indeed, the very metaphor of the spaceship evokes a further projection into cosmic ‘outer space’. Insofar as the latter is yet too far to reach—that is, it is still impossible for humans to use it, draw resources from it, drop wastes in it, migrate toward it, etc.—such a space can be regarded as non-existent for practical purposes. But clearly, this is not going to last forever. Recent progress in this field by world powers—like China landing on the hidden side of the moon, the US sending ‘New Horizons’ around asteroid 2014 MU69 and beyond the boundaries of the solar system, or the joint enterprise (international and public-private) to realize an interstellar trip to Alpha Centauri—are examples of such a pressure. In the symbolical realm, various ways to (re)conceive of transcendence, both individual and collective, could be understood in this connection.8 Thus, an important aspect of my thesis is that contemporary social and cultural forms of life are characterized both by the lack of an ‘outside’ and by ongoing efforts to reconstruct such a dimension. In any case, as Peter Sloterdijk has noted, this condition is unprecedented, and it is changing the whole self-understanding of humanity, involving new ways to experience the world (Sloterdijk 2016: 7–43). People’s lives and identities are going to be profoundly affected, in ways that must still be examined in depth. It is difficult to trace the manifold effects of such a novel ontological horizon. In parts II and III I will highlight some possible links with the social trends identified. My general argument is that having ‘no outside’ has far-reaching implications on openness and closure in the face of overburdening complexity, on social norms—which are to operate within an immanent, decreasingly hierarchical frame—as well as on war, on religion and the meanings of transcendence, on the formation of self-identity, and on ideas of a ‘good’, fulfilling life. The respective connections are admittedly not fully established in causal terms, but their correspondence may well be formulated as a working hypothesis. It is in this context that unbound morphogenesis occurs. Indeed, unfettered morphogenesis and its highly accelerated dynamic may be a co-producer of this very fact. But it is important to note that I do not use the idea of a loss of external references as just another way to define the MS, or as a property that necessarily comes with it. On 8 More

on this in Chap. 7.

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1 Introduction: Unbound Morphogenesis in a Closed World

the contrary, it is meant to indicate a structural and cultural feature of contemporary society that happens to intersect with the ‘long cycle’ that makes it morphogenic, but is independent of it in its origin and different in nature. No reductio ad unum is envisaged. To sum up, the main theme unfolded throughout this volume is that the social and cultural forms that are reshaping the global landscape can be understood as emergent effects of the relation between these big factors. Such an interaction is forbiddingly difficult to examine, and pushes our analysis to walk on uncharted territory. This could be indicated as the fallacy of the book, but it was also the thrill of the enterprise.

1.2 Approach and Outline A few words are necessary about the general aim and frame of the volume. In the first place, this book is meant to establish a meaningful connection between systematic sociological theory and social problems that currently raise public interest, begging for interpretation. Social inclusion and exclusion, social and symbolical boundaries and the dialectic of openness and closure, new forms of conflict, socialization and identity building processes, and emerging threats to humanism are central to the argument. Sociological theory is deployed to offset the spreading semantics of doom and gloom, keeping together gradual and abrupt change, zero-sum and win-win games, opportunities and setbacks. As to the dynamics observed, the book was written from a European perspective, and this obviously had an influence. Nonetheles, it examines problems that are affecting Western and non-Western societies alike. It is also important to clarify that, although the book cannot present any ad hoc investigation, various data are examined and unified under theory-guided interpretations that allow to shed new light on empirically accumulated knowledge. As social theory often wants to do, I would also like to stimulate future research. From a theoretical perspective, the present work has two main goals. One is to show how the M/M approach, and the related thesis of a dawning MS, may produce fresh insights concerning various social facts, even on the macro-level. The other is to uncover some ‘corridors between paradigms’, which could lead to mutual learning between theories and to better, richer explanations and interpretations of social facts. I take this concept by Joas and Knöbl (2009), whose basic assumption is that social theory allows for no great synthesis, while it is also not condemned to hopeless fragmentation or sheer relativism. I will not try to develop a systematic account of those ‘corridors’, or to establish them a priori through the systematic comparison between divergent and convergent approaches. I will rather explore their possible emergence in relation to particular social facts and processes. I am aware that this will probably invite critique from both sides. M/M, critical realist and/or relational theorists may think that I overstate the benefits of intense dialogue with other theories, while others may remain skeptical about the particularity of the M/M approach. I have no a priori response to these objections, and I just hope that they be raised after, not before reading. To me, theoretical convergence is not

1.2 Approach and Outline

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an exercise in coarse eclecticism, but the recognition that social theory must not always be reconstructed from scratch. Indeed, my underlying thesis is that social theory presents more conceptual convergences than it is usually believed. Some major contemporary theorists, like Abbott, Joas, Rosa, Habermas, Luhmann, Collins, and more, are the chosen companions in this dialogue. The insights provided in this way cannot just be pulled together in a patchwork. But given a particular, consistent starting point, they can still contribute to reveal various aspects of social life and forms. One further note is in order. My conceptual ‘home-base’ in the present work was a morphogenetic approach to social theory, with a critical realist and relational social ontology. But I do not assume that readers of this book agree, or even that they are familiar with the M/M meta-theory, and with sociological realism in general. This is not a book for believers. As a consequence, readers might legitimately expect a more exhaustive illustration of the theoretical starting point. However, my aim here is not to present a systematic review of a given conceptual frame. Such a task could only be accomplished at the price of adding a long, unoriginal reconstruction of an approach, whose sources are well-known and for which various excellent texts are already available. Thus, I provided a few basic clarifications in Sect. 1.1, and in the following chapters just those elements were left that I deemed necessary to make the argument understandable. More in-depth knowledge of the M/M explanatory framework in its presuppositions and conceptual nuances will require further readings.9 In any case, explicit references to the theoretical framework are more developed in part I of the volume, which revolves about formal theory, while in parts II and III substantive issues take center stage. The book is divided into three parts. Part I is dedicated to discuss some theoretical implications of the MS thesis. My point is that bringing the M/M approach to sustain such a thesis involves some conceptual developments of its very conceptual framework. At the same time, the approach can thus reveal an explanatory and interpretive potential that had remained latent. Chapter 2 deals with social ontology, casting a fresh light on such issues as regularities and prediction. Chapter 3 explores the specific contribution of the M/M model to the study of macro-social change. In both chapters, the common thread is to rethink the possibilities of sociological theory in the face of highly complex and contingent societal conditions. Part II addresses a few problems that raise intriguing theoretical dilemmas as well as important public issues. Together, they explore various central processes of global society, testing the heuristic power of the MS as an interpretive key. Chapter 4 faces the central question of openness and closure, tackling the issue of the uneven impact of hyper-complexity and contingency on different societal systems—depending on their inner state, viability, cultural and institutional creativity. A landscape of social mechanisms is presented, and some of the most consequential for the future of society are examined in depth. In this context, acceleration, the whole syndrome of human enhancement techniques, and the paradoxes of border setting in the material and symbolical dimension are treated. Chapter 5 deals with social norms, assuming that 9 Among

the numerous works available, let me point at Archer (1995, 2011), Maccarini (2011).

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the MS is not synonymous with anomie, and shedding some light on norm-creating and norm-disrupting processes. The idea is that the MS cannot be understood as simply a tug of war between unconstrained social dynamics and normative, morphostatic resistance, but involves the emergence of new norms and of its own normative logic. Chapter 6 is about war, that is a hotly debated issue, and possibly one of the most dramatic ways to produce catastrophic change and the disruption of normative stability. The concept of the MS is here employed to counter utopic and dystopic views of the future as inherently peaceful or doomed to violence. Finally, Chap. 7 reflects on the transformations of immanence and transcendence—as cultural and institutional factors—once again inflected by the forces of freewheeling morphogenesis. A theory of religion in conditions of high contingency is discussed in this context. Part III discusses some anthropological consequences of this macro-social change. Two specific themes are selected. In Chap. 8, the dilemmas of education and identity building are addressed. In this context, the morphogenic condition results in a problem of excess and pressure upon human subjects, which human personalities and knowledge/learning societies are facing in different ways. An integrated approach to character and skills is presented. Chapter 9 talks about the prospects of a ‘good life’ in the present societal predicament, which is marked by some renewed version of Kulturpessimismus, and paradoxically hinders human efforts to make sense of one’s journey through the world. Chapter 10 ventures to sketch some brief conclusions. Its conciseness is itself an implicit acknowledgement of the intractable complexity of the insights that emerge from the analyses unfolded through the chapters. I hope that readers will see it as a thought-provoking challenge, and not (at least, not only) as hopeless fragmentation. One last concern is that the concept of MS might be regarded as insufficiently complex to grasp these macro-dynamics, and to shed light upon such an impressively wide range of social domains, problems, and phenomena. It should be remembered here that the idea of a MS is not a descriptive concept designed to produce an exhaustive picture of (a given type of) society. It is an insight that concerns the logic of relationships between its structures, cultures, and institutional complexes. Insofar as such a logic tends to become widespread or even dominant, the developmental path of society takes on a given direction. This does not mean to trace all events to the ‘one big fact’ of the MS. The claim I am advancing is not that ‘just about everything’ depends on, or can be reduced to the MS. The latter is the core engine through which a variety of mechanisms emerge. The resulting social forms will be different, because reactions are creative, mechanisms are numerous, complex, and complexly interacting, which makes outcomes contingent. In this historical season, the opposite rhetoric of post-modern disintegration and of old-fashioned reunification are exposed as inadequate. To find some order—together with disorder—in the hyper-complexity of ‘spaceship earth’ is not an easy challenge, but is at least one that surely makes sense.

References

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References Archer, M. S. (1995). Realist social theory: The morphogenetic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. S. (1988). Culture and Agency. The Place of Culture in Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. S. (2011). Morphogenesis. Realism’s explanatory framework. In A. Maccarini, E. Morandi, & R. Prandini (Eds.), Sociological realism (pp. 59–94). London and New York: Routledge. Archer, M. S. (Ed.). (2013). Social morphogenesis. Dordrecht: Springer. Archer, M. S. (2017). Introduction: Has a morphogenic society arrived? In Id. (Ed.), Morphogenesis and human flourishing (pp. 1–28). Dordrecht: Springer. Gergen, K. (2000). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic Books. Jaspers, K. (1953). The origin and goal of history. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Joas, H., & Knöbl, W. (2009). Social theory. Twenty introductory lectures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luhmann, N. (1996). Jenseits von Barbarei. In M. Miller & H.-G. Söffner (Hg.), Modernität und Barbarei (pp. 219–230). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Maccarini, A. (2011). Towards a new European sociology: The morphogenetic approach between social analysis and grand theory. In A. Maccarini, E. Morandi, & R. Prandini (Eds.), Sociological realism (pp. 95–121). London and New York: Routledge. Mann, M. (2013). The sources of social power. Vol. 4: Globalizations, 1945–2011. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Purves, A. (2006). Unmarked space: Odysseus and the inland journey. Arethusa, 39(1), 1–20. Sloterdijk, P. (2016). Was geschah im 20. Jahrhundert? Berlin: Suhrkamp. Spencer Brown, G. (1969). Laws of form. London: Allen & Unwin. Urry, J. (2000). Sociology beyond societies. London: Routledge. Young, J. (2007). The vertigo of late modernity. London: Sage.

Part I

The Morphogenetic Approach: Debates and Extensions

Chapter 2

Analysing the Morphogenic Society. Regularities and Social Ontology

Keywords Morphogenetic approach · Realism · Regularities · Social relations · Social ontology

2.1 Social Morphogenesis from Meta-Theory to Forms of Social Order The first two chapters address one fundamental question: is a theory of macrosocial change beyond the reach of the morphogenetic approach?1 We know that this approach offers a conceptual framework—which Archer calls the ‘methodological’ aspect of social theory (Archer 1995)—to be deployed in sociological analysis. It thus consists of a format for sociological research, which, to put it in Archer’s words again, must then result in ‘practical theory’, that is in interpretive and explanatory narratives concerning social facts. But this is not the end of all issues. The question I asked at the beginning should not be underestimated, because we must recall the difference between levels of social complexity. When the M/M approach deals with an organization, or an institutional complex—e.g. an educational system—it has to do with an object of study that is quite different from ‘society’. In the former case, evidence about the internal processes and structures, defining characteristics, space and time boundaries is much easier to produce. It is evident that a public educational system does exist, that it has existed for a determined span of time, and many of its structures and processes are quite open to investigation. The case of society is quite different. Granted, its very existence would not seem to be at issue. As we know pretty well, the question about social order is always being asked from within actually 1 Throughout

this volume I will refer to the approach in question with the acronym ‘M/M’, as shorthand for ‘morphogenetic/morphostatic’. Besides my preference for conciseness, this serves to underline that such a conceptual framework does not regard any substantive social outcome as prevailing in principle. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. M. Maccarini, Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13624-6_2

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existing social orders. But there are other problems. One is that of the ‘quality’ of such a large social entity. If we want to explore the idea of a morphogenic society as a consistent interpretation of our current social dynamics, there are questions we should start with. What are its main characteristics? Do its structures, cultures and ongoing processes allow, or perhaps require, that we interpret it as a ‘new’ form of society, different from ‘the past’? This problem raises that of societal boundaries in time and space. When did this kind of society ‘begin’, where was its take-off? What are its geographic boundaries, if any? How long has it lasted to date? Is it only a temporary state of the social, or does it promise to become a (relatively) steady situation? In relation with this, does the occurrence of one or more cycles of structural elaboration mean that a ‘new society’ is emerging? And how many would we need for that? Is this type of society simply ‘happening’, and are its qualitative, substantive features essentially to be traced to the crucial ‘engine’ of unbound morphogenesis? Finally, can we rigorously say—as Archer does (2013)—that the logic of opportunity is prevailing for the first time in history? Questions could multiply. To cut a long story short, when it comes to society, as distinct from specific institutions or organizations, the relevant questions are much harder, the responses more debateable, and evidence—even that of the very presence of regular patterns—is easily contested. When the M/M approach ventures the idea of an emerging ‘morphogenic’ society,2 it implicitly accepts to meet this challenge. Its research program then becomes one that links explanatory/interpretive sociological analysis with a macro-level theorization of the social order. The task ahead is to understand the far-reaching implications of this theoretical move, how the M/M conceptual framework can address this challenge and how it might be modified as a result of it. My general thesis is that meta-theories are connected with the representation of society they offer, the relation being one of reciprocity. As it applies to our case I argue that, on the one hand, the M/M conceptual framework can tap into the societal level of complexity, contributing fresh insights about the larger social entities and the ways they change over time. Chapters 4–9 will explore some facets of this relation. On the other hand, stretching analytical concepts to gain an understanding of very complex macro-phenomena prompts reflexivity on the theoretical framework itself. In the present context, the idea of MS could stimulate some theoretical ‘boundary work’—namely, work to be done along the borders of the theory, to consolidate, fine-tune, expand and face challenges to it. As this whole enterprise is extremely complex, other concepts might arise to collaborate in the attempt, and serve as useful traveling companions on the journey of a scholar oriented to develop his research in an M/M mode. Thus, in Chaps. 2 and 3 I am concerned to envision what concepts might be appropriate for the M/M model to make an adequate underpinning of the substantive macrosociological thesis of an emerging MS, as well as what concepts of social order derive from such a model, compared to other theories. Of the many possible lines of development, I will pursue the following three:

2 Hereafter

MS.

2.1 Social Morphogenesis from Meta-Theory to Forms of Social Order

19

(a) First, I will discuss the possible role and meaning of the concept of social regularity within the M/M approach. How should we conceive of the ways in which social things reproduce themselves regularly over time? Here it is argued that the idea of regularity should be rescued from its empiricist legacy, and that the M/M approach can provide a better way to conceive of regularity in the social domain. On the other hand, elaborating on the relationship between morphogenesis and regularity can contribute to the further development of the M/M framework, thereby endowing the sociologist with a richer tool-box. As I will argue, the M/M approach wants to provide an understanding of the social order that is neither functionalist, nor evolutionist or teleological, but quintessentially processual. However, producing a representation of a specific kind of social order implies embracing phenomena that far exceed the scope of a few morphogenetic cycles, extending over a long span of time, and characterizing all subsystems of society. In my view, this means that the relationship of the M/M approach with the notion of regularity should be seriously considered. At the same time, social regularities entail a specific way to think about social time, one which the M/M approach could provide more consistently than many other theoretical frameworks. To sum up, in many respects, the issue of social regularities and that of the scope of the M/M theory overlap significantly. This is the task of Sects. 2.2 and 2.3 of the present chapter. (b) Second, Sect. 2.4 of the present chapter connects the issue of regularities to the underlying social ontology, because what social things are also affects the answers to why, and how, they can stay the same, reproducing themselves over time, being transmitted across generations, and (temporarily) resisting pressures to change. Here I make the case for a relational ontology. In this context, I argue that the social ontology of the M/M frame is inherently relational,3 and that such a feature makes a relevant difference with respect to other social ontologies. In order to clarify this point, a focussed comparison is made with other social ontologies emphasizing process and relations. (c) The following Chap. 3 will deal with the relationship between morphogenesis and macro-social history. This raises various issues revolving around social change, like that of abrupt (i.e. catastrophic) versus gradual, and profound versus superficial change. There it is argued that the M/M approach allows for an original representation of global society and its core dynamics, based on a non-functionalist, non-teleological, fully processual way of theorizing about social order. To illustrate that thesis, however, I must first review other theories of macro-social change, highlighting their systematic connections with general sociological theory and the related differences in conceiving of epochal diagnosis, historical landmarks and turning points. I will then show what insights may come from M/M concepts. 3 For this reason, the approach in question could also be labeled ‘morphogenetic-relational’. Let me

add here that social ontology is an essential dimension of social theory, which completes Archer’s well-known triad comprising social ontology, methodology and practical theory (1995). On relational thinking see the recent reference text by Dépelteau (2018).

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2.2 Morphogenesis and Regularity: Making Friends with Old Enemies? Society as a form of order has often been conceived of as ‘simply a description of certain kinds of regularity’ (Abbott 2006, 324). This goes for most models that were traditionally based on evolution and equilibrium, with their variety of feedback mechanisms and cyclical reinforcement mechanisms. Yet the very idea of regularity in the social world is not fashionable in contemporary social theory. For one thing, the way to conceive of social regularities, and their role in description and explanation, is quite open to epistemological debate. There are authors who still defend the necessity of being ‘only Humean’ (Thalos 1999), whilst others point out that mechanisms are opposed to laws, but not to regularities (Andersen 2011). It is also possible to classify different kinds of regularity to which mechanisms can give rise. Indeed, mechanisms themselves can be defined, and their contribution to causal explanation can be distinguished from other forms of causation in terms of their regularity, provided that regularity be redefined in a suitable way (Andersen 2012). Still others, like Sugden (2011), present a different use of the concept of regularity in explanation, namely as part of a modelling strategy which does not start with unexplained regularities obtaining in the empirical world, but with a model world assumed to display certain regularities. The scientist should then try to discover whether or not there is anything similar in the real world that would be explained by the same model. The thesis I am presenting is that in order to explicate Archer’s preliminary notion of a MS, it is exactly the relationship between the M/M approach and the concept of regularity that must be considered. A corollary is that the sociologist working with the M/M model must be endowed with a more complex conceptual tool-box. In turn, the M/M approach can provide a viable conception of social regularities in the face of the epistemological dilemmas mentioned above. The task is made difficult by two factors, one concerning the M/M approach itself, the other regarding social theory in general. The morphogenetic approach views empiricism as a fierce theoretical adversary, and its relation to regularity has somewhat fallen victim of this original conflict. However, there is reason to think that we are now in a position to set this relationship on new ground. The second problem has to do with the macro-representations of society formulated by modern social theory, and their way of conceiving of the social order, particularly with regard to time. Let me start from the latter point. Although this theme will be the focus of the next chapter, it has relevant implications for the specific issue of regularities as well. The necessity of developing some conception of history lies deep in the identity of sociology. The great classical theories, from Spencer to Tönnies and Weber, from Comte to Durkheim, down to Parsons, have presented us with grand views of modernity and its dynamics which ended up with some sort of—usually evolutionistic—philosophy of history. Large-scale periodizations of historical eras, of human societies and civilizations have been the quintessential products of such theories. In this context, social regularities were largely presented as being law-like (and there-

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fore also predictive) constructs, of the kind that made scholars into ‘confidants of Providence’—to use Raymond Aron’s famous ironic phrase. Sociology has long proclaimed the end of that intellectual phase. Authors as diverse as Luhmann and Boudon have pushed these grand theories back into the prehistory of the discipline. In spite of its merits, this rejection also brought with it at least two negative consequences. The former is that much of contemporary sociology has become purely synchronic. Many social inquiries today found their assertions about the ‘increasing’ or ‘declining’ values of certain variables on some survey or other undertaken some years before, and often on shaky or limited data sets without historical depth. Furthermore, even those who give time a relevant position in their theory—or who operate with more refined longitudinal data—often do not conceive of it as historical time, nor do they operate theoretically with it. In Giddens’s words, there is no such thing as evolution in human society. More specifically, it is impossible to identify any central mechanism of social change. As a result of this, there cannot be any theory of social change, because social dynamics defy conceptual abstraction.4 On the other hand, there are authors like Luhmann, who are still evolutionist, but describe social systems as reproducing (or ceasing to exist) through single operations that have no temporal duration. All of this, Luhmann says, ‘happens in the present, and in a world which exists in contemporaneity (…). Such a system does not need history at all (…)’.5 He concedes that under certain conditions one can witness deviations from existing structures, which in turn influence structural transformations, but this has nothing to do with history. Such a time is made of communicational events and depends on communication bearing inherent limitations, which require sequences. A single communication takes time to connect with another, and there are limits to what can be communicated simultaneously. There is also a different kind of time, one within which the media of communication emerge, but that is conceived of as evolutionary, biological time, impervious to sociological analysis. In spite of all this theoretical refinement, social scientists are often still prone to the temptation of grand theory. Paradoxically enough, civilizational turning points are still set in huge and simple binary oppositions—such as ‘tradition versus modernity’—through which theorists keep looking for a ‘new’ society that is ‘different’ from the ‘old one’. What interests me here is that in such theoretical perspectives, regardless of their differences, any discussion about regularities becomes excessively fuzzy. Regularities tend to disappear from the sociological landscape, as a result of the inadequate manner of dealing with them. All these difficulties notwithstanding, historical time is still laying its riddles to the door of sociology. Observations emerge from within sociological analysis itself that beg for historical depth and a thorough conceptualization of social time in order to be understood, let alone explained. This goes for both ‘grand representations’, which fail to translate their “big pictures” of society into truly explanatory theories, and for those theorists who dismiss the coarse tools of old comparative macro-sociology—such as large periodizations or teleology and its functionalist reformulation. For example, it is hard 4 Giddens

(1984: 227 ff). (1997, 244). See also Luhmann (1995), Chap. VIII (Structure and Time).

5 Luhmann

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to deny that social dynamics exhibit not only a continuous, ‘molecular’ transformation of social structures—including more static versus more dynamic moments, abrupt change and gradual evolutions—but also other kinds of social change one cannot help regarding as qualitative changes. One of these is sometimes called ‘evolutionary achievement’,6 or ‘social invention’.7 What these terms indicate is a set of structural or cultural accomplishments that have been consolidated, which allow social systems to reach higher degrees of complexity—e.g. money, or telecommunication techniques. Another domain is that of social differentiation and its forms. The description of such forms tends to stand for a general representation of society. Generic as these often are, they undoubtedly do have hugely important consequences for concrete social dynamics. In both cases, such structures and their change produce far-reaching effects upon the complexity of the relevant system. Luhmann’s verdict is that they do not produce ‘an epoch-making structure of universal history’ but, nevertheless, one can recognize irreversible sequences.8 These cannot be explained either teleologically or functionally. Yet they do require an explanation. But is sociological theory able to tap into this level of complexity without loss of scientific rigour? To sum up, dominant long-term trends do exist that characterize central aspects of societies. Denying their existence prevents scholars from acknowledging essential features of the social world in which we live. But these types of social change must be documented by detailed studies focussed upon sequences of events rather than being assumed or logically derived from evolutionary macro-theories. Regularities come back into the picture, but require a more refined treatment. The M/M approach speaks neither a functionalist-evolutionist nor a teleological language. The M/M methodology invites to study the morphogenesis/morphostasis of society and of its institutions ‘without grandeur’, that is, distancing itself from grand narratives and focussing attention upon the morphogenetic cycles. These are constituted by particular relations between social conditioning, interaction, and the subsequent structural elaboration. What can be observed is the generation or transformation of some given social forms—e.g. organizations, sets of institutions—endowed with their own emergent properties. Relational emergent properties are connected with human plans and dreams, on the one hand, and with the inner logic of the social, on the other hand. This double connection opens the observable social outcomes of such relations to the influence of a complex set of variables and forces, making them 6 Luhmann

and De Giorgi (1994, 221–229). The same goes with the well-known parsonian theme of ‘evolutionary universals’ (Parsons 1964). For a diachronic, macrosociological analysis see for example Parsons (1966, 1971). 7 Coleman (1970). 8 Here Luhmann is thinking above all of communication media such as writing and the press, and of the forms of societal differentiation. The relevance of these transformations cannot be denied, even though Luhmann would not be willing to revive the old semantics of ‘epochs’, at least not in any realist meaning: ‘When in such fundamental structures as the media of diffusion of communication and system differentiation evolutionary achievements intervene, making it possible to go from one structure to the other, the impression dawns on the observer that he is facing some societal formations that are meaningfully distinct between one another’. Luhmann and De Giorgi (1994: 228), italics added. For a longer version of this argument see Luhmann (1997, especially Chaps 2 and 3).

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unpredictable and relatively contingent, though not totally random. To wonder if the M/M approach can engage with a macro-sociological agenda means to ask whether these notions of ‘morphogenetic cycle’ and ‘emergent properties’ are sufficiently robust and flexibile as is necessary to grasp ‘crystallizations, divergences and renaissances’.9 In other words, we should ask if M/M cycles permit us to account for the emergence of breaking points, long-term regularities and rhythms which characterize social dynamics beyond the temporal states of stasis or change. The other question to be considered concerns the inner logic of the M/M approach. This makes its relationship to the issue of regularity a two-face coin. On the one hand, its sensitivity to the empiricist threat remains a dominant motif. From this viewpoint, Archer emphasizes the fact that emergent properties and causal powers may be active, but are often unobservable and do not produce any regular outcome. This basically depends on the two following factors: (i) a number of emergent properties and generative mechanisms are usually operating in society at any moment in time; (ii) the notion of the generative process of a given social phenomenon is only ever complete when personal emergent properties—that is human agency—are treated as indispensable to structural and cultural ones, because the latter are ‘activity-dependent’ upon the former. And, in principle, these work in no predictable direction, since human agents are creative. Therefore, the format of explanation made available by the M/M conceptual framework involves the narrative reconstruction of the generation of a given social phenomenon—for example an educational system—but it does not allow us to predict that in other (though apparently similar) cases things would move in the same direction and result in identical outcomes. To sum up, the structuring process of society is ‘uncontrolled, non-teleological, non-homeostatic, non-adaptive and therefore unpredictable’.10 This is a crucial point, about which the M/M approach diverges not only from a law-like explanatory format, but also from other, non-realist research programs. Let us take Peter Hedström’s analytical sociology as an instance. Archer does not accept the possibility of deriving any social generative mechanism from the outcomes it ‘regularly’ brings about. Hedström’s definition, on the contrary, is grounded precisely on the idea of regular outcomes. In Hedström’s argument, a mechanism is a constellation of entities and activities—typically corresponding to actors and their actions—that are interconnected in such a way as regularly to generate a certain outcome.11 We could express the divergence as follows. If we consider the two propositions: (a) ‘mechanisms function in the same way’, and (b) ‘the resulting changes are regular’, the connection between them is a necessary one for Hedström, while it would be contingent for Archer—as well as for most critical realist thinkers. Critical realism traces such contingency to the ontological distinction between the domain of the empirical and that of the real—whereby outcomes belong in the former and mechanisms in the latter. 9 I am using here the formulation of recent historical-comparative macro-sociology. See for instance

Arnason and Wittrock (2004). See also Arnason et al. (2004). (1995, 189). This is only one among many similar formulations to be found in Archer’s work. 11 Hedström (2005, 3; 15; 33). This idea is widely shared within the movement of ‘analytical realism’. 10 Archer

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Now it is clear that, as hinted above, such a position on the part of the M/M theory is rooted in the intention to avoid presenting conclusions that would be too weak to withstand empiricist criticism. In order to defend the concept of causality from the empiricist critique, it seems necessary to place a sharp distinction between causes, on the one hand—and such companion concepts as social mechanism or process—and the very idea of observable regularities, on the other hand. Thus, Archer criticizes the ‘neo-Humean’ compromise position as follows: «… structural properties are allowed in under the rubric of [as yet] “undefined group properties” provided they increase our explanatory/predictive power by helping to account for observed regularities». Thus, the right of a structural property to enter into explanation depends on «its contribution to accounting for a constant conjunction which gives a structural property its right of entry… Therefore, the structural elements which can pass the Humean check-point, only do so on an ad hoc basis but are also atypical ‘of their own kind!’ In practice, they are those which approximate to observability and are in play because of their explanatory indispensability».12 Archer’s criticism is that emergent properties—including social structures—should not be introduced ad hoc, but in a systematic way. The strength of this position consists of its being clearly anti-empiricist and non-deterministic. It highlights the idea that the world is filled with generative mechanisms operating simultaneously, which implies that the various forces and trends may combine in many different ways to produce unpredictable, non-regular outcomes.13 It also places much emphasis on the role of human reflexivity, which is not to be reduced to instrumental rationality. The observable result, the macro-level ‘social fact’, is always the result, or better the emergent effect of numerous mechanisms and tendencies, whose combinations can hardly trace regularities. Therefore, the M/M approach identifies institutional configurations, which establish tendencies as situational logics. In different circumstances, the latter produces different outcomes. What can be regarded as ‘regular’ is just the form of the process in time, that is to say the ‘format’ of the cycle(s) of morphogenesis/morphostasis. On the other hand, let us recall a fundamental critique that has been raised against the causal criterion of existence underpinning critical realist treatments of emergent properties. The critique goes as follows: such a criterion fails to provide a consistent justification if (i) a given entity possesses causal powers, but does not exert them, and if (ii) some causal power is exercised, but its effects cannot be observed. This critique poses a serious challenge to Critical Realism, as it does to the M/M approach. In a nutshell: the M/M account starts in the present, with the effects to be explained and the related formulation of the research question. Then it proceeds backwards, tracing some given effects to certain causes, i.e. to certain causal powers, which in that case have produced those effects. Within this diachronic causal account it is certainly possible to include a narrative concerning the way in which some powers were actually present, but were not operative, or not effective, as a result of a particular relational configuration of other emergent properties. This amounts to saying that 12 Archer

(1995: 54 and 57). See also Kemp and Holmwood (2003). this connection, see the relevant arguments developed by Douglas Porpora, when he discusses the application of the coeteris paribus clause to society (Porpora 2011). 13 In

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emergent properties do not directly result in observable regularities, because they must be composed within complex relational contexts, which always include contingencies, and these contexts must be taken into account. This does not mean that the aforementioned causal powers, with their combinations, cannot be consistently taken into consideration as factors within a complex explanatory model. However, we must accept the possible incompleteness of all models. In sum, all models always call for improvement, and the emerging regularities always remain tendencies, or approximations. Conversely, the M/M approach also makes possible a more ambitious approach to social regularities. This can be summarized in the three following points: (i) perceived regularity prompts causal inquiry; (ii) social rifts are identified through situational logics—which cannot suggest exactly when, but identifies the social sites where change will occur, and what is likely to be the direction of change; (iii) there are regular transitions between institutional configurations/situational logics: that is, ‘regularities of connection’. Let us go through each point at some length. As regards point (i), we should call attention to Archer’s following statement: «generative mechanisms, which exist largely unexercised will not usually attract the attention of social scientists. Although emergent causal powers are judged to be such according to the causal criterion, social science does rely upon (something of) empiricism’s perceptual criterion for their detection. Although the social scientist is not reliant upon (or expectant of finding) Humean ‘constant conjunctions’, nevertheless, an established correlation coefficient is not a gift horse to reject but rather an impetus to causal investigation. After all, our hunches usually derive from our observations».14 Now this gets quite close to the idea of using regularities as explananda. Note that in this example emergent properties are not exerting their powers. Furthermore, Archer adds: «In other words, we note some relational property in the social order (or a sector of it) that seems to exert irreducible causal powers of its own kind—as detected through their tendential effects—even though its components can be fully described».15 This quotation involves according some practical role to the ‘observability’ of effects. These are ‘tendential’ in that—all other things being equal, i.e. in their ‘pure’ logic, they tend to produce a given outcome. I think we should assume that outcome to be regular, in the absence of interference, if we could get to know all the mechanisms that are operating at a given moment. However, such a situation hardly obtains in human society, which is by definition an open system. It is therefore hard to generalize from morphogenetic accounts, but this still leaves some place for regularities in the social world. Society itself, after all, appears to be an ordered domain. After these considerations, we may conclude that in principle the issue about the degree of contingency of the connection between social mechanisms and outcomes cannot be fully settled. 14 Archer 15 Ivi.

(2011: 63).

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There are other two, strictly interweaving aspects that complete the profile of the M/M take on regularities. (i) In the model of M/M cycles, each institutional and cultural configuration indicates the fault lines along which rifts and fractures may occur, and their likely dynamics. As in seismic phenomena, this does not allow one to predict when such events will happen, but it does specify where they are likely to occur, and in what direction they are pushed. (ii) With this said, I would add what could be called ‘regularities of connection’. They are located at some given points of the morphogenetic cycles and make the connections between two or more cycles more likely than others, thereby exerting a constraining influence from which a partially predictable regularity emerges. One does not know exactly when structural (and cultural) elaboration will occur. M/M cycles and their phases do not always last for an identical period of time. However, once we know where we are in the cycle, we can also predict (probabilistically) where we are likely to go from there. What kinds of things are possible, what actions are more or less likely to succeed within a given configuration. This means that the shift between one cycle and the other is not random. For example, society is not likely to pass directly from necessary contradictions to contingent compatibilities. Time, interaction, and some intermediate passages are needed.16 Can these regularities of connection exist not only as links between one M/M cycle and another, but also as ‘composite’ meta-cycles embracing long-term phenomena? Can we find a label and a rationale for such ‘long cycles’? If this were the case, we would be able to grasp beginnings and ends, bifurcations, irreversible transitions, particular kinds of regularities, mechanisms of reinforcement, crystallizations, divergences, etc. The idea of a MS entails development and refinement of the M/M approach, through which it manages to cope with these special kinds of ‘social facts’. In the next section I will put forward some additional concepts which can assist in this task. They must be defined and used in such a way as to be fully consistent with the whole M/M approach. Such concepts are meant to increase the sensitivity of the M/M approach to regularities even further, and to make its relation with (social) time and history even thicker, allowing for qualitatively rich observations. In addition, they should be conceived as sharply different from the non-processual models that tend to account for regular ‘social facts’ on the ground of law-like notions of evolution or equilibrium.

16 This

theme is developed in some of the most brilliant—and less cited—pages in Archer’s work. See the treatment of derived connections among configurations (Archer 1988).

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2.3 Duration, Pace, Trajectory, Turning Points, Transitions, and Cycles. New Bricks for the Morphogenetic Fabric The need to understand social regularities beyond the ‘standard models’ and with a fully processual thrust fits in well with some basic features of the M/M approach. Indeed, this is characterized by its careful incorporation of time. Now it is clear that the M/M approach provides a conceptual framework for analysis, leaving the substantive study of concrete phenomena for the distinct moment of the sociologist’s work called ‘practical theory’. Abstract as formal theory must be, such a framework does not intend to convey the idea that M/M cycles are, so to speak, ‘all the same’, occurring and recurring in just the same way, and only producing different outcomes—and outcomes of outcomes. They do not simply follow one another as abstract movements between steady states. Therefore, time-sensitive concepts can serve to characterize them in a more nuanced way. The concepts I will discuss in this section can help us to differentiate the way M/M cycles are designed, making their analysis more detailed, and to enhance their substantive sensitivity to the qualitative features of both change and reproduction. These concepts are time-sensitive, because it is necessary to observe how a given order, rapidity or duration of events influences social outcomes. Thus, sequences of events unfolding in similar, though not identical, fashion in different historical contexts can be identified. This can be done through concepts that recognize the diversity of patterns of temporal connection between events and structures, thereby helping to theorize continuity and change. What they grasp is the causal power generating the quality of connections between events. In other words, this amounts to acknowledging the temporal character of the particular way in which they are connected. This is not a ‘standardized’ movement between two postulated steady states (say T1 and T2), but the way in which—as noted above—a given order, rapidity or duration of events influences their outcome. For example, a certain action takes a certain meaning and produces certain consequences, according to the point of a social temporal sequence where it takes place,17 to what happened before, and to the relational context characterizing that moment. We need to be able to observe such effects empirically, and give them systematic meaning.18 In the present context, these concepts would also complete the picture we can draw of a MS. This they do because the notion of MS prompts a discussion about series of phenomena, their frequency (pace), duration and possible direction; about what the turning points have been, which transitions were involved, and what shape they took. All of this articulates the treatment of M/M cycles further, insofar as it links certain characteristics, that could simply be identified in the particular narratives concerning a given phenomenon, to more systematic considerations. 17 By

the way, this is also one reason that militates against synchronic notions of emergence. does not mean to transform M/M into a notion of causality based on normativity and the centrality of meaning, sequence, and contingency, to put it in Margaret Somers’s words (Somers 1994, 1998). Relations and their properties are still there, and must only incorporate time and narratives. 18 This

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The temporal concepts I am introducing were not forged within the M/M framework, nor do they originate in critical realism. But they are not the offspring of empiricism either. They are largely used in historical sociology and seem to be compatible with many forms of historical sociology, including the M/M approach. The concepts in question are the following: duration, pace, trajectory, turning points, transitions, and cycles.19 The former two correspond to a quantitative understanding of events, while the others are oriented to a qualitative interpretation of social phenomena. I cannot adduce an empirical study employing these concepts, but merely a definition and an illustration of such concepts, with the purpose of showing that they are compatible with a more general M/M theoretical framework and what they contribute to it. (a) Duration. This concept refers to the amount of time elapsed for a given event or sequence of events to take place. How long particular phenomena take is relevant to their character and consequences. Account must also be taken of perceptions, intentions and actions, because things can be perceived as long or short and this makes a difference to their social consequences. More precisely, duration must be dealt with at all levels involved in the M/M view of the social process, namely structure, culture, and agency. It pertains to social structures and cultures, as well as to the way culture shapes perception and is manifested in socio-cultural interaction—because the fact that people perceive things as ‘long’ or ‘short’, e.g. seeming interminable or quickly over, does not depend (only) on timeless psychological features of the human species alone, but also on the way culture forges personalities and expectations as regards the temporal dimension of life. To talk of duration implies indicating some unity, thus defining a beginning and an end. Duration entails the constancy of certain events, or sequence of events, over a defined period of time. The related discontinuities, providing boundaries and phases, do not coincide with M/M cycles, but refer to longer-term social phenomena that repeat throughout such cycles and constitute a problem in their own right, as will be seen below. (b) Pace. Pace indicates the number of events occurring within a given amount of time. It refers to repetitive events, and identifies the rate or speed of the social process. Of course, the concept has to do with those events that are regarded as theoretically relevant, not to any kind of event haunting a given span of time. The purpose remains that of integrating this concept into theoretically shaped narratives, not in furnishing historically exhaustive chronicles of ‘whatever happened’. The theoretical moment thus remains relatively independent. Disjunctures between the pace of different social processes—or in different spheres of society and culture—may produce distinctive consequences (e.g. anomie, disorder). As in the case of duration—indeed, this goes for all the concepts under 19 Some

of these are taken from Aminzade (1992), while the definition I give is partially different, since I put them in the context of the M/M approach.

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discussion—cultural orientations (to past, present and future) are relevant influences on pace. Pace is not only a structural matter. Different forms of social organization produce—and are coupled with—distinctive temporal orientations, which in turn contribute to a different pace of change. To anticipate a consideration I will take up again below, one obvious question from my perspective would be whether or not the MS is characterized by a quicker pace. On the one hand, this would seem to be a defining feature of such a societal constellation that should be taken for granted. On the other hand, it is an issue which can still prompt stimulating insights and discussions. One example is the argument held out by Andrew Abbott,20 who maintains that the pace of change in Western societies has been consistently slowing down and our social semantics has become accustomed to apply the terms ‘innovation’ and ‘revolution’ to relatively short-lived and not very far-reaching changes. (c) Trajectory. This is a complex concept whose relation to the M/M cycle needs careful explanation. In the first place, a trajectory is a cumulative sequence of linked events, suggesting that change has a certain directionality. This leads to the idea of putting more M/M cycles together, and it would organize their interpretation. It clearly involves a qualitative understanding of social facts. Trajectories can also be called paths of change, because they consist of a sequential order of events. This may be appropriate to M/M accounts relating to institutional configurations and situational logics. For example, it can help specify through which particular sequences of events the logic of opportunity is unfolding. When we say sequences, of course, we do not mean just a sheer temporal succession of events, but an internally connected series, placing strong emphasis on the more or less compelling and consequential character of all internal connections. One question that may be of concern here is whether or not there are sequence patterns that are typical, and therefore characterize particular historical processes—e.g. sequences of democratization, urbanization, schooling, institutionalization, family life—in various regions of social time-space. If so, MS could be identified as one of them. We may then inquire further about their causes and consequences. The notion of trajectory involves the idea that there are factors assuming different salience at different points in different sequences. This is what is usually called path dependency. Decisions made at particular points in time delimit future options in particular ways. It is important to note that explanation involves multiple rather than single trajectories. Multiple processes overlap and intersect one another and explaining ‘social facts’ involves a particular logic, situating outcomes in terms of their location in intersecting trajectories with their independent temporalities. Another, quite important feature is that trajectories come in various shapes and kinds as well as describing various types of social change. Because they include the idea of a beginning and an end, they also involve the notions of transitions and turning points. A set of M/M cycles can be observed from this viewpoint. 20 In

various publications. See for example Abbott (2006, p. 32).

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(d) Turning points and transitions. This is a concept often used in historical narratives and indicates abrupt divergences separating relatively regular trajectories. Beyond this general definition, turning points may be designated according to the meta-trajectory they form. In other words, looking at them from the vantage point of a longer time-scale allows one to differentiate among various kinds of turning points. Drawing on the relevant literature, and without any claim to completeness, but for illustrative purposes only, I propose the following: (i) Focal turning points, which lead from more random to more linear and regular paths; (ii) Randomizing turning points, leading from regularity to randomness; (iii) Contingent turning points—displaying no unequivocal path; (iv) Normative versus non-normative turning points, according to the different roles of cultural systems and the related social expectations in fostering the relevant ‘turns’. Type (iv) may of course apply to all the previous ones, being based on a different distinction. In this case, as well as in all macro-sociological representations, the analogy with the life-cycle of an organism will not do. Different social processes display distinctive temporalities. On this basis it is possible to identify subsequent key choice points and the related bifurcations and alternatives, pinpointing actions and mechanisms that sustain movement along a chosen path and prevent reversal or drift. Here again, the M/M cycle may be the basic unit of analysis. However, this concept provides a systematic way to read their sequences, one that also enables specific meanings to be attributed to particular points within the cycle. It can also contribute to making the decisions on how M/M narratives should choose their own time boundaries more theoretically grounded. Finally, we should note that the notion of trajectory—just like that of an M/M cycle—involves a non-mathematical conception of time, i.e. one which cannot be defined chronologically by homogeneous units. One cautionary statement concerns the fact that both subjective and objective aspects must be distinguished and linked when accounting for turning points. It is obviously possible that some ‘turning points’ only exist in people’s perceptions, having no correspondence to objective structures. The methodological companion to this idea is the notion that ‘turning points’ can only be reconstructed through people’s own narratives, which express their all-too-subjective opinions and attitudes. However, in these cases, such ‘discontinuities’ usually do not withstand historical analysis, let alone the further progress of full-blown social morphogenesis in all its multi-dimensional nature. Moreover, a realist perspective prompts to detect the interweaving influences of all factors that contribute to producing such socio-historical discontinuities.21 Finally, the (wrong) methodological claim mentioned above should 21 This thesis should not be confused with the assertion that some turning points may essentially consist of a change in perceptions. This case, though, should not lead to theoretical confusion. A fundamental change in the cultural sensibility of the public may be in itself the ‘social fact’ to be examined and explained. Culture, and social groups, all have their own M/M cycles. But a complete explanation of their dynamics always involves the consideration of other morphogenetic processes.

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not be confused with the (correct) idea that turning points are indeed ‘narrative concepts’, in that they always refer to at least two points in time. In order to designate a given event or moment as a ‘turning point’, a sufficient amount of time must pass to legitimate the conclusion that the course of events has undergone lasting change.22 It is therefore necessary to observe such a point from another, successive point in time. This means that ‘turning points’ can only be reconstructed ex post.23 Another, potentially tricky aspect concerns the duration of a ‘turning point’. It is easy to find confused versions in the literature, which characterize a ‘turning point’ as a ‘process’. Granted, the event or chain of events which produces decisive changes must have some temporal extension. Nevertheless, ‘turning points’—and transition phases, for that matter—must have an identifiable beginning and end, and a relatively small temporal extension compared to the longer, uniform trajectories that precede and follow them. Fuzzy and tricky as this delimitation might be, it is crucial in order to prevent confusion with various other situations and changes, which do not need any specific concept.24 Let us make an example. Losing one’s job, or making a particular decision about one’s family life (e.g. getting divorced, or having a child), or being accepted in a leading educational institution, are all events clearly delimited in time and not gradually changing ‘situations’. They are obviously not instantaneous, and do not amount to, or result from a single act, but emerge from a chain of actions—e.g. the selection process that finally gains entry for someone to a given educational or work organization. However, they can, and must always be defined as (relatively) ‘short’ or ‘little’ time units. Finally, a transition may be defined as a span of time that leads from one trajectory to another, but is longer than a single turning ‘point’. Most importantly, from all the concepts previously defined some meta-cycles may emerge. A general definition of cycles is they are repetitive events defining a temporal sequence of growth and decline, involving ascending and descending phases. They express some regularity within different units of chronological time. Such ‘metacycles’, then, are different from the M/M cycles as a form of the social process and typically embrace a set of the latter. They entail a substantive definition. One possible objection must be discussed right away. It might be objected that trajectories, duration, pace, and the like can simply appear as contents of the M/M narratives and there is thus no need to make them the object of explicit analysis, nor do they add anything to the understanding of the social process. My point in introducing them is that they should be used as reference points and additional units of analysis in empirical studies oriented by the M/M approach. Adding these tools to the ‘basic model’, rooted in the repetition and intersection of M/M cycles, would increase the sensitivity of the approach to further characteristics of the social. That 22 I

am taking the formulation ‘narrative concept’ from Abbott (2001, p. 245, Footnote 12). This author endows such a concept with the specific meaning I have underlined, which must be sharply distinguished from a subjectivist notion. 23 This statement is clearly different from an exclusive emphasis on narrativity as the ontology of the social world. 24 See again Abbott: ‘(…) indeed it seems that is the point of having a concept of turning point, as opposed to simply one of change or causality or succession, all of which would cover a turning point of this extremely gradual kind’ (Abbott 2001, 251).

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is to say, such concepts should be used as reference points for analysis, featuring in the narratives that are proffered about the morphogenesis/morphostasis of given institutions, organizations or any other social phenomenon. In this perspective, they would serve as a way to develop each situational logic temporally, while remaining on the level of abstraction that allows empirical study. Some meanings and implications of a MS might then appear in a different light. There is a temporal dimension to each situational logic that these concepts could help to unfold in a more systematic fashion, by seeking analogies that make particular cases not ‘particularities’, but specificities. The way in which intersections produce key moments or conjunctures that mark the coming together of relatively autonomous processes can thus be revealed. At those points, the choices and intentions of actors become highly consequential and the possibility of structural change arises. Different morphogenetic processes converge and produce outcomes, but their timing can thus be studied more systematically. Reciprocally, a view of society emerging from the M/M approach could explore the forces impinging on key choices that were decisive determinants for future opportunities and shed light on the regularities that make up a certain societal constellation without indulging in the sweeping generalizations of old-style macro-sociology.

2.4 Regularities and Social Ontologies The previous sections have clarified why the concept of regularity is still important for sociological theory, discussed its definition, arguing that it should be conceived in non-empiricist terms, and introduced a set of companion concepts that could refine its usage. Now we complete the chapter by connecting the theme of regularities to that of social ontology, asking what social regularities consist of. It is instructive to examine the social nature of the things that reproduce themselves regularly, because what they are is important to determine why they resist and stay, or fade away. The guiding question concerns what social ontology is appropriate under morphogenetic premises, both in social life and in social theory. In other words, the case to be made is about what social ontology could best serve the sociological analysis of a prospective MS, and where the M/M approach stands in this regard. In a nutshell, the argument I develop here is that an adequate social ontology must be essentially historical, processual, and relational. Social entities are not individual units endowed with categorical properties, nor social wholes determining individual lives, and do not fundamentally consist of symbols or ‘discourse’, although culture is indeed an important part of the social world. They are social relations, which are real, patterned, time-constituted entities, whose further interrelations result in more complex, emergent entities, mechanisms, and effects. Arguably, this theoretical decision is conceptually valid in itself, and it looks like a viable frame of reference in a society marked by variety, mobility, complexity, and highly volatile dynamics.

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The diachronic nature of social reality, which has been illustrated in the preceding sections,25 follows directly from the ontological statement that social regularities do not amount to any abstract, law-like phenomenon, but concern concrete facts and features whose stability emerges over time.26 Social structure can only influence action, and the ongoing course of social processes, through its relational patterns, with the related logics, mechanisms and effects.27 And all of this happens in the present moment. But those relational configurations, as well as their component factors, only emerge over time, which is important in shaping them with their powers and properties. This means that their history remains engraved in their current profile at every present moment, thereby affecting the quality of the synchronic structural pattern. Structures that are seemingly similar in terms of their constitutive synchronic relations may really display significant differences as to their conditioning force and outcomes, depending on the pathways through which the relevant factors have come to crystallize in the configuration in question.28 The crucial point of social ontology, as well as of consistent sociological explanation, is to keep together these two dimensions—the effects of history and those of synchronic relational patterns—without reducing any one to the other.29 The temporal characterization is usually incorporated in processual theories of the social order, as we will see shortly. However, the difference between processual and relational models is not always clear, in terms of their ontological implications as well as of what they offer to substantive sociological analysis. Moreover, relational sociology is itself not a homogeneous field in ontological terms. Beyond the shared, basic idea to counter both individualistic and holistic approaches, significant differences remain. We will not present an extended review of all the processual and the relational theories.30 Such a task is much too large to be accomplished here. The specific focus of the present discussion is twofold. First, I would like to show how processual views resemble and differ from relational ones. Second, we need to understand how the M/M approach compares to both, what its possible advantages 25 This has been argued several times, and is now rather accepted in most sociological quarters. See the argument developed in Archer (1995). 26 See for example Somers (1998), in the context of the critique of some ontological premises related to rational choice theory. 27 See Chap. 4 for a discussion of the concept of social mechanism, and its application in the analysis of the MS. 28 An example is that of parenting and educational styles. The same child rearing style can work differently in different families, although similar in membership structure—e.g. parents, one son and one daughter—and in various structural features—e.g. age, social status, parent education, etc. This depends on the history of each individual member, of their relationships along the axes of gender and generations, and of their involvement in other social networks, structures and cultures. Space limits do not allow for a detailed analysis here. 29 Let me note that the very term morpho-genesis expresses such a theoretical thrust. In my view, such a statement could be shared by some of the most relevant authors embracing historical sociology. See for example, in his own way, Sewell (2005: 184; 199). 30 An extended literature is available in this domain. On relational sociology, see for example the recent reference work edited by Dépelteau (2018), which includes some of the most relevant authors, and effectively illustrates their convergence and divergence.

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and risks could be. Thus, the present argument revolves around a few sensitive spots, upon which the M/M approach is compared to other perspectives that represent the most significant advances on the relevant issues. One of the most ambitious efforts to develop a social ontology is due to Andrew Abbott. His longstanding work pursues a fully processual sociological approach.31 Thus, an analysis of its main tenets is an instructive way to develop our argument. The starting point would sound consistent with relational views, since Abbott maintains that the social world does not consist of atomic units, nor of grand social entities, nor yet of symbolic structures (Abbott 2016: ix). Further, a processual view presumes that the social order is continuously in the making. It is a process where everything changes and stability is something to be explained. So, if change is the normal state of things, why does anything ever stay the same? (Ibid.: xi). Abbott’s response seems initially ambivalent, saying that stability is a creation or, more often, a linguistic mirage (Ivi: 2). The latter term would seem to imply that stability in the social world is only a post-hoc narrative reconstruction, that might correspond to subjective passions or interests, but has nothing to do with real facts. But then he goes on to say that the basic unit of analysis is an event. Individuals and social entities “are patterns and regularities defined on lineages of successive events. They are moments in a lineage” (Ibid.: ix). We speak of stability when we observe lineages of events that keep recurring more or less similarly over time (Ibid.: 24). Thus, lineages are the real entities that stand for structure, or regular patterns. A lineage is formed through a process Abbott calls encoding (Ibid.: 6 ff.; 26). Encoding, with its typical mechanisms, is the only cause of duration, and is therefore the pivotal concept of social ontology. All social entities—human individuals as well as groups or institutions—display some continuity over time (also called historicality) because of encoding, which happens through three main mechanisms: (a) biological, (b) memorial, and (c) documental (recorded).32 These are the ways in which past events continue to have an influence on the present. For example, the biological aspect concerns the experiences accumulated within the individual body—an individual’s physical and medical history, which in turn depends on past experience, from the kind of job s/he did to the rest of his/her lifestyle and life experience.33 Memories influence the present insofar as they live within individual minds, and records tend

31 Within the rich body of work produced by this author, I take into consideration those essays that are more directly related to the issue discussed here. See above all Abbott (1983, 2001, 2006, 2016). The latter is the most systematic exposition of Abbott’s position to date, and I will draw mainly upon it in this part of the chapter. 32 Abbott also mentions a substantive mechanism, which in various parts of his work is treated either as an additional mechanism or as an integrated set of the other three. 33 In this respect, let me note that paleontology draws heavily on bodily remains in reconstructing early human groups’ lifestyle, stage of social and technical development, and overall situation. When it comes to larger social entities, Abbott clarifies that this dimension concerns various kinds of material infrastructures.

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to constitute ‘diffused’ subjectivities, as they are stored in different sites.34 In sum, social entities emerge as lineages of encoded events that tend to recur. Abbott goes on to model “how these effects happen: how contingency, constraint, and action interact in the now to knot the various momentary events into another secured present-become-past that can in turn shape a succeeding present” (2016: 33–34). In Abbott’s processual frame of reference, the concept deployed to accomplish this task is that of ecology: When we call a set of social relations an ecology, we mean that it is best understood in terms of interactions between multiple elements that are neither fully constrained nor fully independent. (…) I shall speak of ecologies as things—that is, ontologically. (Ibid.: 38–39)

This image resembles Archer’s notion (1995) of how structure and culture condition (but do not determine) social interaction, thereby cyclically generating morphogenesis or morphostasis. Moreover, the ontological statement resonates with a realist conception of social structure. More precisely, an ecology is a complex interactional structure, made up of a set of tasks, actors, and a ligation between them. Abbott calls ligation the knot that keeps together an ecology, and produces locations, bundles or settlements as more or less stable and exclusive relational arrangements. In my perspective, these might be conceived as emergent effects, to be classified in terms of a scale of emergence.35 An example made by Abbott is that of the struggle within the professional domain of medicine, whereby different groups, schools, or traditions try to secure medical licensing, which is the final ‘location’. The final step in this model involves the interaction between linked ecologies, through which complex social facts must be explained. The ecological explanatory format envisions “taking into account the simultaneous existence of numerous adjacent ecologies, all of whose actors seek alliances, resources, and support across ecological boundaries. (…) The viewpoint of linked ecologies provides a first model for how the continuous trajectories of past social action, encoded into the relations of present social structure, become the localities, facilities, and constraints of the next round of action” (Ibid.: 37–38). Again, this formulation comes quite close to the M/M idea of the complex interaction between interest groups seeking legitimation and ideational groups seeking resources (Archer 1988, 1995).36 And the description of the struggle for medical licensing, ends up with the following remark: «since the three sects [of medical doctors] could not bring themselves to recognize each other, coordinated action was impossible» (Ibid.: 51). In M/M terms, what we see here is a dynamic of compatibility or incompatibility, and the resulting outcome in terms of social action. Given these analogies, let me deal with a double problem, through which I hope to illustrate what analytical advantage may lie in the translation from ecological models to the M/M frame of reference. 34 Traces

left in the social media are a good example, as well as the more classic records produced and stored for administrative purposes. 35 This analytic tool appears later in this volume, in Chap. 4, to which I will refer for its definition. 36 The analogy becomes quite apparent in the example of higher education (Abbott 2016; 41).

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The various mechanisms of encoding could well serve as elements of an explanatory narrative built in M/M terms—although it is not clear to me why Abbott remains silent about what is usually called ‘socialization’, i.e. encoding through the inter- or intra-generational transmission of behaviours, attitudes, values, ideals, and norms by means of discourse and example. Such behaviours etc. are not only remembered or recorded—much less, hopefully, engraved in the body (which might assume a rather awkward meaning if applied to child rearing)—but internalized as personal beliefs. Be that as it may, to put it in Abbott’s words, the sum total of these encoded marks of historical experience constitutes the set of possibilities and constraints within which actors must work in the present (Ibid.: 13). Indeed, the notion of encoding can help dispel the impression that structural conditioning is nothing but a ‘lag effect’. The idea of encoding demonstrates that some structures do not only endure because changing them takes time, but also because there is something being continuously encoded from moment to moment, across different M/M cycles, that keeps them alive. However, the problem is “how it is that structural rearrangement takes place in the present moment. I.e. how encoding moves forward from one moment to the next, in the process potentially rearranging the whole of social structure” (Ibid.: 14). When this processual model talks about revision and rearrangement, that is, about changing structures (in M/M terms, structural elaboration), it is evoking a selective function it cannot account for. A given population may bear memory of various events—Abbott mentions military draft, times of economic crisis or prosperity, and more—but these past experiences may lead to support or to oppose policies, choices, and lines of action in any further present. As Abbott clearly sees, the “direction of historicality’s impact is not given ex ante” (Ibid.: 11). The problem is precisely to account for this direction of influence. Let us pick a few examples that appear in Abbott’s argument. When certain cohorts come to retirement age, they bring a systematically diverse set of encoded experiences to it. But they can still make decisions—e.g. through their voting behaviour—that prompt social, political, and cultural continuity or change. The same goes for life-stage occupations, which usually do not become professions, because the type and duration of their inner relationships do not allow for some properties (e.g. professional identity) to emerge. However, the people in those occupations can still play different roles for social change versus reproduction. Again, social interaction in linked ecologies may result in bundles, settlements, or locations, but this is not just determined by any set of encoded features. The crux of the problem is that processual models normally assume a flat ontology, in which there is no distinction between structure, culture, and agency. In Abbott’s case, he explicitly denies the relevance of personality, structure, and culture, on the ground that social systems are ‘no larger than’ human individuals. In Abbott’s words, “those who believe in ‘larger forces’ have their ‘structure and agency’ problem” (Ibid.: 110–111). To me, the point is not that there are larger or smaller forces, but that a layered ontology allows to see the qualitative difference between types of forces. There are emergent properties that are different in social nature, and consequently in their effects, i.e. in the ways they contribute to change or reproduce the current state

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of play. Encoded marks could even be conceived as characterizing primary agency,37 but primary agency alone is not sufficient to determine the direction of social change, or its continuity. In order to model this dynamic, active agency, personal reflexivity, and their complex interplay with the situational logics are necessary. Of course, this does not mean that Abbott’s model—as well as all similar processual theories—cannot see how, and why things change or stay the same. It means that these outcomes can only be reconstructed narratively, not in any way conceptualized. This leads to a second problem. But before we come to it, let me highlight a different facet of the same issue. Processual models share with some historical sociologies the assumption, according to which the event is the basic unit of analysis.38 This is a very consequential presupposition, since it envisions a perspective that (i) is radically temporalized, (ii) assumes the deep contingency of all social relations, and (iii) wants to explain both the reproduction and the transformation of structures by using one and the same framework. As to point (i), the term ‘event’ apparently has ‘punctualist’ implications, but then various theories part company, in that some still assume that events have a duration, while others go for a radically instantaneous notion of event, as immediately disappearing and radically post-ontological. Luhmann’s communicational events clearly stand out among the latter, while representatives of historical sociology, like William Sewell, are examples of the former.39 The issue of contingency (point ii) will be examined below, and then again in Chap. 3. But here I want to highlight its connection to point (iii). These different semantics of the event carry different ontologies (or anti-ontologies), and this in turn affects the possibility to understand change versus continuity. For example, Sewell’s view assumes that “[c]ontingent, unexpected, and inherently unpredictable events […] can undo or alter the most apparently durable trends of history” (Tang 2013: 35). Sewell also makes a distinction between happenings and events. Not all facts (sheer happenings) are events to the historian. Events are facts that bring about a structural change. But here again, without a more nuanced conceptual frame that is sensitive to structural, cultural, and personal emergent properties, and their interrelations, facts or events can only be identified ex post, in a purely narrative way. In other terms, in the face of the constant revision of social structures and practices, eventful conceptions are left with the conundrum of the direction of change, having no way to conceive of a selective function. This is really not a problem for those approaches, like Luhmann’s, which are radically post-ontological, post-humanistic, and rely upon a refined evolutionist account of social change as well as durability. But for those who do not share in this paradigm, a social ontology of events is just too thin to work.

37 This

becomes clear on various points of Abbott’s argument (e.g. 2016: 9, 10, 12, 27). For the concept of primary agency, that is, the agential force exercised thanks to the mere positioning within the social structure, see Archer (2000, 2003, 2012). 38 In this respect, for example, Abbott (1984; 2016) is consistent with Sewell (2005). 39 For a critique of Sewell on this account, introducing Luhmann as a possible solution, see Tang (2013).

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So we have established that historicality, on the one hand, and event-based social ontologies on the other hand make continuity, change, and the directions of influence and transformation a purely empirical matter. This leads to our final point, which could be expressed with the following questions: how much social contingency can the theory bear, and how should it deal with it? How much contingency must be reduced, and subdued by conceptual frameworks, or simply left open? Again, Abbott’s approach is quite instructive. The point of a processual theory is to reduce contingency, without postulating any fixed or functional structure. Otherwise, “the social process would simply consist of an undifferentiated flow (as it is in purely contingent theories of history) or a systematically proliferating and differentiating system (as it is in the evolutionary functionalism of Parsons, for example). But by viewing ecologies as current arenas of competition that can be linked together and even in some cases amalgamated or divided, we can reduce the contingent complexity of the social process without assuming any fixed or functional structure to it” (Abbott 2016: 50). Although I can share the theoretical intention expressed in this statement, my point is that Abbott’s arenas of competition are still leaving behind the issue that everything can change, but not with the same probability and direction. Without distinction between structure, culture, and agency the process remains undertheorized. Through the distinction between situational logics and personal reflexivity, the M/M approach moves one step forward, from the qualities of ecologies to the resulting kind of relations between them. Of course, the heart of the matter is what social theory assumes as a frame for analysis and what is left to be narrated ex post, as a purely contingent empirical matter, about which no theoretical statement can be seriously granted. In other words, is the basic causal mechanism only variable, indeterminate and contingent? Is this all that can be said about it? If all we can do is explain social facts ex post, and reflect upon our predictive failures, is social science bound to be a ‘science of errors’, forever focussed on its failures, but with no hope of improvement? Moreover, once we admit that hyper-complexity tends to make even narrative reconstructions uncertain and mutually contradictory, are we sure that pure narrative would establish more solid ground, in the face of ‘fragile’ theoretical or (horribile dictu) predictive ambitions? Or could an ‘order of ecologies’—as a combination of relational structures—be established? Under M/M premises, this would not mean to give in to any deductive or functional illusion, but to specify some conditions and to make a few more theoretically grounded statements about where, and how social change versus reproduction will occur, thereby pushing complexity reduction a little further. This does not mean that sociology will be able to predict the occurrence of events—much less of events that are rare by definition—but, as Abbott himself notes,40 could make sense of the social conditions under which a given occurrence is likely to trigger important consequences—thus, to some extent, predicting its outcomes—thereby becoming an event. This is consistent with what was said above (Sect. 2.2) on the morphogeneticrelational approach resembling seismology in its inability to predict events, combined

40 Abbott

(2016, Chap. 1).

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with its competence in indicating where they will happen, why, and how serious they could be. To sum up, the point with the M/M, compared to processual approaches, is about how much contingency, and vice versa, how much contingency reduction social theory can bear. At this point it is interesting to note that even other models which call themselves not just processual, but relational and realist share in the same problem. One example is Somers’s ‘relational realism’ (Somers 1998),41 whose ontology takes the basic unit of sociological analysis to be neither individual entities, nor structural wholes—and this is what these models all have in common—but the process of interaction between relational identities, embedded in relational configurations. Autonomous categories defined by their attributes are here regarded as historically shifting sets of relationships, contingently stabilized in sites. The causal mechanism of change/reproduction lies in pathways of agential interaction—which Somers, using Stinchcombe’s words, also calls the situational mechanism. Hence sociological analysis must be developed in terms of path-dependency and sequence analysis. This form of causal narrativity shows how past processes are sedimented into the core of current phenomena, and explains not only social change, but social durability, i.e. what Somers calls the institutional patterns of resistance. Now, all of this clearly resonates with Archer’s notion of situational logic, while the M/M approach unfolds explanatory/interpretive narratives that are actually sequence analyses in narrative, qualitative form. Further, the institutional patterns of resistance could well be translated, in M/M terms, into the particular institutional configurations prompting morphostasis. However, even here the various relational ‘games’, and the resulting situational logics, are left unspecified, as if it were impossible to qualify their relational pattern as prompting different effects and tendencies. In the end, we can conclude that regularities exist, and must be explained not by laws, but through diachronic explanatory narratives which take into account trajectories, choices, pathways, etc. This calls into question very profound issues of social ontology. In a nutshell, the point is that a fully historical, processual and relational model is needed. The M/M-relational approach stands at the centre of the most crucial dilemmas, and seems to contribute a viable solution. But its relevance and fitness can only be decided on the ground of the substantive analyses it can produce. More precisely, our argument leads to conclude that the M/M approach lays out a more ambitious form of social theory, thanks to its stratified social ontology, its refined notion of agency and reflexivity, and its appeal to emergent properties pertaining to the various levels. But from the viewpoint of other processual, and even of some relational perspectives, this means leaning dangerously towards a ‘fixed’ model of social processes and structures. What tips the balance between them is the idea of contingency, the ways and degree of its possible and desirable reduction by means of 41 See Somers (2008), for a more recent substantive study, which, however, seems to be only partially

inspired by that approach.

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different conceptual frames. I have shown what the M/M approach allows to observe. However, the final answer should be left to substantive sociological analysis. For this reason, the hypothesis of an emergent MS represents a good test. Explaining, understanding, perhaps even predicting some of its developments (all with modest claims) is an important challenge ahead. It could turn out that the morphogenetic-relational approach provides good insights in this societal formation, which constitute significant advances in our capacity to study social life and the social order. Or it could be that other theories will prove to be more effective in this task. This is part of what the next chapters want to determine. I have already declared my own working hypothesis, so I advance no claim of theoretical neutrality. But I hope that the arguments presented in the rest of this volume will be sound enough to make such assumptions plausible, and open enough to allow a fruitful dialogue between various sociological paradigms. At the end of the day, the coming MS might instead involve such complex dynamics as require to be treated as cases of overdetermination. That is a situation in which relations, influences, and causal relations are so numerous, overlapping, and confused that analysis becomes impossible, it being impossible to disentangle the various relational flows. Abbott calls these ‘congested zones of social structure’ (2016: 71–74), areas that are too relationally dense. I would venture to say that they become like social black holes, where the light of sociological analysis may penetrate—indeed, to which it is attracted—but cannot feed back to the researcher with any intelligible picture of what is happening. Although this would be a social scientist’s nightmare, that’s where social hyper-complexity might be heading. If this metaphor has anything to teach at all, it is that the event horizon of the MS, and the paths toward it, must be observed from the right distance.

References Abbott, A. (1983). Sequences of social events: Concepts and methods in the analysis of order in social processes. Historical Methods, 16, 129–147. Abbott, A. (1984). Event sequence and event duration: Colligation and measurement. Historical Methods, 17, 192–204. Abbott, A. (2001). Time matters. On theory and method. Chicago and London: University of Chcago Press. Abbott, A. (2006). The Concept of Order in the Processual Sociology. Cahiers Parisiens, 315–345. Abbott, A. (2016). Processual sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aminzade, R. (1992). Historical sociology and time. Sociological Methods and Research, 20(4), 456–480. Andersen, H. (2011). Mechanisms, laws, and regularities. Philosophy of Science, 78(2), 325–331. Andersen, H. (2012). The case for regularity in mechanistic causal explanation. Synthese, 189(3), 415–432. 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.

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Archer, M. S. (2003). Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. S. (2011). Morphogenesis. Realism’s explanatory framework. In A. Maccarini, E. Morandi, & R. Prandini (Eds.), Sociological realism (pp. 59–94). London and New York: Routledge. Archer, M. S. (2012). The reflexive imperative in late modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. S. (Ed.) (2013). Social Morphogenesis. Dordrecht: Springer. Arnason, J. P., Eisenstadt, S. N., & Wittrock, (Eds.). (2004). Axial civilizations and world history. Leiden: Brill. Arnason, J. P., & Wittrock, B. (Eds.). (2004). Eurasian transformations, 10th to 13th centuries: Crystallizations, divergences, renaissances. Leiden: Brill. Coleman, J. S. (1970). Social inventions. Social Forces, 49, 163–173. Dépelteau, F. (2008). Relational thinking: A critique of co-deterministic theories of structure and agency. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 51–73. Dépelteau, F. (Ed.). (2018). The palgrave handbook of relational sociology. Basigstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Hedström, P. (2005). Dissecting the social: On the principles of analytical sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kemp, S., & Holmwood, J. (2003). Realism, regularity and social explanation. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 33(2), 165–187. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Luhmann, N., & De Giorgi, R. (1994). Teoria della società. Milano: Franco Angeli. Parsons, T. (1964). Evolutionary universals in society. American Sociological Review, 29, 339–357. Parsons, T. (1966). Societies. Evolutionary and comparative perspectives. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Parsons, T. (1971). The system of modern societies. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Porpora, D. V. (2011). Recovering causality: Realist methods in sociology. In A. Maccarini, E. Morandi, & R. Prandini (Eds.), Sociological realism (pp. 149–167). London and New York: Routledge. Sewell, W. H., Jr. (2005). Logics of history: Social theory and social transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Somers, M. R. (1994). The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach. Theory and Society, 23, 605–649. Somers, M. R. (1998). “We’re Not Angels”: Realism, rational choice, and relationality in social science. American Journal of Sociology, 104(3), 722–784. Somers, M. R. (2008). Genealogies of citizenship. Markets, statelessness, and the right to have rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sugden, R. (2011). Explanation in search of observations. Biology and Philosophy, 26(5), 717–736. Tang, C.-C. (2013). Toward a really temporalized theory of event: A Luhmannian critique and reconstruction of Sewell’s logics of history. Social Science Information, 52(1), 34–61. Thalos, M. (1999). In favor of being only humean. Philosophical Studies, 93(3), 265–298.

Chapter 3

After Late Modernity? The Morphogenetic Approach as Hermeneutics of Transition

Keywords Social change · Modernization · Contingency · Agency · Social evolution

3.1 The Attractions and Discontents of Historical Diagnosis Macro-sociology entails an inherent paradox. Its ‘macro’ aspect refers to both space and time, characterizing it as a study of ‘big structures’ as well as one of ‘the long run’.1 The two facets come together in the idea of historical diagnosis, that is the claim to provide an all-encompassing interpretation of large societal formations, entire civilizations and eras, making sense of big, deep processes of change. Somewhat like cosmology in the realm of physics, such an enterprise is the most popular among the wider public, while being the least rigorous in methodological terms. Sociological attempts to grasp historical crises, turning points, and ‘new eras’ necessarily tackle extremely complex, sometimes overdetermined issues, which is why they easily slide into sweeping generalizations or catchy slogans. Moreover, the very tendency of macro-theories to multiplication hardly contributes to scientific credibility, because—as Hans Joas has aptly noted—the struggle to attract public attention is understandable, but it is hard to believe that a new era is dawning every year, or that every new book announces one (Joas 2014: 127). These limits notwithstanding, social science cannot avoid producing analyses of macro-social change. Beyond the scholars’ inner intellectual thrill of (seemingly) coming to see the big canvas, this happens for two main reasons. First, macrosociology may influence political cultures. It is still Joas who reminds that public opinion, and the formation of its political will must not be left in the hands of those who are brave enough—or rather unscrupulous enough—to disregard any standard 1 These

formulations refer to the work of Charles Tilly and Randall Collins, respectively, that will be discussed later in this chapter. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. M. Maccarini, Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13624-6_3

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of methodically acquired knowledge (Ivi). In addition, policy making also needs to mobilize social science in its most questionable capacity, namely that of prediction. As a chief economist of the World Bank has summarized, “very long-run forecasting is a hazardous activity, almost never correct. However, it is necessary to develop the best models we can in order for our actions and policies to be somewhat rooted in reality” (quoted in Urry 2016: 187). How did sociology meet this demand? After the classical season of modernization theory, it is widely known that historical and macro-sociological diagnoses have typically come in two shapes2 : (i) mono-thematic studies, deploying a strategy based on the logic of pars pro toto. These take a shortcut from one specific, though significant, feature of culture and society to the characterization of an overarching societal or civilizational formation. The result is that of ‘cyclopic visions’, whereby a given era of society is defined either by risk, or by communication, connectedness, multiple options, reflexivity, mobility, and more3 ; (ii) post-something theories, e.g. post-modern, post-industrial, post-military, postsecular, and even, most radically (and somewhat disturbingly), post-societal or post-social.4 A collateral effect of these approaches is that the old dichotomy between traditional and modern society is emerging again in new forms, that is as the distinction between modernity and high, second, reflexive, or post- modernity (Joas and Knöbl 2009: 474).5 Thus, it is not surprising that in such authors as Beck the two forms of Zeitdiagnose outlined above tend to merge. All these theories have some merit, in that they graphically convey an idea or highlight one essential factor that is likely to change social life. However, the task of developing adequate illustrations and explanations of contemporary macro-social change does not seem to be fully accomplished. As a result of all this, the current theoretical landscape looks rather fuzzy. A few decades ago, Charles Tilly could still write that in the “waning years of the twenti2 In

this respect I am still drawing on Joas’s work (2014: Chap. 5). However, such a description is widely shared in the literature. See also Chap. 4 in the present volume for further reflections. 3 I took the notion of cyclopic visions from Willke (2001: Chap. 4), but its meaning in the present context is different. What Willke had in mind was the particular view on the whole reality produced by each functional (sub)system, while here I am thinking of the totalizing view of a society, civilization, or historical age based on one, catch-all factor—one that is not necessarily the medium of a functional system. In spite of this fundamental difference, some virtues and flaws of these respective ways to observe society are very similar. 4 The latter two labels refer to the work by Urry (2000), Knorr-Cetina (1997, 2009), Touraine (2013). In their respective paradigms, the concepts in question take up different meanings. My limited claim here is that they all deploy a similar theory-building strategy. As regards Knorr-Cetina, because she simultaneously speaks of postsocial and of synthetic societies, her work really shares in both categories, (i) and (ii). To what extent the ‘synthetic’ character is going to become the all-important feature of future society remains to be seen, but clearly deserves closer attention. 5 The same could be said of Luhmann’s distinction between forms of differentiation, opposing functionally differentiated to stratified societies (Luhmann 1997: Chap. 4, 1998).

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eth century, the nineteenth century also keeps its hold on many ideas about social organization. In the analysis of social change, we cling loyally to ideas built up by nineteenth century intellectuals” (Tilly 1984: 2). Such were ideas of “increasing differentiation as the master process of social change”, and of “societies as coherent but delicate entities, vulnerable to imbalances between differentiation and integration” (Ivi). The present situation is profoundly different. With the development of globalization, and with the sociology of globalization that became popular in the 1990s, we seem to have witnessed a meta-transition, leading from a relatively definite situation to one that is difficult to identify. After the so-called ‘roaring 1990s’ the utopic vision that had accompanied the fall of the Berlin wall and of the Soviet empire began to fade, giving way to apocalyptic visions. The 1990s then appeared as a decadent fin de siècle, a time “of intense opulence and decadence, combined with the anticipation of doom-laden catastrophe” (Urry 2016: 34). Correspondingly, most characterizations of the present times amount to metaphors of fragmentation, indeterminacy, and dissolution. For all its empirical resonance with some contemporary social phenomena, it is doubtful that such perpetual litany of ‘all that is solid melts into air’ can stand in the place of a full-blown macro-theory. As a result—as noted by Michal Mann—most discussions of globalization are not particularly interesting, and globalization has not generated innovative theories of society (Mann 2013: 3). Many scholars describe rather than explain global society and its processes, and some of their analyses aren’t but descriptions of the global expansion of social structures long familiar on a more local scale (Ibid.: 361). The same remarks are made by Knöbl (2007), concerning both the current stagnation of macro-sociology (Ibid.: 12) and the descriptive nature of globalization theories (56). Thus, he concludes that most current versions of macrosocial theory—globalization theory, world system theory, world society—really have no more explanatory strength than old time modernization theory (Ibid.: 14; 27). Given this situation, Mann’s own proposal is to resist the notions of liquidity, fragmentation, and indeterminacy, and to see globalization “as driven by a few networks that are far more powerfully structuring than others, and that have a relatively hard and durable reality” (Ibid.: 8). He adds that societies must be studied as networks of interactions at the boundaries of which there is a certain degree of discontinuity, involving power organizations which contain different logics endowed with causal significance. Sometimes they are mutually reinforcing, some other times are mutually contradictory. They can be just orthogonal, different and disjunctive, sometimes creating unintended problems for each other (Ibid.: 11). Mann’s argument could be linked with Joas’s comment (2014: Chap. 5) that novel theoretical efforts in the macro-sociological realm should (a) develop a multidimensional approach rather than focus on single, allegedly dominant factors of change, (b) balance continuity and discontinuity in historical change, and (c) focus attention on the concept of contingency. While points (a) and (b) parallel the lines of thought criticized above (i and ii), Joas’s main general thesis is that sociological analysis in the domain of modernization must be sensitive to contingency. He then maintains that we are now really in an ‘era of contingency’. This in turn invites a new set of rigorous studies, because

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the idea of such an ‘era’ is not meant to become one more ‘single issue’ proxy for strictly analytical conceptions of the current phase of modernization. To sum up, contingency, multidimensionality, and a focus on structuring networks of relations are the keywords of theoretical renewal. On the contrary, mere description and an exclusive focus on fragmentation and indeterminacy are the methodological and substantive pitfalls to be avoided. But this still does not amount to an explanatory approach. To begin with, we have to determine what it really means, and indicate the main consequences of such theoretical decisions. The thesis presented in this chapter is that the M/M approach, and the related idea of an emergent MS, are fundamentally consistent with these proposals. While it is not in itself a macro-social theory, M/M is in line with the requirement to keep together historical diagnosis and methodological rigour. Indeed, macro-social theory can, and should engage with M/M basic assumptions. Furthermore, I will advance a specific claim about the significance of the concept of MS for the analysis of contemporary society and its futures. The underlying spirit is not to herald the one ‘new’ and ‘better’ approach that should supersede ‘old’ ones, but to establish one of those corridors between paradigms I have mentioned before.6 Let me now provide a quick outline of the argument. The ultimate aim of this chapter is to anchor the main working hypotheses of this book on some reference points within the main paradigms involved in macro-sociological analysis. The guiding idea is that significant relations can be fruitfully established between the M/M approach and some recent trends of macro-sociological theory, through the identification of mutual compatibilities regarding a few conceptual hot spots. The unfolding of this connection into a fully developed research program involves several conceptual milestones. I will not be able to spell out all the possible details and corollaries of such an agenda, but the door will be hopefully opened for further study. Some particular social mechanisms and concrete dynamics that are currently playing a crucial role in macro-social change will be examined in Chap. 4. The present chapter has a larger, though in its way specific, scope. In order to illustrate my theses, I first have to review the conceptual frames involved in the discourse. Due to space limits, I do not dwell on any systematic reconstruction of modernization theories and their successors.7 My argument instead revolves around a set of specific problems that are typical of this level of analysis. First, I discuss a few implications of the ‘era of contingency’ on macro-sociological conceptual frames (Sect. 3.2). Then I address a few approaches that are playing a pivotal role in sociological responses to the contemporary challenge, on opposite sides of the theoretical fence encircling different ideas of socio-historical patterns (Sect. 3.3). This provides the key points of engagement, paving the way for the final section. There I lay out my proposal about

6 See

the illustration of the main argument of the volume in Chap. 1. the crisis of modernization theory during the 1960s (a theory exemplified by the outstanding work of Talcott Parsons, e.g. 1966; 1971), and on its current situation, there is obviously a vast literature. From a vantage point consistent with my own analysis, see the accurate account by Knöbl (2007).

7 On

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the specific contribution the M/M approach and the MS thesis offer to the study of macro-social change. Overall, I specify their possible role as that of providing an instructive hermeneutic of transition.

3.2 After (Functionalist) Modernization Theory: Contingency Beyond ‘Master Trends’ In Chap. 2, contingency was addressed in relation to social ontology. In that context, the line of argument was that social reality in itself involves a high degree of contingency, which excludes determinism and, to some extent, predictability—at least in its most ambitious sense. Now, to talk of an ‘era of contingency’ means to take the argument on a historically specific level. In this sense, social contingency refers to the increasing options for individual and collective action and experience, that come as a consequence of various factors of change, from organizational complexity to the ICT, to the growing, multiple forms of mobility (Urry 2007), to the expanding sphere of human agency in realms once impervious to human powers, due to technological advances. This definition is grounded in social structures and historical processes, and leads to consider the societal implications of contingency. The social awareness of contingency represented a powerful exogenous factor which, together with endogenous ones, brought about the crisis of classical modernization theory.8 The influence of endogenous factors on theoretical transformation includes the inherent strain to consistency between the three dimensions of social theory, namely social ontology, methodology, and practical theory, as outlined by Archer (1995). In this particular case, the main tenets of macro-social theory were shaken in at least two respects. Firstly, the nineteenth century proposed timeless and placeless models of social organization and social change, whereas the need has surfaced for more historically grounded analyses of big structures and large processes.9 In the second place, the two prevailing paradigms after World War II—that is, Marxism and the functionalist modernization theory—shared the notion of a tight coupling between the various social spheres, subsystems and dynamics.10 The idea of a sharp break between modern and traditional societies was based on this unification between a wide range of heterogeneous processes and structures, which were supposed to amount to one overarching entity called ‘modernity’. Such an idea that modernization would work as a latent ‘big process’ constituted by internally related sub-processes has also attracted severe criticism. 8 The

co-presence of endogenous and exogenous factors in that crisis is also asserted in the cited work by Knöbl, who criticizes Jeffrey Alexander’s apparently exclusive emphasis on social—i.e. exogenous—facts (2007: Chap. 2). 9 The so-called historic turn in the human and social sciences has now been advocated by many authors within their various, specific approaches, from Abbott to Tilly, to Somers, Steinmetz and Sewell—and this is obviously no exhaustive list. For early statements see at least Lloyd (1993), McDonald (1996). Some implications of such a ‘turn’ have been explored in Chap. 2. 10 See again Joas (2014, Chap. 5 passim).

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To sum up, what prevents the reconstruction of modernization theory in terms of contingency is the claim that modernity be the offspring of one master trend—be it differentiation or a certain developmental path of the economic system—which would represent both an abstract and a unifying scheme. For this reason, the idea of a master trend leading social evolution is precisely the main focus of critique in the present theoretical mood. Among the long-term trends indicated as central in macro-social change, differentiation, particularly in its functional form, has been to the forefront in modernization theory as well as in subsequent, evolutionary oriented theories. To a significant extent, the critiques to this concept may be regarded as paradigmatic from a logical viewpoint. The main critical points could be summarized as follows: (1) Differentiation ends up covering multiple autonomous processes, that may well be mutually related, but whose reciprocal dependence is not warranted by any functional presupposition. They are really characterized by structural tensions, different spatial and temporal scales—e.g. the de-coupling between structure and culture—and may be more or less likely to find mutual integration. This does not exclude that they entertain causal relations. Indeed, institutional covariation could be regarded as part of the very definition of society as a social entity (Somers 1994). But the point is that such co-variation is contingent upon specific constellations of structural and cultural factors to be studied in their time constitution, and is not the outcome of internal, i.e. necessary, relations. (2) The idea of differentiation was, at least in part, prompted by the mercantile and colonial expansion of Europe and its encounter with relatively small and simple societies. This helped work out the idea of a master trend, whereby societies all fall on the same continuum, from simple to complex, and the most differentiated must also be regarded as the fittest11 (until they just collapse, as Luhmann would ironically add). The idea of differentiation as the fundamental largescale social process has its attractions, in that it provides an unambiguous, and apparently value-neutral principle on which societies can be ranked. However, critics have shown that in the end, no process is fundamental (Tilly 1984: 49). Some processes may take centre stage in a given society or historical period, but none of them is fundamental in any abstract, principled sense. For example, processes of de-differentiation are also important in modern societies (Ibid.: 48), like governance by standards (e.g. in education), linguistic standardization, mass consumption, capital concentration, and more.12 11 On

this point see Tilly (1984: 43–53). to Joas (Ibid.), Parsons keeps his theory open to multidimensionality, differentiation being just one in four dimensions of the process of social change, while such a feature is lost with Luhmann’s conceptual radicalization. I fully agree that Luhmann’s theory involved a fundamental change in what was once the ‘parsonian mood’—especially about the meaning and likeliness of integration and latent pattern maintenance, with the related rationale of societal evolution. But even Parsons considered functional differentiation to be the guiding vector of social change, as the recurrent start-up phase in a necessary sequence of adaptive upgrading. The idea of ranking 12 According

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(3) Multiple principles of differentiation coexist in one civilizational domain, and even more so in the global society. It would not be easy to justify why the functional one must be called primary and others secondary. Global society, and its various regions, are presently tending to differentiate along structural and cultural lines that are increasingly exceeding the functional principle,13 and evoking religious, ethnic, national, geo-political, and other dimensions. In turn, this cannot be understood in linear-evolutionary terms, since the multiplicity in question produces complex interactions rather than the superseding of one principle of organization and legitimation by the other. In sum, in late modern society differentiation (i) is not the fundamental process, and (ii) is not following functional requisites as an exclusive logic. Moreover, (iii) there is no one master trend involving internal relations between sub-processes. Two further remarks are relevant, concerning concrete processes and their relation to contingency. First, it is true that social differentiation theory allows for different values and logics to prevail in different subsystems of society. However, the same theory also argues that a given form of differentiation—i.e. the functional one—is characteristic of modern, and then of global (or world) society, being paralleled by an autopoietic turn in every sub-system. The concrete, historical processes and structures are, thus, supposed to develop their observable dynamics according to a unitary logic. If this may be problematic under the premises of a theory of contingency, it is also what allows to speak of ‘modernity’ as more than just a metaphor. Once we accept that concrete processes should be the first object of sociological analysis, is it still possible to add the relations between them, and a resulting situational logic? If no abstraction were possible beyond historical narrative, wouldn’t this plunge sociology into historiography? Thus, the problem of how much contingency, and how much abstraction, macro-sociology can bear comes up again. Second, even historical, ‘concrete’ (sub)-processes must not be taken as the ultimate refuge of a contingency-sensitive social theory. For a theory to have not just descriptive, but also explanatory relevance, it is also necessary to envisage a systematic place for agency.14 Whether or not all of this leaves us in a situation where theory itself remains possible is precisely the problem we have to tackle. The study of historically concrete constellations of processes, actors, and the resulting build-up of organized social forms may take different directions. It may develop in terms of an individualizing theory, focussed on the specific features of the complex bonds between human creativity and the contingent consistency among social forces, that become historically societies along the same continuum of complexity, as well as the functional logic of change, do not seem to be essentially different. 13 This prompted Niklas Luhmann—in a rather astonished mood—to speak of a sabotage of functional differentiation. See for example, with regard to religion, Luhmann (2013). 14 This is emphatically not to say that the mechanisms explaining social change must be totally placed in human agency, instead of properly social processes. It just means that human agency is part of a complex interpretive/explanatory bundle. This clarification is reminiscent of Luhmann’s critical statement (1997: 456), that will be discussed in Sect. 3.3.

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consequential and scientifically intelligible. But it may also give way to concepts which represent little more than conventional formulas that hide the paradox of an unsolvable puzzle.15

3.3 Socio-Historical Patterns and Logics of Development: Conceptual Alternatives in the Era of Contingency The present section briefly reviews some prominent macro-social approaches ‘after’ classical modernization theory, in order to highlight their way to deal with the key concepts that are cornerstones of, as well as watersheds between different macrosociological visions. The selection presented is obviously not meant to cover an exhaustive range of theoretical frames, but to outline what I regard as instructive reference points of meaningful alternatives, touching upon key issues. The analytical paths they follow are indicative of different approaches to the morphogenesis of complex societies. The problem we are studying concerns the ways in which contingency is approached in different paradigms, and the consequences for our understanding of complex societies. Once we have criticized the idea of characterizing macro-social change through one ‘master trend’, what comes next? Let us take Charles Tilly’s statement as a useful starting point. When he maintains that “historically specific changes in the organization of production and coercion, rather than abstractly specified processes such as differentiation or concentration, mark out the limits for intelligible analysis of social processes” (Tilly 1984: 50, italics added), where is he leading sociological analysis? Where does the boundary lie between excessive abstraction and patternless narrative? What kind of theory is possible in this intellectual predicament? The work of Randall Collins represents one interesting way to tackle the issue. The title of his book would seem to indicate a precise line of thought. If ‘macro history’ is strictly associated with a ‘sociology of the long run’, narrative would appear to prevail over abstract modelling. In fact, Collins intends to strike a balance between grand theories, which at times get close to the philosophy of history, and the historical consciousness that brought twentieth-century intellectuals to shy away from theory tout court. He wants to counter the notion that history “shows us no more than ourselves hopelessly contextualized in patternlessness” (Collins 1999: 1). Collins’s view is that around the 1960s the maturity of world history, and the history of civilizations—in various strands of research—has paved the way for a revival of macro-sociology after the fall of the traditional Marxist paradigm (Ibid.: 2–18; 36). Robert Wuthnow, Jack Goldstone and Theda Skocpol are then mentioned as examples of such ‘new’ macro-sociology. Considering a few key points in Collins’s argument, the kind of performance offered by such historically grounded theorization, focussed upon concrete processes, should become clear. 15 So

Luhmann (1997: 413).

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(a) One important issue concerns prediction, which Collins addresses with regard to his own work about the collapse of the Soviet Union.16 A geo-political (GP) model is specified, which consists of the following points: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Size and resource advantage; geopositional advantage (‘marchland’ vs. inner position); fragmentation of interior states; long-term simplification, with final showdown wars between few contenders; overextension, resulting in military-resource strain and ultimately in state disintegration.

These principles constitute a dynamics of mutually reinforcing processes, and serve as indicators of the likely territorial expansion versus contraction of a given political unit. Following Tilly’s argument, Collins adds the idea that variations in the forms of state organization can be explained by conditions affecting the resources available to support military expansion. The capacity for military mobilization and for administrative control are crucially important here. Tilly’s work, and Collins’s own GP model are then mixed with Skocpol’s and Goldstone’s to form an integrated Collins-Skocpol-Goldstone-Tilly model of state breakdown.17 Basically, the resulting idea is that GP crises trigger both military strain and population pressure, the latter mediated through prices, taxation, and inflation. In turn, military strain and population pressure foster fiscal strain, intra-elite conflict and popular revolt. On the other hand, the GP conditions also undermine or underpin personal and institutional legitimacy. When all these factors coalesce in a consistent, self-amplifying trend, state breakdown becomes the end result. Collins then claims that this model could be successfully deployed to predict the Soviet collapse. In methodological terms, he rightly concludes that serious prediction in social science must be distinguished from guesses, short-term empirical extrapolation or ad hoc claims, for which no theoretical principles are indicated and no sufficient data are available. When this is the case, the conditions under which things happen or do not happen, and what could cause things to change direction, cannot be specified. Prediction requires a full-blown conceptual frame and an adequate data base. It must be cross-validated by the convergence of diverse theories and studies over time, establishing a cumulative process which “takes generations” (Ibid.: 69). This approach surely advances the sociological knowledge of large processes of change. It is surely positive that the model consists of logically coherent and empirically observable connections between various social mechanisms, to construct a further, complex meta-mechanism. There are, however, a few critical issues to be raised, which explain some predictive limits of the model. First, the predictors in question are rather one-sided. Culture goes almost unnoticed, except for the quick mention of legitimacy—conceived of as an emotional 16 This

is the object of his Chap. 2, pp. 37–69, on which I draw for the following discussion and for the related references. 17 See Fig. 3.1, which is my own re-elaboration of the schemes found in Collins (Ibid.: 48–49). By contrast, the model might also work to understand state formation and successful institutional stabilization.

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Fig. 3.1 The Collins-Skocpol-Goldstone-Tilly model of state breakdown

atmosphere rather than as a cultural element. This is not something to be said for the sake of modelling completeness. What is relevant is the consequence in terms of theory refinement. For example, cultural factors are important in explaining why the extension of military power may encounter ethnic hostility or not, in understanding the principles of legitimacy that are valid in a certain political system (which in turn may be consequential on other levels), or for an adequate understanding of intra-elite conflict. The latter may be more or less radical, and lead to various forms of compromise or breakup, depending (among other things) on the extent of ideological compatibility between various factions of the cultural, religious, political, military, and economic élites and counter-élites. Furthermore, the GP factors should be further qualified. Overextension makes a good example. While examining this factor, the type of domination involved could be of high explanatory value. The forces of a given power may be stretched in terms of presence or resources, but this also has to do with the type of relationships entertained with the relevant ‘host’ countries—which may qualify as colonies, conquered enemies, allies, political satellites, etc. This highlights the relevance of inter-national constellations, with the kind of relations involved. The work of Mann (2013)—which will be deployed in Chap. 6 of the present volume to illustrate my own argument—represents an outstanding example of this approach. Again, GP factors are not alone in producing the dynamics that end up with a military, economic, or administrative crisis, nor do they act automatically. The process leading to certain outcomes must be reconstructed beyond the punctual connections between factors. Such connections are not extensionless, but are precisely the thick

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areas where sociological analysis must strive to explain and understand why things takes a certain direction—or another. Of course, Collins would not fail to provide adequate descriptions about ‘how things went’ in a given historical circumstance. But the problem is that the connections in question—i.e. the contingent junctions and intersections leading from GP crises to military strain, population pressure, and then to intra-elite conflict, popular protest, and so forth—would seem to be either causally determined (and thus taken for granted) or historically random-like (therefore totally patternless and merely narrated). In both cases, the contingency involved is made invisible to social theory. These issues reflect critically upon a few blind spots in the predictive performance of the model. For example, the case of the Soviet collapse—though irrefutably successful—did not involve any final showdown war, as the model would entail. To say that the arms race of the 1980s can be likened to a showdown gets dangerously close to an ad hoc interpretation. Moreover, what Collins seems to read as an obstacle to correct prediction—namely, the ideological misconstruction of Soviet power and viability, and of Gorbatchev’s reforms, on the part of US politicians and media (Ibid.: 68)—may in fact have underpinned precisely those reactions which brought about the final crisis of the USSR. With a different American reaction, the Soviet reforms might have had a very different outcome, and this in turn might have influenced the subsequent evolution of the Soviet system, thereby affecting the whole dynamics of the international system. This is no irrelevant detail. Leaving aside the substantive question of whether those misconstructions were caused by sheer misinterpretation or by strategic thinking, the methodological point is that the way agents react to the situations is obviously part of the process and outcomes, and this should be systematically included in the model. This contributes to make the time scale of the predictive statements—30–50 years, as Collins declares—definitely too large to exclude that substantial changes may happen in the meantime. The relative tendency to downplay the relational constellations also plays a role in the case of China. Collins maintains that the current success of Chinese economy—which parallels the rise of China to world power—falsifies what he calls the ‘capitalist-productive-superiority model’, that is the idea that the Soviet disintegration was mainly caused by the failure of its economic system in the face of the US capitalist one. However, it is impossible to dismiss the fact that China was only marginally involved in the US-USSR confrontation during the Cold War, and in the related arms race, which caused severe strain to Soviet economy. The predictive conundrum is what would have happened, if China had found itself in the same position as the USSR—i.e., had the Chinese economic structures been the protagonist of that struggle. The rise and fall of the great powers are clearly not the only macro-social changes that beg for explanation—let alone prediction. For example, one might wonder why the West is undergoing a demographic decline, as well as the loss of its moral high ground. A more classic issue is why some countries become modern, while others do not. Collins’s study of this problem with regard to the transition to capitalism in

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some Asian countries18 offers a further insight into his way to study the contingent morphogenesis of complex societies. The scheme in Fig. 3.2 summarizes a Weberian-Schumpeterian argument about the emergence of self-sustaining capitalist growth from agrarian-coercive economies. Collins then extends the model, applying it to Asian capitalism.19 The scheme specifies a set of necessary conditions, which must occur together for capitalist economy to take-off. What I especially want to highlight is the implicit logic. The first two columns on the right—labeled ‘ultimate conditions’ and ‘social obstacles’—comprise a list of structural conditions, which are held to be inherently conducive or unfavourable to the emergence of self-sustaining capitalism. However, the crucial point to me is that the macro-change at issue is not explained by the mere co-presence of those factors, but by the connection between some of them. For example, bureaucratic organization only prompts systematic law protecting property transactions insofar as it comes in combination with citizenship, disrupting political/military dominance over economic relations (Ibid.: 215). In M/M terms, what the scheme describes is the transition from one institutional configuration to another, which involves the shift in relational paths connecting various structural elements, with the related change of situational logic and the prevalence of morphogenesis over morphostasis (social obstacles). The column of organizational preconditions thus represents a set of emergent effects, which in turn constitute a new institutional configuration and result in the actual components of self-transforming capitalist growth (last left-hand column), opening a new morphogenetic cycle. The rationale of this model seems cognate to the M/M one. However, I would add that (i) the relationships and the resulting logics are not made fully explicit, (ii) the acting interest/ideal groups should be systematically included,20 and (iii) the causal chain should be spelled out as a process in time, comprising conditioning factors, positive and negative (potentially conflictual) interactional phases, and structural elaboration or reproduction. The model in Fig. 3.2 represents a more refined and multidimensional approach to social change than the GP-based explanation discussed above. In Tilly’s typology of the ways to compare “big structures and large processes”, it would fall into the universalizing case (Tilly 1984: 80–84), provided that we bear in mind that Collins is always dealing with historically specific processes, not with formal law-like abstractions into which societal dynamics should fit. The model also provides a hint of how modernization itself can be seen through the more specific processes of bureaucratization, capitalist economization, secularization, and democratization.21 To these four processes, Joas added the socio-psychological process of individualization, as well as the progressive pacification among diverse societies, and takes the resulting picture as a frame of reference to articulate a typology of macro-sociological 18 Collins

[1999: 209–237 (Chap. 7)]. 218 ff., see particularly the figure at p. 223 about Buddhist Japan. 20 In Collins’s narrative, they sometimes appear under the label of ‘leading sectors’ (e.g. Ibid.: 217). 21 Although the cited scheme refers to an early phase in the emergence of capitalist economy, which Collins regards as religiously based rather than brought about by ‘secularization’. 19 Ibid.:

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theories. The advantage of such a démarche, and its consistency with the notion of contingency, would consist in the possibility to address the variability of differently modern institutional constellations, dismissing such ad hoc adjustments as the idea of Sonderwege (e.g. as typically applied to Germany) or of deviations from the modern mainstream.22 This seems to me an effective illustration of how far we can go with socio-historical approaches. Section 3.4 will have to clarify how the M/M approach works as an ‘orthogonal’ theory that hits the blind spots of the former. A supposedly opposite way to investigate the morphogenesis of complex societies is connected to the concept of evolution. Its enduring relevance to macro-sociology probably lies in the effort to identify a unitary logic in the plurality of historical processes, without which it becomes impossible to articulate coherent representations of society. The point is if, and how, it can be (re)conceived in the era of contingency.

Fig. 3.2 Causal conditions for self-transforming capitalist growth. Source Collins (1999: 212)

22 Joas

(2014: 140). Arguably, the idea of pacification may be overly optimistic, or residually unilinear. More on this topic in Chap. 6.

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Most discussions of evolutionary theories of social change still revolve around such issues as unilinearity versus multilinearity, the decline of the idea of progress and of the related ranking of societies as ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’. But for all its critical relevance, such a presentation of the problem is quite outdated. Stage, or phase theories of social development were declared dead a long time ago. In Tilly’s words (1984: 41–42), the theories that forced societies into models which order their historical change placing them in necessary stages of development did finally “write their own obituary” (42). Even authors who maintain an unapologetic concern for the idea of ‘progress’ have clearly distanced themselves from the notion of the “unilinear, necessary, uninterrupted, and ascendant development of a macro-subject” (Habermas 1979: 130). Thus, it is no longer necessary to argue for ‘multiple modernities’ (Eisenstadt 2002) as against old-fashioned, Eurocentric views of modernization. The point is now to unfold the research agenda oriented to multiplicity and contingency in such a way as to maintain some intelligible interpretation of macro-social change. In my view, the challenge is to study the logic of social development in terms of time-constituted bonds balancing chance, plans, and relationships, and to shape this complexity into models that still qualify as sociological. The following illustration is meant to clarify this thesis. To my knowledge, Niklas Luhmann has made the most complete exposition, and the most compelling case for an evolutionary oriented social theory.23 His starting point is to look at society as the outcome of evolution, while at the same time holding that this is just a metaphor to “transform a logically unsolvable problem into a genetic one” (413). It also should not go unnoticed that Luhmann immediately mentions ‘emergence’ as practically synonymous with evolution (Ivi), a conceptual move he simply takes for granted, but that we must take up again later. The argument starts with the idea that the morphogenesis of complex systems cannot be explained either by causal laws or by rational considerations, but entails the inherent paradox of what Luhmann calls the likeliness of the unlikely. In a nutshell, it is extremely unlikely that the relevant features coalesce to constitute a given system—be it a social or a human psychic system—which makes it hard to theorize the conditions of its emergence. At the same time, what may be unlikely is also actually existing in every concrete case, and therefore somehow ‘normal’. Thus, evolution works as a recursive process constituted by the Darwinian factors of variation, selection and restabilization (415–16). Furthermore, the conditions for complexity to emerge are usually non-repeatable. Evolution proceeds by differentiation, combin23 Within

the monumental corpus of Luhmann’s work, I have chosen to base my present discussion mainly on chapter 3 (Evolution) of his two volume book Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (1997: 413–594). Although I would not argue that this text represents a fully exhaustive summa of Luhmann’s thought on the subject, it can be regarded as the most complete, as well as the final articulation of his theory. This choice is justified by my end, which is not to provide a philologically refined reconstruction of the author’s theoretical development over time, but to present a paradigmatic statement of evolutionary oriented macro-social theory. The book is now available in English (cited in the references), but I have worked on the original German edition. The page numbers quoted in the present chapter, therefore, refer to the latter.

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ing non-durable conditions in one-time-only constructions. Thus, Luhmann’s view of evolution is also assuming an already existing system with a capacity to reproduce, survive, and wait for the useful chances.24 The author goes on to discuss the theoretical alternatives that have tried to model this phenomenon, considering theories based on creation, then on progress, and finally on evolution. Until the 17th century, order was conceived as the implementation of a plan, that is as resulting from an intelligent origin. On the contrary, evolutionary views regard the growth of complex forms from previous forms as just led by chance. The coordination and coexistence of different forms can only be explained historically. Nonetheless, the alternative to creation theory still involves an ambivalence. Earlier versions are based upon the idea of progress, which means the gradual transition from the intelligent design, to the invisible hand (still supposed to be the secret expression of some providential will), to the invisible-and-blind forces of history, evolution, latent motives and interests, which only become observable through scientific theories. It is the latter that finally translates into what may be properly called social science (421). The following step is to spell out the main tenets of an evolutionary oriented theory. Luhmann first mentions a few approaches, which he does not regard as truly evolutionary. One is the mix between natural selection mechanisms and pre-existing notions of historical processes, which produced the stage theories I have just dismissed out of the contemporary sociological canon. They compared different phases of the historical process, shaping them as evolutionary sequences. These worked as operationalizations of progress theories, and reconstructed the unity of history as the difference between eras of civilization, plus the residual anomalies. Theories of innovation and diffusion, and theories oriented to the differential development of societies, also remain at the margins of what Luhmann sees as evolution theory, which deals with the morphogenesis of complexity. Evolution theory must be identified by its own guiding distinction. It does not distinguish ‘ages’, but variations, selections and restabilizations, thereby decoupling entities from origins and necessity, and explaining them through accidental events. In addition, evolution is not a process that leads from simple to complex, because (i) relationships are always complex, (ii) complex systems have not substituted simple ones, but the two really co-exist, and (iii) in fact, complex systems are at times superseded by simple ones (446–47). These three points tend to reject Habermas’s critique (1979) that the evolutionary mechanism could be conceived as a neutral learning process which ends up with a teleological outcome, since it allows to rank societies according to degrees of complexity. I will come back to this shortly. In any case, the guiding distinction of evolution explains how systems use temporary, rapidly vanishing conditions to build complex forms of order, and unfolds the paradox of the likeliness of the unlikely. As Luhmann immediately notes (426), 24 With

this, it also becomes clear that Luhmann does not want to deal with the problem of the beginning, which he considers intractable. As he repeated at various points of his work, he sees the question of social order as always arising from already existing forms of social order. See also Ibid., pp. 499–500.

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the blind spot of the distinction is about the boundary and the connection between variation and selection. In other words, it concerns what decides about selection and stabilization. The interesting move at this point is that selection must not even be defined as natural (427). Such a principle involves the idea that environmental pressure determines selection. Therefore, some stability would be somehow warranted, in that ‘fit’ and ‘well-adapted’ systems are supposed to be relatively stable—until the environment changes again. When the theory must deal with the co-evolution of autopoietic systems, such stability is lost. The relation between variation and selection can only be defined as chance (Zufall). Theory simply does not know, and systems simply cannot successfully pursue better adaptation to their environment. The mechanisms of variation, selection and stabilization make an endless process, whereby every point of stability just opens new opportunities for variation, and restabilization represents both the end of a sequence and the beginning of a new one. To sum up, evolution theory does not offer any interpretation of the future, does not allow predictions, and assumes no historical teleology. It is clear that planning and intentions also play a role in evolution. Indeed, evolution theory also deals with systems which (try to) plan their own development. However, plans and intentions are not spontaneous self-actualizations of the human spirit. Their foundations lie in deviations from internalized routines. So, they also are the outcome of evolution. In addition, the future cannot be steered by intentions, but takes intentions as points of departure for further evolution. Systems react to human efforts, but never fulfill their goals.25 Thus, the individual contribution to social change is not excluded, but must be understood in terms of chance. Correspondingly, the source of variation for a social system lies in the diversity of its population, not in such individual capacities as creativity, assertiveness, or character (435). In this respect, human agency is neither regarded as a relevant power, nor is it limited to what Archer calls ‘primary agency’. It simply lies outside these distinctions, and out of the social realm altogether. Thus, what remains to be seen is the way social systems draw these distinctions. In other terms, the problem is how the mechanisms of variation and selection can be identified within social systems, thereby re-specifying evolution theory in a properly sociological way. This is a crucial point. Luhmann argues that sociology has too often explained social change with the endless variability of human behaviour or with human motivations, thereby placing the mechanism of variation outside society. On the contrary, the relevant mechanisms are to be found in the basic operation of the social system, that is communication. Thus, the primary mechanism of variation lies in the linguistic form of communication, more precisely in negation. Variation comes into being when a communication rejects the content of previous communications, thereby producing a deviating element (461). Variation increases in historical time, e.g. with writing and with a growing tolerance for conflicts. This is not meant to overstate its capacity to produce social change. Luhmann goes on to add that communication is a volatile event, which quickly loses relevance. As a consequence, the concept of variation does not in itself answer the more complex question of how age25 Consistent with this statement is also Luhmann’s notion of evolutionary achievements. See above all pp. 508–509.

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making ideas or inventions come into being. Moreover, early modernity developed excessive expectations on the evolutionary power of variation—Luhmann says this was expressed in a “semantic hypertrophy of variation” (472)—which ended up in societal self-disappointment. Hopes and explanation must lie somewhere else. As it was said above, variation and selection are only randomly related. Variation produces deviations, which may then be amplified or not. Both outcomes remain free. There is no effective intentionality in variation, and its relation to selection cannot be an object of reflection. As a result, a theory of selection must be developed as a separate enterprise. In Luhmann’s own words, the distinction between variation and selection is the form of the concept of evolution. The two notions also refer to different system components. Variation is an event, while selection has to do with structures. The point is that society itself—not the environment, nor any underlying logic—decides about selection. The primary mechanism consists of the distinction between interaction and society. Variation has a high likelihood to be selected in interaction, while society involves much narrower criteria. Countless experiments may emerge in the interactional dimension, while few eventually surface at the level of society. On the societal level, religion worked as a selection tool, reordering the selections regarded as positive for society. But this function has later been taken up by symbolically generalized communication media—e.g. power, money, law, etc.—which articulated novel criteria for selection. For example, a given innovation finds its way in the economic system if it is profitable. In this context, the morphogenesis of social complexity depends on the issue of what media are more effective than others in solving their selection problems, to adapt to modern time structures, or to articulate their accomplishments. The current situation seems to proclaim the dominance of technology, money, and specialized forms of rationality. Finally, stabilization involves the construction of new structures and institutions, e.g. new forms of differentiation, which both delimit and enhance complexity. These fix some problems and create new ones. For example, the selective criteria fostered by the functional form of differentiation work in a quite destabilizing way, grounding stability upon flexibility and mutability, and therefore exposing the distinction between stabilization and variation to the risk of collapse.26 On the level of (re)stabilization, the incremental connection between reduction and enhancement of complexity allows the emerge of consolidated accomplishments that appear to be more compatible than others with the complexity itself. These are called evolutionary achievements. When the related level of complexity is enacted, these achievements become irreversible, in that their loss or significant transformation would have a catastrophic impact on the system involved. This clearly opens a further set of conceptual developments and clarifications, on which I will not follow up in further detail. Let me just call attention to two points that emerge in this context. First, the way the concepts of selection, stabilization, and evolutionary achievement are treated makes Luhmann’s sense for contingency even 26 This mechanism involves a dynamic form of stabilization. For a similar conceptualization, in a critical vein, see Rosa (2017).

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clearer. For one thing, the idea of selection does not entail any notion of a system pursuing some telos, intention, or necessary improvement that ends up enhancing its adaptation to the environment. Whether they were accepted or rejected, selections remain in the knowledge and memory of a system. Moreover, the (good or bad) consequences of rejected selections may be bigger and more far-reaching than those of accepted ones. But, perhaps more surprisingly, even functional premises seem to be downplayed. Rather than ‘solving problems’, introducing new structures raises new problems, which cannot be predicted until it is too late to withdraw. Efforts for stabilization then occur through reactive procedures (491). Even evolutionary achievements: (a) emerge in various, often unintended ways, only to reveal their significance for structures and domains that may be far from their original context; (b) bring up issues that were not seen in advance, and which only emerge with and after them, on the new level of complexity they make possible. The other point concerns the very status of the concept of evolutionary achievement (515–16). Luhmann is careful to deny that it can be deployed to define a whole societal formation, or a historical age. Some evolutionary achievements may be momentous, even epoch-making in the sense that their emergence involves deep and irreversible changes in social forms. This typically happens in the realms of communication media and forms of differentiation. Stable innovations in these domains bring about big transformations. They may even entail some constraint on sequences of events—for example, there can clearly be no print before writing is ever invented, or direct transition from segmentary to functional forms of differentiation. Thus—so Luhmann’s argument goes—an observer may get the impression that different societal formations are evolving, distinct from each other. Nevertheless, it is impossible to derive a unique definition of an age, or a civilization, starting from two different realms. Luhmann follows up with an undoubtedly effective example, namely that of modernity. It can be said to begin in the 15th century, with the invention of print—which refers to communication media—as well as in the 18th century, with the transition to a functional form of differentiation. Indeed, who could deny that the beginning of modernity—but then perhaps of most historical eras—involves a heavy burden of ambivalence? And who could claim to have permanently settled the issue? At the end of the day, Luhmann concludes, all one can do is rely upon second order observation. That is to say, describe the ways in which society describes itself. There are now two themes I would like to bring up. They provide useful points of engagement, which pave the way for the discussion of Sect. 3.4. (1) Levels of Development and Direction of Evolution. This is a very important point to qualify any macro-sociological approach. In the end, does a theory of socio-cultural evolution still want to maintain the idea of identifiable levels of development—with the inherent burden to accept some kind of teleological notion of evolution? In Habermas’s account, sociological evolutionism—featuring Luhmann as a protagonist—holds on to this thesis, employing the concepts of increased control and adaptive capacity. Such concepts—so Habermas argues—are

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deceptively neutral, and really have inescapable normative implications. The sheer fact that a given type of society survives, and reaches a certain degree of complexity, involves a normative connotation, insofar as observers assume the inner viewpoint of the surviving organism—deeming life preferable to death—which could hardly apply to social systems. In fact, Luhmann seems to escape this characterization. As we have seen, his account does not include any idea of better adaptation or increased control, nor does it claim that surviving is better—whatever ‘better’ means—unless an observer’s viewpoint is specified, for whom such a statement would make sense. Even the notion of levels, or stages, is dismissed as old-fashioned. This is indeed an instructive point at which different evolutionary theories diverge. Habermas’s objections to Luhmann are relevant here, precisely because the former still tries to maintain the idea of levels of development and to “find some vantage points from which it is possible to organize historical materials according to some logic of development” (Ibid.: 131). Of course, Habermas regards the degree of complexity as an insufficient concept. But this is exactly the crux of the argument. If the radical emphasis on pure chance is rejected, and if some idea of ‘stages’ must be maintained, what is the alternative vantage point? Habermas elaborates on the concept of mode of production, reconstructing historical materialism in a more refined way. The degree of progress can be measured with regard to the unfolding forces of production and forms of social relations. Thus, he identifies the general principles of social organization in the institutional core of a society, which establishes the dominant form of social integration. Forms of social integration can then be classified in evolutionary fashion. But the pivotal point to make sense of such forms is to be found in the fundamental structures of linguistic communication and in the cognitive structures which articulate technical as well as moral-practical knowledge. The identity of social systems can be identified in their interpretive systems. These, however, are not just seen as forms of self-description—as in the case of systems theory—but are regarded as the very stuff of what society ‘really’ is. They are articulated in structures of consciousness—i.e. learning levels—that vary along the course of evolution, constituting a scheme of stages that can be rationally reconstructed. The inherent developmental logic, therefore, lies in collectively shared structures of consciousness. Forms of technical knowledge and communication structures are surely important. Paradoxically, Luhmann and Habermas are closer than one would expect in this respect. This is perhaps the point around which a systematic comparison between them should revolve. What is important to me here is that such structures might well serve to qualify societies’ capacity to survive evolutionary (self-induced) crises, while the evolution of moral knowledge and its influence on what can still be called ‘progress’ seem to me quite ambivalent. Furthermore, whether these ideas can still fall within the conceptual range of historical materialism, or the theoretical adjustments must be regarded as excessively far-reaching remains to be seen. (2) The Genetic Problem: Variation and Selection. The common thread of knowledge and learning also characterizes the genetic problem. It is common for most contemporary theories to distinguish between structural

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formations and contingent events. Structures shape spaces of conditioning states, which delimit the possible further developments. The latter, however, also depend on accidental events, that can only be the object of empirical investigation. Luhmann’s approach has been criticized as one that neglects genetic questions, which are not theorized and only left to history. Therefore, functionalism cannot explain how new structures are generated, and cannot determine the identity of societies, since it is impossible for it to define the vital structures of society, fixing a range of variation that delimits societal identity. In other words, there are here no sociological concepts analogous to biological birth, nor to death.27 Again, Habermas’s theoretical alternative is revealing.28 Luhmann’s emphasis on the power of negation is held to be insufficient to explain why certain systems fail, whilst others expand their problem solving capacity. The proposed alternative is a “genetic theory of linguistically mediated cognition” (Ibid.: 171). Crucially important for us, such a proposal means that the explanation of the genesis of social forms lies in structures of consciousness and the related learning levels, not in “sociological considerations” (Ivi). Thus, social learning really means a change in the knowledge potential societies may reach. Evolutionary changes in social systems are explained through learning, the related structures of consciousness, and contingent historical events. Societal processes unfold both within the various learning levels, until their respective structural possibilities are exhausted, and in those unlikely evolutionary waves that lead to new learning levels. The learning potentials lie in the skills and competencies to be found in individuals. Deep anthropological structures, as well as processes of personal ontogenesis, thus take centre stage in the evolution of society. Learning, consciousness, and the properties and powers of human subjects are clearly important. However, in this approach the mechanism of social change seems to be located in knowledge, language, and psychic systems, bypassing the social layer of reality. The approach to socio-cultural evolution I have summarized clearly presents a different perspective on the contingency of macro-social change, compared to those oriented to historical sociology. Each of them offers a specific contribution. Together, they provide an overview of the complexity macro-sociological analysis must engage. This also means that the role of M/M social theory, and of the idea of a MS, must not be understood in the simplified terms of a substitution. We are not envisioning to replace one theory with another. The nature of the possible connection must now be specified.

27 However,

see the interesting contribution by Al-Amoudi and Latsis (2015). More on this in Sect. 3.4. 28 Habermas (1979: Chap. 5).

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3.4 The Morphogenetic Approach as Hermeneutics of Transition: Chance, Plans, Agency and Relationships Macro-sociology represents a level of social scientific analysis that often gets bypassed in two different directions. One consists in dismissing its capacity to articulate general frames of interpretation for long-term trends and large-scale social facts, falling back on historical narratives. The other scales up from history to theory, but then appeals to naturalistic theories of complexity to do the job, ignoring sociological contributions.29 This could be because macro-sociological explanations and interpretations bear a heavy burden. What we have seen indicates the need to keep together chance, human plans and intentions, and the relations between structural and cultural conditionings. On the one hand, it is difficult to deny either of these factors a role in macro-social change. Individuals, groups and organizations do develop plans, which affect social forms in various direct and indirect ways. Structural and cultural constellations define the spaces of contingency, making some courses of action more or less likely to be successful. Finally, it is empirically evident that many innovations appear by chance, and their establishment or rejection makes a difference on unexpected time scales, as well as in different realms than the ones where they originally arise. On the other hand, these elements are also uncomfortable mates to sit together in one model. My thesis is not that the M/M approach, and the related substantive notion of an emergent MS, represent the perfect solution, punctually fitting all the bends and asperities of social reality. I think, however, that they can provide a meaningful contribution to macro-social theory, which may be understood with the formula of hermeneutics of transition. This word choice calls for justification. Broadly speaking, hermeneutics is the act of interpreting the meaning of a text, a law, or a historical document, as well as the set of norms or tenets that allow to shed light on the inner layers of that text. This general meaning can apply to the M/M approach, insofar as it provides a criterion, a set of principles and conceptual tools for social analysis. Such an act of interpretation is here specified as referring to transition, because the core performance expected of this conceptual framework as deployed in the present chapter lies in its capacity to tap into the inner dynamics of macro-social, historical change. What we are pointing at is indeed a possible transition, namely that toward a MS, and the processes that promise to blur the border lines are the most interesting. The related notion of hermeneutic circle could also make sense in this case, since the M/M model works as a coherent set of conceptual tools which allows for particular social facts and mechanisms to be revealed in their broader meaning. But such a meaning is also just a hypothesis, which is itself open to learn from the empirical observation of social and historical events. However, a few qualifications are necessary. First, we are surely reminiscent of the Diltheyan mood, which would lead to regard hermeneutics as the characteristic 29 Of course, various kinds of mix exist between these two extremes. An interesting example of this

démarche in the field of history is Niall Ferguson’s acclaimed work on civilization (2011: 300–301).

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method of historical versus natural sciences. But the M/M is meant to be an explanatory, not only an interpretive format. Furthermore, although hermeneutics can be conceived as a continuous questioning of oneself and the world, within a realist frame of thought it cannot be shaped as a form of penser en rond. Being open to continuous, sharper re-interpretation is part of the everyday work of researchers, but sociological realism involves the idea that ontological and historical dimensions of truth must be kept together in a positive, not an inverse relationship. Finally, symbols and discourses are neither the only, nor the main object of study. Social structures and social relations are also involved, and they cannot be reduced to language or text, neither in their causal powers, nor in the way they change over time. Bearing in mind this preliminary clarification, speaking of a hermeneutics of transition in the present context refers to a specific meaning. More precisely, there are two aspects to this formula. To illustrate the former, let me go back to some crucial issues discussed in Sect. 3.3. Critics of the classical modernization theory have emphasized multiplicity and contingency. Thus, there is no one master trend through which historical processes can be grasped, and no process is fundamental. There is also no single value dominating all social spheres. The theory must deal with real processes, investigate causal connections, and include agency and actors. Even the idea that modernization be characterized by the systematic co-variation occurring in various sub-systems of society according to one logic of development has been called into question. Charles Tilly declared this notion ‘a disaster’, particularly in the case of newly developing societies, and Daniel Bell proposed the idea of radically disjunctive societies, in which structural and cultural developments are typically out of sync.30 But once we accept that multiple social processes are woven into contingent patterns, it is still necessary to understand whether such patterns—and the related trajectories of change or reproduction—can be conceptualized or can just be narrated historically. Furthermore, we have seen in Collins’s example that historically sensitive models can also aim to be predictive. My main critique was that the causal chains established in the model require more analytic space for understanding the various transitional moments in the process, which otherwise risk being either excessively determined or overly contingent. Finally, Luhmann’s theory of evolution works with concepts of variation and selection that are independent of plans and intentions, and places chance at the centre of social mechanisms of change. Habermas’s critique takes exactly the turn Luhmann explicitly wants to avoid, in that it emphasizes structures of consciousness over “sociological considerations”. Two main tenets of the M/M approach become relevant here.31 First, it articulates a conceptual frame that channels social contingency within a given pattern, while simultaneously rejecting institutional co-variation. This is possible through a subtle, but fundamental distinction between different ways to conceive of a logic of devel30 As

Hans Joas reminds in his already cited work (2014: Chap. 5). especially Archer (2011) for a compact, systematic outline of the M/M explanatory framework.

31 See

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opment. Theories of institutional co-variation see a similar logic underlying various processes and sub-systems of society. Such a logic may well be constructed inductively, that is starting from single processes and systems, and working its way up to generalization through accurate comparisons. In these cases, comparisons principally aim at universalizing or at variation-finding propositions (Tilly 1984: 80–86). Correspondingly, they aim to identify a rule followed, or a varying character or intensity of a phenomenon among the examined structures, processes, or systems. The M/M approach also appeals to logics of development, but in an importantly different way. To begin with, such logics would not be the expression of a functional necessity, but depend on contingent constellations of structures and cultures. Moreover, the morphogenetic/morphostatic institutional configurations involve a sophisticated notion of structural/cultural interactions, and of relational properties emerging from those interactions. Thus, what characterizes a given logic of development is not necessarily institutional co-variation in a substantive sense. The point is not to discover analogous facts or institutions in different spheres of society (although this can be the case in some empirical circumstances), but that structures, cultures, and groups entertain certain concrete mutual relations. Such relations have a systematic meaning, in that they foster the emergence of a certain situational logic as an emergent property. As a result, social processes unfold within, and are influenced by that situational logic. This means that there will be some generative mechanisms that can be traced to such a logic, not that they produce substantively similar phenomena in all societal domains. For example, to say that the logic of opportunity characterizes the situational logic of contingent complementarities means to identify the constraints and enablements persons and groups have to face in a given social context. It can also make sense of the actual dynamic observed, involving concrete actors and processes. The possible diffusion of the same situational logic in most social domains involves that multiple social mechanisms will be identified in diverse spheres of society that may be traced to that logic. As a consequence, social forms and social life might take on certain qualities. But the argument unfolds on a different level than that of identifying typical trends like bureaucratization, juridicization, economization, differentiation, centralization, and more. These are the possible outcomes of the complex interplay of various mechanisms, that are contingent upon different relational/institutional contexts. The same situational logic—e.g. protection—may result in the differentiation of certain functions in certain contexts, and in epigenetic processes (Etzioni 1963) in other contexts. These outcomes are socio-historically contingent, but do not ‘just happen’. The M/M model provides a conceptual frame that allows to read their particularity as specificity, that is to understand them as the offspring of relational constellations endowed with certain emergent properties. Co-variation at a macroscopic level is just one possible empirical case. The second important tenet of the M/M approach concerns the multiplicity of the factors of change, and their respective role. The model balances structural conditionings and human agency. In addition, the way human subjectivity is involved is not only cognitive or moral, but fully relational. It is not primarily a matter of personal, pre-social qualities. The theory sees the human condition as essentially characterized by a relation of concern with the various dimensions of social and non-social reality.

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Personal reflexivity plays a crucial role, but is itself understood as emerging from the interplay with the practical, natural, and social layers of the world. Some special features of social contexts—particularly discontinuity and incongruity—give reflexivity its crucial relevance in contemporary society. Thus, the individual and collective pursuit of life plans is not indifferent to social forms, yet they never correspond to human intentions as such. Finally, an element of randomness still lingers at the core of what Luhmann calls the mechanism of variation as well as of selection. To sum up, the specific contribution of the M/M approach to macro-social theory is focussed on the points where structure, culture, agency, and chance interact to generate, establish or reject social novelties. The interpretive and explanatory narratives it provides are, in this sense, a hermeneutic of transitions. A further issue could be raised at this point. In the previous section of this chapter we have discussed the possibility for macro-social theory to define a vantage point or a variation principle, according to which different ages of society could be identified. Evolutionary stages would represent a companion concept. Now, one might wonder whether in the M/M approach the socio-cultural forms emerging from structural elaboration have anything to do with this idea. Do the notions of stages, levels of development, growing complexity, or increased adaptive capacity—however defined—fall within the range of the M/M conceptual frame? My answer is a qualified ‘no’. To classify societies or ages according to some big principles, to describe some social trans-formation as enhancement, leading to irreversible, qualitative change—one that may deeply modify the very conditions of social morphogenesis—lies beyond the scope of the theory. Such levels of development may well exist, either as selfdescriptions or as structural conditions of society. For example, social complexity, the range of human action, the dominion over nature and the transformation of the planet allowed by technology may generate a taxonomy—though clearly not a hierarchy, since complex societies are not necessarily ‘better adapted’, do not necessarily have better chances of survival than simpler or less technically advanced ones, nor could they be held ‘superior’ in any normative sense. The M/M approach can highlight the emergent social formations, the forms of personal and social life they allow, foster, or hinder, and what assets or liabilities derive for a life that may be culturally interpreted as ‘good’—or at least ‘tolerable’. The rest of this book offers a modest contribution to addressing some of these issues. The construction of more general representations of entire eras, civilizations or societies means to tap into a further level of analysis, and requires the mobilization of other symbolical resources. This leads me to consider the second meaning of the hermeneutics of transition. In this respect, the concept of morphogenic society (MS) plays a pivotal role. Its definition was provided in Chap. 1. The point here is to specify its status within macro-sociological concepts. Is the MS the name for a type of society? If this is the case, doesn’t it contradict what we have just said about ages and stages of society? What are its relations to modernity and modernization? What are its implications? It would seem that the inherent idea of ‘unfettered’ or ‘unmitigated’ morphogenesis were consistent with those theories that highlight how modernity itself, at least in its later stage of development, entails some kind of meta-transition, bringing not

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from one steady state to another, but to the continuous fluctuation of unbound contingency. The notion of MS reflects the effort to strike a balance between the old, grand theories of modernization and those approaches which overemphasize contingency to the point of denying that any theory of social change is possible. The status of the concept can be clarified as follows: (a) The idea of an MS does not involve any notion of one ‘big trend’ underlying all social processes, structures, and institutions, shaping them as some sort of latent factor. As we have seen, such an idea has been consistently criticized. The concept of MS comes after that critique, and is consistent with its rationale. So, the thesis of an emergent MS does not amount to the same way of theory building. When social theory speaks of the MS, the phrase is not meant to indicate one more ‘big historical trend’, like some kind of Geist or abstract law—in the end, like ‘modernization’ itself—that orchestrates all social life. The MS is just the shorthand for a concrete relational arrangement between structures and cultures (in M/M terms, an institutional configuration) in some given spheres of society, which results in a situational logic as the emergent effect. Such a situational logic is not any general, abstract entity that exists ‘over and above’ all social processes or structures, which in turn are no mere instantiations of some general principle. (b) Furthermore, the idea of an MS does not in itself entail any prediction as regards the capacity of the coming societal formation to cope with complexity, the related shape of its major institutional complexes, or the predominance of civilizing versus de-civilizing forces. In other words, it involves no idea of evolutionary stages, and no value judgment about its quality in humanistic terms—whatever this means and however it could be defined. This does not make the theory blind to the qualities of social life, or to the critical dimension of social theory. The point is that the concept is not normatively characterized, it is sensitive to high social contingency, and it comes within a non-deterministic, non-positivist paradigm. (c) Finally, the MS does not amount to the description of an already given societal formation. This is because it is regarded as an emergent entity, that is, more a complex set of processes than a consolidated form. In the various chapters of this book, I will be exploring some typical features of a society that displays the hallmarks of an MS, and will try to show how this situation shapes social institutions, structures and cultures. However, the point of the concept is rather to characterize the morphogenic condition of society, that is the logic of development—in the sense specified above—through which a new form of social order is emerging. It has to do with a situation all persons, groups, cultural and structural entities have to face, in their struggle to pursue their plans or to endure the pressures to change and vanish. The morphogenic condition outlines a situation where variations increase rapidly, as well as the combinatorial possibilities. This means more variations may be selected and find an adaptive compatibility. Two things remain unclear at this point. First, how stabilization mechanisms are working, and are likely to work in a morphogenic

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future.32 Second, whether or not this increasing variety and volatility may display some convergence on a set of relatively identifiable, mutually compatible values, goals, and shared visions of collective life. In other words, whether the morphogenic condition heralds what John Urry called “the end of society” (Urry 2000, 2016). As regards such issues, the idea of an MS represents an attempt to tap into deep change, avoiding the pitfalls of sociological impressionism.33 Therefore, it also rejects linear, apocalyptic predictions. In this sense, its basic assumptions are consistent with Tilly’s critique of the “pernicious postulates of twentieth-century social thought”, particularly of the idea that differentiation and integration are opposed to each other, order and disorder are sharply divided, and change is risky if not strictly controlled. As Tilly concluded: “The sequence going from (1) rapid or excessive social change and dissolution of social control or support to (2) generalized distress, tension, or normlessness to (3) disorganization or disorder in general (…) has proved an abysmal predictor of the actual course of Third World social change” (Tilly 1984: 55–56). The idea of a morphogenic condition of society has learned this lesson, and rejects those assumptions as applied on the larger scale of late modern, indeed of multiply modern societies. We now possibly find ourselves in that ‘chaos point’ when for a period systems may still move in various directions. “A variety of interlocking systems have irreversibly taken the world into uncharted territory” (Urry 2007: 287). The idea of an MS moves some steps into that territory—not in a visionary style, but holding on to theoretical grounds. In this macro-sense, again, it may be characterized as a hermeneutic of transition. That uncharted territory is currently the object of multiple diagnoses, often mutually contradictory, at times verging on to wild speculation. Some of them are easily amenable to the logic of unchained morphogenesis. For example, the tendency of modern national states either to fragment or to be drawn into supranational entities cannot be understood as just a manifestation of ‘disorganized capitalism’ (Urry 2007), but is fully consistent with the growth of rapid combinatorial games that is the hallmark of an MS. At the same time, the idea of the nation is proving more resilient than many would predict. In the face of its contemporary surge, either in ethnic versions independent of modern states (Smith 1981) or in strict connection with these (Lévy 2019), it seems hardly suitable to call the nation a ‘transitory semantic’, that is a self-description of society that is now deprived of a structure or space of plausibility, and is only an epistemological obstacle to understanding world society (Luhmann 1997: 1055). Once again, long-term prediction might prove disappointing. Whatever will be, the MS is not going to be a seamless garment, some sort of ‘flat world’ (Friedman 2005) defined by high dynamism, high speed, enhanced compatibilities, freewheeling and peaceful mobility with no barriers, where distances 32 This

issue is an underlying motif of the volume, but is treated especially in Chap. 5. I must point out that this must not be read as an anti-simmelian statement, but rather as an appeal against a character of which Simmel himself famously offered a felicitous description, namely the flâneur—as applied to a style of sociological analysis.

33 Remembering David Frisby’s well-known work (see the recent edition of 2014),

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are annihilated and everything lies within communicative reach. These features are surely part of the emerging picture, but the story is much more complex. Global society is painfully working out new forms of cultural and institutional arrangement, in the growing plurality of powers and principles of organization and legitimation of the social order. Some of them diverge dramatically from that image. For example, after the new beginning of history that followed the end of the Cold War, the emergence of big global actors which are contesting the present global (dis)order is by far the most interesting and structural phenomenon. The emergence of neo-nationalism not only in Europe, but in Russia, Turkey, and elsewhere in the world34 —sometimes coupled with more or less realistic imperial ambitions—might be used as an argument against the thesis of an MS, because new walls, barriers and old doctrines and ideas are being recreated. It is important to note that these social facts cannot be dismissed as a set of (oddly, unexpectedly similar) traditional and morphostatic reactions to the coming MS. We must not be misled into thinking of the MS as some process of infinite Westernization and individualization, further neo-liberalism, and democratization, that is as the continuation of Western, linear modernization with other means. Thus, even in the case of liberal post-democracies, illiberal democracies, ‘populism’, and other catastrophes of the late modern order, what we are witnessing is a complex morphogenetic process, which does not simply resist change or lead back to pre- and early modern politics, or even to 20th century forms of authoritarianism. Big global actors, within and outside the West, are creatively recombining the primordial, civil, and spiritual principles of human experience and of the social order (Eisenstadt 1996), producing formulas that are still in the making. Therefore, unsurprisingly, macro-sociology still has to bring these phenomena into full light. What is clear is that the logic of the MS involves counter-intuitive moves, which are deeply transforming what we believed we knew of historical civilizations. Whatever kind of order humanity might be able to establish in the new world, it will be a product of the ways in which the transition is happening. This is the ultimate relevance of the idea of a morphogenic (condition of) society.

References Al-Amoudi, I., & Latsis, J. (2015). Death contested: Morphonecrosis and conflicts of interpretation. In M. S. Archer (Ed.), Generative mechanisms transforming the social order (pp. 231–248). Dordrecht/London: Springer. Archer, M. S. (1995). Realist social theory: The morphogenetic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. S. (2011). Morphogenesis. Realism’s explanatory framework. In A. Maccarini, E. Morandi, & R. Prandini (Eds.), Sociological realism (pp. 59–94). London and New York: Routledge. 34 I don’t add China to this list, because I do not think that its rise to world power could be adequately described as a form of ‘neo-nationalism’. Be that as it may, it remains clear that China is by far the most important of those big actors.

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Collins, R. (1999). Macro history. Essays in sociology of the long run. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Eisenstadt, S. N. (1996). Barbarei und Moderne. In M. Miller & H.-G. Söffner (Hg.), Modernität und Barbarei (pp. 96–117). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Eisenstadt, S. N. (Ed.). (2002). Multiple modernities. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. Etzioni, A. (1963). The epigenesis of political communities at the international level. American Journal of Sociology, 68(4), 407–421. Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Frisby, D. (2014). Sociological impressionism: A reassessment of Georg Simmel’s social theory. New York: Routledge. Ferguson, N. (2011). Civilization. The west and the rest. New York: Penguin Books. Habermas, J. (1979). Toward a reconstruction of historical materialism. In Id., Communication and the evolution of society (pp. 130–177). Boston: Beacon Press. Joas, H. (2014). Faith as an option. Possible futures for christianity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Joas, H., & Knöbl, W. (2009). Social theory. Twenty introductory lectures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knöbl, W. (2007). Die Kontingenz der Moderne. Wege in Europa, Asien und Amerika. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag. Knorr-Cetina, K. (1997). Sociality with objects: Social relations in postsocial knowledge societies. Theory, Culture and Society, 14(4), 1–30. Knorr-Cetina, K. (2009). The synthetic situation: Interactionism for a global world. Symbolic Interaction, 32(1), 61–87. Lévy, B.-H. (2019). The empire and the five kings. America’s Abdication and the fate of the world. New York: Heny Holt & Co. Lloyd, C. (1993). The structures of history. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp (2 vols.); English translation Theory of Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012–2013 (2 vols.). Luhmann, N. (1998). Observations on modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Luhmann, N. (2013). A systems theory of religion. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Mann, M. (2013). The sources of social power. Vol. 4: globalizations, 1945–2011. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McDonald, T. J. (Ed.). (1996). The historic turn in the human sciences. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Parsons, T. (1966). Societies. Evolutionary and comparative perspectives. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Parsons, T. (1971). The system of modern societies. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Rosa, H. (2017). Appropriation, activation and acceleration: The escalatory logics of capitalist modernity and the crisis of dynamic stabilization. Theory, Culture and Society, 34(1), 53–73. Smith, A. D. (1981). The ethnic revival in the modern world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Somers, M. R. (1994). The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach. Theory and Society, 23, 605–649. Tilly, C. (1984). Big structures, large processes, huge comparisons. New York: Russell Sage. Touraine, A. (2013). La fin des sociétés. Paris: Seuil.

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Urry, J. (2000). Sociology beyond societies. Mobilities for the twenty-first century. London and New York: Routledge. Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Urry, J. (2016). What is the future?. Cambridge: Polity Press. Willke, H. (2001). Atopia. Studien zur atopischen Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Part II

An Outline of the Morphogenic Society

Chapter 4

Openness and Closure in Turbulent Times: Adaptive Responses to Unbound Morphogenesis

Keywords Openness · Closure · Social mechanism · Morphogenic environment · Enclave · Vortex

4.1 Unbound Morphogenesis and the Emergence of the New The previous chapters have elaborated on the theoretical potential of an M/M approach, compared to other processual, generative, or historical-comparative models in sociology, to conceptualize patterns and transitions characterizing the current state of ‘the social’. Part II examines some substantive mechanisms, big social facts and trends in crucial domains of global society. Its aim is not to draw a complete picture of the societal landscape, but to pick a few relevant phenomena within its multiple realms. We begin in the present chapter with an analysis of some key mechanisms, and then with a study of openness and closure as a crucial issue in the turbulent, volatile context of the MS, which is likely to be profoundly consequential for the future of advanced societies—eventually for the whole global configuration. But if we set out to tackle hyper-complexity on the ground of the working hypothesis of the emergent MS, there are a few general questions that must be asked in the first place. How novel is, or is becoming, the society we inhabit? There is widespread perception of its novelty in the comments of ordinary people and in the diagnoses of social scientists, in the worried or enthusiastic columns of mainstream pundits as well as in the pamphlets of critics. The ground of these converging statements may lie in everyday experience or in conspicuous parts of empirical evidence concerning changes in lifestyle and mass culture, or even in longstanding structures. Thus, many people tend to experience this society as ‘novel’—and it is often not a pleasant feeling. But we must wonder

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whether subjective impressions, or even some isolated, if macroscopic, empirical data can be trusted or not. How can social science really know? This questioning clearly raises broader issues that lie well beyond the range of the present chapter. To say there are ‘qualitatively new’ social phenomena means that something tends to cross a threshold leading from one form of social order 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 an unambiguous concept for a change to be described as qualitative—which would mean, leading from one socio-historical formation to another—that can apply to contemporary global society. Few 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 words, how many deviations from the main societal framework are needed—for the idea of a ‘new society’ to be regarded 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. For those who read this dynamic in the framework of the M/M approach, the question is whether social change is headed towards the emergent form of a MS, and where we are along the way. Furthermore, it is necessary to explore what the main qualities of social life in a ‘morphogenic’ societal formation might turn out to be. Once we assert that unbound morphogenesis is likely to become the overarching conditioning context at the global level, how do organizations, institutions, and even entire national societies cope with this situation? At the micro level, how do people caught up in unconstrained morphogenetic processes go about their daily routines? If we add the idea of a closed society, complexity grows. How does all of this change their life? What seems obvious is that the characteristic condition of a MS is likely to be one of extreme turbulence. 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). As Giddens and other authors have shown, late modern society faces the continuous need to question its own foundations, 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. 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. This was the liberal dream for globalization. The new societal landscape

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clearly represents a risky, fluctuating environment for people, families, and groups to navigate with their strategies and life plans. The other guiding insight of the present essay is that of a ‘closed society’—in the particular sense specified in Chap. 1. Such a feature works more as an overarching, conditioning context than as a generative core for social processes. It is in the issues examined in the present chapter that such an insight must begin to reveal its implications. 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? Then, 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 single, striking feature 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, communication, are all names 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 recurring to some fashionable catch-word or proceeding by sweeping generalizations, we will follow a more winding road. Let me briefly outline the methodological and substantive coordinates of the argument developed in this chapter. Our démarche is inspired by the morphogenetic approach,1 and involves the following analytic steps: (i) identifying a general generative logic, (ii) tracing social mechanisms and social features to such a generator of change, and then (iii) establishing their mutual connections and further emergent outcomes, which could finally lead to conclude whether a new type of society is being born or not. In the present chapter, point (i) is taken for granted as the general hypothesis of a developing MS. On that ground, I will pinpoint some relevant social emergents, explaining how they relate to the main generative mechanism. Indeed, I will claim that this relationship is the most adequate way to account for such emergent entities. Reciprocally, mechanisms are only consequential if it is possible to detect the emergent phenomena they account for, thereby showing what difference they make to social life, social change and its possible direction.2 This covers point (ii) above. 1 The

classical reference here is obviously 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. 2 This 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 morphogenesis.

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Moreover, I will try to highlight the mutual relationship between at least some of these, which allows observers to regard them as part of a unique syndrome leading the current social dynamics to one consistent societal outcome. This step will constitute my contribution to task (iii) above, which I will only tentatively begin to develop through a few examples. I can only draw a sketchy picture here, whereas book-length treatment would be in order. More precisely, my argument (a) tackles formal and substantive issues, and (b) works on two levels of analysis. (a) The first point is to identify specific generative mechanisms and establish their internal relations with particular institutional configurations and their situational logics. The hypothesis that we may be on a path leading to a ‘morphogenic’ society may be confirmed or not, and different conclusions may be drawn about where we stand along that track. Then the problem is to specify what calling the current global society ‘morphogenic’ really means. 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? Are there any qualitatively new features characterizing global society? What are the social qualities of the most striking emergent phenomena? And do they together amount to a wholly new societal formation? Furthermore, 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? 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? 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 is focussed on the study of such complex relationships. (b) The argument develops as a middle range approach, based on two levels of analysis: the study of social mechanisms and of conjunctures between them—which I call second order mechanisms. The starting point is a consideration of various emergent entities and of their mutual relations. After presenting a landscape of emergent social facts, I will go on to address those among them which I claim are intrinsically connected to the central morphogenetic mechanism of variety generating more variety, and to the logic resulting from contingent compatibilities. In addition, some of these will only increase random-like complexity, while others give rise to new social mechanisms, which in turn build up various social environments. Such social environments are endowed with social, cultural, and agential qualities (conceptualized as emergent properties), and display different dynamics. As a result, lifestyles and quality of life within these environments are bound to take correspondingly different directions. The underlying idea is that such social ‘environments’ are partial contexts, in which the dynamics of unbound morphogenesis leads to different outcomes that may emerge and become 3 Following 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’.

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relatively stabilized. The further interaction among mechanisms and environments is likely to play a crucial role in the emergence of a more general ‘shape’ of the morphogenic society as a whole societal formation. Now what are the substantive claims advanced in the chapter? The selected ‘big social facts’ I will highlight are especially social acceleration and human enhancement techniques. Then I turn to the more complex environments resulting from the conjuncture between lower scale mechanisms. Discussing how organizations and institutions creatively adapt to such a situation, attention is mainly focused upon the way openness and closure are managed. The main thesis of this chapter is that this is a crucial problem on multiple scales and levels—for organizations, institutions, as well as for entire national societies. From this vantage point, I will claim that the force of intensified morphogenesis in a closed world is shaping organizations and big institutional complexes into social forms that could be described as ‘enclaves’, ‘vortexes’, and ‘seed-beds’. These in turn have their own structural and cultural emergent properties, and influence the quality of social life in the emerging MS. I first introduce the notions of vortex, enclave, and seedbed environments, as possibly coexisting re-active or pro-active strategies in the face of unbound morphogenesis, and then present some examples to illustrate the different developmental paths that may result. ‘Enclaves’, ‘vortexes’, and ‘seed-beds’ display different typical features, thereby playing a role in fostering or hindering social integration, cooperation and solidarity. The former two tend to emerge when social complexity tends to exceed the adaptive capacity of human individuals, groups or collectivities. The outcome is social closure as a strategy to cope with the problem of excess. On the other hand, seed-beds appear when a cooperative strategy is chosen, because material, human and symbolical resources allow for it and élites display adequate skills of social, political and cultural entrepreneurship. My analysis will focus on the former, leaving the latter for a further study. Examples are presented to illustrate some cases in point, referring to such crucial issues as immigration, welfare areas and local development. Zero-sum versus win-win relationships between strong and weak areas—at the regional, national and trans-national level—are highlighted as the crucial strategyand-outcome of the whole process. The chapter is organized as follows. First, it is clear that the concept of social mechanism plays a crucial role in this context. However, my goal is neither to produce a scholarly exhaustive review, nor to refine or advance any formal theory of social mechanisms, but to put this concept to work in the study of some relevant social processes. Consequently, I will not discuss the vast array of theoretical approaches to causal mechanisms currently available in the social sciences.4 In the next section (Sect. 4.2) I will simply lay out a working definition, and explain how such a concept can serve to make my substantive points. In Sect. 4.3 I will quickly point out a few ‘things we have lost’, or may be losing, that is forms of social and individual life that seem to be disappearing. But since exercises in social memory are not my 4 See

the chapters by Margaret Archer, Pierpaolo Donati and Philip S. Gorski in Archer (2015), which provide fresh perspectives on this theme in a way that is compatible with mine in most respects.

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core business, the main focus will be on the flipside of this argument, that is the identification of social phenomena that can legitimately be called 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. Then I will go on to pick some and use them as illustrations. I will thus address two important questions, namely (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. This 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. Clearly, one has to go all the way back to their morphogenetic constitution. But at the end of the day, if it proves impossible to identify any kind of convergence among observable outcomes, but only disparate facts and trends, then it becomes difficult even to imagine a ‘new society’—i.e. a qualitative change of the social order. 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 Sect. 4.4 I will advance some substantive claims as to where such a society is heading. I pick the example of social acceleration, which, as I argue, needs to be more systematically considered within social theory, highlighting its connection with the generative mechanism of unbound morphogenesis. In Sect. 4.5 I will turn to the social environments which are responding to the increase in social complexity in the context of unfettered morphogenesis. Arguably, openness and closure make a crucially important, structural and cultural cleavage in this respect. Correspondingly, the focus will be on the notions of enclave, vortex and seed-bed as particular types of social environment, and on why I find them useful within the theoretical framework of the M/M approach. The section spells out the main argument and the conceptual tools at some length. Then in Sect. 4.6 I present some illustrations of those concepts. Detailed examples would require specific case studies. What I hope to accomplish here is to argue for the existence of structural and cultural trends that mould some social forms into those shapes, and to uncover some of their implications for the possible profile of the coming MS. Finally, in Sect. 4.7 I will draw some provisional conclusions about the emerging societal formation. As to the relevance of the analysis unfolded in the chapter, and the consequences that may be drawn, my reflections revolve around the idea that unbound morphogenesis entails a state of total mobilization. In this connection, one key issue is surely whether or not such a situation allows for successful re-integration, i.e. whether or not it is possible for the coming, morphogenic societal formation to find a healthy balance between change and stability, to establish new social, political and

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legal institutions which could bring about a new social equilibrium. The MS would thus involve a huge process of balancing, institution building, constitutionalisation, and processes through which new types of social subjects emerge. As I hope I can demonstrate, the idea of social enclaves, vortexes, and seed-beds addresses precisely this issue. The final section will also point to a few particular issues that call for further study. Among such issues, special attention should be devoted to how values and norms adapt to and co-evolve with the new societal syndrome. I thus hope to clarify the connection with the following Chap. 5. Let me close this section with a quick note about the language employed. Throughout this chapter I will 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 detail (so to speak, in a ‘static’ way) and 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 the way they emerge and their mutual relationship that should make the object of study for the realist-morphogenetic social scientist. In other words, these facts and trends 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.

4.2 On the Concept of Social Mechanism The concept of mechanism is now quite fashionable in the social sciences and in epistemology at large.5 More particularly, social mechanisms are currently at the center of theoretical attention,6 and are evoked as the explanation of a wide range of social facts.7 The concept of social mechanism also plays an important role in the main argument of this essay. The emergent social entities presented in Sect. 4.4 are meant as both outcomes of social mechanisms and potential components of further 5I

do not review all the relevant nuances in the literature on mechanisms. For a discussion of the main epistemological issues concerning the ‘mechanistic’ view see Bunge (2004); the same journal issue includes important essays on the same topic by Renate Mayntz and Colin Wight. See also Hsiang-Ke et al. (2013), Craver (2007), Machamer et al. (2000). The work of Roy Bhaskar is obviously relevant as the original critical realist position on this theme. For a useful summary see Hartwig (2007, 57–62). 6 My discussion here draws mainly on the following sources: Hedström and Swedberg (1998), Hedström and Ylikoski (2010), Demeulenaere (2011). For a critical view of the ‘analytical’ take on mechanisms see: Abbott (2007), Norkus (2005). A theory of social mechanisms within historical sociology is laid out by Gorski (2009). For a pragmatist view cf. Gross (2009). 7 Just a few examples need to be mentioned here: Goodman and Jinks (2013a), Guzzini (2012), Givan et al. (2010), McGloin et al. (2011), Pierson (2004), Thorntorn et al. (2012).

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mechanisms. Therefore, this chapter must open with a definition of what is meant by social mechanism in the present context. However, my objective here is not formal, but substantive theory. Thus, my brief discussion will be focused upon a few points I deem to be essential for the approach I am following. Broadly speaking, we could maintain that «[T]he mechanisms position aims at ‘something intermediate between laws and descriptions’, or as HS [Hedström and Swedberg] put it, between universal social laws and story-telling».8 Most authors consider mechanisms to be some sort of middle ground between the positivist search for law-like generalizations to be used as premises in covering-law explanations and the interpretivist satisfaction with narratives and descriptions alone. Following Darden,9 a mechanism scheme can be defined as «a truncated abstract description of a mechanism that can be filled with more specific descriptions of component entities and activities.» In a more articulate way, according to Charles Tilly’s account (2001), explanation by mechanisms must be regarded as one of the main explanatory strategies adopted in the social sciences as well as in social history. Apart from the explicit denial of the possibility of serious explanation in the social and historical realms, Tilly mentions as contenders: (i) the covering law model, whereby researchers try to establish robust empirical generalizations, tracing them to overarching laws; (ii) the propensity view, in which researchers explain social facts by the inner states and propensities to act on the part of individual actors; (iii) the system view, which explains facts by identifying their functions within a social system; and finally (iv) the mechanism view, which is then held to differ from all the rest. This latter strategy should consist of decomposing «unique sequences of alterations in relations among connected elements», called episodes, into recurring processes and mechanisms.10 Mechanism based explanations involve selective, theory oriented accounts of episodes, accentuating their salient features, which try to explain their differences and similarities by identifying a relatively general regular pattern within them. Now it is true that any theory oriented account must involve some separation of necessary versus contingent elements within observables. In the above formulation, though, such a definition sounds too close to an inductive move towards the identification of a ‘law’ to be making a real difference. In addition, episodes are sorted out and bounded by processes Tilly calls ‘social constructions’. The latter is an intriguing point that prompts the question whether or not Tilly would have been in agreement with a realist position, particularly with the M/M approach to social theory. It is obviously the social scientist who decides where morphogenetic/morphostatic cycles begin and end, and which particular entities or events enter morphogenetic narratives. For Tilly, participants and observers sort out myriads of events in social life. However, only some fraction of events acquire social significance because the relevant subjects give them names, draw boundaries, and tell stories about them. 8 Abbott (2007, 3, where ‘HS’ stands for ‘Hedström and Swedberg’; see also Gorski, in this volume.

This is also why deterministic accounts of social mechanism are inevitably self-defeating. Darden (2006, 281). 10 Tilly (2001); see also Tilly (1997). His theory of social mechanisms has been further elaborated in Tilly (2006, 2008). 9 Cf.

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But does this mean that social and historical periodizations are nothing but mere conventions?11 Be that as it may, one thing all versions of the mechanist approach to explanation have in common is that they oppose any conception of causation as a robust statistical correlation that identifies causal relations with controlled statistical dependence between variables. As we will shortly see, this has an important consequence in terms of the epistemological presuppositions made. With this said, four points are essential to my view of a social mechanism: (1) Social Mechanisms Do Not Entail Methodological Individualism. It is true that the mechanist approach involves a specific move, which consists in seeking explanation for any given explanandum at a lower level. Opening up the ‘black box’ of empirically observable regularities (or correlations between macroscopic variables) means explaining ‘larger’ phenomena with ‘smaller’ ones. Nevertheless, such a ‘lower level’ and these ‘smaller units’ do not consist of individuals per se, but may well refer to social relations and their properties, as well as to individual agency with its own personal emergent properties. According to Tilly, who argues for a form of relational realism «with transactions, interactions, or social ties serving as starting points of social analysis»,12 relational mechanisms are synonymous with patterned, non-random alterations in the relations among individuals, networks, and groups.13 (2) Social Mechanisms (Can) Involve an Anti-empiricist Epistemology. As hinted above, the idea of causation as statistical correlation is an adaptation of the Humean analysis of causal relations as regular associations, and was prevalent in quantitative social research until the 1980s. This means that the mechanist perspective should, or at least can be consistent with an anti-empiricist philosophy of science.14 In this respect, the sociological landscape is not homogeneous. ‘Analytical sociologists’ like Hedström and Swedberg insist that mechanisms bring about regular outcomes, or they could not be called mechanisms in the first place.15 According to these authors: «One should identify the situational mechanisms by which social structures constrain individuals’ action and cultural environments shape their desires and beliefs (…), describe the action-formation mechanisms linking individuals’ desires, beliefs, etc., to their actions (…), and specify the transformational mechanisms by which individuals, through their actions and interactions, generate various intended and unintended social outcomes (…). Only by understanding the whole chain of situational, actionformation, and transformational mechanisms have we made sense of the observed 11 For

a refined treatment of this issue, which cannot be followed up here, see Abbott (2001). (1997, 47). This passage is cited in Norkus (2005, 366). 13 See Donati, in this volume, for a relational theory of social mechanisms. 14 Contra, Demeulenaere (2011, 19). 15 See, however, Ylikoski (2011), according to whom such a claim would only apply to what he calls ‘A-mechanisms’, namely regular processes, and not to ‘B-mechanisms’, i.e. to more abstract causal schemes. 12 Tilly

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macro-level relationship».16 This statement is probably as close as it could ever get to Archer’s formulations concerning the situational logic, reflexive agency, and their interrelation that is ventured as constituting the basic transformational mechanism of social morphogenesis or reproductive mechanism of morphostasis. But even here, to Hedström and Swedberg, the causal mechanism generating the output Y from the input X is constituted by a number of intermediate causal links that regularly generate the expected outcome. Realist accounts, on the other hand, do recognize the ‘pure’ necessity of internal relations, but emphasize the contingency due to (i) the multiplicity of simultaneous mechanisms, and (ii) the open character of society to other external factors. In a nutshell, because the ceteris paribus clause is never respected in the social realm, a mechanism does not necessarily bring about regular outcomes, even if it potentially would were closure possible. It is important to note that such a position clearly differs from Elster’s idea that mechanisms are just ‘sometime’ things, that is, things that only sometime happen. The point is not that mechanisms are just ‘weaker laws’, but that they specify the relations and processes through which the outcome would be brought about, were it to act alone within a closed system. That is to say, mechanisms should not be conceived of as attenuated and under-specified law-like generalizations, but as entities and activities working in an entirely different way. (3) Social Mechanisms Are Not Synonymous with the Causal Power(s) and Tendencies of a Single Entity. This point is much more controversial, even within the conceptual framework of critical realism, insofar as it subscribes to the view that a generative mechanism can consist of one causal power, with or without the related tendency. The point I am making here is essentially that explanatory models should be conceptually parsimonious. Now, why should we speak of a ‘mechanism’, if all we do is simply refer to an entity X which exercises its causal power, (potentially) causing another entity or event to happen? Why couldn’t this just be described as a ‘causal relation’? If we are dealing with a tendency, we would not need anything more. Therefore, I consider the term ‘mechanism’ to be properly used only when it identifies mutually intertwined causal powers. So, entities all have their own causal powers and tendencies, but only when the causal relations leading from an X to a Y entail the interaction of more than one power and tendency can we speak of a (generative) mechanism. Mechanisms are indeed causal combinations, but we usefully call them mechanisms only when more than one causal tendency, inclination or intentional action is involved, which could lead to a possible outcome. This is consistent with the observation that entities—e.g. human agents—are endowed with various different inclinations and tendencies, all having causal effects, but none of these alone can bring about a determinate outcome. To give a simple example: a man in a dangerous situation can fight, flee or freeze. He incorporates, and indeed may exercise, tendencies pushing him in all these directions. What his actual action will be in a given situation must be co-determined by the other relevant features of the situation—all other conditions, causal powers, intentions and 16 Hedström

and Ylikoski (2010, 59).

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contingencies at work. Only this set of tendencies can make a causal complex that is robust enough to be called a mechanism—which by definition involves some regularity of connection, though not of empirically observable outcomes. (4) Lower- And Higher-Order Mechanisms Exist, Strictly Connected to Different Levels of Reality. Mechanisms, like relationships, build upon each other, generating and defining levels of emergence. While social mechanisms are never deterministic, their increasing complexity multiplies contingency. Thus, their expected outcome will be even more difficult to predict. On the other hand, once we can really get to an account based on second- or third-order mechanisms, then our understanding of the issue in question will be correspondingly improved.

4.3 Things We Lost in the Fire and Things Emerging from It: A Landscape of Social Emergence The cultural sensibility of contemporary society, at least in Western quarters, is often framed by the ‘things we lost in the fire’.17 Forms of social and individual life that 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,18 but is now the subject of wide public debate, sometimes touching readers with the keen edge of loss. I would not even try to come up with an exhaustive list of the features of our ‘way of life’ that we believe we have lost, but some browsing 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 17 For 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—destroying past forms of life that were familiar. 18 This explains the tendency of modernization theories to become ‘reconstructive’. As a witness to this awareness, let me quote Donati and 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 Knöbl (2007).

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tamer, less confusing, more predictable in outcomes, more accessible, and easier to interpret; yet (simultaneously) a world that was 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 look back at those years as ‘safer times’, or for the first affluent generation to hear that its children are relatively poorer,19 and so forth? 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 is indeed more traffic in many globally important cities. In many Western countries, 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 easily 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’?20 My 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 global 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 19 While some of these references could claim widespread validity (e.g. unease at wild multitasking or degraded working environments), others are somewhat country and culture dependent. 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. 20 This 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/.

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incongruity and lack of normative consensus, and new social facts, properties, processes, and entities emerge. Let me now point to some of these. The specific way in which I develop my argument is meant to avoid two pitfalls, namely (a) the risk of generalizing from a few ‘big novelties’ to an alleged ‘new society’, and (b) of collecting a lot of emergents 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 of social phenomena that places them on different layers within an ontologically stratified scale of emergence (see Fig. 4.1).21 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 general formulation. In this context, it is traced to four basic characteristics22 : (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; (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 qual-

21 This

is a taxonomic tool elaborated in Maccarini (2013), to which I refer for a fuller explanation of its rationale and theoretical underpinning. The version presented in Fig. 4.2 is a new and amended formulation. Some word choice and a few substantive details differ from the former scheme, and even from Fig. 4.1. My treatment of the category of ‘emergent events’, that was added in this new version, is reminiscent of the work by Sewell (1990). From an epistemological viewpoint, the scheme in question is ‘analogical-topological formalism’ in kind, with claims of similarities and principles of variation. For these notions see Tilly (2004a: 5). 22 For this definition see Clayton (2004, pp. 4–6).

- Property emergence

Emergent distributions

Reciprocity effect – lower middle:

no dialogical capacity, no symbolical self-constitution, no self-organization, no feedback

Reciprocity effect – low:

Relational thickness

- Property emergence

Reciprocity effect – high:

no dialogical capacity, ongoing symbolical self-constitution, good selforganization, rapid feedback

Reciprocity effect – upper middle:

Fig. 4.1 The stratification of social emergence

dialogical capacity, high and refined (e.g. families, organiza- - Irreducibility 2 (no explanatory reduction) tions, institutions and institu- - downward causation 2 (as constraining factor symbolical self-constitution, complex tional complexes, societies, and as autonomous centre of action) self-organization, rapid and strong feedback civilizations)

Emergent subjects

- Property emergence - Irreducibility 2 (no explanatory reduction) (e.g. wars, economic cycles, - downward causation 1 forms of collective action, etc.) (as constraining factor)

Emergent macrophenomena

no dialogical capacity, partial sym(demographic distributions, - Irreducibility 1 (no linear causation) social stratification, e.g. bolical self-constitution, rudimentary downward causation 1 (as constraining factor) self-organization, slow feedback educational inequality)

- Irreducibility 1 (no linear causation)

(styles of action, norms, routines, etc.)

Requisites of emergence - Property emergence

‘Families’ of emergents

Emergent actions

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ities that cannot be traced back or reduced to the individuals enacting them.23 Here I articulate this ‘effect’ in four basic dimensions: dialogical capacity, symbolical self-constitution, self-organization, and (type of) feedback. The point is to deploy this conceptual frame as a tool to interpret social change. Therefore, in Fig. 4.2 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. The resulting scheme is not meant to build 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.24 The scheme brings to the fore some relevant social facts, with the aim of providing an outline of social ‘novelties’ emerging on the skyline of global society.25 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. 4.1—the table in Fig. 4.2 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 it is simply impossible to spot relevant novelties, because social processes are not evenly distributed, and cannot 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 23 The 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 Donati (1991). 24 For a quick overview about the use of the concept of ‘civilization’ as a category of macrosociological analysis see again Knöbl (2007, pp. 62–70). 25 The literature on such a vast array of phenomena covers various disciplines, and clearly exceeds any reasonable limit. I will only quote a few works, which played a crucial role in the development of my own perspective on the topics in question. On the concept of boundary change cf. Tilly (2004b). On smart governance see Willke (2007). On experimentalist organization, cf. Sabel (2006), Sabel and Zeitlin (2010). About new forms of social exclusion see Woodward and Kohli (2001). The phenomenon of new land enclosures is well documented in The World Bank (2010); http://www.landcoaltion.org/cpl/CPL-synthesis-report. For case studies see http://www. landcoalition.org/cplstudies, http://www.future-agricultures.org/index.php?option=comdocman& Itemid=971 and http://media.oaklandinstitute.org/publications; Anseeuw et al. (2012). About the mechanisms that tend to produce the QISM and the links between family organization and macrosocial change see Axinn and Yabiku (2001). The de-generating tendencies of some Western institutions are studied by Ferguson (2011). An application to Italy may be drawn from Censis (2013). On the notion of ‘governance by standards’ see Thévenot (1997), Busch (2010). The connected themes of new legal frameworks, processes of constitutionalisation, and post-democracy evoke the work of such authors as Gunther Teubner, Hauke Brunkhorst, and many more. For human rights see Goodman and Jinks (2013b). The concept of social subjectivities is treated by Prandini (2013), Donati and Archer (2015).

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Interaction

Organization

Society

‘Families’ of emergent entities Human enhancement techniques (discoveries and related challenges)

Emergent events (e.g. wars, crises, technical innovations, etc.)

Emergent practices (lifestyles, styles of action, routines, etc.)

- Accelerated and functionalized life course; - technically mediated interactions (relations through social media etc.)

Emergent distributions (demographic distributions, social stratification, e.g. educational inequality)

New forms of social distinction (‘boundary change’: e.g. digital divide, moving vs. staying, etc.)

Emergent structures (social and symbolic)

Emergent subjects (e.g. families, organizations, institutions and institutional complexes, societies, civilizations)

a b

- New social movements; - Plural family forms (e.g. QISM b ); - New types of reflexivity (limitless, ‘bulimic’ self).

- Economic crisis - New forms of protests and unrest (e.g. “Arab springs”) - migration flows

New organizational styles (new models for coordination of action)

- Demographic winter; - New forms of stratification, exclusion, and inequality within and between countries (e.g. new land enclosures, different structures of opportunities, generational divide, the NEET a youth). - Experimentalist organizational forms (e.g. “pragmatist organizations” in welfare services) - dis-emergence (or “degeneration”) of institutions in some advanced democracies (e.g. Italy)

- New temporal structures: acceleration and functionalization (desymbolization) of time; - ‘smart governance’ (societal level); - ongoing development of a human rights international regime; - anti-humanist culture (naturalism and radical individualism); - New legal frameworks and routines (soft law, ‘governance by standards’).

Autonomous constitutional bodies

Post-democratic vs. polycratic regimes

British acronym standing for those people ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’. The acronym stands for ‘quasi-infertile serial monogamy’, and it is meant to describe a lifestyle and cultural syndrome that is increasingly widespread in the West, particularly in some countries and among some given ethnic groups.

Fig. 4.2 Emergent phenomena in the transition toward a ‘morphogenic’ society

morphogenesis. In the following section I take one examples from the table and provide some answers to these questions. I will consider the case of ‘social acceleration’, which I regard as highly consequential for the emergence of a ‘new’ societal formation. Two clarifications are in order at this point. First, this démarche does not mean that the theme I have chosen to discuss is the most important among the features listed above.

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No claims are made about its relative significance for the possible emergence of a new 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 of unbound morphogenesis26 and the logic of opportunity. The full account of how many of 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, if we consider together social acceleration and human enhancement techniques, I would 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, and I cannot provide a morphogenetic history of how actors elaborate upon the relevant structural and cultural conditioning to produce emergent outcomes. However, these two social emergents (i) are logically entailed by one another, and by the general morphogenetic mechanism. Moreover, (ii) such mutual implications can in principle be discovered by social actors, and thereby occur in empirical reality. This is not what makes them real, but actualization on the part of social actors is what would 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 corporate 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.

26 Signifying

an extreme state where morphogenesis is no longer restrained, stabilized or counterbalanced by morphostasis.

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4.4 Changing Temporal Structures: Social Acceleration 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.27 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 which defined itself through a 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.28 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 versus fragmentation, multitasking, de-symbolization, functionalization of time, temporal cycles in production and lifeworld, and many more.29 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.30 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 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 27 It

would be possible to counter that society has always been conceived of as a temporalized order—not just in the context of modernity. But what surely changed was the kind of temporal imaginary involved—e.g. the notion of a ‘golden age’ could look at the past versus the future, social time could be regarded as cyclical versus 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. 28 The 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 Luhmann (1976, 1997, 1998). 29 Once again, there is a vast literature on the subject. See for example Young and Schuller (1988). 30 Within the vast literature on social acceleration, the following discussion refers mainly to the following texts: Rosa and Scheuerman (2009); this text provides a brilliant anthology, some serious scholarship and a very useful bibliography on the subject; Rosa (2013); see also Havelock (2011), which has a positive take on the driving forces of acceleration, but still looks at things through the monochromatic lens of ‘progress’. Wajcman and Dodd (2017). For an example of how the theme has attracted attention in popular culture, see James Gleick’s Faster (1999).

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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 diminishing: 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? (Rosa and Scheuerman 2009:1–29)

This ‘definition’ appears rather specific, since apparently it refers to the overlapping 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, morphogenesis, or contingency. Of course, speed may result in increased contingency, and contingency may call for rapid change and adaptation to ever shifting situations. But these elements should be kept analytically distinct and the theory developed in a conceptually parsimonious way. Some authors seem to appreciate this, but confusion is still rife throughout this literature.31 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. 31 Ibid., 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.

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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, selfpropelling process. However, the cause he sees behind this 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.

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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 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,32 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 eternal life and the practical modern response to the problem of finitude and death.33 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.34 To sum up, this cultural factor is 32 A classic locus for the critique of ‘the myth of cultural integration’ is in the well-known pages by Archer (1988). 33 Rosa (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 getting 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. 34 In 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

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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 consequences 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 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, macroimpressionism 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 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. On the possible link between exclusive humanism and acceleration, see Blumenberg 1986.

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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 expectations 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 opportunities. 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 and socio-economic structures (as structural elements), stand in a relationship of contingent complementarity. They can create human enhancement (see Sect. 4.4) 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

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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 morphogenesis 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.35 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 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 destroy35 Here ‘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’ (Maccarini 2018).

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ing 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.

4.5 Enclaves and Vortexes as ‘Morphogenic Environments’: A Thesis and Its Working Tools As we have seen, the conjuncture between various emergent entities generates chains of mutually related mechanisms, which build up strings of emergent factors and processes. Some examples may be listed here: (a) social acceleration, functionalization of time, HETs, anti-humanist culture, new family forms, demographic winter, new types of personal and social reflexivity; (b) economic crisis, forms of new stratification and exclusion, new land enclosures, dis-emergence of institutions, new forms of social distinction, riots and movements, massive migration flows; (c) economic crisis, experimentalist organizations, smart governance, autonomous social bodies, expansion of human rights. All these developments are mutually related, but both their internal links and their empirical outcomes are contingent upon the relevant structural conditionings under which they each occur, and the agency of individuals and groups. Corporate agency may disregard or take advantage of compatibilities, spread social innovations or oppose unwanted developments, forge or adhere to alternative cultures, etc. Social environments then emerge that are endowed with different social, cultural, and agential properties. As a result, lifestyles and the quality of life within these environments are bound to take different directions, depending on what mechanisms prevail. We must now go back to our main question. From our viewpoint in space and time, the pivotal issues for a social scientist who wants to explore the hypothesis of an emerging MS could be the following: once we have identified a core mechanism that serves as the ‘first motor’ of intensified morphogenesis, where are we along the path that is possibly leading to a complete societal reconfiguration? And once we set out along that path, what is the rapidly changing landscape beginning to look like? To put this in more technical language, what are the emergent social facts and entities, with their own ‘qualities’ (i.e. emergent properties), and, are they starting to reveal anything like a latent pattern beyond purely contingent convergences? These questions constitute a thick bundle of problems, that should be approached with some analytical tact. I will not embark on any possible assessment of ‘how advanced’ the morphogenetic syndrome is at present, but will try to catch a glimpse of its profile from the mist of long term social trends. My most basic assumption is that the MS is not going to be a seamless garment. The present considerations entail rejecting evolutionist views, do not endorse a smooth

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process of diffusion, and are skeptical of popular images that convey the idea of a ‘flat world’.36 Even my own reference to a latent pattern (above) should not be taken as the notion of an orchestrating principle (or structural force), but as the consistent outcome of a partially contingent process.37 The morphogenic logic tends to spread, yet global society still remains highly differentiated in terms of structural and cultural conditions characterizing organizational systems, industrial sectors, geographical regions, peoples, and communities. The same goes for agents and groups. As a result, there is no ‘social synchrony’ among the areas of global society, not even in the West, despite the ongoing partial synchronization concerning expert systems.38 Moreover, no homogeneous outcomes can be predicted as to the social forms the MS will foster—or hinder. Therefore, the march toward a societal formation we can call ‘morphogenic’ can be conceived of as a stepwise process, whereby mechanisms produce emergent properties and entities, and these gradually coalesce to generate new ‘environments’, i.e. ‘parts’ or ‘islands’ of society (organizational sectors, interinstitutional complexes, regions, etc.) that are in tune with the morphogenic logic. The scale of such innovations tends to increase, as well as do further links among them, and the eventual outcome would be a whole ‘society’ in which all the main processes finally work according to that logic. The argument I am presenting builds a gradual path to the characterization of a whole societal formation, and could be outlined as follows. (i) The morphogenetic ‘engine’ generates various emergent phenomena, in all social domains and on various levels of social organization. Some of them are internally related to the core mechanism of ‘contingent complementarity’, others are only indirectly connected with it. As a consequence, different types of interactions are possible. Some of the newly emergent social entities interact randomly, contributing to increased chaotic complexity, and resulting in a ‘fallout’ of random effects due to the causal powers all social emergents have. This means there are indeed causes and effects, but the overall impact of contingently related phenomena is not systematically consequential. Every emergent social entity can be traced to some social mechanism. At the same time, every social entity might itself become a part of further mechanisms, producing other phenomena on different levels.39 Here I will not deal with those mechanisms and social forms that are not internally (i.e. necessarily) related among themselves and with the core logic of opportunity.

36 Friedman

(2006). approach is consistent with Archer’s claim that social realism always respects the fact that such potentials may remain unrealized because of (a) countervailing mechanisms at work and also (b) unforeseen contingencies that cannot be excluded from the open system of society. 38 To put it bluntly, although expert systems may well work synchronically and predictably when checking flights or e-finance operations, this does not mean that social morphogenesis will also display such a smooth and standardized process. More commonly, globalized systems are often ‘out of sync’. 39 This statement is meant to include downward causation. 37 This

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(ii) However, other emergent phenomena may exhibit a clear mutual compatibility and may come to establish necessary relationships, producing new, higher order mechanisms or activating existing ones, and thereby moving along new developmental paths. I call such relationships structural conjunctures, which in turn constitute higher-order mechanisms.40 The concept of conjuncture calls attention to the fact that higher-order relationships—that is, relationships among phenomena that are originally constituted by social relations in the first place—and the convergence of multiple social mechanisms may give rise to more complex social forms.41 Here, I focus on these chains of mechanisms, and on their emergent effects. (iii) The outcome is the relative stabilization of various ‘environments’ of different geographical and systemic dimensions—organizational, inter-organizational, etc.—involving consequences on different levels of organization: lifestyles, interaction, institution building and performance, political regime, and many more. My particular interest is in environments generated by the morphogenic hallmark of variety generating more variety. They represent social forms that are both generated by and creatively reacting to the conditions of unbound morphogenesis. Therefore, I call them ‘morphogenic environments’. These social forms can differ in many respects. They are endowed with their own particular features, among which their particular ways of coping with contingences, and they change according to the structural and cultural conditions within which the relevant conjunctures unfold. The point of taking such a perspective lies in developing a pluralist view of the emerging substantive qualities of what could finally become a whole societal formation. The logic of unbound morphogenesis is still not dominating all social processes, but it is spreading unevenly throughout global society, generating ‘regions’ where it is more intensely realized and recognised, and giving rise to qualitatively different social forms in response to its pressure. Here I am concerned with two particular types of social forms, namely with ones I will call ‘enclave’ and ‘vortex’. I am claiming that enclaves and vortexes can be fruitfully used to describe some particular shapes into which the morphogenic process is crystallizing. This is emphatically not to say that the overall ‘destiny’ of the coming MS will be a world of enclaves and vortexes. These are only two possible—and possibly unstable—outcomes that are currently emerging at some latitudes and longitudes of our social globe. This choice depends on the assumption that openness and closure represent some of the basic challenges contemporary social

40 This

point needs clarification as regards the concept of social mechanism, and the notion of mechanism-related levels of (social) reality. See Sect. 4.3. 41 My use of the term ‘conjuncture’ is similar to its common usage in critical realism. See Bhaskar (19983 , 2008); Hartwig (2007, 76). With reference to the latter, I take the meaning of conjuncture to be a combination of events and circumstances that is critical or betokens a crisis, with some abstraction and generalization, namely as a set of mechanisms that are critical to generate particular social outcomes. See also Porpora (2015: 185–187), Steinmetz (1998).

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forms must face, given the speed and depth of social change. The idea is that these notions, and their empirical referent, respond to such a situation. It is now time to explain where these concepts come from, and what they have to do with an M/M approach. I draw the concepts of enclave and vortex from the literature on organizations and management, more precisely from the work of McCann and Selsky.42 In taking up the intuitions produced by these authors, I will partially change their meaning, as a result of translating them in terms of the M/M approach. In other words, we can set out an M/M conception of a research tradition that studies the impact of growing complexity on different kinds of social environments, even on societies and civilizations at large. The usefulness of this operation lies in two, mutually related aspects: (i) that the related organizational literature has provided concrete examples of different directions that social morphogenesis may take, precisely when its main features make it resemble the ‘morphogenic’ condition; (ii) that such studies allow us to model morphogenetic/morphostatic cycles,43 comprising gradual change, catastrophes and sudden collapses, social de-generation and re-generation.44 In other words, they describe and model the possible ‘rhythm’ of social morphogenesis within particular time spans, characterized by given conditions and structures, in concrete case studies. The pivotal concept of the whole argument is that of turbulence. Such a word has become a fashionable way to characterize the ‘times we are living in’. As a metaphor for allegedly unprecedented challenges and complex situations, it has inspired talks and even big conferences in the social sciences.45 Thus, it would seem that our society is becoming more aerial than liquid—or dusty, for that matter. Maybe this only indicates the increasing difficulty of global society in providing an adequate self-representation. Leaving metaphors aside, McCann and Selsky identify the two driving forces that promote turbulence as follows: (a) an escalating scale and density of social interaction brought about by population growth and its demands; (b) increasing, but uneven, technological innovation that is diffused through all aspects of social activity. 42 McCann

and Selsky (1984, 2012). The following reconstruction draws upon their work. The relevance of their 2012 volume has yet to be assessed in the context of a theory of reflexivity. 43 Cf. Maccarini (2013). 44 It remains a matter for future speculation whether or not there are inherent ‘limits’ to morphogenesis, after which collapses or catastrophes become necessary to rebuild capacity and to start a new morphogenetic cycle—e.g. a new civilization. The ‘society without an outside’ is precisely a society that has lost a quite specific (kind of) asset, namely the ‘space’ in which to expand and grow—the material social morphogenesis can burn, or the place where it can develop. But on this point metaphors still have to give way to sound conceptualization. 45 For example, the 10th conference of the European Sociological Association, ‘Social relations in turbulent times’, Geneva, September, 2011, which obviously prompted a bunch of papers that took up such a metaphor in their titles.

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These two forces result in more numerous and interdependent, but less stable and predictable, relations among the parts of an environment. High levels of complexity and change are a necessary, but not sufficient condition for understanding turbulence. An environment is not turbulent as long as a member has the requisite resources and skills to meet the demands the conditions impose. Only when such conditions become truly problematic—that is, when the level of ‘relevant uncertainty’ confronting a member makes continuing adaptation correspondingly uncertain—can the label ‘turbulent’ be assigned to an environment. This is to say turbulence is not an objective threshold state passed through by all members of an environment in the same way or at the same time. The factor making turbulence an unevenly experienced condition is the relative adaptive capacity of members. Hyperturbulence, then, is the condition in which environmental demands finally exceed the collective capacities of members sharing an environment to cope with growing complexity. A good example concerns Italian firms in the context of the so-called ‘new globalization’ marked by the ongoing unbundling and fragmentation of productive systems. This resulted in the further differentiation between trade-in-goods and trade-in-tasks and the creation of complex global value (supply) chains. The firms that were already struggling to survive, given global competition and a national environment characterized by high taxes and inefficient administration, have performed differently in the face of the commercial crisis of 2008–9, according to their ability to upgrade their position in those chains and to govern their relationships with the neighbouring links. Some of them could not control all internal and external relationships, and were ‘caught’ by a dominant buyer (Accetturo et al. 2011). Hyperturbulence can lead to what McCann and Selsky, reminiscent of Emery and Trist, call a ‘vortical environment’, that is an environment shaped by forces totally beyond management.46 At that point, highly bounded domains may develop, called enclaves and vortices. They result from a process of ‘social triage’, that is an effort by members to allocate and protect scarce resources and skills. Social triage involves a ‘manipulation of surpluses and scarcities’. More precisely, such a partitioning occurs when members attempt to allocate and protect an adaptive capacity they perceive as limited and overly challenged by increasing complexity. To keep to the previous example concerning Italian firms, some of them transferred all available resources to the successful functional or relational parts of their activity, separating and dismissing the rest. Social enclaves and vortices are two different forms that may result from the above partitioning process. A social enclave is a domain of less turbulent, more manageable social space that is created and protected by one or more members who share a given environment. Enclave members selectively manage their relations, defending their shared domain from external demands. An enclave represents a bounded space members defend from non-members, and involves the effort to de-couple from external relations regarded as dangerous, because of the amount of resources they require. In other words, an enclave is formed when insiders successfully manage their relationships according to a highly selective principle. Following McCann and 46 For

an interesting literature review on this topic cf. Baburoglu (1988).

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Selsky, three criteria for obtaining membership within an enclave can be listed: (a) the adequacy of a member’s current adaptive capacity; (b) its ability to contribute some value-added, i.e. a surplus of capacity, thereby helping to build the capacity of others within the enclave; and (c) the compatibility among the values and goals of prospective members. A macro-example here concerns the way the European Union negotiates the adherence and full membership of partner countries, which includes requisites concerning both economic performance and cultural values. Vortices could be said to be the flipside of the same form. They are created when members within the larger environment attempt to isolate and contain hyperturbulence within a manageable, nonthreatening space. In this case, excessive turbulence is not being shut out, but kept within heavily patrolled borders. The reason why vortices arise is that there can be cases when the need for resources and skills within a given domain may be so great that members in the larger environment perceive the latter as a non-manageable threat to their own existence, viability, or well-being. A social vortex, thus, is created when some (individual or organizational) entities sharing an environment face a problem situation for which they perceive that no realistic solutions can be found, at least in the short run—or are not prepared to sustain the costs of an existing solution, and prefer to isolate the problem, keeping the concerned domain as far from themselves as possible. Two further considerations are relevant here. First, the one characteristic enclaves and vortices have in common is that both forms imply that under (hyper)turbulent conditions, the gap between those who have and those who lack sufficient adaptive capacity will increase. The rate at which this gap grows will be a function of: (a) how quickly turbulence accelerates; (b) the amount of excess capacity within an environment; (c) the ability of members to minimize the dysfunctional consequences of their interdependencies with other members; and (d) the type and enforceability of prevailing ethical standards. Enclaves and vortices are two different ways to manage openings and closures, and arise as responses to growing complexity, based on the attempt to avoid contagion with some sort of epidemic—keeping it within a delimited space ‘within’ or staying at a safe distance from it. The second consideration is that the authors drawn upon regard cooperation within a vortex as close to impossible. They deem it to be highly fragile, episodic, and prone to major setbacks. Integrative strategies find no adequate resources—either structural or cultural. Now, the way turbulence is described here appears to be close to the way Archer characterizes and accounts for unbound morphogenesis, examining the configuration of contingent complementarity and the situational logic of opportunity. In fact, the M/M approach may be linked to the notion of turbulence in more ways than one. First, it can provide a better account of what is new about the kind of ‘turbulence’ contemporary societies are experiencing. ‘Times’ have always been ‘rough’. But unbound morphogenesis and the relentless generation of variety means that technology and the growing density of social interaction per se are not the determining causal powers at play. This Durkheimian-like landscape must be further examined. The point is not just growing relational density, but the unconstrained freedom to develop creative combinations and opportunities for action and experience with (or

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indeed without) any normative grounding. In a nutshell, the morphogenic logic of opportunity is not just another way to spell the good old transition from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ societies. On the other hand, the process of partitioning and the development of enclaves and vortexes represent instructive hypotheses about the direction social morphogenesis may take in particular domains and situations—that is, under particular forms of structural and cultural conditioning. Here the link between the M/M approach and the idea of turbulence lies in the fact that unbound morphogenesis really has different effects when it meets with highly dynamic or weak and previously static—let alone de-generating—systems. In some cases it can be simply overwhelming, and this results in a breakdown of the capacity of the related systems to set their morphogenesis on a ‘generative’, not ‘de-generative’ path. When the opening of contingencies crosses the threshold of ‘relevant uncertainty’, as mentioned above, this makes social dynamics turbulent and partitioning—resulting in enclaves and vortexes—arising as a possible reaction. The reason why this is interesting is twofold. First, it helps to explain why the extremely dynamic environment fostered by a morphogenetic cycle can be paralleled by the crystallization of morphostasis in some niches within it. In a nutshell, this may constitute the starting point for an analysis of those cases in which not only ‘things stay the same’ (to put it in Porpora’s words in this volume), but social change may even slow down and stop, precisely in the wake of the emerging MS. Moreover, the pace of change may not be reduced in enclaves, but it will tend to remain within their borders, or will cross them only through highly selective channels. The point here is that the creation of ‘walled systems’, albeit internally dynamic, contradicts the expansive, diffusive logic that characterizes freewheeling morphogenesis. Again, we might add that the emergence of enclaves and vortexes must be reconstructed in a morphogenetic way. One consequence of this is that even the possibility of developing collaboration to face overly complex situations cannot be met with generalized skepticism. Unlikely as it might be, one always has to take the structural conditioning and the related situational logic into account—the particular resources actors can count on, and the reflexive agency, individual and social, acting upon the given situation. No real ‘situation’ exists without these factors, and this can make the claim about the low probability of cooperation too abstract and underdetermined. In our present theoretical context, we can assume that unchained morphogenesis has an ambivalent relation with cooperation, because the idea of synergy involves both cooperation and competition. One last consideration is in order. If turbulence is a relationship between the complexity of conditions and the coping capacity of the subjects involved, then this calls into question the robustness and flexibility of their modus vivendi and the ‘maturity’ of their personal reflexivity. And the same argument may also come to embrace the collective reflexivity practiced and exhibited by organizations and institutions. What McCann and Selsky define as the capacity of an individual, group, organization, or inter-organizational collectivity to manage environmental complexity and change is contingent not only upon its own capacity, but also upon the capacities of those sharing the environment with it. This can be connected with Archer’s idea of contextual

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incongruity and mixed messages that make for the reflexive imperative. Actors not only cultivate concerns that are different from those held by significant others, but are also influenced by their capacity to reflect effectively, and to design effective lifeplans within overly and increasingly complex environments. In the present context, what system theorists refer to as the capacity of adaptation would be translated into the reflexive capacity to select and shape a life-course in the face of enhanced variety. Because adaptive capacity refers to the amount and variety of resources and skills available to actors, we are warranted in claiming that reflexivity plays a crucial role among them. A good example is that the ability to understand complex, ambiguous situations and build adequate decision making models features among the relevant skills that are highly valued in complex, rapidly changing environments. This goes both for individuals and their families, on the one hand, and for organizations within an organizational and institutional environment, on the other hand—albeit in a rather different way, because the latter environment also includes competition as one key principle. All of the above calls for the extension of a realist-morphogenetic theory of reflexivity to consider the capacity of a whole social domain to sustain and nourish reflexivity, in its different modes and types. To sum up, one aspect of the present morphogenetic situation is that it may result in overwhelming turbulence, which in turn may give rise to enclaves or vortexes – the last resort before the fading adaptive capacity of an individual or a collectivity collapses into widespread anomie and an ultimate loss of form. On the way to a possible MS, we are bound to encounter morphogenic environments, some of which will have the shape of an enclave or a vortex. What we are looking at here is a specific side of an enormously complex process. Another emergent environment, which requires ad hoc treatment, is the one I dub the ‘seed-bed’. Its main difference with respect to enclaves is its outreach. This choice of name is intended to cover the tendency of such social forms to expand and create relational bridges toward external social forms and groups, as well as their capacity to prompt internal solidarity and cooperation. The issue concerning the social quality of a morphogenic societal formation—the crucial question about what social life will be like if the MS finally becomes our social universe—must remain as uncertain as all statements about the future do. But the practical answer is already unfolding before our eyes.

4.6 Relational Conjunctures and Morphogenic Environments Are vortexes and enclaves anything other than concepts within a theoretical model? Do they exist in social reality? The literature on organizations and management provides many empirical examples, but can this notion be of any interest with respect to the societal dynamics that are the object of the present considerations? The claim I have been advancing is that the morphogenic logic often results in a tendency to create enclave- and vortex-like environments. It is useful to recall some key features of

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such social forms, which could help to identify them and discern their profile within real social dynamics. As we have seen, enclaves and vortexes are the outcome of hyperturbulence. They occur when interdependencies among members have become dysfunctional and impossible to manage on a nondiscriminatory basis. Enclaves obtain when it becomes more efficient and viable to de-couple from those relations that limit one’s capacity and to build those relations that promise to maintain capacity.47 Vortices are created when members of a larger social group try to isolate and contain individuals and groups that lack the sufficient resources and skills required to cope with a challenging situation into a non-threatening, conveniently bounded space. It is interesting to note that these partitioning processes exhibit some common features, like an increased emphasis on resource efficiency, boundary management, and the regulation of consumption to maximize group, not individual, survival.48 Of course, the whole process is dynamic. Enclaves can collapse, vortices can extend or shrink, depending on external conditions. These attempts to preserve and protect capacities have a clear meaning and effect in the short run. However, the long term effects are more uncertain. McCann and Selsky go on to say that such a process typically leads to the ‘involution of structures’, which we may liken to the ‘degeneration’ or dis-emergence of institutions.49 At least some of the features we have invoked here can easily be found in some large processes, that should be reconstructed in detail through full-blown morphogenetic narratives. Here I can only quickly present a few examples which could help make the case for the plausibility of my thesis. (1) The following ‘big events’ have been mentioned in many sociological quarters as characterizing our ‘turbulent’ times: (i) the ‘financial war’ conducted by markets and rating agencies against nation-states and the euro; (ii) the global triumph of the neo-liberal model, attacking such institutions as the welfare state and the University; (iii) the erosion of the European social model and the decline of the whole European project; (iv) an accelerated pace of social change; (v) unprecedented riots even in formerly peaceful parts of Europe. Arguably, the response by European institutions and national governments to these facts could be described as a tendency to generate enclaves and vortexes. The bulk of European governance—of the European project itself—has clearly become the setting of standards concerning mainly economic resources and performance,50 to be used as requisites for full membership and enforced through sanctions that are 47 The rate and extent of enclave formation depends on: (a) the abilities of members to differentiate among their functional and dysfunctional relations; (b) the speed at which they can break off undesired relations by becoming self-sufficient or minimally dependent on others with needed capacity; and (c) their ability to create and enforce boundaries. (McCann and Selsky 1984: 466) 48 Ibid. 49 The term ‘disemergence’ can be found in Jamie Morgan’s treatment of emergence, in Hartwig (2007: 166–167). 50 But not exclusively. The same rationale seems to apply to political stability, institutional efficiency, and the respect of human rights as well as of a growing set of rules and procedures on the part of

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guided by a logic of immunization from the risk of contagion. The complex interrelation between technical standards and national interests would require a detailed study. The same logic seems to prevail with respect to immigration—both on the part of national governments and of European institutions (see the EU-Turkey agreement based on ‘money to stop immigrants’) and of some immigrant communities. Finally, a closure against European standards and a downgrading of the process of European unification is the battle cry of anti-European, nationalist and regionalist political parties and movements. In sum, the construction of enclaves—mirrored by vortexes arising wherever communities and countries cannot meet the required standards—appears to be the prevailing dynamics in European politics. Arguably, this set of responses is triggering situational mechanisms that are likely to disrupt the whole European polity. (2) Within this European context, it’s becoming commonplace to name Italy as an example of decadence. Few analysts, however, go beyond the usual reference to ‘corruption’. Two important factors would deserve in-depth analysis, namely (i) the degeneration of institutions in the face of cliques and factions, and (ii) the slowing pace of social morphogenesis– in the proper sense of the emergence of new structures, cultures, and social subjectivities—paralleled by an accelerated growth of overwhelming complexity in most domains of social life. Italy would thus appear to be an example of vortex, translating morphogenesis into chaotic fuzziness-without-change. The gap between the overly complex and rapidly changing global world and the fading structures, cultures and groups typical of Italy’s first modernization has not yet been filled, and still accounts for much of the country’s problems. Within the country itself different regions, social and professional circles, industrial sectors, etc. try more or less successfully to replicate the same logic of isolating problems and taking stock of their own resources. Examples could easily be drawn from the labour market, the longstanding problem of most Southern regions, and the domain of research and higher education. The latter may be quoted as a good instance of continuous reforms coupled with very slow change and weakening institutional and professional identities. (3) At the global level, issues like civil wars, migrations, and climate change could bring about new sources of conflict. Because such changes may end up favoring some social groups, macroregions and nations more than others, governments and business could seek to improve or maintain only the well-being of the rich and powerful. However, rich countries will not be able to insulate themselves totally, because enforcing their borders would require enormous security costs. Furthermore, the specific phenomenon of climate change may dramatically alter the balance of wealth and power between areas and regions worldwide.51 In the cultural sphere, this corresponds to the emergence of doctrines and ideolomembers—concerning issues as different as immigration, food safety, patent rights, criminal justice, waste processing, etc. 51 This possibility is explored by Mann (2013, especially Chap. 12).

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gies that are often intolerant or reinforcing in-group identity (e.g. ecofascist or populist-charismatic, see Mann 2013: 397–405). This could result in a major drawback to the linear expansion of the logic of opportunity as a unique form of integration, and in the multiplication of enclaves and vortexes in various regions of the global society. On a global scale, new boundaries arise everywhere to contrast the flattening forces of the logic of diffusion. Even beyond the big facts mentioned above, increasing entrenchment is prevailing. And the new enclosures are more and more evident—from immigration policies even to raising physical barriers—in the West as well as in non-Western countries too, consistent with their emerging re-grouping and re-stratification according to economic growth rates.52 One striking example comes from urban planning, with the increasing spread of ‘gated communities’, i.e. of residential areas with restricted access designed to privatize what are normally public spaces. These new residential areas occur in both new suburban developments and older inner city areas for the purposes of security and segregation (Atkinson and Blandy 2006), and currently involve millions of people in advanced countries like the USA, raising concerns for social integration. Arguably, the shape of the processes and emergent structures examined above is characteristic of a society with no ‘outer space’. To be sure, there might be no explicit or conscious reference to such a condition in the behaviours, attitudes and policies that build enclaves and vortexes. Yet, such reactions could be definitely different if collective action could still cross the social and geographical boundaries to some ‘new world’, or to some empty space. The case of migration flows seems clear enough, but many issues in environmental policy are cause-and-effect of the same. As regards environmental problems, one reason why the dominant mind-set is so hard to change—besides the obvious clash of national and corporate interests—may be precisely that people are slow to realize the new predicament, although they may have some haunting feeling.

4.7 Conclusion. Openness, Closure, and the Big Bang of Social Relationships This chapter began from a substantive question and a main thesis. I asked what social forms are beginning to characterize the morphogenic syndrome, and what social qualities we can expect them to exhibit. Along the way, the bullet points that should comprise the conceptualization of social mechanisms was sketched.

52 Australia versus Indonesia and Pakistan versus India are only two of the most evident examples. In the cultural domain, the diffusion of values is suffering serious setbacks, while rapidly growing non-Western countries like Russia, India, and China become increasingly vocal in asserting their difference on many sensible issues connecting deep identity dimensions with concrete policy choices. The definition of the ‘family’ is a blatant example, although others may be brought up.

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I argued that the present development of the morphogenic logic is an essentially uneven process, which is giving rise to highly bounded social environments. The concepts of enclave and vortex, taken from the organizational literature and discussed in the light of the M/M approach, served as pegs around which my analysis was hung, which proved an effective tool for understanding the dynamics of new boundary building and the fragmented landscape of global society. Enclaves and vortexes as social forms are more likely to emerge where the logic of competition supersedes that of (cooperative) diffusion. The coming MS is announced by coexisting developmental paths, defined by strings of higher-order mechanisms, giving rise to expanding or shrinking environments that work to different effects. In view of all these considerations, it is important to conclude that social turbulence starts to generate partitioning strategies—and with them enclaves and vortical environments—precisely when competition prevails over cooperation. This all too general statement becomes more meaningful if we read it in connection with Archer’s argument about the intertwining logics of diffusion and competition, resulting in a delicate synergy, that pulls the social order in two different directions. The ‘new’ society of ‘our’ days is generating its new divides. Symbolic boundaries arise between opposite plans for the individual and collective future. The MS may speed up its transformation vis à vis human enhancement, pure contingency, and the ambivalent dominion of technique, serving both social control and individual desire. On the other hand, the complex of human rights may continuously expand, touching upon non-state actors and moving from lip service or principled acceptance to actual compliance; multiple creative, reflexive reactions may emerge in the domains of family life, labour, education, and others, against the loss of a minimum continuity, homogeneity, and stability of people’s relational contexts—i.e. as a way to counter unbound contingency. However, this cultural variety will interact with other factors that make processes of universalization versus retrenchment the most likely outcome. Social, political, economic, and cultural structures and processes in the coming MS may take the shape of a new wave of universalism as well as of uneven and fragmented worlds. Probably both are going to co-exist in an unstable equilibrium, in which the capacity to produce win-win games and avoid closure will be essential to human flourishing and even to survival. At least two tasks remain to be accomplished. One is to examine other possible social forms emerging from the same morphogenic situation, but characterized by their bridging and bonding capacity, that constitute the expansive side of the emerging MS. Processes of universalization are continually crossing the continually re-created and enforced boundaries. Capacity building and dissemination processes are opposing enclosures, and an emphasis on dissemination is contesting immunization. These complex processes, guided by different relational mechanisms, constitute the field of tension of the novel societal formation. The other, twin task involves a consideration of what norms and values are being destroyed, preserved, or generated anew. What normative processes are still working, and what personal strategies are successful in the context of the areas and boundaries marking the structural and cultural landscape of the new world? In other words, how ‘unbound’ is ‘unbound morphogenesis’ going to be from normativity itself?

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Chapter 5

The Logic of Opportunity and Its Normative (Dis)contents

Keywords Normativity · Anomy · Personal ontology · Universalism

5.1 Introduction: Social Norms and Social Morphogenesis What legal, social and cultural norms are being destroyed, preserved, or generated anew in the current, high-speed dynamics of global social order? What normative processes are at work in the structural and cultural landscape of this new world? In other words, how ‘unbound’ is social morphogenesis going to be from normativity, its prompts and restraints? The present chapter revolves around these fundamental questions. Such a presentation of the problem entails an underlying thesis, namely that the fate of the global society is not necessarily one of anomie. The sheer collapse of the normative fabric of society is an ever present risk, but it is much more likely that a new normative logic is at work. I will try to highlight some facets of that logic and to make sense of some related challenges. The hypothesis that a MS is possibly emerging—and its underpinning morphogenetic-relational approach1 —provides a promising, original vantage point from which such an issue can be examined. More precisely, this chapter studies both the implications of intensified social morphogenesis for social normativity and, conversely, the role played by normativity in social morphogenesis. The former deals with how morphogenesis is affecting normativity, causing both its disruption (de-normativization, anomie) and regeneration. The latter means that, depending on what normative processes and contents prevail, the MS will take on different forms and even diverging civilizational paths. The idea that social change, indeed that transitions between different societalhistorical formations, can be studied through the change in the prevailing kind of 1 This formulation,

which links a morphogenetic and relational approach, is my own responsibility. I tried to clarify its rationale in Maccarini (2013). © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. M. Maccarini, Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13624-6_5

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social norms clearly represents a classical analytical strategy for social science. Suffice it to mention Montesquieu’s monumental work, Henry Sumner Maine’s famous notion of the transition ‘from status to contract’ (Maine 1972), and Émile Durkheim’s theory of the division of labour in society, which was illustrated through the shift from penal to civil law as the prevailing form norms take in the societal contexts characterized, respectively, by mechanical versus organic solidarity. Leaving aside other possible examples, it is clear that exploring the connection between the MS and social norms places our study within an important sociological tradition. For all the virtues those classical works have, nowadays it seems hardly plausible to produce similarly sweeping generalizations to describe our contemporary ‘world society’ (Stichweh 2000). But at the same time, my démarche here will sidestep the meticulous analysis of single norms. An extremely long list of changing, rising or declining norms would immediately come to the fore, stretching from the idea of marriage and the couple to many other issues concerning technology, soft law, etc.2 I will not focus on any one of them, and will instead try to pinpoint a few major issues and trends. This is clearly no easy task. In his famous work on social differentiation, Simmel (1890: 6–11) noted that in sociological questions, as well as those of psychology and metaphysics, it is typical for opposite principles to display the same degree of plausibility. For example, it is possible to regard the world as ultimately unitary—every difference being nothing but false appearance—but also to believe that every part of it is completely individualized, not even one tree’s leaf being identical to another one—from which it would follow that any unification is nothing more than a subjective act of ours, the consequence of a psychological urge for unity for which there is no real, objective justification. According to Simmel, the cause of this uncertain knowledge lies in the fact that the objects described are in themselves complex and ambivalent, comprising such a huge variety of single facts that any thesis or statement about them can find support, bearing sufficient psychological weight to obliterate our consciousness of opposite experiences and interpretations. This means that the number of elements, relations and mechanisms simultaneously present prevents any sweeping generalization. Therefore, the connections created and explored both conceptually and empirically are always somewhat unilateral, though not necessarily wrong. This amazingly timely insight into social ambivalence, which sounds close to a critical realist outlook, could be a fair description of the present situation. Global society simultaneously feeds opposite phenomena. To quote only a few instances: the decreasing relevance of distance involves trust and cooperation, but also more confrontational attitudes between communities; therefore, we experience more unity and more fragmentation. There are more moral scandals, but there is also more moral indifference.3 A growing sensitivity for human rights co-exists 2 For

a discussion of some relevant changes see Archer (2014: 10–11). Alexander (2012), Porpora et al. (2013) for interesting arguments and examples on each side of this distinction in the political domain. Another impressive example concerns pedophilia—one of the last moral taboos in the secular West that is currently becoming a contested phenomenon. Here we witness a growing quest for transparency and media driven scandals, expressing a more refined moral sensitivity, paralleled by a tendency to downgrade such an inclination from ‘illness’ to ‘disorder’, and finally to mere ‘orientation’—which clearly involves a consistent march towards

3 See

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with war and violence to a degree unmatched since the two world wars. We have de-normativization and new norms, de-regulation and a growing bureaucratic threat. We experience the Internet as a locus of ideational diffusion as well as the arena of unprecedented cyber-wars.4 To sum up, it is impossible to indicate one single, unifying trend in the morphogenetic processes of global society. What I try to do instead is to point out the main foci of normative tension, the essential challenges, and a few strategies that appear to be central in the symbolic and institutional arenas of contemporary society. These strategies describe ways in which normative systems try to cope with intensified morphogenesis, avoiding sheer collapse and a resulting state of anomie. This involves the idea that a characteristic type of norms is currently emerging. The latter point may be further elaborated through a distinction between: (a) the cultural content of norms—the worldviews expressed through them and the way they mould social relations; (b) the very nature of normativity—namely, the type of obligation involved; (c) the normogenetic processes, i.e. the ways in which norms emerge, are institutionalized and enforced. All these dimensions deserve attention. The following analysis must provide an interpretation of some current phenomena, establishing their meaningful connection with the overarching situational logic and specific mechanisms characterizing the situation of intensified and (relatively) freewheeling morphogenesis. As hinted above, in this chapter I set out to examine norms that are being destroyed, preserved or generated afresh. More precisely, I try to answer a crucial question, namely whether new normative processes are emerging that constitute the MS’s own endogenous forms of stabilization. This wording raises a further issue. Following Archer (2014), we must distinguish stability from stabilization. In a nutshell, it must be emphasized that stability may result from morphostasis, thereby depending on ‘the continuing defence of pre-established vested interests’ (Ibidem, 8). But it can also be the outcome of brand new forms of stabilization, of new norms and institutions, responding to and supported by newly emerging objective interests.5 My principal aim is to gain some purchase on these emergent forms and processes, not to figure out the ways old normative arrangements may endure the chill of global winds. One last point needs clarification. I accept Archer’s statement, according to which the sources of normative stabilization are to be found in the notion of concerns, and

its moral (and in the end, legal) neutralization. This evolution is apparent in the political activity of the related protest groups, and can be traced through the various editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, issued by the American Psychiatric Association. For the most recent edition CHECK see American Psychiatric Association (2013). 4 The argument for diffusion has been effectively presented by Archer (2015). As regards cyberwars, the recent actions of the hacker group called the ‘Guardians of Peace’ (sic), which threatened Sony Inc. into cancelling the movie ‘The Interview’, is a good case in point, with a still unknown plot that possibly involves State and non-State actors and groups. 5 Among other things, this means stability is not necessarily the offspring of ‘defensive’ struggles.

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among those subjects she calls the meta-reflexives.6 To this she adds the concept of relational goods.7 Her argument could be summarized as follows: (i) the endogenous process of stabilization typical of a MS is characterized by the emergence of relational goods; (ii) the process begins from a cultural change of values grounded in contingent complementarities…; (iii) … and prompted by the concerns endorsed by meta-reflexive subjects; (iv) thus, stabilization results from the manifest benefits generated by relational initiatives that produce added social value in terms of trust, cooperation, reciprocity. With this said, it is necessary to add that values change among ‘active minorities’ first, and spread through the success of their experiments. This calls into question the category of experience and that of culture. The latter is important because of its contents. Someone can be a meta-reflexive, but the cultural contents involved in his/her concerns could still be totally different from those that produce relational goods—for example, they could be inspired by extreme individualism. Such are many subjects who currently spearhead protest movements and qualify as ‘normative entrepreneurs’, i.e. generators of new social norms. The former comes into the picture insofar as experiences do exist that must be judged in the absence of stable, pre-defined, sufficiently specific values or normative principles. Of course, experience and culture are mutually related, because experiences are not self-interpretative, but must be articulated within a multidimensional symbolic space of values, practices, and institutions, whilst social experiments and innovations in turn involve new experiences—i.e. ones exceeding established normative patterns—and may eventually result in newly stabilized norms, to the extent that they are perceived as ‘beneficial’ by some particular subjects. Having clarified my approach, in Sect. 5.2 I will outline what I consider to be the main challenges and the related responses, characterizing the relationship between the MS and the normative sphere. I will subsequently discuss two issues which are bound to be of crucial importance to the whole normative and symbolical landscape of the emerging MS. In Sect. 5.3, the argument will focus upon the specific problems concerning personal ontology, while Sect. 5.4 deals with emergent norm-creating processes which tend to produce innovative forms of universalism in the global arena.

6 See

again Archer (2014: 3–14 ff.). A full illustration of the above concepts obviously needs more extensive reading. See above all Archer (2000, 2003). 7 As regards this concept, Archer refers to Pierpaolo Donati’s work. See for example Donati and Solci (2011).

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5.2 Normative Tensions in a Morphogenic Society: Foci, Challenges and Strategies Foci What is the major influence of the MS on social normativity? What we know is that the new societal conditions make both the normative control of behaviour and the justification of social norms more and more challenging and extremely hard to effect. It is increasingly difficult to set effective constraints on global actors and their unchained powers, while it is also hard to establish a shared legitimation of values and norms, given the crisis of the subjects, rationales, and institutional settings which used to provide a foundational background throughout modernity. Broadly speaking, this depends on four factors, namely (i) the multiplying opportunities for action and experience, (ii) the spread of contextual incongruity, (iii) the globalization processes, with their related forms of differentiation of society, and (iv) the increasing cultural fragmentation of global society, which involves the decline or exhaustion of most symbolic resources that would allow mutual translation between various discourses and communities.8 These very general problems are well known. But what we see here is only crisis and de-normativization. Is this all there is to say about the transformation of social normativity under the pressure of such conditioning factors? First, there are a few major foci of normative tension in the MS, involving structural and cultural strains between conflicting innovations—some of which then find their respective ‘chains of compatibility’ making them mutually supportive—as well as being the case for agential struggles. They could be summarized as follows: (i) material goods, needs, and spaces. This involves the availability of food, water, natural resources, a healthy environment, work, land, and the related Commons for large parts of the world population. In the context of climate change, tensions revolving around this focus are likely to increase; (ii) knowledge, (social and personal) memory and oblivion, related to the new conditions prompted by the digital revolution and its possible consequences; (iii) human ontology and a new anthropology evoked by machines, hybrids, the manipulation of human biology, etc. Most constructive (innovative) as well as conflictual processes in the MS revolve around these areas, whose normative relevance is evident. As hinted above, in each of these domains global society is facing both a problem of control and one of justification. My thesis is that specific normative dilemmas arise concerning those problem areas, and their complex relationships. 8 The

increasingly confrontational attitude of non-Western civilizations and movements against the basic premises of Western modernity is a good illustration of this point. Secularization should also come into the picture as a relevant component. The full consideration of all these issues is obviously far beyond the scope of this essay. Points (i) and (ii) in the text are aptly examined by Archer (2012, 2014, 2015), and constitute the core of what is meant by a ‘reflexive’ and ‘morphogenic’ turn of society.

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Challenges More specifically, two challenges are upfront. Arguably, they are redefining most other issues. They also represent instructive fields in which to discuss problems of control and justification, and to test the emerging solutions. The former is a problem of ontology, the latter has to do with universalism. They are also mutually related, as can be clearly seen in the problem of generating normative universals in the domain of human dignity. It is possible to draw two distinctions to describe the perimeter of the coming scenario: (a) as regards ontology, the problem is what personal and social ontology is embedded in the emerging social norms of a MS. It makes a huge difference if the prevailing culture will be centred on the notion of human indisposability, instead of individual self-determination remaining the (only) guiding value of late modern society; (b) as to universalism, in the twilight of most ‘vertical’ sources of justification, a significant divide is separating different types of processes intended to generate ‘universality’. One finds expression in the attempts to reconstruct some normatively thick rules and definitions of social objects within ‘networks of communities’, while others lean heavily on technical standard setting, with the explicit aim of social engineering. The main differences between the two lie in the participation of the subjects involved and in the openness of dialogue to multiple rationalities9 (or not). Strategies The challenges I have just mentioned are met by different strategies, through which law and social norms adapt and react to the relevant dilemmas. Three of them are particularly important (Fig. 5.1). All these strategies describe ways in which normative systems try to cope with intensified morphogenesis, avoiding sheer collapse and a resulting state of anomie. They entail the orientation to a guiding value, but also a ‘guiding emotion’. Such a formula may raise some eyebrows in sociological quarters. I use it here to mean the basic intuitions, close to experience and still not (fully) articulated on a rational level, through which normative (e.g. moral) feelings find a first expression. As commentaries on experience, they initiate the process of emergence of concerns (Archer 2000: Chap. 6). Insofar as they are socially shared, they may become a powerful drive for normative claims to develop and for new norms to emerge. Moreover, the connection between prevailing emotions and the mobilization of normative complexes within human subjects can be traced to recent research in the domain of neurobiology.10 9 Throughout

the present chapter, this term (or its equivalent, ‘form of rationality’) refers to the different forms of argument, derived from different cognitive as well as normative presuppositions that social actors exhibit in connection with their diverse interests and identities. 10 A complex, interdisciplinary research domain is emerging at the intersection between neurobiology, moral philosophy, educational science, developmental psychology, and the sociological theory of socialization. For an inspiring summary statement see Narvaez and Bock (2014). More on this in Chap. 8.

5.2 Normative Tensions in a Morphogenic Society … Normative strategy a) autoimmune syndrome

Guiding value

121 Guiding emotion(s)

individual self-determination

individual desire

b) social closure (enclaves and vortexes)

identity, controllability

fear, safety, nostalgia, indignation (‘purity and danger’)

c) networking for foundations

‘safe and righteous innovation’, Imagination, shared rationality and common engagement. Desire to share experiences and goods relational goods.

Fig. 5.1 Normative strategies in the morphogenic society

Let us now examine the various strategies indicated in Fig. 5.1. Strategy (a) indicates those processes through which law reacts to disruptions in a self-destructive manner11 —its guiding value being individual self-determination, while desire (the satisfaction of individual preferences) is its guiding emotion. This explains its selfproblematizing nature, because both elements make it particularly hard to set limits to behavioural variety. Coping strategies come in two shapes: (i) Laws which temporarily legalize illegal behaviour. As such, these remain generally illegal (and may even be regarded as immoral), but are not negatively sanctioned for a given period of time or for a particular category of subjects, or under special conditions. Frequent laws that condone abuses—e.g. regarding fiscal or construction law—are a good case in point, producing the breakdown of normative expectations as a collateral effect. The autoimmune aspect comes into full light when one considers that the strategy in question is often employed (and legitimated) as a ‘necessary’ or even ‘rational’ way to escape the impossibility of control.12 Here the two broad dimensions of the normative crisis—control and justification—interact closely. Because the impossibility of control is a paradoxical form of justification for a norm, the effect on justification is devastating. (ii) Technical regulative standards, which set prerequisites for individual or collective entities (e.g. nation-states, functional systems, etc.) to respect, where the autoimmune effect is generated through a different mechanism. The point is that such regulations often lack any apparent normative content that may possibly be traced back to any principled premise or assumption. Further, their importance 11 The application of the term “autoimmune syndrome” to the dynamics of the legal system—in the way I use it here—must be traced to Prandini (2012 passim). The meaning this author attributes to the formula is here summarized at point (i) below. In point (ii) I extend it beyond that original statement. 12 The ineffectiveness of control is often used to justify legislative change, even in the ‘hard cases’ of morally contested issues such as abortion, euthanasia, etc. Appeal to this ‘principle’ is quite common, e.g. when it is deemed ‘irrational’ or even ‘unfair’ to forbid behaviour that is allowed elsewhere.

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for a given collectivity may also be less than clear in terms of utility.13 Sometimes they even prevent the pursuit of some legitimate good—as it happens in the case of many bureaucratic constraints on action. Therefore, their content is often perceived as either arbitrary or hiding the sheer power and interest of the stronger party. If this is the case, such standards induce a cost benefit calculation on the part of the subjects, and their normative nature is denied. These days, the EU fiscal compact and the norms concerning the GDP/debt ratio risk are regarded as an example of this strategy. As is apparent, this represents a significant factor in the legitimation crisis of the whole European project. It is still relevant to note that form (ii) indicates, and in turn fosters, a lack of trust among the members of a network or of a collectivity. More generally speaking, this strategy develops as a fully heteronomous form of legislation, which is connected with the spiraling dynamics of ‘freedom vs. control’, as the result of its radicalization.14 My point here is that such a strategy itself becomes just one option in the MS, where it is paralleled by other, emergent developmental paths. Strategy (b) in Fig. 5.1 has to do with social closure, thereby involving those social enclaves and vortexes I discussed in Chap. 4. It represents the attempt to outface the dynamics of growing morphogenesis by creating enclosures where strong normative premises may still be shared, or setting barriers against social environments where norms simply cannot work. Here the driving force may be the complex of fear and safety, and the urge to fly from complexity and openness. The flipside would be the capacity to reconstruct social distance and to simplify social dynamics. The prevailing emotion, however, may also be indignation, and the scandal produced by compulsory contact with different lifestyles. In Western societies, the integration problems concerning some immigrant communities are a case in point. Both the closure against them and their own self-closure within their ‘bonding social capital’ are examples of the same strategy. Finally, strategy (c) is driven by a ‘wish to share’, coupled with the psychological complex of imagination and engagement, and with the cultural idea that a new ‘common world’ and some contextual congruity must be reconstructed from the bottom up, through networks connecting various communities. This is the only strategy that still posits the possibility of a normatively meaningful (i.e., not neutral) universalism, although this can only result from a networking process, not from a ‘vertical’ or hierarchical form of rationality or politics. It should be noted at this point that empirically observable cases may at times be rather ambivalent as to whether they belong to one or the other strategy, and such an ambivalence often reveals profound social contradictions. Such ambivalences can only be disentangled over time, following the morphogenetic cycles through which—for example—a law in enacted by all parties involved. A good example is the Italian law n. 67, 04/28/2014, which establishes a particular type of ‘probation’ for adult people. I will use this case to illustrate the ambivalence often occurring 13 Without

this clarification, traffic lights would fall into this category—which would be absurd.

14 I cannot follow this line of thought in its far-reaching implications. The very crisis of late modern

society has been read as an outcome of such a problem. For this thesis see Donati (1997).

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on this level. On the one hand, the law treads an innovative path in criminal legal reasoning, in that it institutionalizes alternative forms of punishment that do not involve serving any time in jail. Further, the social control of the convicted seems to be entrusted to a ‘civil’ network including the court, social work offices,15 third sector associations, and possibly the family of the convicted and the victim him/herself. The ideal would seem to involve reconstructing trust and reciprocity. It also entails the need for different subjects to converge on a common definition of a situation and to organize common action, which involves mutual understanding between different rationalities and a delicate balance between the material and ideal interests of all the stakeholders. If the whole enterprise is conducted effectively, it could be an illustration of strategy (c), generating the common goods: ‘security’, ‘social control’, and ‘rehabilitation of the guilty’ for a given local community through an intense networking process. The organizational routines, as well as the professional habitus and established practices of lawyers, judges, social workers, third sector leaders, etc. are clearly challenged by a reflexive imperative, imposed by the new empirical and normative conditions. On the other hand, many features of the law reveal its ‘deflationary’ aim (Bartoli 2014; Marandola 2014). The law was solicited by a recent ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (2013), which found Italy guilty of overcrowded jails, and came as a further attempt to decrease the number of inmates, without looking like one more ‘pardon’ that would cancel any punishment for the sake of reducing overcrowding. If such an instrumental goal prevails, then the novelty of the norm might boil down to a cosmetic change, paying lip service to the principles outlined above while really reducing the new complex process to a few bureaucratic rules which would allow it to meet the maximum number of inmates recommended by the Court and by international legal standards. The results of implementation will be crucial to disambiguate the issue. In the last instance, this new institute will prove ‘successful’ or not—regardless of the standards met—depending on the experience of personal and social security-and-justice it will be able to foster. If people feel and their everyday social environments are experienced as being ‘safer’ (or not); if the various stakeholders involved perceive the relevant process as producing a ‘fair’ outcome, this will influence the experiment of the new norm, determining its success or failure. The experience of judges, lawyers, social workers, convicts, victims, police forces, and wider ‘public opinion’ will all be important in this respect. Such a shared experience is of course not a foregone conclusion, in that it always raises issues—in this and in other cases—both in terms of universalistic processes and of the content of norms. Each of the three strategies I have rather cursorily illustrated has its own way of facing the ontological and the universalistic challenge. The former must now be further examined, as it can highlight one very important way in which these developments may come to qualify the MS as more or less, and differently, ‘bound’ or ‘unbound’. The second will be covered in Sect. 5.4. 15 More

precisely, the UEPE (office for external implementation of criminal law). I thank Cristina Selmi, Ph.D., for discussing this case with me and providing useful first-hand information.

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One last remark concerns a unifying insight I have been following throughout this chapter: that the need for normative regulation increasingly emerges on the boundaries between the functionally differentiated subsystems of global society, between these and their human and natural environment, as well as between the ontological layers that constitute the very stuff of social and personal reality.16 The logic underlying such normativity, as well as the relevant kind of obligation and relationality involved, qualify the developmental path we can expect the MS to follow. This point is very consequential for a theory of social differentiation. Its prevailing form is going to have a profound influence upon the way these normative tensions and challenges are faced. In global society, social relations and communications, institutional arenas, and cultural domains are developing beyond national borders, which are becoming less and less meaningful. This is usually taken to mean that functional differentiation is now the primary form of differentiation.17 However, such a post-national constellation (Habermas 2001) can hardly be reduced to the functional principle of differentiation. Social and political movements, lifestyle or religious communities, criminal organizations, continually cross national boundaries, and transnational diasporas assume increasing importance (Ben-Rafael 2003). What they all have in common is that they perform actions, enter relations, and express allegiances that cut across societies and functional systems throughout the world, tending to become the primary obligation (obligatio ligia) in cases of conflicting loyalties. This prevents them from being downplayed as forms of segmentary differentiation within the primary functional principle.18 In that sense, one could speak of a social differentiation along cultural, ethnic or religious lines. Finally, there are forms of differentiation that are still coupled with a territorial principle, but exceed the level of nation-states. This does not mean that states disappear, or that they cease to condition the lives of their populations. It means that most relevant processes and decisions come to depend on a civilizational dimension, referring to geo-cultural, geo-political, and geo-economic areas, which transcend national borders, characterized by a relatively common cultural program and common institutional arenas, with their typical features and tensions.19 Such a plurality of powers, identities and loyalties is itself an expression of the MS in its capacity to produce ‘variety’, which here takes the form of social entities organized around different selective principles and endowed with specific forms of 16 As regards the boundaries between functional systems and their environments as important sources of new global normativity, I share this insight with Prandini (2012: 64). My own version of it has a wider scope, including (i) the ontological dimension, (ii) the emphasis on the type of obligation, and (iii) the complex nature of the differentiation of global society (see below). 17 I don’t even try to provide references for the concept of functional differentiation. Its clearest and most systematic statement to me remains that offered by Luhmann (1997). 18 As in the case of nation-states surviving within the functionally differentiated system of politics. For this interpretation see Luhmann (1997: 806–812). 19 This point brings up a complex issue, which I cannot follow up here. A different way to put it would be that nation-states only display sufficient vitality when they assume the dimension of sub-continental units—such as the USA or China—while their ‘classical’ modern format becomes hopelessly inadequate—as is the case with old European states.

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inner rationality. The normative tensions which characterize world society are largely an expression of this polyarchy. Therefore, the normative texture of the coming MS will be an emergent effect of such a complex game.

5.3 Morphogenic Society, Morphological Rights: The Logic of Opportunity and Its Ontological (Dis)Contents The Ontological Challenge Personal and social ontology were an essential element of modern society. On the personal level, an idea of agency is still pivotal in most social processes and in all functional subsystems of global society. On the social level, the very stuff of the ‘body politic’ and its articulation has been a central theme of the scholarly debate and—more concretely—of institutional creativity. Both levels are currently under pressure from intensified morphogenesis, whose impact is probing deeper and deeper into the most basic premises of our once ‘modern’ historical formation. As a consequence, it is not surprising that social and legal norms concerning the ontological dimension are spearheading the present changes. Arguably, they represent a key distinguishing factor between what may be called ‘bound’ and ‘unbound’ morphogenesis—and the related future of our society. My thesis is twofold. First, I argue that one decisive point for the culture of global society is whether it is human indisposability20 or individual self-determination that constitutes the guiding value. The problem, of course, is not simply to assert either principle, but to articulate its justification in such a way that is culturally adequate and compatible with the structure and dynamics of the MS. Second, I hold that the crucial difference between these two cultural contestants is the way in which the relations between the ontological layers comprising the human being are conceived of and protected by law and by socially shared cultural norms. The situational logic of opportunity can be instantiated in different ways. The difference, which qualifies a civilizational turning point, lies in the way the relationships in question are interpreted, distorted or denied, both conceptually—within the Cultural System—and practically, in Socio-Cultural interactions. In this section, I focus upon certain normative phenomena regarding the ontological status of the human person. In terms of the dimensions of normativity listed above (Sect. 5.1), the argument here revolves mainly around the content of norms and the type of obligation. Before getting to the core argument, let us quickly outline its overarching context. Global society seems to place a strong emphasis on the idea 20 Simply put, the idea of indisposability implies the normative request to treat the natural constitution of human beings as indisposable (i.e. unavailable for manipulation), and is directed against the attitude of having it at one’s disposal, as it happens in case parts of the human body could be patented and become available for industrial production or commercial exchange. There is obviously an extended literature on this subject. See at least Lohmann (2014: 167 ss.). See also Joas (2008: 125–132, 2013).

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of the ‘human’. This means that the notion is increasingly appealed to, in frequent attempts to articulate fears that deep social change undermines the conditions for the existence of society—among which figures humanity itself.21 Thus, the symbol of the human (and his/her dignity) expresses what risks to be destroyed, while simultaneously evoking a possible barrier against destruction. ‘Humanity’ is meant to stop contingency, reducing the arbitrariness of actions, experiences, decisions, and socially possible connections.22 This appeal to ‘the human’ is based on the premise that something may be saved from the whirlpool of social change, and ‘remain fixed’. However, in a highly morphogenetic context the idea that something may resist contingency, including the human being in his/her very nature, becomes increasingly unlikely. The emphasis on humanity is paralleled by growing attention and concern for human rights. This connection even promises to become the bearer of deep transformations in our legal systems. Starting with those mobilizations following the end of the cold war, and with the democratization processes in various regions of world society—from Eastern Europe to Latin America—new times and spaces opened up for law, which may prompt a revolution: “If the ‘revolution of equality’ was the hallmark of modernity, the ‘revolution of dignity’ signals a new time, as the offspring of the tragic 1900s, and opens the age of the relationship between the person, science and technology”.23 The path that once led from homo hierarchicus to homo aequalis would now extend to generate homo dignus, characterized by the emergence of new rights connected with a new anthropology. All this entails a tremendous set of normative problems. If it is to be taken for granted that all ‘external’ references to reason, nature, and religion are gone, and cannot constrain contingency, then how are intangible and indispensable norms to be produced? Given the present ‘clash of civilizations’ within the West, what could still serve as a foundation for human rights? The contours of the constitutionalization of the person (Rodotà 2012), that should contrast with the dehumanization of society, become ever more uncertain. What is its relationship with the transformations of the human that are prompted by science and technology? Will it still be possible to produce a shared culture of human rights and dignity within global society? What ‘sources of the self’ are still available to do this job? The idea and value of human rights and dignity can be usefully conceived of as a process of sacralization, whose specific object is the human person (Joas 2013). The latter is not the only conceivable ‘sacred object’. In fact, other concurrent, indeed rival processes of sacralization have been going on throughout modernity, centred on race, nation, socio-economic class, and more. Such processes are a way for societies to define their own identity. One implication of this is the misleading view that ‘sacredness’ only characterizes pre-modern societies and should be abandoned. What we deal with is rather a difference in objects and cultural contents.24 21 Fuchs

and Göbel (1994: 8). See also Donati (2009). and Göbel (1994: 9, 14). 23 Rodotà (2012: 184) (my translation). 24 An impressive (irritating) demonstration of this came some time ago from one of the most distinguished representatives of Islamist terrorism. His fierce accusation to the West was not that it has 22 Fuchs

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Now, the emergence and the relative ‘success story’ of human rights would seem to indicate that the sacralization of the person prevailed over other rival themes, at least in the European and Western society and in international institutions. The core of law comes to deal with the very root of humanity. But this is exactly the point. Given the intense multiplication of opportunities for action and experience, and the loss of external symbolic references, where is this root, how is the ‘person’ understood, and how is his/her value asserted and justified? On these issues, we must deal with sheer lack of consensus within the West—let alone between the West and ‘the rest’. In fact, the contestation is getting to fundamentals. With the rising technical opportunity for humans to become neuro-bio-info-nano entities, the sharp alternative between being either human or ‘anything else’ (e.g. machines) will soon be unable to grasp the complexity of our coming ontology. Law, and social norms in general, are caught in a potentially contradictory ‘double mission’, namely to safeguard the deep ontology of the human species and to foster, or at least not hinder the emergence of new, ‘post-human’ anthropologies.25 Here two normative cultures part company, their guiding values leading social normativity in diverging directions. A culture of indisposability involves two principal tenets. First, the idea that every human being has an untouchable core,26 which was not selfproduced and does not depend on one’s performance and capabilities. Therefore, such an ‘inner core’ cannot be lost or destroyed, and ultimately is not at one’s disposal. The second tenet entails the belief that human existence is no mere fact. The fact that human beings are actually there is not just a random event, but happens within a set of relationships with various layers of reality that gives it meaning and value. Such a relational bundle also generates obligations. The two aspects converge on the idea that human dignity means first and foremost the indisposability of the human. Now, it is certainly possible to leave foundational matters in the background, and admit that the above tenets may be supported by different conceptual tools. However, at the end of the day, the problem remains as to whether the symbolic resources to produce such a culture are still with us or not, and how indisposability could become a valid and motivating force, in the characteristic conditions of an emerging MS. The culture that holds individual self-determination as the main (indeed, absolute) value kicks off from very different premises. In this sense, systems theory has articulated an instructive interpretation, conceiving of human rights as essentially an de-sacralized everything. He did not go with the Weberian motif of disenchantment, which would supposedly scandalize a ‘fundamentalist’ person. On the contrary, his point was that Western societies were sanctifying different—and allegedly wrong—things and causes. The mistake would be one of ‘misplaced sacredness’. This, in his opinion, is the big divide between the two civilizations. The example comes from a video message issued by Al Zawahiri, broadcast by Al Jazeera in March, 2006. In that message he said the decline of the ‘false’ and ‘dying’ Western civilization depends on its making ‘zionism, the Holocaust, and sexual perversity’ its sacred objects. Thus, the notorious ‘clash of civilizations’ would amount to the confrontation between two ideas of the sacred, not between theocracy and secularism. 25 The formula bears the obvious weight of a paradox. On the posthuman, the literature is now so extended that I give up quotations. I’ll refer to a few important authors in the text below. 26 About the relevance of untouchability, as related to other companion concepts like dignity, see Lohmann and other contributions in Albers et al. (2014).

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emergent effect of functional differentiation (Luhmann 1993). Conceptually they correspond to the principled, mandatory openness of modern society, where every individual must be able to access every social subsystem. This excludes the validity of any limit imposed by ‘rigid’ classification. Human rights, therefore, appear as a particular way to assert freedom and equality, which comes into the picture when society gives up the forms of life that were typical of Ancien Régime stratification to adapt to the ongoing individualization of individuals.27 The interesting point here is that in such a perspective human dignity is opposed to ‘nature’, which is the source of essential, indisposable distinctions.28 Luhmann’s intriguing argument is that the idea of ‘nature’ typically served the discriminatory purpose of positing ontological distinctions between different ‘kinds’ of people—i.e. within humanity—and enforcing practices of social exclusion. This has been culturally represented in terms of race, caste, or of any other symbol which could work as a possible ground for a ‘naturalized’ notion of social stratification. Therefore, in this context the notion of indisposability really means something like ‘unfair rigidity’, limiting access to given social spheres, and thereby stifling human freedom. My aim is not to follow the whole Luhmannian argument, but to highlight its connection with the legal doctrines which emphasize individual self-determination. The latter see nature only as chance and necessity, devoid of any normative meaning. Normative meaning should emerge from the human historical condition, in the particular sense that the person is his/her will and praxis, extended over the life course and applied to the ever varying situations and spheres of life encountered on the individual’s biographical trajectory. In this game, the individual should be free to construct his/her personality, using all opportunities that are socially available. Accordingly, human rights may emerge, and their list be extended through protest and struggles in these various spheres and concrete situations. As a result, what this culture has to offer in the face of the post-human challenge is a basic idea: innovation must go on, and no predetermined direction may be fixed. The only norm that is still perceived as valid says that equality of opportunities should be guaranteed for all (adult) individuals. In other words, equality and freedom are still the only categories that are expected to manage the technological revolution. The problem is that choice remains free, including access to self-enhancing technologies (Hughes 2004). Dignity appears at first as a third principle, beyond freedom and equality, but ends up being nothing more than an additive effect of ‘freedom plus equality’. This does not come as a surprise, given the absence of an ontological dimension. In this structural and cultural context, the symbolic vector of innovation is epitomized by the concept of morphological freedom, and its corresponding rights (Bostrom 2005). These are the rights to enhance oneself by technical means. More precisely, it means to legitimate the will to give oneself a form that matches one’s (self-)imagery, as well as to escape the limits of one’s present (human) form. They apply to many crucial domains where human biology is involved, from procreation to human/machine relationships. 27 Luhmann 28 Ibidem,

(1993: 484, 515 ss). pp. 191–192; 233 ss.; 575.

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The carrier groups of these ideational and material interests are: (i) the protest movements and advocacy groups which stand for morphological rights—everyone who claims his/her self-perception should bear normative meaning for society; (ii) technoscience labs; (iii) biotech corporations. These actors and movements are currently riding on the Western mainstream. If this ‘struggle for rights’ is successful, technological liberation from nature will be accomplished. To sum up, if dignity is understood exclusively as equally possible forms of selfdetermination, then the new challenges are met with the conceptual tools which served to fight the cultural-and-structural wars of classical modernity, when equality was the main problem in principle. I am perfectly aware that it still is in practice. Indeed, global society is currently producing less, not more equality. However, technological divides (the ‘enhanced’ vs. the ‘unenhanced’) will surely add to the burden. My point is obviously not that freedom and equality should be dismissed as irrelevant. On the contrary, I deem it very hard to imagine an effective protection for such goods in the absence of an explicit ontology of indisposability. But this will be impossible, if the latter is mistaken as the comfortable soul mate of pre-modern hierarchical societies. This point becomes clear if one considers what I call the ‘ontological backlash’. By this I mean that the ontological changes prompted by the various ‘anthropotechnics’29 will feed back onto the very normative structures which try to make themselves indifferent to it. Such an attempt entails the bizarre illusion that ontological change will be inconsequential, but who can really imagine what meaning and value any ‘indispensable norm’—indeed, any constraint—could still have for the post-human beings who will emerge from the (egalitarian) exercise of their morphological freedom? This means that science and technology intensify, and so to speak ‘transfigure’ the themes of freedom and equality, in that heteronomy and inequality can come to be rooted in our very personal ontology. This is exactly why it is hard to demonstrate that the exclusive value of self-determination can be a robust bulwark of human dignity. It seems much more realistic to accept that radical individualism and anthropotechnics stand in a relation of (contingent) complementarity. As with every contingent relationship, its outcome is—by definition—not a necessary one! The human person in her indisposability versus pure self-producing individuality are the two ‘sacred objects’ that are posed to define the latent identity pattern of the MS. In the last instance, the issue at stake can be understood through the concept of ‘transcendence’, as applied to both individual and collective life.30 Human enhancement techniques point explicitly to such an aim. The problem is whether 29 I

take the term ‘anthropotechnics’ from Sloterdijk (2013). Using it in the present context, I change—or better, restrict—its meaning to technologically assisted manipulations of the human person. 30 This problem has triggered a renewed interest within sociology (not just history) for concepts such as the ‘Axial Age’ (Bellah and Joas 2012). For an interesting discussion of a strictly related

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humanity will preserve some sense of its transcendence—i.e. a relationship with some ‘exterior’31 —or it will try to produce (re-enter) it within an enhanced immanence. In a nutshell, the coming civilizational distinction is between conceiving of humans—indeed, of the whole world—as a material platform from which resources may be drawn and upon which powers and capacities may be implanted, and a nonutilitarian, relationally articulated recognition of their ontological integrity. The enhanced society would confront us with a tough decision, namely whether the re-identification and protection of all that is human will depend on recognition or rather on a brand new construction. If human experience on the planet makes sense as self-transcendence within an immanent sphere, this involves grasping-and-letting go of our roots. In other words, the point is whether the human species still conceives of itself as not only creating meaning, but as an entity that is inherently endowed with meaning. Such meaning may only be discovered in and through social relationships, provided that humans still think of themselves as related to a world that is not totally of its own production, and is not merely the product of chance. Many ways may be opened for this recognition, but options should be made explicit in the culture and in the social norms advanced societies want to enforce. A choice will happen anyway, and will be crucial for the sense of human experience as a whole, for the quality of human life and the meaning attributable to its accomplishment. Needless to add, this is also a fundamental watershed for the profile of the coming MS. Stepwise Post-humanism? The second part of my thesis connects the guiding values I have been discussing to a specific type of norms, whose cultural content and underlying logic of obligation share a common denominator. In my view, a key feature of emerging social norms concerns the way they conceive of and safeguard the relationships obtaining between the different layers comprising human ontology.32 It looks as if our normative culture is currently running a particular experiment, which consists of separating the various dimensions of the human—material, biological, psychological, and social. The idea is to regulate social and individual opportunities of action as if each of these dimensions made no difference and were of no consequence for the rest. For example, norms would allow us to act as if our biological being would and should mean nothing to society, or as if social structures meant nothing to individual psychic systems. Even when such differences can be detected, they are normatively disregarded. Therefore, the human body becomes a platform that can be used to enhance its powers and virtual properties. The morphogenic thrust lies in the attempt to make all games, permutations, and combinations possible, through the dissolution of the relationships topic see also Donati (2010). The issue is obviously far beyond the scope of this paper, but it would represent a way to ‘re-code’ the whole argument I am presenting here. 31 By this formulation I indicate that transcendence and ‘exterior’ are also strictly connected with relationality. 32 I use the formula ‘social norms’ here in its most general meaning, to include law and other norms. The reason is that the problem does not lie in law alone, but in the whole gamut of normative symbols shared at the socio-cultural level, playing a regulative and constitutive role for behaviour.

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between ontological layers. Such a dissolution, making relationships invisible or at least totally contingent, and bereft of any reality status, serves the purpose of making all games possible, thereby increasing the opportunities for individual choice, action and experience. The rationale is that norms should forbid constraining individual creativity in its various possible forms—including technically assisted ones. An example concerns so-called ‘procreation rights’, where the very definitions of a couple, of intra- and inter-generational relationships are becoming shaky, and where specific goals of actions and interventions tend to focus on one aspect of things, regardless of the possible impact on other dimensions—as if ‘all other things remain equal’. Embryo selection for the enhancement of cognitive abilities is a similar case in point (Shulman and Bostrom 2014). Advocates of such (future) practices invoke the relevance of ‘human capital’; genetic means are allegedly just another way to increase it. Their impact on society is usually predicted without any consideration about the social relations involved, or the symmetries and a-symmetries that would obtain within personal ontological layers. In some cases, the norm-creating strategy involved may be that of sheer ‘openness’, setting provisional standards that show no clear connection with any principled constraint. When this is the case, the role of ‘regulators’ is merely that they can speed or slow advance through rules on stem cell research and the private consumer genomics market. A different example is that of a recent court ruling. On December, 2014, the European court of justice ruled upon unfertilised human ova.33 The court overturned its own previous judgement, maintaining that an organism which is incapable of developing into a human being does not constitute a human embryo within the meaning of the European Biotech Directive. Accordingly, uses of such an organism for industrial or commercial purposes may, as a rule, be patented. In the judgment in question, the Court holds that, in order to be classified as a ‘human embryo’, a non-fertilised human ovum must necessarily have the inherent capacity of developing into a human being. Consequently, the mere fact that a parthenogenetically-activated human ovum commences a process of development is not sufficient for it to be regarded as a ‘human embryo’. By contrast, where such an ovum does have the inherent capacity of developing into a human being, it should be treated in the same way as a fertilised human ovum, at all stages of its development. In that respect, it is for the High Court of Justice to determine whether or not, in the light of knowledge which is sufficiently tried and tested by international medical science, the organisms which are the subject of ISCO’s34 applications for registration have the inherent capacity of developing into a human being. In the previously cited Biotech Directive is EU Directive 98/44, article 6 is worded as follows: ‘1. Inventions shall be considered unpatentable where their commercial exploitation would be contrary to ordre public or morality’. This is the same principle used by the American Supreme Court in 2013 to deny Myriad Genetics Inc. the right to patent and copyright human genes Brca1 and 33 European

Court of Justice (2014).

34 ISCO stands for ‘International Stem Cell Corporation’—a publicly traded biotechnology company

based in California.

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Brca2, which the corporation labs had isolated. Therefore, this might well be—in an ironically strong sense—a case of ‘cross-fertilization’ between courts—one of the key principles in the soft law fostered by the ‘global community of courts’ (see Sect. 5.3). However, further study allowed the European Court of Justice to come to the conclusion of December 2014 mentioned above. Moreover, ISCO amended its application before the Hearing Officer, promising to avoid any further genetic manipulation aiming at making the parthenote able to develop into a human being. Such a decision appears to be reasonable at first sight. However, these rulings are ambivalent enough to leave space for different interpretations. Indeed, this very ambivalence is an inherent feature of soft law. Further, the importance of interpretation as a basic way for soft law to evolve should not be underestimated. Nobody seems to be asking a few elementary questions. First, where did the original ovum come from? It must have been taken from some human at some point. The procedure in question is not mentioned, and is definitely outside the Court’s purview. Second, the relevant parthenote will not be able to develop into a full blown human being, but it may become some part of a human body (tissue, cornea, etc.). Indeed, this was the medical (and economic) point of the whole operation. Third, ISCO might keep its word, but we may not even need to apply further techniques. There are cases in which the same technologies used for a given purpose later turn out to lead to unexpected applications. For example, the same techniques now used to avert disease—such as Tay-Sachs genetic disease—also seem likely to enable embryo selection for more complex heritable traits that involve many genes and environmental influences, such as height or cognitive ability (Shulman and Bostrom 2014). Overall, this is a good example of the way law advances. Be it through unprincipled regulations or by cross-checked (criss-crossing) court rulings.35 Change usually happens stepwise, not through severe ‘cultural shocks’, but by means of little steps which gradually and incrementally come to gain momentum and finally cross a morphological/ontological threshold. A second example to be presented here examines human enhancement techniques in the light of the European legal framework. The European Union is using the formula of ‘inclusive innovation’ as a way to articulate its ideological, legal, and policy framework for spurring-and-steering socio-cultural change. It is interesting to study 35 The strategy of ‘social closure’ is bound to fail in the long run, should it try to create ‘safe havens’ where such experiments cannot enter. This goes for Western societies. The often confrontational attitude other civilizations may have as regards some of the behaviour in question is far from irrelevant, but its full consideration is beyond the scope of this chapter. The notion of ‘cross-checked court rulings’ refers to the new forms of network universalism that lean on technical deliberative or adjudicating bodies, typically courts and international arbitration boards. These courts and boards perform sort of a legal bricolage, deciding what laws are applicable and combining them so as to create a relatively consistent corpus of transnational law. The validity of a norm would then be left to the cross-check and cross-validation between these actors, constituting a ‘global community of courts’ through continuous mutual observation and adaptation (Burke-White 2002; Slaugther 2003; Teubner 2000, 2002a, b).

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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?36 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 dissimilar in its main lines from many others in the related literature. Jes Harfeld lists a few other, more articulate attempts: In his recent book, Allen Buchanan defines human enhancement as ‘a deliberate intervention, 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, p 8). (see also Harfeld 2012, p. 3)

Two things should be noted at the outset. First, HET may improve an existing capacity, i.e. one that is typical of ‘normal’ individuals 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 2012). 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.37 Such ideological forces are surely 36 Throughout this section I draw both the biomedical and the juridical information for my discussion from the following sources: Arnaldi and Marin (2012), Ruggiu (2012), Gerotto et al. (2011), Harfeld (2012). 37 The 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.

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involved, but the emergence of the HET is more fruitfully explained and interpreted if structurally linked with the ‘morphogenic 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 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/or anthropological 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 further radicalizations of the problem. Indeed, 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.38 Furthermore, (b) HET are related to the main mechanisms of the morphogenic syndrome. Among 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 combinatorial 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 devel38 For 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.

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oped, 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 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’ could look like, and to the role norms could play in that process. 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 leaves a space for unconditionality. According to Prandini, the increasing relevance of human rights in global society would play precisely this role (Prandini 2012; Grion 2012). How are emerging legal frameworks doing in this respect? A first practical tool is the distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic HET. This distinction draws an ideal 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 antiaging 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

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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 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 the following: (i) autonomy and freedom of choice (extended to such features as 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 types of competence proves rather disappointing, for at least two reasons. The first reason 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 would require a heavily problematic reference to the future and to unpredictable consequences—a blatant example of the contraction of the present noted in Sect. 5.3. The second reason is a normative one: the culture incorporated by the Courts—as summarized in principles (i)–(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 distinguishing 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;

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(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 sociocultural 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 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.39 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? 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. Emotions do not totally transcend culture, therefore sharing pain (cum-patire) is not enough,40 because it is neither a fully cross-cultural trait, 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 lasting, 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. But ultimately, this whole work will not be able to bypass social and personal ontology. Once certain emergent phenomena have been identified, 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.

39 Insofar 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). 40 Among 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’?

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5.4 The Quest for Universalism in the Morphogenic Society The Crisis and Need for Norms in the Global Society The idea and practice of universalism makes another instructive domain where the norm-creating processes that characterize a MS can be examined. In this context, it is clear that the very meaning of universality is undergoing profound redefinition. For example, ‘universal’ may stand for something all-embracing, valid for all members of a given community,41 but could also mean to be ‘bound in all directions’ (Serres 1992), increasing the possible directions of experience and action, and the combinatorial games people can play on the way to self-construction not only as working beings, but as fully self-building entities. Be that as it may, the theme obviously raises the issue of the unity versus fragmentation of global society, and of how the ongoing normative processes may contribute to either. On the one hand, the present situation presents us with a rather grim picture. Anything that could remotely resemble a smooth process of cultural diffusion of ‘universally’ shared values is suffering major setbacks. One just needs to think of the way in which different societies and their cultures define such basic notions as that of the family, with the related problems involving policy and deep identity, and consider the widening gap that separates ‘the West’ from ‘the Rest’. One could also consider the growing violence and diffused conflicts in various regions of global society. Neo-colonial strategies are still tried with the weak parts of ‘the Rest’, but after the fall of the ‘Yalta world’ they fail to produce any stable, if unfair, outcome, and keep feeding back into chains of endless struggles. Non-Western geo-political and geo-cultural powers emerge, religious identities mix with various material interests, and inter-cultural dialogue seems as hard as it gets. Also, a few years ago human rights seemed to have been rediscovered, and now they are arguably worse off than they’ve been for decades. All these facts notwithstanding, it would be a gross mistake to regard the prospects of the (potential) MS as doomed to foster a triumph of sheer de-normativization in the dimension of global governance. Anomie is one branch of the morphogenic tree, but normative morphogenesis is also at work. It is important to note that I am not talking about the mere ‘resistance’ of morphostatic forces. Nor am I thinking of a ‘moral’ reaction against (certain aspects of) unchained morphogenesis. Both these phenomena may well be in place, but I won’t dwell on them here.42 The point I’m making is that new ways to generate norms are emerging, with their inherent rationale and logic of obligation. This process is connected with the very engine of intensified morphogenesis. Increasing opportunities for action and experience generate normative expectations, needs of security, and emergent norms, lest the opportunities could be driven to a stalemate and would not be exploited. From the core of social dynamics an orientation must emerge to generate some self-constraint, 41 To

be ideally extended to the whole world society. strategy of social closure (Sect. 5.1), and the related social form of the ‘enclave’ (Chap. 4 in this volume) may account for some of these facts. 42 The

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precisely in the context of ‘multiplying combinatorial games’. However, the dilemma of a MS lies in having to give up the certainties of foundational reason,43 while it remains hard to believe in the magic of some ‘order from chaos’. Basic feelings, cultural traumas, scandals, play a significant role, but something else is needed. My reflection takes off from a basic assumption: in the MS, neither social closure nor mere neutralization (i.e. the autoimmune de-normativization of law) can generate shared norms or values. These can only be the emergent effect of complex social networks, insofar as they can also tap into symbolic resources endowed with adequate potentials for ‘universalization’. But how is this happening? In making my case, I find it useful to draw upon Gunther Teubner’s conceptual frame on this theme.44 Therefore, I will briefly outline some of his central points, which illustrate some essential transformations law is undergoing in global society. They will serve as pegs around which I’ll hang my analysis. While using them as coordinates to identify legal change, as well as foci of tensions and debates, I will highlight what convergence and divergence is involved between this view and a morphogenetic analysis of normative processes. Globalization Processes and Polycontexturality The starting point must be a consideration of the globalization processes. There are two lines of thought in this respect. One regards globalization as essentially an economic process, which involves a crisis of governance and normativity. Following a suggestion of systems theory, Teubner allows us to take a more accurate view of the scene. What is really happening is that processes of autonomization are taking place in various spheres of society. Globalization is here conceived as a plural process, that generates a ‘poycontextural’ world made of functional global systems, each with its own inner rationality. Human rights, the professions, multinational corporations, technology and the related technical standards, science, research and education, ICT, the Internet, sport, tourism, health systems are all tending to cross national borders and to establish global private regimes as sources of non-state law. To these I would add other relevant entities, like organized crime and ethnic diasporas, which give the whole picture a different colour. I would also argue that all such subsystems must not necessarily fall within the logic of functional differentiation. In fact, their differentiation could even happen according to multiple principles—with the related problems of overlap, synchronization, mutual understanding, and more. What is common to all is that the normative needs—of securing expectations and solving conflicts—arising within the various global subsystems tend to find an answer within the same spheres. To put it in Teubner’s words, the transition accomplished through the passage from a nationally to a globally organized society is paralleled by the differentiation of 43 A clarification is in order here. I am emphatically not saying that reason is an exhausted resource or is no more available in the cultural system(s) of global society. I am just making the empirical observation that it is currently very hard to see it shared at the socio-cultural level. 44 The following discussion is based upon various works. As regards Teubner, I refer to them here: Teubner (2000, 2002a, b, 2006). See also Prandini and Teubner (2011). The most systematic discussion of this author to my knowledge is to be found in Prandini (2012).

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law, that is developing along sectorial instead of territorial lines. Transnational legal regimes are emerging which define the scope of their own validity along thematic rather than territorial lines, because trans-national communities differentiated on a global level express normative needs that cannot be satisfied either by national or by international law. A new ius regiminis is becoming more and more important, increasingly impinging on the states’ ius soli. Further, an even more complex ius collisionis—or an entire set of such laws—might result from the complex interactions of such systems and regimes. Regimes collide, and they inevitably reproduce within law the conflicts existing between the functional systems, being structurally coupled with them. Such collisions generate conflicts among rationalities, and (tentative) normative solutions and mediations. For example, the lex mercatoria often conflicts with rules issued by such organizations as the Who or the Wto, concerning environmental protection, human rights, or the health of a given population. In these cases, collision rules should determine what law is applicable in specific cases—that of a nation-state or of a given regime—and regulate conflicts. It is important to add that such ‘collisions’ do not only happen ‘between rationalities’, but are currently the concrete stuff of hotly contested public issues, with cultural and political élites and counter-élites struggling to prioritize different interests, identities, and legitimating principles of social order that are rooted in national versus global spheres. Be that as it may, translation between rationalities and combination of interest is a hard task, but there is also the urge to enhance the possibilities of action and experience, facilitating translations between different systems and preventing relationships and chains of action from stopping. Overcoming barriers to action and experience becomes a priority.45 The Hierarchy of Sources Thus, Teubner’s argument is crucial in understanding how law becomes no more the exclusive expression of national political systems. One important consequence is that the traditional (modern) hierarchy of the sources of law, and between legal decision making centers, is disrupted. The hierarchic form of law production is substituted by a heterarchic one. The distinction between centre and periphery takes the place of the hierarchy of sources. The periphery of law interacts with the autonomous social sectors, thereby constituting a new arena where a plurality of law-generating mechanisms emerge and work: standard contracts, professional agreements, formal organizations routines, technical, educational, and scientific standards, informal consensus between Ngos, the media, and social public spheres. This new global law has something in common with traditional customary law. It’s not produced by a sovereign, who is not even involved in its legitimation. In some circumstances, social norms produced by latent, informal forces of action coordination may be included in the legal system as customary law. However, the latter is ultimately diffusive social communication, while the new private regimes are highly specialized forms of legal production within functional systems. They do not 45 Standard

setting is one way to respond. However, the logic of standardization processes is rather different from that of networking, as I will try to clarify below.

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emerge ‘customarily’, from a gradual process of repeated interaction and stratified practice, but are established by decisions issued by specialized formal bodies. Within this perspective, customary law and court decisions can support and legitimate one another.46 This responds to the dual need to act rapidly and to justify the actions, responding to change while preserving a minimum of stability and identity. Therefore, the new global law tends to be peripheral, spontaneous, and social. The most relevant points in our perspective are (i) the autonomization of multiple global social spheres, and (ii) the balance between formal and informal (spontaneous) law, which involves dynamism and rapid problem solving. In a nutshell, there is a combination of socially organized and spontaneous norm production, decentered in a plurality of political and private actors without one decision making center. Such inner differentiation between organized and spontaneous legal production, which must remain balanced, creates the functional equivalent of state law and contracts. Quick decision making, effective adaptation to new situations and contexts, and the ability to combine different interests and identities make this logic particularly germane to that of contingent complementarity. Decision Making Bodies The lively social dynamics entails a proliferation of courts, tribunals, judges and decision making bodies that are meant to fix conflicts. Indeed, courts—with their jurisprudence—tend to become the center of the legal system. Their function changes accordingly, exceeding the traditional modern task of ‘applying the law’. Indeed, legislation generally migrates from parliaments to courts, from the political center to the periphery of the legal system, while other social possibilities and processes of norm creation may now be recognized as law. Many forms of private government increasingly issue their own legal production. Law becomes structurally coupled with non-legislative normative processes. As we will shortly see, the new centrality of courts raises a crucial problem. Validity The loss of hierarchy—both in terms of sources and of decision making bodies—obviously generates a problem of validity. It is here that courts play a pivotal role. The logic of legitimation shifts from verticality to circularity. That is to say, legitimation is ‘invented’ and constructed through a recursive set of references to a fictitious ‘origin’: normative expectations look for legitimation, and are transformed into law when someone claims that they refer to some precedent sentence. The point is that there may be no proper jurisprudence to refer to. Alternatively, it may not be clear why the existing jurisprudence—e.g. that of a given nation-state or of a court that has made a reputation for itself on the global arena—should have normative value in 46 This is exactly what is happening with some of the emerging rights concerning the human biolog-

ical sphere I mentioned above (Sect. 5.2). Diffused communication crystallizes around particular events, e.g. the media produce a scandal, and the scandal produces new law. Legitimation and validity emerges from this circularity.

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a given context. What happens is that a continual mutual observation and adaptation between courts and decision making bodies is triggered.47 This cannot prevent some typical flaws this kind of ‘law’ brings with itself: (1) the structural coupling between law and global economic processes sometimes risks to engender a ‘corrupted law’, one that is prone to interests and power coming from the economic actors; (2) global law is bound to have an episodic character, consisting of weakly connected episodes and ‘contractual feudalism’, in which small dominions and legal regimes interact and try to find some mutual compatibility, in the absence of any overarching framework. The mechanism of stabilization is underdeveloped, so such a law will risk to follow the development of the economic system; (3) the normative substance of soft law is rather undetermined. Values and principles prevail over structures and rules. According to Teubner, this should not be seen as a weakness, but as a virtue. In the present societal context, stability lies in flexibility. Emergent Subjects One last theme has to do with the subjects that will be recognized as legal persons in the new global law. In this respect, the potential developments are very ambivalent. On the one hand, fictions and artificial entities may appear to blur the distinction between human and nonhuman persons. On the other hand, the law may extend its protection beyond individuals in an interesting way. In an essay concerning the protection of art (Teubner and Graber 1997), it is said that a work of art should be protected even when the artist him/herself should approve of its disruption. In Teubner’s perspective, the point is to protect art as an autopoietic communicative system. I would add that such a protection involves the right of human beings not to be deprived of a pure artistic experience, which may be conceived of as a relational good. In this case, the protected subject is not an individual, but a particular sphere of action and experience—i.e. art—that is declared to be indisposable even to the will of its creator, and may thus be protected from individual freedom. What is protected here is a certain possibility to experience the autonomous ‘world apart’ created by a work of art, without allowing its corruption. This development seems instructive, particularly when it comes to environmental or cultural goods. The protection in question should work against the expansion of other communication media, typical of other social systems. These are not limited to politics, but include economics and technology. We could briefly summarize the bullet points so far, translating the whole argument into the language of the morphogenetic/morphostatic approach. The ‘big process’ of globalization entails the structural differentiation of (functional and non-functional) social systems on the global scale, and a general reorganization of society in terms of globalizing sectors (vs. territories) and institutional arenas. Each system develops its own inner culture. Within this pluralistic landscape, organizations, courts, movements, and various kinds of groups (i.e. corporate agency) bring up their claims, ask 47 The

example of the European court of justice illustrated in section 2.2 is a case in point.

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for justice, coordinate their actions. Their complex interactions generate a ‘cloud’ of normative expectations and emergent norms, whose validity lies in the mutual relationships established between them. It remains to be seen what emergent effects, structures and cultures are generated through these processes in time. Networks of Communities It is time to round up our argument. It is not necessary to accept the functionalist paradigm to see that—short of the currently unpredictable development of some sort of global polity—fragmentation has gone to fundamentals. I agree with Teubner that there is presently no meta-level on which conflicts can be solved. Verticality is gone (for good?). Because fragmentation cannot be conquered in itself, the most plausible strategy lies in developing a ‘law of collisions’ that establishes a network logic, through which some compatibility between social and legal fragments may emerge. In Teubner’s modified systemic approach, the absence of hierarchy in global society requires to include a normative concept of network into the self-description of law. Beyond the alternative between central coordination and the complete autarchy of functional systems lies the logic of networks trying to combine different claims, with the related logics and rationalities. As anticipated, the reaction that tends to emerge against the absence of a legal hierarchy consists of reinforcing the mutual observation between the various knots of the network. Constraining, top-down decisions are substituted by a sequence of decisions taken from different angles of observation within a given network. Teubner’s theses may be followed so far. Problems arise when it comes to conceptualize the way ‘collisions’ find some mutual compatibility. The keyword here is selective networking. Three guiding principles are indicated for such a decentred, selective networking: (1) normative compatibility; (2) creation of law through mutual irritation, observation and reflexivity between autonomous legal orders; (3) decentralized procedures to treat legal conflicts. Now, within a MS and its logic of opportunity the compatibilities in question should be more likely to occur. This makes selectivity simultaneously easy and difficult: easier to start, more difficult to stabilize. Ambivalence strikes once again. But this is not the major point. Two further considerations are in order. (1) In the first place, the actual dynamics of the networks in question are not made of automatic operations. One thing is to provide an abstract description of the logic social systems appear to follow. But that does not provide an understanding about if, when, and how ‘things happen’. For example, Teubner maintains that social systems manage to find some mutual compatibility over a given issue when they generate an inner limitation of their own logic through adequate reformulations of their own principles. This technique allows to build constraints that elicit responsiveness, each subject still remaining within its own inner form of rationality. For example, environmental or medical concerns may be re-entered into the self-organization of a different regime—e.g. commercial, economic. But within such conditions of possibility, the game is always played by actors endowed with power, interests, and identities. That they mould their claims in a legal shape, and that they show themselves willing to converge on a peaceful

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solution in case of conflict, is just one possibility among others. Such a strategy may last only insofar as it is considered to be effective, or believed to be fair, or thought to correspond to one’s destiny, and so on. Without this analytical perspective, it is impossible to produce any real account about the way things really go. Collisions are quite concrete events. Moreover, even the will and ability of certain actors to produce universality (vs. particularism) is a specific orientation some actors may display or not, which takes place within structural and cultural conditionings—e.g. ethics, cultural ways to define their identities, the current balance of power and the related possibility for each of them to obtain what they want in other ways, the kind of connection that ties them to other actors involved in the collision, and more. (2) Secondly, the mutual translation between different systems does not in itself amount to the emergence of a ‘universalistic’ solution. Each knot of a network (actor, group, organization, court, etc.) has its own autonomous reflexivity, looking for compatibility with the relevant environments, as well as connections between these decentred reflections, because the knots observe each other closely. As a result of this, networks can of course take on different shapes. At one extreme, they do not involve any common identity or common good, no common interest, no collectivity. There is just trust in the compliance on the part of autonomous individuals pursuing their divergent interests. At the other end of the continuum, networks may crystallize into social subjectivities. Many constellations lie in between.48 A network may be nothing more than the connection of independent, self-interested actors or become a collective actor in its own right. Concepts applying to such a network—e.g. responsibility—must be reformulated according to its status.49 Further, a network is often ‘hybrid’, in that it comprises various kinds of actors—public and private, formal and informal groups, etc. Once again, these concepts seem to fit in well with the protean, rapidly changing character of social forms in the MS, and their capacity for unprecedented combinations. Finally, the logic of obligation—the cement of a network, so to speak—may also be the outcome of a mix of different rationales—e.g. competition and cooperation, allegiance and self-interest, covenant and contract. The outcomes are, of course, extremely contingent. There are, however, empirical examples that show how hybrid networks may produce common goods. In some cases, these dynamics are regular enough to allow for relatively effective empirical generalizations. An instructive example in the domain of human rights is that of the so-called spiral model (Risse and Ropp 2013, pp. 5–16). 48 For example, Teubner (2002b) usefully discusses three different configurations he calls coopetition, unitas multiplex, and public/private networks. There is no reason to regard these as exhaustive of the protean ability of a social network to take different shapes and to generate related properties. 49 This pluralistic network ontology reminds of the ‘scale of emergence’ mentioned in this volume, Chap. 4.

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The model explains the way human rights come to be successfully institutionalized in a given country. It consists of a set of mostly non-hierarchical mechanisms involving a hybrid network made up by state, local civil networks, transnational networks, and formal international institutions. It describes the life cycle of human rights norms, which emerge somewhere in a complex network thanks to norm-entrepreneurs, and works its way into the normative core of a formerly infringing country. The model connects mobilization of transnational networks, empowerment of local civil society, and continued dialogue. Even unqualified communication and the tactical concessions a dictatorship may choose to make to relieve international pressures contributes to the positive feedback and the final outcome, which implies that human rights assume prescriptive status and rule-consistent behaviour is sufficiently established. The model emphasizes the significance of indirect, incremental change, and the importance of empowering activists and victims (Dai 2013).50 New Wine in Old Bottles? Norms, Decisions, and Communities The argument presented was meant to clarify the conditioning context of the normative dynamics characterizing global society. The underlying thesis was that social differentiation and cultural pluralism restrict the range of options for the emergence of common goods and universalistic norms and values. It is now time to draw some conclusions, pointing to some ambiguities in the line of thought we’ve been following so far and articulating a provisional response. (a) The ambivalence of social networks for normative stabilization. As I said in Sect. 5.1, following up on an insight by Archer, the stabilization of new norms is contingent upon personal emergent properties, being based on concerns and meta-reflexivity. In this respect, the ‘network constellation’ illustrated above has been credited with very different effects. There is a whole literature which perceives the ‘new world’—marked by acceleration, networks, and the logic of opportunity—as disrupting ethics, trust, reciprocity, long term commitment, integrity, thereby hindering the development of concerns and of meta-reflexive subjects.51 On the contrary, Teubner emphasizes that autonomous hybrid networks must rely heavily upon trust and loyalty versus opportunism, moral/diffusive versus utilitarian/contractual-specific obligations, generalized reciprocity versus short term exchange of equivalents. As a result of this, personal identities must develop in a way that is consistent with these social and cultural needs.52 Thus, one crucial point consists of specifying the conditions for each outcome to emerge. 50 See also the chapter about the UN Global Compact (Mwangi et al. 2013), which presents a case of UN-sanctioned soft law for human rights and environmental protection, which mobilizes a network including corporations, NGOs, professional associations, and more. 51 See for example Sennett (1998), Boltanski and Chiapello (1999), among other negative diagnoses about the ‘network man’ and his ‘character’. This intersects the argument presented in chapter 8 of this book about the self, character, and reflexivity. 52 This point is sometimes couched in the language of ‘skills’. One interesting line of inquiry would be to connect the macro-sociological framework of the MS with the emergent research agenda revolving around the ‘social and emotional skills’ (OECD 2015), or ‘character’ (Nucci, Narvàez and

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(b) The global community of courts and its discontents. Overall, the underlying question present in Teubner as well as in much literature on globalization concerns the hope that the unchained powers of global social systems can be ‘civilized’. According to Teubner, the only realistic hope is that legal formalization learns how to smooth the self-destructive tendencies emerging in the clash between different rationalities. Law will contain damage and provide compensation for those related to human and natural environments. But where will such a ‘civility’ come from? What life will generate this (civil) form? Moreover, such a form may establish a relatively peaceful regime on simply rational grounds, but what guarantees that the solutions found will be ‘civil’? Indeed, what will this symbol even mean? If a global civil society existed which could develop its own mechanisms of democratic governance, different from those characterizing global markets and globalizing political spheres, then this would provide an alternative to the idea that global power is simply shifting from politics to economics. Teubner has the merit of being strongly realistic in focusing on decision-effective actors. This is why he dismisses both social movements and formal organizations like Amnesty International. Movements are parasitic, i.e. do not have adequate problem solving capacities of their own, while formal organizations like NGOs tend to be too bureaucratic. Instead, the decision making potentials should be highly rational and focused on formal organizations, while never taking complete control of the social sector they refer to.53 Nevertheless, the practical solution to be found in authors like Teubner appears to be very problematic. In his view, the new forms of network universalism come to lean on technical deliberative or adjudicating bodies, typically courts and international arbitrate boards. These courts and boards will perform the legal bricolage, deciding what laws are applicable and combining them so as to create a relatively consistent corpus of transnational law. The validity of a norm would then be left to the crosscheck and cross-validation between these actors, constituting a global community of courts (Burke-White 2002; Slaugther 2003). Such a view is both the description of a quite robust empirically observable trend and a normative proposal. Nonetheless, courts make a rather odd kind of ‘community’, and this raises two thorny issues. One is that this montée en puissance des juges involves a radical decoupling of law from democratic forms of legitimation and the shift towards a technical civil society of experts. The other is that courts are not unrelated to the environment of power and to the media controlled public opinion. Indeed, they easily become enmeshed with ideational and material interests, particularly with those who want to ‘civilize civil society’. Therefore, their activity easily Krettenhauer 2014). Here again the problem intersects the argument presented in chapter 8 of this book about the self, character, and reflexivity. 53 Education and research on a global scale make a good example. Their freedom depends on depoliticization and de-bureaucratization, on the development of forms of non-economic competition, and on the pluralization of research funding sources. But as all who work within such system know too well, standardization and bureaucratization are currently becoming overwhelming. The balance between formal and informal is at risk.

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becomes a particularly intensive form of politics, often in technical disguise. This is not to be taken as a value laden judgement, nor is it necessarily an oppositional statement. History has shown cases in which such an institutional arrangement has substantively been both successful and desirable. The struggle for civil rights in the USA was precisely led by courts, backed by the mobilization of a social movement. But that struggle took place within a nation-state and its legitimate institutions, and the courts did not claim to have the power to make laws, even in a common law country. In the end, the courts’ (alleged) neutrality cannot be a functional equivalent of parliaments and representative institutions. The property of being a ‘third party’ is adequate to their present role, not for ruling about culture wars or social conflicts by means of their ‘correct argumentation’. If the social conditions of democracy are changing, just shifting power from one (set of) institution(s) to the other can only be a provisional solution. It may work in a transitional period, but the stabilization of network universalism and of the new global law requires the development of new deliberative bodies to redefine democracy and the principle of representation. To sum up, building new democracies which are apt to face the challenges of intensified morphogenesis may well involve some of the ways to norm-creating Teubner sees as the most relevant trends of a ‘global law without a state’. However, a full-blown transition to the new societal formation calls for a fundamental change in the social ontology of democracy, including the deliberative bodies and the very notion of representation. The new wine must not be poured in old bottles. For example, it will be important to develop boards and decision making forums based on a ‘collegial’ principle, including courts as just one component of a polycratic network that tries to integrate different legitimating principles: representative democracy, technical reason, etc. Such a collegial way would also place strong emphasis on experience. As a consequence, stakeholder involvement and participation plays a central role. All the subjects affected by a certain decision should be represented, as bearers of interests and of a given rationality. Such boards also entail the defense of cultural diversity, so that different coalitions may prevail in given instances.54

5.5 Conclusion My provisional conclusion recapitulates the main points of this chapter, and is meant to pave the way for further study. I have focused attention upon two normative tensions characterizing the rising constellation of the MS, and upon three coping strategies that were identified as empirically relevant among social actors, intended to meet these challenges. The main tensions are those revolving respectively around personal 54 Models

of decision making in the domain of health systems are a good example in this sense. Within a vast literature see for example Daniels (2008), Daniels and Sabin (2008). Their model is based on what they call ‘accountability for reasonableness’, and is prima facie compatible with my present argument.

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ontology and normative universalism. As to the strategies, the former is the attempt to close social spheres against the threat of intensified morphogenesis. Although the resulting enclaves were seen to represent an empirically possible outcome in some regions of global society (see Chap. 4), the effectiveness of this strategy in meeting the challenges in question is very poor. The second strategy consists of a deep denormativization of law, which becomes a merely adaptive device. Finally, there is the development of networks which incorporate and generate their own normativity—not as a predefined legacy of the past, but as a need and simultaneously a performance that is made possible by the inner relational structure of the network itself. We have also seen that empirical cases often stand in an ambivalent connection with some of these strategies. My following point was to show that the current situational logic of opportunity is in itself consistent with all these strategies, and with different and even opposed approaches to the relevant normative tensions. Therefore, the emergent properties of our society will differ, according to the developmental path social normativity will take with respect to the challenges in question. Finally, a cautionary note must be added as regards the prospective role of the courts of justice in this context. Their tremendously enhanced role assumes that their decisions can be grounded on a ‘strong’ legal rationality rooted in social reality, especially in the pattern of relationships. But what if legal arguments decide to break such a pattern, as happened in the case illustrated in Sect. 5.3? What guarantees that legal reason has the capacity to ‘read’ social reality and preserve the goods it generates? This task would involve a legal reasoning that is sensitive to ontology. But law is now also promoting a new anthropology, not only safeguarding the old. Law may well be actively promoting a ‘big bang’ of social relationships. To put it in a more sociological language, it could be facilitating the breakdown of the stability of some fundamental relational patterns. Both developmental paths are possible. The concluding point is that justice (and indeed all normativity) can be neither constructed nor deduced. In the MS, neither social closure nor mere neutralization (i.e. the autoimmune denormativization of law) can generate shared norms or values. These can only be the emergent effect of complex social networks, insofar as they can also tap into symbolic resources endowed with adequate potentials for ‘universalization’. In other words, this can only be the outcome of a generative encounter, through which the potential of a culture to read and evaluate social reality is newly elaborated to articulate individual and collective experience, by cultural elites who discover how this operation can lead to ‘give order’ to a new social world. Whether this will be human or inhuman depends on (i) the goals and interests (material and ideational) of such symbolic entrepreneurs, (ii) their cultural orientation, and (iii) the cultural repertoire they draw upon, with its ontological and universalizing potential. This leaves us with a further task to accomplish. At the end of the day, the watershed between what can still identify ‘the human’ and what encourages its change beyond the boundaries of ‘old humanism’ ultimately lies in the symbolic resources that can still be mobilized for this task. Although it is hard to speak of cultural contents, and may be even harder to shape the argument in such a way that may remain firmly within the discourse of social science, the notion of human flourishing is the logical step ahead of the present work.

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References Albers, M., Hoffmann, T., & Reinhardt, J. (Eds.). (2014). Human rights and human nature. Dordrecht: Springer. Alexander, J. C. (2012). Trauma. A social theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 5th edition: DSM-5. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing. 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. Archer, M. S. (2014). Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’—On which would morphogenic society depend? In Id. (Ed.), Late modernity. Trajectories towards Morphogenic society (pp. 1–20). Dordrecht: Springer. Archer, M. S. (2015). How agency is transformed in the course of social transformation: Don’t forget the double morphogenesis. In Id. (Ed.), Social mechanisms transforming late modernity (pp. 129–150). Dordrecht: Springer. 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 (Ed.), 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). Bartoli, R. (2014). La sospensione del processo con messa alla prova: una goccia deflattiva nel mare del sovraffollamento? Diritto penale e processo, 20(6), 661–674. Bellah, R. N., & Joas, H. (Eds.). (2012). The Axial age and its consequences. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Ben-Rafael, E. (2003). The de-civilizing process. In G. Sk˛apska & A. Orla-Bukowska (Eds.), with the collaboration of K. Kowalski, The moral fabric of contemporary societies (pp. 283–289). Leiden: Brill. Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, E. (1999). Le nouvel ésprit du capitalisme. Paris: Gallimard. Bostrom, N. (2005). In defense of posthuman dignity. Bioethics, 19(3), 202–214. Burke-White, W. W. (2002). A community of courts: Toward a system of international criminal law enforcement. Michigan Journal of International Law, 24, 1–101. Dai, X. (2013). The “compliance gap” and the efficacy of international human rights institutions. In T. Risse, S. C. Ropp, & K. Sikkink (Eds.), The persistent power of human rights. From commitment to compliance (pp. 85–102). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Daniels, N. (2008). Just health. Meeting health needs fairly. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Daniels, N., & Sabin, J. E. (2008). Setting limits fairly. Learning to share resources for health. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donati, P. (1997). La relazione libertà/controllo sociale nella società globalizzante. Studi di sociologia, XXXV (4), 285–315. Donati, P. (2009). La società dell’umano. Genova-Milano: Marietti. Donati, P. (2010). La matrice teologica della società. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Donati, P., & Solci, R. (2011). I beni relazionali. Che cosa sono e quali effetti producono. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. European Court of Human Rights. (2013). Chamber judgment 08/01/2013, applications nr. 43517/09, 46882/09, 55400/09, 57875/09, 35315/10 and 37818/10—Torreggiani et al. vs. Italy. European Court of Justice. (2014). Judgment in Case C-364/13, International Stem Cell Corporation v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks. Fuchs, P., & Göbel, A. (Eds.). (1994). Der Mensch—das Medium der Gesellschaft?. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

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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. Grion, L. (2012). Persi nel labirinto. Etica e antropologia alla prova del naturalismo. Milano-Udine: Mimesis. Habermas, J. (2001). The Post-national constellation. Political essays. Cambridge: Mit Press. Harfeld, J. (2012). Human Enhancement and Ethics. Structured overview on the state-of-the-art academic Debate. Epoch Report 5.1. Hughes, J. (2004). Citizen cyborg: Why democratic societies must respond to the redesigned human of the future. Cambridge: Westview. Joas, H. (2008). Do we need religion? On the experience of self-transcendence. Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers. Joas, H. (2013). The sacredness of the person: A new genealogy of human rights. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Lohmann, G. (2014). How to protect “Human Nature”—By human dignity, human rights or by “Species-Ethics” argumentations? In M. Albers, T. Hoffmann, & J. Reinhardt (Eds.), Human rights and human nature (pp. 161–172). Dordrecht: Springer. Luhmann, N. (1993). Das Recht der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Maccarini, A. (2013). A morphogenetic-relational account of social emergence: Processes and forms. In M. S. Archer & A. Maccarini (Eds.), Engaging with the world etc (pp. 22–49). London: Routledge. Maine, H. S. (1972) [1861]. Ancient law. Its connection with the early history of society and its relation to modern ideas. London: Dent. Marandola, A. (2014). La messa alla prova dell’imputato adulto: ombre e luci di un nuovo rito speciale per una diversa politica criminale. Diritto penale e processo, 20(6), 674–685. Mwangi, W., Rieth, L., & Schmitz, H. P. (2013). Encouraging greater compliance: Local networks and the United Nations Global Compact. In T. Risse, S. C. Ropp, & K. Sikkink (Eds.). The persistent power of human rights. From commitment to compliance (pp. 203–221). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Narvaez, D., & Bock, T. (2014). Developing ethical expertise and moral personalities. In L. Nucci, D. Narvaez, & T. Krettenauer (Eds.), Handbook of moral and character education (pp. 140–158). London and New York: Routledge. Nucci, L., Narvàez, D., & Krettenhauer, T. (Eds.) (2014). Handbook of moral and character education. London and New York: Routledge. OECD. (2015). Skills for social progress: The power of social and emotional skills. OECD Skills Studies: OECD Publishing. Porpora, D. V., Nikolaev, A. G., Hagemann May, J., & Jenkins, A. (2013). Post-ethical society. The Iraq war, Abu Ghraib, and the moral falure of the secular. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Prandini, R. (2012). Complessità sociale e diritto riflessivo. Dall’auto-regolazione “regolata” fino alle costituzioni societarie. In Id., Culture e processi “costituenti” della società riflessiva. Globalizzazione, accelerazione e auto-regolazione sociale (pp. 33–68). Bologna: Bononia University Press. Prandini, R., Teubner, G. (a cura di). (2011). Costituzioni societarie: politica e diritto oltre lo Stato. Special Issue of Sociologia e politiche sociali. (14) 2. Risse, T., & Ropp, S. C. (2013). Introduction and overview. In T. Risse, S. C. Ropp, & K. Sikkink (Eds.), The persistent power of human rights. From commitment to compliance (pp. 3–25). Cambridge: Cambridge 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 highspeed society. In H. Rosa & W.E. Scheuerman (Eds.), Social acceleration, power, and modernity (pp. 77–111). University Park, PA: 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

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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. Serres, M. (1992). Le tiers-instruit. Paris: Gallimard. Shulman, C., & Bostrom, N. (2014). Embryo selection for cognitive enhancement: Curiosity or game-changer? Global Policy, 5(1), 85–92. Simmel, G. (1890). Über sociale Differenzierung. Sociologische und psychologische Untersuchungen. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. Slaugther, A. M. (2003). A global community of courts. Harvard International Law Journal., 44, 191–219. Sloterdijk, P. (2013). You must change your life. On anthropotechnics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Stichweh, R. (2000). Die Weltgesellschaft. Soziologische Analysen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Teubner, G. (2000). Globale Privatregimes: Neo-spontanes Recht und duale Sozialverfassungen in der Weltgesellschaft. In G. Teubner (Hg.). Zur Autonomie des Individuums. Liber Amicorum Spiros Simitis (pp. 437–453). Baden Baden: Nomos. Teubner, G. (2002a). Breaking frames: Economic Globalization and the emergence of Lex Mercatoria. European Journal of Social Theory., 5(2002), 199–217. Teubner, G. (2002b). Hybrid laws: Constitutionalizing private governance networks. In R. Kagan & K. Winston (Eds.), Legality and community: On the intellectual legacy of Philip Selznick (pp. 311–331). Berkeley: Berkeley Public Policy Press. Teubner, G. (2006). The anonymous matrix. Human rights violations by ‘Private’ transnational actors. Modern Law Review., 69, 327–346. Teubner, G., & Graber, G. C. (1997). Art and money: Constitutional rights in the private sphere. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies., 1997, 61–74.

Chapter 6

War and Violence in the Morphogenic Society

Keywords War · Social structures · Modernity · Revolution in military affairs

6.1 Introduction: The New Connection Between War and Society The previous chapters have dealt with some central features of the emergent MS. In Chap. 4, social mechanisms were identified that are currently characterizing the global societal dynamics, and we examined the problem of openness and closure as a critical issue in a highly complex and volatile society. Chapter 5 explored social normativity, proposing an interpretation of the processes through which social norms are destroyed and created in a MS. The present chapter is concerned with the phenomenon of war and its transformations, and is connected with the former two in various ways. For one thing, future wars could be one outcome of the imbalance and tensions involved in those processes of openness and closure. Furthermore, with regard to social norms, war is a paradoxical event. On the one hand, it would seem that no other fact is as disruptive as this for the social order. On the other hand, war is caused and can only be sustained by social normativity, as well as it creates new forms of social order. Both its causes and effects are ambivalent in this respect. Thus, war is an extreme case of the creation-and-destruction of norms and order. This ambivalent nature of war has been noted by many authors, regardless of their different conceptual frames. As Centeno and Enriquez argue, war “is a reflection and consequence of social structure, group norms, and relations” (2016: 4). It is not just violence as an end in itself, or the mere result of aggressive impulses. “It is a product of coordinated efforts and motivations”, and involves “aggression (…) of groups of people united in some way to act in concert” (Ibid.: 6). Wars require people to sacrifice their lives on behalf of their social group, and this is mostly done by successfully socialized individuals. At the heart of the social phenomenon of war “is an institution © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. M. Maccarini, Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13624-6_6

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that transforms individuals with fear of and ethical objections to killing into elements of a collective whole designed to withstand horrific pain and to inflict it on others” (Ibid.: 47). This entails discipline and obedience. In somewhat nuanced terms, Hans Joas also notes that normativity features in some standard explanations of war, both in an affirmative and in a negative version—that is, there are norms and values leading to war, or it is anomie that prompts war and violence (Joas 2000: 273–275). To sum up, the complexity of war lies in the fact that “it makes horrible brutality part of a rational course of action for huge numbers of people” (Centeno and Enriquez 2016: 7). Vicious brutality and destruction are accepted, but also stricter norms are enforced, and violence appears to be more bureaucratized, but not diminished. Norms are needed to make brutality effective, it takes order to destroy order. All of this is well known. The specific aim of this chapter goes beyond the sheer acknowledgement that organized violence depends on social conditions, and is itself a social fact. It wants to examine the relationship between war and society. More precisely, it explores the mutual effect of war and society in a given historical context. Its focus is on how different types of societies practice different forms of war, while different styles of conflict produce different social structures, and it tries to explore such a connection in the present global predicament. The underlying hypothesis is that contemporary society is witnessing fundamental changes in the ways war is conceived and practiced. First, in order to make sense of these, I review some contributions through which social science is articulating the connection between war and society. This is the topic of Sects. 6.2 and 6.3. Then I will link the argument to the main working hypothesis of this volume, namely that the current macro-social change can be interpreted as the emergence of a MS, in order to see what insights this may produce in the context of a sociological theory of war. Taking this step might prove fruitful, because most theories seem to make rather unspecific statements about those processes. The trends they highlight are often real, but beg for qualification and explanation, while the relevant social structures and cultures are usually just hinted at, or even remain out of the picture. For example, it is quite common for many authors to mention that the Greek phalanx was the product of the social structures of the polis, and affected them in turn. Closer in historical time, Italian fortifications developed in response to increased cannon power during the XVI century, shifting the balance in favour of defence and making war increasingly indecisive, stuck in long sieges. The political effect was to prevent the formation of an imperial hegemony in Europe, to maintain a pluralistic international system, which in turn had important effects on the inner development of European nation-states. The institutional configuration of competing territorial states and their kind of relationships had this military aspect as one of its conditioning factors. In turn, the resulting interplay of economic conditions (the price revolution of the XV century), unemployment, deskilling due to gunpowder weapons, etc. played a role in the process of raising large armies (Hirst 2001: 12 ff.). These seminal insights are historically well-known, but have hardly given rise to analogous, systematic studies on contemporary societies. In this perspective, I will argue that unchained morphogenesis is bringing about deep changes, shifting boundaries and transforming loyalties that ground political and societal configurations.

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Section 6.4 spells out the conceptual background of the connection between war and the MS thesis, while Sect. 6.5 examines the two sides of the relation, i.e. how society changes war and vice versa. Obviously, these aspects are strictly intertwined, but are here distinguished for the sake of analytical simplicity. The final section will draw some provisional conclusions. The issue seems very timely. War is currently (re)emerging as a subject of the public debate and of collective self-understanding. This applies to many regions of the global society, and is definitely true for Europe and the Western world.1 Arguably, such a rising interest does not correspond to an actual intensification of the war phenomenon on the global scale. Since the end of the second World War, and for all the period the world has lived under the Yalta order, a few countries—particularly Europe—have been able to live in peace for a relatively long span of time. Other Western countries, like the USA, have been continuously engaged in wars, but not on their own territory, and have consistently been on the offensive side. The overall impact on Western societies has been relatively limited.2 Meanwhile, the so-called Cold war was in fact hot, generating conflicts that cost more than 20 million dead mainly situated in the peripheries of the global system. But it eventually cooled off. The situation of mutual assured destruction (‘MAD’) resulted in a sharp decline of war. More precisely, interstate wars have declined, while civil wars now dominate the global landscape of conflict.3 Indeed, this very fact, together with the enduring legacy of the Enlightenment and the related ‘progressive’ ideas, has even removed war from collective consciousness. If we take social science as a manifestation of the cultural system, we find the same repression. As Hans Joas aptly notes (2000: 49), 1 This statement summarizes wildly the evidence from many heterogeneous sources and indicators.

As regards public awareness and debate, attention has arguably been rising in most European countries for the last decade, although I cannot produce any comparative statistics here. Global military expenditures, which are a good objective indicator of public ‘war awareness’, after dropping during the 1990s have been consistently on the rise in the years 2000s, then leveling off in the 2010s. For the latter decade, however, evidence seems more ambivalent. For example, nuclear warheads are slightly decreasing, due to the US and Russia complying with formerly signed treaties, but such a decrease is paralleled by their current replacing and modernization, and by a renewed emphasis on the strategic relevance of nuclear deterrence. Moreover, countries like North Korea and Iran are on record as building up their nuclear capability, all recent agreements notwithstanding. On this subject, see the SIPRI yearbook 2018, and the data that are freely available on https://www.sipri. org/. See also the various data sources mentioned by Mann (2013). 2 This may sound like a dramatic understatement, particularly as applied to the US in the case of the Viet Nam war. However, what I mean by ‘impact’ should be assessed in comparison to what wars usually do to countries on whose territory they are fought. For all the country’s leading role as a military superpower during and after the Cold war, the US population could hardly be described as deeply affected by war in its lifestyle or in the main forms of its social life. All the more so for the peaceful societies of Western Europe—under the US nuclear umbrella. 3 There have been 50 civil wars and 2 full-scale inter-state wars (the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan) in the period 2001–2012 (Mann 2013: 33 ff. and Chap. 2). The following conflicts, like the devastating Syrian war and the ongoing unrest in the Middle East, mostly took the shape of civil wars, which then evolved into mixed and confused situations, where many actors intervene and confront each other within fragile, continuously shifting alliances and without any ‘classical’ pattern of inter-state war being declared, or discernible.

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if one reads a handbook of sociology, one gets the impression that we are living in societies with no wars, no military, and no police forces, whilst the security apparatus actually makes a significant part of the whole institutional setting in most advanced societies—and in some developing ones. Thus, on the one hand, war has always been with us, while on the other it is not really intensifying right now. However, the present situation of world disorder has disposed of the cultural and political nirvana and is taking war back to centre stage. Why? Some features of our current predicament—both structural and cultural—contribute to explain this mismatch. We could summarize them as follows: (1) The West is now feeling attacked and going on the defensive in the face of spreading unrest and geo-political shifts in the power and strategies of big global or regional actors; (2) The Western, particularly the US role as ‘world police’ is proving increasingly ineffective; (3) The effects of regional conflicts can hardly be controlled, or externalized to ‘peripheral’ (or ‘marginal’) areas of the global system of international relations. Here too, the world is closed; (4) Conflicts happen without a relatively adequate symbolical frame. The world system dynamics cannot simply be framed as a continuation of the Cold war, the bipolar world is over, and we are well beyond the American ‘one superpower’ momentum. Narratives revolving around the distinctions of progressive versus conservative, moral versus immoral, good versus evil exhibit decreasing clarity and effectiveness. The symbolical order is broken; (5) Wars do not only depend on discursive constructions, on good or bad will and sentiments. There are structural and cultural conditions resulting in particular rifts. New divides emerge around which conflicts arise, and new social mechanisms are at work, characterizing the forms of political violence. Arguably, these are the main facts that are prompting a reappraisal of war in public debate and attention. As indicators of change, they also foster the sociological reflections developed in the present chapter. The latter are based upon a double assumption. First, that all these facts need a fresh and unifying interpretation. Second, that sociology should keep at a safe distance from any militant position. To put it in Joas’s words again (2000: 11), I reject both ‘pacifist’ utopias and sheer Realpolitik as totalizing views of the possibilities of politics. As a consequence, moralistic versus a-moral perspectives on war must be countered. The underlying assumption is that the relation between war and peace involves no evolutionary or dialectic process. More generally, whatever may be called ‘progress’ in human civilization is never an established outcome, but is always a highly contingent achievement.4

4 I share Joas’s emphasis on contingency, and the related argument that a sociological theory of war

is also relevant to modernization theory and the critique of ‘progressive’ rhetoric. Page numbers in my quotations of this work refer to the original edition (Joas 2000). The English translation is mentioned in the references.

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6.2 The Mystery of War: What Social Science Knows Unsurprisingly, the nature of war has always been a haunting theme for scholarly thought. It is the source of radical questions about the human condition. War as a social fact is the subject of research in a quite extended and heterogeneous literature. In addition, the broad topic obviously articulates into a vast set of issues. My aim is not to present an exhaustive review of this huge corpus, but to highlight the principal ways in which the connections between war and society have been understood, and to examine the insights derived from these efforts. Limiting our search to contemporary thought, the first impression is that a ‘sociology of war’ has been tossed between narrative-historical, ethological-evolutionary, and strategic approaches, thereby producing scattered—if interesting—insights, which have been rarely ever connected to systematic social theory. Some facts and trends are even obvious to specialists in the military or strategic field, and have been incorporated in the related practices, but haven’t got the attention they deserve by the social sciences, thus preventing more wide-ranging reflections on their nature and long-term consequences.5 As a result of this, our brief review must work its way through a diverse body of work, joining fragments together and drawing some conclusions. Generic as these might be, they will allow to get gradually closer to our core argument, while proving that a fresh theoretical interpretation is needed. For sheer analytical purposes, we can distinguish a mainly abstract-theoretical and a historical approach to the problem. Let us begin with the former, leaving the second to Sect. 6.3. Two start-up questions around which many scholarly reflections revolve are whether or not organized violence is natural and instinctive, whether it is a universal experience of all human societies. A third, intriguing problem is whether war is essentially rooted in the inner qualities and properties of different types of society or it is mainly the product of relations between distinct political systems. The former two issues have been studied before, and the answers to both could hardly be innovative. On a basic level, it is obvious that humans and animals alike practice violence and aggression, but humans are the only species that plans and executes organized violence on a vast scale, and is reflexive about its own capacity for violence—as well as about anything else. It is also known that we have both violent instincts and instincts for cooperation and affection. Moreover, the on/off switches of these instincts are not deterministically pre-set. Most conflicts and manifestations of violence cannot be traced to biological or instinctual forces (Collins 2008), and war is clearly too complex to be derived from individual biological responses. It is a creation of our societies, not (only) of our genes (Centeno and Enriquez 2016). Finally, the

5A

few exceptions must be remembered here, like the seminal work by Gaston Bouthoul (recently republished, see Bouthoul 2006). See also the more recent contributions by Gardner and Kobtzeff (2012) and Centeno and Enriquez (2016). As I will argue at various points of the present chapter, even their very stimulating and informative work fails to establish a systematic connection with some social scientific frame of reference. These volumes also include very useful reference sources, which arguably confirm what I have just noted.

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second question also has an unequivocal answer, namely that no historically known society, civilization or era was ever immune from war. So, these answers are not interesting in and of themselves. However, within this context two points emerge, whereby such monolithic core of knowledge begins to produce more asymmetrical views, and therefore more explanatory insights.6 First, the idea that war had a beginning in human (pre)history. Second, that although no human civilization has been immune from war, there are more or less violent places and periods. Now, are these spatial and temporal differences totally contingent? In other words, do they just happen by chance? Through these issues, some explanatory theses begin to emerge. The third question must be treated separately. When did war begin? Research has shown that although aggression and violence have always been present, war in a more demanding definition only emerged with the Neolithic era (10,000–8000 bce; some authors push the date back to the Mesolithic, 12,000–10,000), when sedentary life became possible and agriculture allowed the creation and storage of a surplus. This in turn made possible (a) demographic growth, and (b) for some members of a social group to serve as soldiers. That is, the specialization in violence, i.e. the creation of a class of people dedicated to protection and hostility, took off. At the same time, (c) a surplus in stored foodstuffs meant the presence of ‘something at stake’, which could invite collective aggression and conquest. Now, recent interdisciplinary studies, mainly fueled by neurobiology and human ethology, have identified this transition from small band hunter-gatherers to sedentary farmers as the evolutionary point at which ‘something went wrong’ with humans, from a neurobiological and psychological viewpoint.7 Fundamental changes in socialization practices as well as brain development made humans violent. The reverse process must be activated for humanity to reach a superior state of morality, oriented to care and peace.8 These authors propose a thought-provoking thesis. True, its limits are clear, and consist in their ignoring emergence and complexity. As Centeno and Enriquez explain (2016: 174), war is not just about our nature, but about the forms of life we have created living together in complex societies. In other terms, it is an emergent social fact linked with social complexity.9 The starting point of this morphogenesis was the establishment of sedentary living arrangements—which provided both constraints and enablements. Density of interaction, competition for the control of land and 6 Here

I refer to Niklas Luhmann’s notion that explanation requires the production of some asymmetry among various factors, which can be different according to different explanatory schemes. Among these schemes, spatial and temporal differences are very important ones (Luhmann 1995, 1997: 1011). 7 See the contributions and references in Fry (2013) and Narvaez (2014), as distinguished representatives of this stream of thought. 8 In Narvaez’s words, mindful morality entails that the complex of safety in human brain be superseded by that of engagement and imagination, thereby leading from reaction to danger and selfdefense to care and empathic interaction. I cannot pursue this line of thought here, which I deem as a significant contribution to a theory of socialization and personal reflexivity. 9 It could be labeled as an emergent event. See the scale of emergence presented in Chap. 4.

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water, and the related dynamics of excess and scarcity are essential factors in this process.10 Thus, the social layer of reality has its own causal powers, and the task of making a peaceful society cannot consist of trying to ‘rewind’ long term social morphogenesis, or even our evolutionary history. It is hard to believe that a further leap in civilization—something like an upgrade in cultural evolution—could come from psychological features deep in our primordial past. However, the relevance of this theory lies in focusing attention on the deep anthropological dimension of the connection between war and society. It contributes to understand that the specific ways in which cultures, social mechanisms and institutional configurations can be steered toward the production of win-win games, peaceful cooperation, and conflict resolution must go ‘all the way down’, taking into account socialization practices and the activation of brain mechanisms. It points to a layer of reality that moralistic theories centred on what we ‘should’ do and purely rational-strategic theories of negotiation cannot dismiss or downplay. The current, pitiful state of intra-European relationships represents a good example. The pressure of what is perceived as an external threat—mainly in the form of migration flows—on ageing societies with increasingly weak cultural identities and fragile social cohesion is resulting in the fragmentation and possibly in the collapse of what generations of Europeans had thought would be the everlasting accomplishment of a union among the peoples of the Old continent. The success of neo-nationalist ideologies, coarse prejudice and mutual stereotyping are revealing that defense mechanisms are activated which are rooted in deep layers of identity. Europeans have dramatically overestimated the depth and strength of the mutual bonds they have created during the post-war decades. They also indicate how deeply they should reach in any serious work of reconstruction.11 War making is not due to invariant human nature, but to certain types of society. Until the 1950s, Europe contributed for more than 68% (some say 80%) of all wars, followed by Asia and the Middle East, with Latin America and Africa lagging well behind. After the two world wars there is a reversal (Mann 2013: 34–35). Short of general frames of reference, what is left is usually a doctrine of the causes of war. In this respect, three broad types of explanation are prevalent. In a nutshell, they are focussed on culture, social psychology, and rational choice, respectively.12 Some societies are allegedly more prone than others to engage in wars because of the values institutionalized in their cultural systems. Others think that wars are decided on the ground of instrumental rationality, as cost effective strategies to securing resources. Finally, aggression toward others and the creation of external threats 10 Collins

(2008, Chap. 1) is saying the same thing when he notes that civilization does not tame, but foster violence. 11 The present situation in Europe somewhat reminds of the pre-civil war years of the United States, where the manifold bonds holding North and South together were gradually loosened and dissolved. For those who are interested, that historical picture is beautifully drawn by Goodwin (2005). 12 For this account I draw on Centeno and Enriquez (2016). As regards culture (Ibid.: 23 ff.), they point out that cultural theories of war can be as deterministic as neurobiological ones. My point, though, is that culture is indeed a factor contributing to wars, which does not entail assuming a deterministic theory of culture—much less any cultural determinism.

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serve to create social cohesion within a given social group. Inner solidarity is created through external hostility as a pivotal reinforcing and accelerating mechanism, that builds its own ad hoc institutions.13 Clearly, one of these factors may prevail in particular cases, but the three explanatory schemes are not mutually exclusive, and could combine in various ways. For example, a political élite may have the ambition to conquer other states, and therefore needs to spread a war-oriented culture among the population, while it will also make some rational planning before actually starting a conflict. However, the ‘us and them’ psycho-social theory is the most radical one, because it conceives of conflict as deeply embedded in the very process of the formation of politically organized collectivities. Let me add that it is also the psychological foundation of Realpolitik approaches, which understand this as the only necessary condition for all political groups to emerge. The famous amicus/hostis distinction (Schmitt 2007) is the most famous case in point. In these views, all political systems are necessarily formed through a process of exclusion of a portion of humanity, against which there is actual or potential war. Thus, war is simply the ineradicable manifestation of the human condition, which is intrinsically conflictual, and reveals humankind as ontologically a being-in-conflict (‘in Krieg-sein’). The human fate is to be inescapably ‘prone to antithesis’,14 and war appears to be a basic relational need of all political systems. One further remark is in order. To their own bewilderment, most authors see that war often involves emotions and attachments among soldiers, who tend to fight for their comrades, not for general beliefs and values. Again, Centeno and Enriquez point out that “rather than a set of abstract values, perhaps the most effective faith an armed force can develop is a belief in itself” (2016: 52). Men remember war as the period of life when they developed their most intense friendships, fraternities born out of the danger of death. And there is a strange kind of joy to war, which may touch soldiers as well as commanders and even political leaders.15 Although the diffusion of this kind of emotions must be soberly estimated on solid empirical ground,16 their occurrence is undeniable, and may be because war reminds of a primordial experience of togetherness—as in hunting a big animal—on which the survival of the whole social group depends. In this sense, it may also constitute the remote and deepest root of what used to be the male kind of friendship. But this could in turn convey a more disturbing idea, namely the possibility that the meanings of social life are constructed through tragically self-referential activities. 13 It is impressive to note that these doctrines of causes mirror and develop Thucydides’s brilliant insight, according to which men fight for ‘honour, fear, and interest’. 14 A radically consistent formulation of this paradigm is to be found in Miglio (2011, especially Chap. 7). A corollary is that the enemy can be real as well as virtual. The enemy being necessary as a function, it can well be created ad hoc, its real existence being irrelevant for the purpose of the political construction. See also, in the same vein, the work of Freund (1965). 15 A good example is Graham Allison’s account of Winston Churchill’s puzzled discovery of his own emotional ambivalence at the onset of the First World War (Allison 2017: 312, note 129). 16 For an example see Collins (2008: 66–69), who argues that such a ‘joy’ seems to be negatively correlated to proximity to the real battlefield, and concludes that among combat soldiers it appears in the 0.3% of cases, estimated on the ground of combat photo sources.

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Wars and armies might then be a metaphor of the inherently desperate way humans try to make their world meaningful, while no meaning actually goes beyond the actual ‘band of brothers’—indeed, the only thing that is.17 Although I would regard it as an unwarranted expression of radical Kulturpessimismus, the possibility must not be dismissed that this grim version of Durkheimian thinking makes a working mechanism in concrete cases and historical situations. Finally, as regards the dilemma concerning the internal versus external origin of war, no clear consensus exists in the literature. It is important to note that this divide does not necessarily overlap with other conceptual dimensions. For example, the prevalence of endogenous factors is claimed both by the Realpolitiker, who are convinced that (the possibility of) war is an essential condition for all political systems to exist,18 and by those who assume democratic societies to be inherently peaceful, and ground the hopes for peace on a social psychology of democracy.19 The latter position is characteristic of most liberal thinking today. While theoretically far from the position of Realpolitik, Beck (1996) has held the opposite thesis, arguing that democracies get the whole population involved in war as no other political regime. And Michael Mann has established a meaningful connection between the US policy becoming more violent during the cold war and the virulent domestic anti-communism. Being soft to communists, Mann explains, threatened re-election, and therefore was not a politically viable option (Mann 2013: 101). The easy positive association of democracy with peace must then be qualified, to say the least. The same misalignment occurs with those authors who stress the relevance of conflictual constellations at the international level. In this perspective, one reason why sociology did not analyze war adequately is precisely that the historical-empirical reference of the notion of society was the (modern) State, territorially based etc., while the dynamics of relationships among States was treated as mere historical contingency. This dilemma raises important epistemological and ontological issues, which cannot be treated here.20 However, what is clear is that the importance of inter-national relations cannot be downplayed. To wrap up the argument so far, what we have learnt could be outlined as follows: (i) War is an ambivalent phenomenon, both rational and irrational, that cannot be totally controlled by conscious reflexivity, yet involves high levels of instrumental reason; 17 This resonates with Abbott’s idea that performative sense-making—erecting a world of ‘oughts’ that is then treated as real—is the only alternative to a shallow and meaningless existence (Abbott 2016: 31). 18 See Miglio (2011: 75–85, 196, 256) for the most consistent and articulate statement of the ‘realist’ theory to my knowledge. 19 Note that Joas (2000: 15) declares his former agreement and subsequent disappointment with it, coming to criticize the debates oriented to endogenous variables. 20 See for example Skocpol (1979, 1994). Again, this thesis is also upheld by Realpolitiker, who regard the kind of political regime as irrelevant for war and peace. For a critique of the latter see Porpora et al. (2013). The scarce empirical explanatory value of endogenous variables is consistent with the idea that conceiving of societies as territorial entities is a limit to the development of social theory—indeed is an ‘obstacle épistemologique’ (Luhmann 1997: 23-25).

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Increasing complexity (capacity to grow)

- destruction and reconstruction of social order

- Social complexity

War

- Lack of distance (closure and relational density)

(threat and capacity)

- Resources (stakes and scarcity)

Fig. 6.1 The social morphogenesis of war—structural side

(ii) As it is shown in Fig. 6.1, it parallels the evolution of complex social units. Social complexity creates the conditions for war, which in turn produces higher levels of social order, resulting in even more complexity. War requires-andproduces forms of social order, like hierarchies and various related institutions; (iii) War provides an evolutionary advantage. Once one group has discovered the possibility of practicing organized conflict on a large scale, and has developed the related capacity, others have the limited choices of escape, enslavement, or emulation; (iv) The real possibility of war also functions as a fundamental mechanism to build identity and social cohesion; (v) The roots of politically organized conflict branch out, involving endogenous and exogenous variables; (vi) The relation of war to civilization is also ambivalent. It is deeply entangled with it, yet it is often perceived as its possible destruction; (vii) Overall, societies engage in wars because of constraints laid by the system of inter-political relations, because of their inner cultural orientations, because they fight over scarce resources, or just as the very way to emerge as distinctive social entities—and insofar as they can shape human minds in the necessary mode. Further, the experience of danger and threat reinforces the psychological mechanisms that reproduce hostile attitudes. We will see in Sects. 6.4 and 6.5 what conclusions may be drawn from these premises, concerning the prospect of war and peace in the global society.

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6.3 ‘Who Now Reads Spencer?’ War and Modernity Revisited In sociology as well as in social and political philosophy, a theory of modernity and modernization has been an important vector of a theory of war, which goes to the core of our problem concerning the connection between politically organized violence and social structures. In the Introduction to their edited volume on modernity and barbarism, Miller and Söffner (1996: 13–18) provide a useful starting point to frame the argument. They highlight the ambivalence of modernity, swinging between ‘progress’ and ‘barbarism’, and lay out three fundamental responses: (i) civilization is the principle of modernity, while barbarism is its counterprinciple. Therefore, the more modernity advances, the more barbarism retreats; (ii) barbarism is the dark side of modernity, or its bad conscience, something that can be neither excluded from modern civil life nor overcome by the evolution of society; (iii) modernity accomplishes its very project by becoming aware of its own potential for barbarism, and by the attempt to overcome it. In other words, modernity involves a reflexive self -distancing and self -critique of the modern. As a consequence, modernity must develop a concept of barbarism that is reflexive enough to be applied to oneself and not only to other peoples or civilizations. Actually, it is just this capacity that sets a society on the true path to civilization. These three alternatives also constitute the theoretical range of the ways modernization theory has faced the problem of war. Case (i), which has been largely dominant in modernization theory, was effectively illustrated by Joas (2000). The approaches inspired by the philosophical tenets of Enlightenment, Joas explains, have been foundational for the social sciences. And for all their differences, they all shared the prediction of the peaceful outcomes of the modernization process, based upon the inner characteristics of modern societies. Then the sociological theory of modernization took up those assumptions within an evolutionary and functionalistic framework. The notion of peaceful modernity comes in four shapes, depending on the crucial factor that is presumed to epitomize modern societies: industrialism (Spencer), free trade (Smith), the republican order (either in the European Kantian version or in that of American thinkers), and socialism (Marxist thought). Correspondingly, the phenomenon of war is regarded as a relic of the past, the residue of feudalism and military societies, the hallmark of European decadence, the symbol of the conflict between democracy and autocracy/authoritarianism,21 or the effect of covetous capitalism and its conflictual dynamics at the international level (Ibid.: 72–73). Joas goes on to outline the failure of these different versions of the Enlightenment tradition in making sense of the real developments of modern history. From French expansionism after the Revolution to liberal imperialism, form two world 21 This is clear in the American thinkers blaming the ‘European criminals’ for centuries of violence,

and will return in the images of Europe as ‘the dark Continent’ of totalitarianism (Mazower 2008).

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wars down to Soviet imperialism and republican missionary universalism, the modern god of peaceful evolution has clearly disappointed all his believers, so we could wonder ‘who now reads Spencer’ (and the rest) again.22 However, the heritage of the modern peaceful utopia is still deeply embedded in Western societies. The “serious cultural gap (…) between the civilian and service populations, with, at worst, a sense of disdain forming between the two” (Centeno and Enriquez 2016: 171) which characterizes some Western countries, that is the growing distancing between citizenship and military service, as well as the decline in the military participation of the élites since World War II are a graphic, and potentially consequential, example. Such a phenomenon reflects the socializing strength of the narrative of peaceful modernization and democratization, as against violent totalitarian regimes. For the same reason, deviations from linear evolution have often been tackled with ad hoc theories.23 One example is that of German exceptionalism (Sonderweg), which works as a way to make German experience exotic and thereby prevent such events as two world wars from questioning modernization theory. Another is the attribution of the enduring violence in inter-state relations to regimes that have gone off-track with respect to the mainstream of modern democracy—i.e. totalitarianism and fundamentalism—and to all ‘abuses of the modern’, including the inner structure of some democratic societies, whereby the military and the related industrial sector become the dominant élites.24 Be that as it may, modern societies are now aware of being exposed to such contradictions, that can be described as barbarism. Case (ii), i.e. the claim that modernity is inherently connected to barbarism, which includes the rise of intensive organized violence, does find some support in historicalempirical evidence. For example, Michael Mann has clarified that the 20th century was a century of war, taking a historically unprecedented toll in human lives.25 The thesis of a necessary relationship between war and modernity has been argued mainly on three accounts. Firstly, war seems to be strictly intertwined with state formation (Tilly 1985, 1990; Luhmann 2000; Wight 2015).26 Second, in the context of a philosophy of life, war has been conceived as escape from the modern cultural 22 I

am obviously referring to Parsons’s famous incipit (1937), extending it from Spencer alone to the various branches of modern thinking mentioned above. The issue of war represents a further element of the displacement of linear evolutionism in social science. It is interesting to note that some authors have even come to opposite conclusions. For example, from the vantage point of the early 21st century, Paul Hirst regards total war as a heritage of the industrial age, conveniently declining with it (Hirst 2001). 23 As it is well known, this is the way all dominant theories react to innovations, seeking to reassert ‘normal science’ against attempts at paradigm change (Kuhn 1962). 24 See Joas (2000: 196), mentioning C. Wright Mills’s analysis of the US society. 25 It has been calculated that inter-state wars caused 80 million deaths. There were also 40–50 million victims of colonial, civil, and revolutionary wars, and another 80 million including efforts by states to reform their populations along ethnic, religious, or socio-economic criteria (Mann 2013: 83). 26 In Luhmann’s words, conflict constitutes a variation mechanism from which the modern State emerged. See especially his Politik der Gesellschaft, where he also quotes Tilly’s work (Luhmann 2000: 418).

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tragedy.27 Finally, there is the interesting insight by Bauman (1996), who connects violence to the strain for order (Ordnungsstreben) he sees as the core of the modern process of civilization. While the former thesis is well established, and the second is but the manifestation of a scholarly and cultural niche, Bauman’s claim deserves a closer look. He assumes that since the beginning, the modern project was about compelling the world to be something different from what it is (Ibid.: 36). It involved the hope, Bauman goes on to say, that everything could be ‘pure’, and the expectation that if it were pure it would become better than it currently is. The activity of setting in order produces differences, particularly between the things and people who find and accept their place within such order and those which do not adapt. On the latter, constraint must be applied. They must become different from what they used to be or disappear from the scene of the world. Thus, on the one hand, the distinction between civilization and barbarism really means a difference between the planned order and the rest, the controlled and the uncontrolled, the regular and the irregular, the predictable and the unpredictable, the structural and the contingent. On the other hand, violence is the byproduct of this order machine. Therefore, violence lies at the heart of modernity, and civilization, not barbarism comes to be associated with violence.28 The interest of this theory lies the fact that it does not connect war with the functional requisites, the institutions, or the social mechanisms of one subsystem of society, but with the whole project of modernity. In this sense, it is the most radical thesis one could think of. This becomes clearer if we consider how Bauman’s argument comes close to Charles Taylor’s account of the great wave of reform that characterized Europe and the West even before the dawn of modernity.29 Taylor discusses this phenomenon in part I, entitled ‘The Work of Reform’, of his masterful work on secularization (Taylor 2007). There it is argued that a great transformation of the social order can be grasped through the antithesis between structure and antistructure. The work of reform was to produce a ‘pure’ kind of order, both within individuals, in their social behaviours, and in forms of social life, one “without moral boundaries” (Ibid.: 52). That was meant to transform the old kind of order, which was based on the limits to the capacity and desirability of control, and thus on a balance between order and disorder, light and shadow, structure and anti-structure.30 The ancient idea was that “[a]ll codes need to be countervailed” (Ibid.: 50), while the modern order entails the dominance of one rational code. I cannot pursue this complex argument further, but let me explain why such a convergence is important. First, it connects Bauman’s account of (modern) violence 27 This

story, which involves such authors as Georg Simmel, is told among others by Joas (2000), in the chapter about the ‘modernity of war’. Such an interpretation finds some correspondence with the connection between war and meaning-making I have briefly brought up in Sect. 6.2. 28 It would be interesting to compare Bauman’s thesis with the chapter written by Jan Philipp Reemtsma in the same volume, which articulates the various ways in which modernity may prompt violence in a Hobbesian mood. 29 See particularly Taylor (2007: 47–54). 30 In this context, Taylor refers to Turner (1969) and his idea of ritual as combining structure and anti-structure.

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to a more general interpretation of the modernization process, particularly in its cultural roots. Moreover, it exposes Bauman’s theory as too deterministic. For what dangers the strain for ‘purification’ did involve, the ‘work of reform’ was also meant to curb violence and produce a more peaceful order, both in personal characters and in social life. So, while the modern shape of violence may well be that of control and prediction versus instinctive brutality, this does not support any broad thesis about a necessarily warlike modernity. To sum up, our claims must be both restricted and generalized. On the one hand, no necessary link between modernity and war can be sustained. The scale of modern wars increases, but that may simply be a matter of growing social complexity—with the related technical capacity—not of the special features of a given type of society. On the other hand, war probably lies at the core of political systems and dynamics—while not being their exclusive midwife—well beyond modernity. We are thus left with an emphasis on contingency, which involves the critique of linear-evolutionary modernization theory and the need to stress the difference between various forms of violence. The question of how to conceive of society as not (entirely) determined by violence remains, and is laid at the door of a more refined, not functionalistic modernization theory. Granted, war and other forms of ‘barbarism’ cannot be excluded from the self-representation of modern societies. Furthermore, and as a result of these findings, the inner features of societies seem to be much more linked with the kind of wars that are practiced than with their frequency or the level of violence. The relations between political systems take centre stage. Of course, the contingency of inter-political relations intertwined with the coevolution of military affairs and inner social structures makes a more difficult subject to set within a conceptual frame than necessary, unambiguous evolutionary links seeking to determine the peaceful or warlike character of entire ages or civilizations.

6.4 Sociological Analysis of War: The Morphogenetic Approach The preceding sections examined the insights produced by various analytical and historical contributions to the study of war as a social fact. I have argued that their ways to connect conflict with social structures are either vague, deterministic, or one-sided, and call for a more systematic conceptual frame. Such a frame must also be apt to embrace contingency without excessive reduction. Now let us deploy the M/M approach as an analytical tool, and consider how the related thesis of an emergent MS can provide an instructive vantage point on the future prospects of war and society. In principle, the M/M approach presents a few analytical advantages: (a) it is non-functionalist and non-deterministic, it seeks to balance narrative and theoretical aspects, thereby keeping theory and contingency together;

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(b) it can be applied to study both the internal dynamics between structures, cultures and actors within societies—e.g. the interactions between military establishment, government agencies, lobbies, cultural élites, and the public opinion in decisions about wars—and the relations between politically organized collectivities31 ; (c) it could allow to study the transitions between different configurations of international relations, conceptualizing their respective properties. As to the idea of an MS, it is clear that it involves the excess of possibilities, variety producing more variety, accelerating social dynamics, mobilities, etc. The point is to understand what it has to do with war—if anything. What would war look like in the MS, and how would the MS change the longstanding reality of war? Figure 6.2 presents a pencil sketch of the way structural conditioning is conceptualized within the M/M approach.32 Relationships between various parts of social structure, may be ones of necessity or contingency, compatibility or incompatibility. Their combinations, in turn, create emergent situational logics, which constitute the context within which people and groups act, transforming or reproducing structures and transforming themselves in the process. The scheme is presented here in its simple form, but the same framework should be reproduced for the cultural system, and the respective morphogenetic trajectories of structure and culture interact with one another and with agency. This quick brush-up is necessary to understand the following step. If the scheme of institutional configurations is applied to war (Fig. 6.3), we get an idea of how social structures influence the likeliness and quality of military conflict.33 Different kinds of war are associated to a corresponding situational logic. Going through the various cases, it seems intuitive to link limited war to compromise, total war to elimination, and peace or the externalization of war to conservation. Before we go on, let me emphasize that the conditioning influence is not predicated upon any essential features of societies (e.g. democratic/totalitarian, modern/premodern, and so forth), but on a relational logic, that is a logic pertaining to, and emerging from the relations between the structures involved. Moreover, the correlations between logics and kinds of war are not just deductions, but result from empirical research, while at the same time seeking to set them into a systematic frame that can be used for explanation and interpretation—perhaps even for modest predictions. Finally, it is clear that the proposed scheme does not encompass all the possible qualities war can exhibit. For example, the state of military technology may 31 For example, see the contribution by Porpora et al. (2013), which is focussed on a clearly delimited

issue, and therefore does not unfold the whole morphogenetic reconstruction of the Iraq war decision, but is consistently inspired by the approach in question. In the following paragraphs we will also see how Michael Mann’s important work (2013) might be read within this paradigm. 32 A quick summary of the main coordinates of the M/M meta-theory was offered in Chap. 1 of the present volume. The essential references are at least Archer (1995, 2011). 33 Note that although the primary application is to relations between societies, the same explanatory scheme can be used to analyze how institutions and groups interact within a collectivity.

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Relationships of… compatibility

incompatibility

Outcome:

which condition a situational logic of…

necessary

Conservation

Compromise

Morphostasis

contingent

Opportunity

Elimination

Morphogenesis

Fig. 6.2 Institutional configurations and situational logics

Situational logics: Compromise

Elimination which condition

limited war (balance of power)

total war

Conservation

Opportunity

negotiated peace (alliance, externalization of conflict)

?

Fig. 6.3 Situational logics and war

sometimes encourage mass armies, sometimes stress the role of single ‘heroes’ or of highly competent specialized warriors. This in turn may affect social structure, insofar as the military enjoy higher or lower social status, and result in transformations of citizenship. All these facts do not appear in any box of Fig. 6.3, which is focussed on the macro-link between situational logics and the fundamental nature of the conflictual dynamics. But it would be possible to track these changes telling their morphogenetic histories. And because such changes are always socially mediated, studying their social morphogenesis would still be necessary to understand their emergence and establishment. In other terms, the M/M scheme may be used on different levels of analysis, and be associated to different properties of the social structure, the cultural system, and actors.

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Let us go back to our main argument. Two problems are immediately evident. First, we have to put some flesh on these conceptual bones, and see whether or not historical-empirical records show some evidence of the correlations above. The other problem is that of the question mark left hanging on the bottom right space of Fig. 6.3. So, what is the type of war that could be associated with the logic of opportunity, therefore with the MS? In the rest of Sect. 6.4 I will first present a few examples that fit in with the scheme. Each of them should be developed as a case study in its own right. Space does not allow to do this here, but I hope I can illustrate the scheme as a useful tool for analysis, interpretation and explanation. Then I begin to answer the second question, discussing some ideas about the possible future of war that come from various authors. This should set the stage for Sect. 6.5, where I complete my argument about war and social structures in a morphogenic society. In Chap. 5 of volume 4 of his masterful historical work, Michael Mann examines the nature of US domination in various areas of the world during the Cold war.34 He begins by recapitulating the main varieties of empire, from direct to indirect forms of domination, which involve descending levels of military and ascending levels of political, economic, and ideological power. Then he applies his typology to the US foreign policy in the period 1945–1980. Such a review can serve as an instructive exercise to test our conceptual frame. That of US-USSR relationships is the first, big case in point. Their ideological incompatibility was paralleled by the growing mutual deterrence due to the development of their nuclear arsenals—the notorious ‘MAD’ (mutual assured destruction)—and by the lack of ‘distance’ caused by their geographical dimensions and technological capacity of mobilization. In a statement that is very significant of the early Cold war atmosphere, Carl Friedrich wrote: History knows balanced systems of several states. History knows universal empires… [H]istory does not know the polarity of two giant continental powers with peculiar opportunities for defense and autonomy. But what is more unusual yet is that each of these two powers rests upon a creed. Each resembles a church and shares with churches the wish to convert everyone to their creed: They are missionary, and cannot help being missionary .35

This combination of cultural and structural properties made their relations of incompatibility increasingly necessary, based on a permanent threat of mutual elimination that could never be realized, except at the cost of total planetary destruction. After an early period in which the situation seemed to be still allowing the elimination of the enemy without the nuclear holocaust of humanity, the logic of compromise set in and pushed toward limited war, which was mostly fought by proxy. This is clear, for example, in the evolution of the American strategic doctrine, which gradually shifted from deterrence as exclusively based on all-out, massive retaliation, and on the expectation of possible direct confrontation, to the capacity to win limited 34 In

the following discussion I draw heavily on Mann (2013: 86–127), Allison (2017), Miglio (2011) for the historical information that is quickly presented with illustrative purposes. 35 Friedrich (1950). I take this quote from Niall Ferguson’s brilliant biography of Henry Kissinger, clearly a protagonist of that era (Ferguson 2015: 259).

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wars (Osgood 1957).36 This could be read as an indicator of the transition from one institutional configuration (contingent incompatibility) to another (necessary incompatibility). While this arguably represents a ‘pure’ case, it is interesting to mention other mixed situations, that are quite telling about the complexity involved. One is that of ‘frustrating proxies’ in the middle east (Mann 2013: 119–125, referring to Israel), whose aggressive attitude the US (allegedly) failed to restrain, thereby contradicting American interests in the region, precisely because they knew that ultimately the US would not desert them, due to some other linkages on various levels. Another case concerns the alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia, through which each side gained the one thing it wanted, namely oil at stable prices in return for protection, but the extent of which “must remain hidden from the two peoples. If revealed, it would be embarrassing for both.” (Ibid.: 121). Saudi Arabia was clearly strategic, due to oil and to its geographical proximity to the Soviet Union, but the two countries were obviously divergent in ideological terms. In these cases, it is prima facie harder to identify a precise configuration. There is surely an element of incompatibility, and some necessity holding the actors together, but (i) complementarity is also evident, and (ii) the outcome was in both cases alliance, not limited war. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it has even been secret alliance, at times wearing the mask of ambivalent, fake hostility. More refined analysis would be necessary, but I would argue that the problem lies in the mismatch between structure and culture, with different types of relationships prevailing in each realm. This complicates the relational weave that results in different institutional configurations, with their emergent properties and tensions to change. In any case, I would argue that what applies to both situations is (i) the tendency of political classes to preserve each other, and (ii) the presence of a ‘third’, ‘real’ common enemy of the two parties. This is likely to result in wars of limited intensity, because radical conflict is really somewhere else, or in limited, ambivalent, even ‘single-issue’ alliances. The corresponding situational logics swing between compromise and alliance.37 The US policy in East and Southeast Asia has gone through a phase of imperial wars, which were fought without principled limits to violence. The exemplary cases are Korea and Vietnam. Here the US was culturally and structurally incompatible with the political regimes of the countries involved, and these had large populations, strategic importance—being adjacent to two major communist powers—and economic potential. In addition, these countries were not nuclear powers. All of this means that the situational logic could be one of elimination.38 Then, as nationalist communist regimes failed to produce desirable forms of society and various countries

36 See

again Ferguson (Ibid.), who illustrates how this structural dynamic was reflected in the mind of some of the main characters of the age. 37 These two conditions were specified by Miglio (2011: 260–66) as empirical regularities explaining limited war. The further specification of the possibility of ambivalent, single-issue alliance and the application to historical cases is my own. 38 Isn’t this realization something that might lie at the heart of the current North Korean policy?

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of the region acquired some imitations of democracy (Ibid.: 101–105), US policy also shifted to compromise or to negotiated peace. Another example of contingent incompatibility, elimination, and total war, although mainly entrusted to proxies and local allies, is what Mann called the gunboats policy in the American hemisphere—e.g. in the cases of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. Here, too, the following historical process has led toward more nuanced and peaceful positions. The US-Europe relationship represents a case of necessary compatibility and complementarity.39 America and (Western) Europe had common cultural values and deep common interests, among which the main point of protection against the Soviet Union. In the resulting alliance, the US required that Europe not seek to become an independent military force, so any European rearmament should fit into a larger Atlantic framework led by the US. On the other hand, Europe was accepted as an economic force, and even as a rival, although within a common economic order endowed with the related institutions.40 This fits in with the idea that common values and identities, and some civilizational affinity—either between the leaderships or the whole populations—are a common feature of those cases where confrontation between rising and emergent powers is avoided. In Graham Allison’s words, these are the cases in which Thucydides’s trap is escaped (Allison 2017). The historical examples he presents constitute an interesting catalogue of cases in which political actors were able to work out structural and cultural arrangements that built and enhanced mutual compatibilities/complementarities, whilst downplaying incompatibilities/contradictions.41 To sum up, the M/M approach provides a way to frame sociological and historical insights in more systematic fashion, studying what situational logics are more conducive to peace in some given cases, and how to exit from one situational logic and pass into another. For example, it clarifies what factors are crucial, and must be taken into account, in limiting one’s dependence on unreliable proxies, getting rid of the contradictions in one’s strategy that would result from uncomfortable partnerships, or building compatible and complementary relations with potentially rival powers. The second focus of this section is to introduce the issue about the possible link between war and the logic of opportunity. First of all, given the argument developed in Sect. 6.3, any idea of an MS as inherently peaceful—or inherently warlike, for that

39 In

the M/M approach, the two terms refer to culture and structure, respectively. could be a similar case, although with lesser cultural commonality. Arguably, this emphasizes the aspect of American influence over that of friendly alliance. 41 In Allison’s volume, sixteen cases are listed of the so-called Thucydides’s trap, i.e. the risk of war between one rising and one declining power. The only cases in which war was avoided were affected (i) by the nuclear MAD condition and/or (ii) by deep cultural/ethnic commonality between the actors involved. A common civilizational ground is therefore a positive condition. Typical examples were that of USA versus Britain, and that of Spain versus Portugal. In the latter case, the actors found an agreement in seeking to create a morphostatic island against colonial newcomers (England, France, and the Netherlands). This was a further condition for their peaceful settlement, which reminds of what I said above about the importance of a ‘third’ as the real source of enmity and conflict. 40 Japan

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matter—would seem to be a dead-end street. However, such a notion still features in some significant contributions, and must be taken into consideration. One example is Ulrich Beck’s application of his theory of risk society in the domain of the sociology of war (Beck 1996). As I have already mentioned, Beck makes the opposite case to many other authors, maintaining that modern democracy involves an intensification of war, because the involvement of citizens is deeper and vaster than in non-democratic societies, due to the shared responsibility they have for the fate of society. Then he applies to war a notion proper of new risks in general, namely that they can hardly be delimited in time, space, or in social terms. Indeed, they challenge the established rules of attribution and responsibility. Finally, he draws attention to the vulnerability of advanced societies in terms of energy and communication networks. His conclusion (Ibid.: 260–61) consists of a theorem of incompatibility. Risk society and war are becoming increasingly incompatible with each other. The cause is to be found in two related processes, traced back to industrialization: (a) the decreasing ‘fitness for war’ (Kriegstauglichkeit) of modern societies; (b) the increasing destructive power of weapons. In principle, the notion of a structural incompatibility of a certain type of society with war is surely interesting. The intriguing fact is that such incompatibility, if proven, would contradict the situational logic of the MS, indicating a case in which variety and unchained morphogenesis produce a stalemate—and a welcome one, in this case. However, it seems both too deterministic and too hard to generalize. People and collectivities react creatively to the situation. And it is apparent that not all societies in the global world are unfit for war, or unwilling to fight. Moreover, such a theorem does not explain why wars are still currently happening. Finally, point (a) above should be defined better. What does this alleged ‘unfitness’ really amount to? Is it some sort of psychological evolutionary stage, or anything else? This may be argued, but only in the case of European societies that are highly individualized, hedonistic, ageing and demographically poor. Such a predicament involves a high degree of emotional investment on children and on personal safety in all respects, and the improbability of choosing to sacrifice one’s life for a cause beyond individual interest or for (possibly non-existent) future generations. A cultural and psychological rejection of war as such would logically be part of this larger syndrome. But this thesis cannot be applied to global society as such, which would amount to a sweeping generalization, captivating but in the end unwarranted. However, the hypothesis that such ‘unfitness’ might apply to the West, or to Western Europe, cannot be dismissed, and is indeed part of the current decadent structure of feeling in Western culture.42 In the same vein, but with more emphasis on objective and macro-structural effects, Niklas Luhmann argued that war is becoming useless as a way to pursue 42 This feeling is beginning to surface in some European quarters. For example, the argument I’ve just briefly gestured at also appears in a recent article by Maximilian Probst, in Die Zeit of 12 July, nr. 29/2018, in which he maintains the unsustainability of a ‘post-heroic’ society. The fact that such an appeal is addressed to German readers—and the automatic psychological response this still evokes—is a graphic image of the cultural stalemate involved.

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specific, significant political goals, because it would result in just an ecological catastrophe without winners and losers (Luhmann 1997: 1053–55). Again, this is not totally wrong, but involves an undifferentiated notion of war, forgetting limited war and the various forms it can take. Overall, the rationale of these approaches is still close to the evolutionary views examined in the previous section, and are no less problematic than their earlier ancestors. Another stream of thought addresses the changing nature of war, seeking to identify its inner transformations in connection with macro-social change. An instructive case in point concerns the already cited Centeno and Enriquez (2016: 151–163 and passim). In a rather cyclical perspective, they lay out the thesis of a decline of the power of accretion, and the corresponding return from wars of society to wars of the warrior. By the power of accretion, the authors mean a positive correlation between the capacity to aggregate power and the military and political effectiveness of violence. The history of war, they explain, has seen a linear progression in the social and organizational complexity of military forces (more complexity, more resources, more destruction), which involved a strict parallel between the complexity of societies and their military muscles. The reversal of this trend means that the capacity to aggregate and organize ever larger groups of soldiers and support them with the appropriate materiel is no more the key to victory. This allegedly separates societal development from the capacity to operate significant violence, and therefore makes a major revolution in the link between war and society. The main factor of this change lies in the technological revolution that produces more destructive weapons of ever smaller dimensions, at relatively reduced costs, and with reduced logistic and operational complexity. This makes possible for small groups of combatants to conduct relatively autonomous actions, inflicting huge damage and making massive military campaigns less cost-effective than ever in the recent past. This new relevance of small military units changes the style of war, and also explains the paradox—often evoked by the authors—that we now live in a world where war is omnipresent, yet unfamiliar to most. One consequence is the renewed role of ‘warriors’. A war of the warrior was one which (i) depended on skilled combatants and (ii) entailed fewer damages to the non-military population than we have witnessed with conflicts in the industrial age—since the First world war. On the macro-social level, this decline of the power of accretion is linked to the decline of empires. According to Centeno and Enriquez, the post-imperial line has been crossed. My critique is that the authors are surely pointing out an existing trend, but lack a more systematic frame of reference, which would allow to plot it on a more complex chart. Trends and mechanisms are indeed complex. This becomes apparent if we consider the following, contrasting evidence. Firstly, as an effect of the new style of war, the distinction between military and civilian targets is totally collapsing, even more than it did in the industrial era. As I will argue in the next section, cyberwar and

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other recent trends turns anything into a potential target—e.g. computer networks regulating nuclear energy plants, the remote control of nuclear arsenals, hospitals, airports and air traffic, banks, and more. Second, it is true that in some regions of global society small armies can sustain conflicts which bring about huge macroeffects on the global scale—e.g. statehood failures, massive migration movements, and mass killings on the edge of genocide. But this is only possible because of the current state of the system of international relations, whereby the great powers confront each other on those playgrounds without finding an agreement or producing a relatively stable balance of power. Also, if the relative ineffectiveness of the ‘big scale’ is a fact, the military and political doctrines adopted in war are part of the explanation. Moreover, various countries are still leaning on an effort to build up a powerful army, which would be impossible without a corresponding organizational and institutional societal complexity—e.g. Iran and North Korea. Finally, in the wake of the renewed claims to a global role by such rising powers as China, Russia, and (though with lesser credibility, at least in the short run) Turkey, the unambiguous thesis of a decline of empires and of a post-imperial age seems rather shaky.43 And all of them are still scaling up their military apparatus. The fate of war and peace in the emergent societal constellation, then, needs a broader, overarching interpretive framework that includes the high degree of complexity these facts exhibit and makes sense of their mutual relations.

6.5 Transforming War and the Transformative Power of War I will now identify some emergent social trends, which may be meaningfully connected to the core mechanism of the MS. Further, the mutual relations between them form increasingly complex second-order mechanisms and bring about other emergent effects. The reconstruction of the morphogenetic history of each lies beyond the task of this chapter. I hope it can at least lay out a map of the main vectors of change, and point the observer to their combinatorial potential, thereby offering an overview of the evolving link between war and society. In these quick illustrations, I will seek to disentangle the power of social structures to transform war and the reciprocal effect of war feeding back on social life and institutions. 43 On this point see Henry-Lévy (2018), who envisions the new rise of the five old imperial powers:

Persian, Turk, Russian, Chinese, and Arab. Although the fate of each of them, and of the system of international relations, looks complex and requires more nuanced analysis, this image surely catches something of the current political strategy and cultural identity (re)building in these five regions of global society.

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(1) New sources of conflict. The emergent societal constellation entails a range of old and new sources of conflict. Let us consider the following: (i) material goods, needs, and spaces. This involves the availability of food, water, natural resources, a healthy environment, work, land, and the related Commons for large parts of the world population—all related to climate change; (ii) knowledge, (social and personal) memory and oblivion. These elements relate to the new conditions prompted by the digital revolution and its possible consequences; (iii) political, economic, and military power, while new powers rise and the system of international relations is no more bipolar, but increasingly multipolar; (iv) apparently primordial sources of conflict (e.g. ethnic, religious) modernity thought to have overcome and that cannot be reduced to conflicts of interests (Luhmann 2000: 218–19), which can be easily mediated by a third instance. To some extent, all these factors have always been present in human history. However, their nature and meaning change deeply, as a result of the specific societal conditions in the contemporary global world. The issue of material goods and spaces is going to gain new momentum, because of the possible changes connected to climate change. If its consequences are still fuzzy and quite hard to predict, the rationale and the related risks are pretty clear. The current geo-political equilibrium is based upon a distribution of resources strictly linked with the characteristic assets and liabilities of the territories involved. As these normally change on a very long time scale, the present configuration seemed to be rather stable. Claims were always possible—the classical pursuits of better access to the sea, or areas rich in oil, etc. that are typical of ‘Realpolitik as usual’—but the overall situation is the outcome of longstanding dynamics of settlement, migrations, and conquest lost in the depths of history—in some cases even in pre-history. Now if climate change brings about huge transformations, for example the desertification of whole sub-continents, while once frozen lands become fertile ground, we might witness the challenge of big geo-political turmoil on a global scale. Knowledge—e.g. scientific and industrial innovations—has always been a valuable stake in political conflict. But now again its meaning and import are undergoing dramatic change. Advanced societies depend on immaterial knowledge and memory stored in computers and in the web, which makes them and their populations vulnerable to an unprecedented extent. Information systems become targets, which entails the diffusion of war beyond its traditional limits (e.g. targeting traffic control computers or routine government-citizen interfaces, like social security, or political elections). Moreover, the system of international relations has been mobilized by the end of the Cold war, and is now the playground of very dynamic forces. Finally, some of the so-called primordial factors—e.g. ethnic and religious—that seemed to be alien to modernized society and culture are showing a new relevance, just because of the high mobility, volatility and uncertainty that is destabilizing for-

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merly steady (i.e. relatively morphostatic or at least slowly changing) social structures, social imaginaries, and identities. (2) New military technologies. After the gunpowder revolution (XV century), the application of the industrial revolution to warfare (mid-XIX century), and the advent of nuclear weapons, a new revolution in military affairs is dawning on global society, that is already changing the organization of the armed forces, but also the nature and purposes of war itself. There is a long list of (mutually interacting) innovations, ranging from the development of more powerful conventional weapons to the fusion of weapons and sensors, remote controlled, space, and autonomous weapons, AI, robotics, and nanotechnology applied to warfare, biological warfare, and tools for cyberwar. Generally speaking, many of these innovations can be regarded as a manifestation of the inescapable pressure to reproduce the possibility of warfare in a nuclear age. They surely change the conditions of conflict, requiring a new production technology, a new organization and training of the military, and a new way of funding it. Also, their connection with the high-speed production of variety prompted by the scientific-technological structures of MS is quite clear. What is still unclear is who will enjoy a competitive advantage. For example, advanced countries would seem to have an advantage, because of the huge amount of economic resources, scientific and technical facilities, know-how and human capital involved in these developments. But they are also more vulnerable, due to their advanced infrastructures. Terrorist groups, as well as low-tech countries with a small élite of cyberwarriors acting offshore may represent a tough enemy. Be that as it may, the new revolution in warfare would create enormous problems. One good example concerns killer robots, which could turn out to be impossible to control, as well as it would eventually become really impossible to determine on what ground they make lethal decisions. Moreover, terrorists and hackers could easily appropriate or re-program such weapons.44 (3) Privatization of war. One quick remark must be dedicated to the development of private agencies acting independently or in collaboration with governments. All recent wars have seen a 44 In 2017, the UN voted to begin formal discussions on such weapons which include drones, tanks and automated machine guns. Ahead of this, a group of founders of AI and robotics companies have sent an open letter to the UN calling for it to prevent the arms race that is already under way for killer robots. On Monday August 21, 2017, in Melbourne, 116 founders of AI and robotics agencies and firms from 26 countries, including some of the world’s leading robotics and artificial intelligence pioneers, meeting at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), called on the United Nations to ban the development and use of killer robots. Tesla’s Elon Musk and Alphabet’s Mustafa Suleyman were among them. They wrote: «Once developed, lethal autonomous weapons will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend. These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways» (The Guardian, Sunday August 20, 2017). Note the emphasis on timescale, which resonates with the issue of acceleration.

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growing presence of such agencies, which has resulted in hard cases for international law to confront, due to the often ambivalent status of the related personnel. On the one hand, this trend must be linked to the current unwillingness of national governments to declare wars officially—due to issues concerning domestic or international public opinion, or to diplomatic moves—while on the other hand it also corresponds to the increasing professionalization of warfare, which sometimes makes it easier for some countries to hire a private army than to build one’s own. In either case, such a trend indicates a declining participation of citizenship to war, and indeed the separation of war from citizenship. In other terms, in these cases war is no more the quintessential activity of citizens—which to some extent defined them as such—to become a private kind of action, managed ‘by appointment’ or under a regime of private contracts. In this context, the evolution of war may be linked with more general changes in both ideological and political power—to put it in Mann’s words. (4) Blurring the boundaries of war. A paradox of the present predicament is that the whole world is at war, but the majority of humanity is currently not living in a state of war (Centeno and Enriquez 2016: 146). To some extent, this paradox is explained by the fact that war no longer has clear, unambiguous start, end, front, battlefields and armies. The very distinction between war and peace is declining, and political violence is more and more exceeding the legal definition of the war state. In other words, war can no longer be defined as a state. This is a key point in the current phenomenology of war. It does not amount to a single trend, but is itself a second-order outcome of several processes. Without any claim to exhaustiveness, we could outline some as follows: (a) stop-and-go, quick and continuous movement in and out of war, used as a strategy and deployed in as flexible ways as possible—which involves abandoning old definitions of a ‘state of war’ (Wight 2015); (b) new forms of war: it is decreasingly a matter of states fighting against each other, and increasingly an asymmetrical conflict, with the prevalence of civil war, insurgency and terrorism, civilians being increasingly the targets, and a widening variety of political violence to embrace forms that would not be regarded as war, e.g. targeted drone attacks, limited air-force strikes and political assassinations (Münkler 2005; Centeno and Enriquez 2016); (c) information systems become targets and war exceeds its traditional limits, potentially hitting traffic control computers or routine government-citizen interfaces, like social security or elections. Thus, war is becoming multifaceted, i.e. involving multiple resources and a decreasing distinction between military and nonmilitary technologies45 ; (d) continuous shift of alliances and partnerships, which would bring about fresh forms of limited war. This would mean making alliances ‘liquid’, i.e. subject to sudden change, coalescence and fragmentation. The current turmoil involving 45 The recent issue about American suspects of Chinese smartphones possibly used as spyware is a good case in point.

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historically taken-for-granted alliances, which had come to be part of the very identity of certain countries, indicates this emergent shift; (e) invisibility of war: besides the complexities involved by processes mentioned at points (b) and (c) above, states are often conducting their military operations under cover, without the official frame of war declarations and the related international law. While states used to be proud of their flags and uniforms, now they seem to hide, making it hard to attribute responsibility for acts of hostility.46 (5) Shifting/multiple loyalties, new political subjectivities. As modern war contributed to forge the modern nation state, can we expect the transformation of war to bring up new political forms? The question of the morphogenetic power of war is seldom raised, and seldom finds systematic answers. However, it is a core issue in the current societal configuration. My thesis is that we are witness deep changes in political loyalties and political subjectivities. The processes hinted at points (b) and (d) above, i.e. the new, asymmetrical forms of war and the continuous shift of alliances, must be evoked here as indicators of this great mobilization of collective identities and political subjectivities. The fact that wars are increasingly occurring within, not between states, and in the name of non-state motivations, interests and identities, is now commonplace (Hirst 2001; Münkler 2005; Centeno and Enriquez 2016).47 But it is usually not linked with more general social change in the sphere of politics. The link with the logic of the MS lies in the fact that once crystallized identities, allegiances and partnerships become more and more fluid, contingent, open to further combinatorial games. The faltering grip of the superpowers makes possible to enter this new game. A further related phenomenon is that of emergent forms of political dissent. As Colin Wight has noted with reference to the so-called ‘Arab springs’ and to other examples (Wight 2015: Chap. 3), protest movements are requiring a new political vocabulary. They are increasingly expressing a quasi-anarchist version of politics, new decentred power to organize, facilitating the rapid and effective formation of groups. And they allow people to reply, reformulate and disseminate communications themselves. Moreover, there is often no integral party line that is strictly respected, to which every member of the movement must conform. Lack of conformity is the rule. New forms of protest have a very large membership, very large in scale precisely because they do not require conformity in all respect and on all issues. They draw participants who come from various affiliations and are only united by common commitment to one particular cause. One corresponding feature is that such protests are difficult to transform into long-term political formations and projects such as traditional parties with traditional political cultures and stable identities. Loyalties crystallize and dissolve rapidly. Openness, precariousness and instability, and the 46 Various

examples come to mind: Ukraine, with its odd kind of war and the participation of anonymous (Russian) ‘green men’, CIA renditions and the ambiguous status of the Guantanamo prison, and more. 47 Hirst (2001: 79–109) also adds that failed or rogue states even wage war against their own citizens, which is a variation on the same theme.

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apparent lack of a unified command to sustain (long-term) action are the hallmarks of these movements. The connection of all these emergent facts with the morphogenetic logic can be seen in the emphasis on easy combinations, compatibility in affiliations, change in the meaning of political loyalty and commitment. Thus, new political subjectivities are emerging above and below the level of the nation-state, on various levels of aggregation. Morphogenic processes are shifting boundaries and transforming the systems of loyalties that ground political configurations. This reflects both on the changing nature of political systems at the national level and on the form of differentiation of the system of international relations on a global scale. The post-national constellation can hardly be reduced to the functional principle of differentiation. Social and political movements, lifestyle communities, ethnic diasporas and religious communities, criminal organizations, continually cross national boundaries, and transnational diasporas assume increasing importance (BenRafael 2003). What they all have in common is that they perform actions, enter relations, and express allegiances that cut across societies and functional systems throughout the world, struggling to become the primary obligation (obligatio ligia) in cases of conflicting loyalties. In that sense, one could speak of a social differentiation along cultural, ethnic or religious lines, coexisting with forms of differentiation still coupled with a territorial principle. Such a plurality is itself an expression of the MS in its capacity to produce ‘variety’, in the form of social entities/networks organized around different selective principles and endowed with specific forms of inner rationality. So, after the modern unification of all loyalties and allegiances—religious, ethnic, linguistic, territorial, interest, cultural, etc.—within the nation State, the MS is probably producing new pluralistic arrangements, in which loyalty itself becomes plural and contingent. Some primary problems will have to do with where loyalty is going to crystallize, which one will be appealed to by conflicting actors at any given moment, and whether or not it is possible to produce a relatively stable institutional fabric based upon plural loyalties, all included in an ordered setting. In this connection, it must be observed that the state is probably not just declining, but will have to learn how to act in symbiosis with other powers, because these are inevitably rising, but they in turn need territorially based powers to secure the world and provide certain goods. For examples, multinational corporations will still need physical and legal protection, and having to provide their own infrastructure would be more costly than using state protection. The case could be made for the MS involving contingent, but potentially advantageous complementarity between different institutional complexes—states, corporations, various local and global powers, either territorially based or not. To sum up, these processes can be linked with the central dynamics of contemporary society in various ways, many of which arguably represent good examples of a situational logic of opportunity. They also interact with each other, supporting and feeding on each other in complex ways. All these interweaving threads cannot be followed up further, but I hope that the emerging picture lends some plausibility to the MS-connection.

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Now let me quickly outline a few relevant consequences that are bound to have structural, long-term significance. For one thing, war is increasingly side-stepping democratic decision making. The need of adaptive response to quick, unpredictable turbulence and the related high level of flexibility on a very strict timescale—a specification of social acceleration—puts increasing pressure on the democratic decision making bodies and procedures. Secondly, the diffusion, differentiation, and invisibilization of hostility is resulting in the expansion of war and its apparatus beyond their historical mission and functions.48 This is silently producing some kind of ‘militarization of society’. The state of exception has gradually been replaced by an unprecedented generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal technique of government. What used to be the emergency becomes the rule, and the very distinction between peace and war becomes impossible. In connection with this, liberal democratic institutions are finding it difficult to reconcile security with human rights (Baxi 2009: Chap. 5, 2012), and with the whole set of rights developed within the tradition of Western liberalism.

6.6 Conclusion. Mobilizing, Expanding, Delimiting War Trying to draw any general conclusion, or to make long-term predictions about the future of war and peace would be an exercise in wild speculation. Clashes of civilizations may happen, but are also countered by other mechanisms, one of them being the increasing mobilization and differentiation of political identities that make civilizations themselves less internally homogeneous than one might believe. The US and China might escape Thuchydides’s trap or not. The West could finally decline or show some resilience. Powers may rise and powers may fall, with their imperial ambitions. The 21st century might well be divided into three parts, as Paul Hirst predicted (2001: 108–109), passing from a relatively traditional ‘modern’ situation to the full maturity of the revolution in military technology and the first visible emergence of environmental crises around the middle of the century, ending up with extended environmental and Malthusian crises, prompting large conflicts, in the last third. These, however, are futures we cannot really see from the present point in time, unless we believe we are ‘confidant of Providence’—as Raymond Aron would say (1961). What I have tried to do is lay out the playfield and identify the processes and tensions that constitute the forces in the game. We cannot know whether or not the MS will be drawn in a mostly peaceful direction, as a result of its main actors being willing and able to combine factors in such a way as to grab the opportunities producing win–win games. The opposite option is to assume an immunity-like approach to the threats of global society, trying to protect one’s peace and security by the multiplication of vortexes and enclaves. As Joas argues, much—though not all—will 48 The

case of the US is brilliantly investigated by Brooks (2017).

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depend on the capacity of actors not to give into the ‘lack of normative imagination’ (2000: 2023) and to provide better foundations for the rational core of the historical conceptions of peace in the face of future challenges. The core truth of Realpolitik is that war is likely to remain with us for a long time, if not for good. The task ahead is to understand how it can be limited in time, space, and destructive power or bloodshed, preventing it from escaping the very normativity that has been historically inherent to war itself, in the societal constellation that is dawning. The pursuit of the full legalization of international relations under the monopoly of legitimate power held by the United Nations seems a remote dream. To some analysts, it would even be an undesirable solution. Promoting a foreign policy based on human rights and a consistently multilateral approach to political crises makes more sense—even more so if it leads to spread the cultural and socio-psychological awareness of the essential unity of human fate, given the level of advancement reached by human civilization as a whole. This involves the renegotiation of a new world order including a new role for Asian powers and the Arab world within a frame of interweaving interests and values. This cannot be the accomplishment either of a renewal of Western-style Enlightenment, or of its sheer rejection in the name of cultural diversity. One fundamental condition probably lies in conceiving of the integration of plural societies beyond modernity, in some way close to Shmuel Eisenstadt’s important insight in the principles of legitimation of the social order. What Eisenstadt argued was that three such principles must be combined, which are also crucial dimensions of human experience, namely the primordial, the civil, and the spiritual. The idea that these must not be considered to be mutually exclusive, but can be integrated within the same cultural program and institutional arrangement, lies at the ground of his critique of modernity, and consequently of his theory about how complex societies could prevent falling into barbarism. Let me recall one of his felicitous formulations: Barbarism did not present itself as a direct, somewhat natural outcome of primordial orientations, (…) or as the result of rational ideals. Rather it arose from the incapacity to integrate these different dimensions of experience, these layers of the construction of collective consumers and collective solidarity within the institutional frame that was constituted by the modern cultural program. It was the outcome of the inability to develop a frame in which the tensions could not be wholly eliminated, but could be treated in a constructive way. (Eisenstadt 1996: 116)

This seminal insight must be developed further, and has many important corollaries. On the structural side, it has to do with the way a plurality of emergent political subjectivities and allegiances should be treated, combining and ‘civilizing’ primordial loyalties within complex and pluralistic networks. Culturally, primordial identities must not be denied, but oriented toward peace and the valorization of other particularities. This is the difficult task of building a new universalism, in the twilight of the modern order. Finally, Eisenstadt is also reminding us the crucial relevance of a sense of the transcendence of humanity, which is necessary to produce new, ever contingent alignments, new effective couplings between values, norms, law, and politics. Overall, this combinatorial capacity lies within the potential outcomes to be expected of a morphogenic condition of society.

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Miglio, G. (2011). Lezioni di politica. Vol. 2. Scienza della politica. Bologna: Il Mulino. Miller, M., & Söffner, H-G. (Hg.). (1996). Modernität und Barbarei. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Münkler, H. (2005). The new wars. Oxford: Polity Press. Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality. Evolution, culture, and wisdom. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company. Osgood, R. E. (1957). Limited war: The challenge to American strategy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Parsons, T. (1937). The structure of social action. New York: McGraw-Hill. Porpora, D. V., Nikolaev, A. G., Hagemann May, J., & Jenkins, A. (2013). Post-ethical society. The Iraq war, Abu Ghraib, and the moral failure of the secular. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Schmitt, C. (2007). The concept of the political (G. Schwab, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Expanded Edition 1932). Skocpol, T. (1979). States and social revolutions: A comparative analysis of France, Russia and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skocpol, T. (1994). Social revolutions in the modern world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Tilly, C. (1985). War making and state making as organized crime. In P. Evans, D. Rueschmeyer, & T. Skocpol (Eds.), Bringing the state back in (pp. 169–191). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, C. (1990). Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990–1990. Oxford: Blackwell. Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wight, C. (2015). Rethinking terrorism. Terrorism, violence, and the state. London: Palgrave.

Chapter 7

Formations of the Secular. Transcendence in a Closed World

Keywords Axial age · Immanence/Transcendence · Cultural change · Secularity · Pluralism

7.1 The Problem The present chapter addresses an issue that is seldom treated outside the specialist circles of religious studies, namely that of transcendence in the cultures, identities and practices of inhabitants of the global society. However, although religion is obviously part of the discourse, the aim is not to write an essay in the sociology of religion. No claims are advanced here with regard to the fate of any particular church or organized cult, their rise or decline in numbers, their prospects of establishment or impact on a given society. Rather, the point is to examine the transformations of the distinction-and-relation between immanence and transcendence, using this as a vantage point from which the cultural systems in global society can be studied. The focus is on the making and loss of social meanings (Porpora 2000; Sayer 2011), and on what immanence/transcendence have to do with this. In other words, the chapter addresses transcendence as a relevant factor in the cultural fabric of society, and part of how people make sense of their everyday experience. Some current approaches in sociological religious studied are considered, with the objective of fostering a particular research agenda. As in the other chapters of this book, there is a common thread unfolding through the text. The underlying aim is to unearth some deep processes characterizing the morphogenic state of society. Thus, the distinction immanence/transcendence is here meant as a conceptual tool to understand one more facet of this societal constellation. The ‘closed world hypothesis’ is also deeply intertwined with this theme. In this context, attention must go to the efforts to conceive of transcendence in new ways, recombining symbolical elements to form new syntheses. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. M. Maccarini, Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13624-6_7

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The chapter comprises three analytical steps. First, I review some recent sociological theories of religion. The contemporary intellectual scene is dominated by the further developments following the radical questioning of secularization theory that has animated the debate in recent years. I will not embark on a detailed reconstruction of the theoretical landscape, but focus attention on the conceptual frames that formulate the most important questions from my specific viewpoint. This choice does not only result from lack of space. The focus of my argument is not on secularization theory—either in its empirical strength or in its epistemological status—but on the cultural elaboration of transcendence. Thus, the presentation will be focussed upon two emergent paradigms ‘after’ that of secularization1 : one is centred on pluralism, and moves from the last contributions of Peter Berger, which I will discuss in relation to other views. The other could be labeled as the contingency of disenchantment, and refers to the recent work of Hans Joas. My discussion aims to highlight their convergence and divergence, drawing some implications concerning my central theme.2 Drawing on those insights, the second step will be to outline some trends affecting the socio-cultural construction of transcendence in the current societal predicament. In a nutshell, these are interpreted as ‘morphogeneses’ or ‘catastrophes’ of transcendence, in that they involve creative elaborations or radical exits from the mediation formulas between immanence and transcendence that characterized classical modernity. This presentation of the problem entails the thesis that religious and secular should not be conceived as mutually opposite, but as interweaving elements of structural and symbolical knots I will call formations of the secular. The continuous reconstruction of such formulas by cultural, religious, and political élites has a profound influence on what Shmuel Eisenstadt called the cultural program of a civilization. Some coordinates of the current situation will be identified. So far I have used the concepts of immanence and transcendence in a simple, undefined way. Before I undertake the analysis I have just sketched, I must introduce a conceptual frame that allows to speak of transcendence in a more formalized way. Of course, I will not discuss this in confessional terms, as the insider of any particular religious tradition. Thus, I deploy the concept of the Axial Age to outline the ways transcendence is culturally conceived (or forsaken), institutionalized and socialized, seeing this as a vantage point that is simultaneously more abstract and allowing adequate insights. The present chapter does not engage in historical or philosophical debates. Its aim is to mobilize the notion of ‘Axiality’ as a conceptual tool for sociological analysis. This is the third step, which will actually come before the other two, as a necessary premise to their analytical narrative. 1 ‘After’

means ‘more recently emerged’. I am not claiming that secularization theory is dead. The status of classical secularization theory as a (now contested) paradigm is commonplace among sociologists of religion. See for example Casanova (1994), Davie (2003), Gorski (2003), Berger (2014). As I said, I will not take sides in this contested issue. 2 I am aware that secularization and disenchantment do not refer exactly to the same formal object. However, both have to do with religion, conceived as historically situated experience of something that is perceived as sacred. This definition is taken from Joas (2017: 14–15). The relevance of such a comparison will be clarified in Sect. 7.3.

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7.2 Axiality: An Old New Tool for Analysis Starting with the seminal philosophical work of Karl Jaspers, the theory of the Axial Age has developed into a special branch of the sociological tradition. Although it gave birth to a deeply interdisciplinary debate, ranging from the philosophy of history to evolutionary psychology, it is on that tradition that we focus in this chapter.3 As Joas (2014a, b) has noted, the debate about the Axial Age has become a way for intellectuals to take a stand over the problem of transcendence, its role in history and contemporary possibilities of re-articulation. This is also the main theme of this chapter, in an essentially analytical mode.4 Jaspers famously described the Axial Age as a fundamental turning point in the history of humanity, the synchronic period—between 800 and 200 B.C.—in which all world religions, as well as Greek philosophy, were born. It was a revolution in the realm of ideas and in their institutional bases, whose core lies in the “emergence, conceptualization, and institutionalization of a basic tension between the transcendental and the mundane orders” (Eisenstadt 1986a, b: 1). It is not simply the idea that a ‘transmundane order’ exists. Such an idea had been there even in pre-Axial civilizations, where the ‘two worlds’ had been conceived as symbolically structured according to very similar principles (Ibid.: 2–3). What is new is the emphasis on their qualitative difference. The transcendent sphere now involves a sharp ontological discontinuity between God and the world, the divine and the earthly sphere. In God resides perfection, while the immanent realm can only be ontologically and actually wanting. Several consequences follow in the social realm. Political authority and the structures of social stratification are de-sacralized, new forms of social and political critique emerge, as well as conflicts of interpretation of social norms and values, and new possibilities to reconstruct the worldly kingdoms according to transcendent ideals. This account is typical of Eisenstadt’s interpretation of the Axial categories. In his understanding, the analysis is not much concerned with the notion of an Axial age. This would entail the related issues of explaining the synchronicity of the processes taking place in various civilizations as more or less mutually independent, and making sense of their origin in the first place. On the contrary, here the emphasis shifts from Axial age to Axiality, as a hallmark all cultures might display. Correspondingly, the research agenda centres around the type of social order characterized by Axiality, and the way in which different ideas of transcendence—or their decline and loss—shape civilizations and societies. Eisenstadt’s perspective—with its original mix of Parsonian and Weberian themes—is also the approach I connect with in the present chapter.

3 In the present discussion I draw mainly upon the work of Jaspers (1953), Eisenstadt (1986a, b), the

important theoretically oriented reconstruction by Joas (2014a, b, 2017, Chap. 5), and the manifold contributions in: Arnason et al. (2005), Bellah and Joas (2012). 4 Attempts to articulate new ‘axial visions’ lie far beyond my purposes—indeed, I would say, beyond any social scientific approach. For an interesting, recent work in that vein see Marshall (2016).

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As it is well-known, this is not the only possible line of thought. The sociological reception of Jaspers’ work has been multifarious. For example, Wittrock has emphasized the rise of reflexivity—i.e. second order thought and symbolism—over the notion of transcendence. Others—like Apel and Cassirer—have highlighted the relevance of the Axial period as the foundation of moral universalism.5 In my view, dismissing transcendence as a crucial component of Axiality would deprive the theory of much of its heuristic potential. The theory would become blind to the possible consequences of a loss of transcendence for moral universalism, and for society at large. In fact, these aspects are not mutually exclusive, and their joint consideration allows to look at the possible connections. Arguably, such a move is consistent with Jaspers himself. His original intention was to identify an ‘axis’ of world history that could be recognized as an empirical fact, valid as such for all humankind (Jaspers 1953: 19). The aim was to build a common structure for the historical and anthropological self-understanding of all peoples, rejecting Eurocentric views and exploring new foundations for universalism (Joas 2014b: 37). Nonetheless, in Jaspers’ mind this agenda was also strictly related to transcendence. A de-axialization of culture—so Jaspers argued—would cause tremendous effects not only with regard to values and beliefs, but also in the anthropological domain. Nihilism, fostered by modern technology, which he saw as a threat to the entire cultural tradition since the Axial period “from Homer to Goethe”, would also herald the sunset of our very being-human.6 And this process is internally related with the loss of religious faith. Jaspers then wondered whether or not faith would be possible without transcendence. His judgment was definitely negative. ‘Secular faiths’, which translate transcendence into innerworldly goals oriented to an immanent future, would not do. Faith in social planning, pacifism, and similar “social religions” without transcendence and enchantment7 would only foster skills, intensity of work, the unbound Prometheus of enthusiasm for technology and for the learning of practical things.8 His conclusion is peremptory: «It is impossible for man to lose transcendence without ceasing to be human» (Ibid.: 228).9 5 See the works cited in note 3 above, particularly the excellent syntheses to be found in Joas (2014b,

2017: 279–354). especially Chap. I of part Two. 7 It is impossible not to hear in these lines an echo of Weber’s tragic feeling for Entzauberung. 8 All part Two of Jaspers’ book is relevant. See above all Chap. I, points B and C (106–125), and Chap. III, point C (213–229). I will not totally subscribe to Jaspers’ Kulturpessimismus, but it must be admitted that part of his diagnosis—e.g. the hints regarding education—resonates with some current processes characterizing learning and the educational institutions in knowledge societies. 9 This thesis is convergent with Voegelin’s interpretation of secularization as loss of transcendence—and with it of the sense of human indisposability, which would set a limit on State power. It would be interesting to contrast Jaspers’ negative view of ‘learning practical things’ as a cognitive idol of de-axialized humanity with Sloterdijk’s idea of practice (and the ‘practising man’) as a new form of human relation to verticality, after the semantics of transcendence (Sloterdijk 2013). I cannot deal with this matter in detail, but I will quickly come back to Sloterdijk’s characterization of the human condition as one of being placed within a vertical tension later in this chapter. 6 See

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Such a final statement would surely sound too deterministic—to say the least—to Western, late modern ears. Indeed, in many scholarly quarters the default option would now be the opposite.10 However, the contemporary socio-cultural dynamics are making the distinction between immanence and transcendence relevant again, processes of sacralization and de-sacralization still weave their complex paths, and old cultural dilemmas appear in new forms. In this context, a research agenda focussed on the forms of the immanence/transcendence relation is as timely as ever. As I understand it, such a program must be in line with Eisenstadt’s overarching frame, and is also meant to be consistent with Joas’ interpretation of Axiality. In the latter’s approach, the Axial Age is the historical period when an idea of transcendence was articulated in some specific civilizational seed-beds—in relation to social and political processes and structures. The characteristic of that idea of transcendence was that it made sacrality reflexive. Therefore, transcendence should be understood as reflexive sacralization (Joas 2017: 295–296), prompting systematic reflections on the basic conditions of human existence. So, the idea of an Axial Age does not just refer to transcendence, but to a certain representation of transcendence (Ibid.: 310–311). Both clarifications are important. The link with social processes and structures emphasizes the sociological, non-idealistic character of the notion of Axiality. Ideas of immanence/transcendence must be studied as formulas elaborated by social actors, in relation to interests, identities, needs, problems, and purposes emerging from personal and social life.11 The emphasis on representations specifies that transcendence is not just an undifferentiated symbol, that may be included or not in the matrix of a cultural system. Different cultures shape different notions of transcendence, and if the latter is a symbolical resource for the social construction of meaning, moral behaviour, social critique, and more, its specific form could make a difference for social life and institutions.

7.3 Pluralism, Contingency, and Axiality in a Morphogenic Environment If there is anything like a mainstream in the current sociological theory of religion, it is the rejection of unilinear evolution. In this theoretical context, two distinct conceptual 10 That is, the loss of transcendence would be regarded as a necessary step toward authentic human flourishing. Such arguments are well-known. Recent discussions can be found in Archer et al. (2004), Joas (2008). 11 More specifically, Joas links the emergence of the Axial Age with the structures of the archaic state. While the link with the political systems is in itself important, paving the way for the discussion of collective self-sacralization and its alternatives (Ibid.: Chap. 7), I disagree with the particular interpretation of such a link offered by Morris and Gauchet, which Joas mentions at pp. 334–336, on at least two accounts. First, as Joas himself maintains, Axiality cannot be regarded as just a reaction to the emergence of state structures. Moreover, the characterization of ancient political systems as ‘states’—or even worse, as ‘modern states’—seems to me quite inaccurate, and leading to equivocal results.

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frames are particularly interesting. I will call them the paradigm of pluralism and the contingency of disenchantment, and briefly outline them as a backdrop against which our reflections on Axiality must unfold.12 Peter Berger’s late work (2014) explicitly lays out “a paradigm for religion in a pluralist age”. Such a new paradigm must deal with two kinds of pluralism, i.e. between different religions and between a religious and a secular discourse, both in individual minds and in the social space. Berger defines the pluralist condition as follows: «a social situation in which people with different ethnicities, worldviews, and moralities live together peacefully and interact with each other amicably» (Ibid.: 1). He goes on to clarify that “the last phrase is important”, because pluralism may only unleash its full dynamic where there is intense and relatively friendly conversation, covering serious existential matters. In this definition, segregated societies are not really pluralist, since people will not actually talk with each other. Let me notice that this sounds like an ambitious as well as a too simple assumption to be starting with, but I’ll come back to this later. The argument begins with an interesting statement, namely that we have misunderstood pluralism. Berger seems to admit his own mistake—in good company with a whole generation of secularization theorists, he claims—in thinking that pluralism would lead to relativism and to secularization. Instead, he now argues, the pluralist condition does have a deep impact, but one that is not necessarily hostile to religion. Hence the need of a paradigm for the study of religion that revolves around pluralism, not secularization, as the pivotal fact.13 It is essential to understand where exactly Berger corrects his previous view. Four analytical steps constitute the purported causal chain. First, any interaction with others that is extended in time and covering a broad range of subjects brings about a process of cognitive contamination, that is, of mutual influence. Second, any interaction with others who disagree with one’s own view of the world relativizes the latter, initiating a process of cognitive bargaining as some sort of mutual accommodation of the various views. Third, pluralist societies produce cognitive contamination and relativization as an ongoing condition (Berger 2014: 2–3). So far, the argument hardly differs from Berger’s old theory. The turning point comes with the last step. There is indeed a challenge of pluralism to religion. In a pluralist context, religion is de-institutionalized, i.e. deprived of its taken-for-granted quality, but secularization is neither the necessary nor the prevailing outcome. Pluralism as the end of taken12 In the following discussion I advance no claims to philological completeness. Various authors may well be involved, some making the same or similar arguments. What I do is focus on work that can be regarded as exemplary in terms of originality and theoretical consistency, making the case for the relevant perspective with outstanding evidence. The literature on pluralism is vast enough to make a book out of it. Above all, the issue of building commonality out of difference is a leit motiv in contemporary social science. Let me just quote Seligman and Weller (2012, 2018), Seligman et al. (2016). 13 As it is well-known, in his previous work (1994) Berger also envisages other possible outcomes, like religious fundamentalist reactions to reconquer the secularized world. Such a strategy remains possible. Here I will focus on the alternative—that of non-fundamentalist, non-secularized religious resilience in a pluralist world—because its nature and conditions of existence have to be specified.

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for-granted certainty involves contingency and choice. Many different formulas of compromise emerge from the process of cognitive bargaining. However, such choices may well remain within the religious domain (Ibid.: 20). Berger supports this statement with an empirical and a theoretical argument. Empirically, he just points to the evidence that in much of the world, people are (still) religious. The perspective of multiple modernities—which is included in his explanatory narrative—helps to understand that such an outcome does not depend on lingering traditionalism, but simply on different forms of modernization. Theoretically, differentiation is the pivotal concept. Starting from the meaning of secularization as functional differentiation between religion and various secular subsystems, Berger argues that the differentiation between institutions must have a correlate in the consciousness of individuals. Thus, people may succeed in being both secular and religious, and such differentiation is the “prototypical cognitive balancing act of modernity” (Ibid.: xii). Secularization is avoided through differentiation. This covers one side of pluralism, i.e. that between religious and secular discourse. The other side involves the co-existence of different religious options. In this sense, belonging to one particular religion is no longer a matter of being ‘born into’ something, but of personal, reflexive choice. What all of this means is that religion enters the “interminable process of redefining who the individual is in the context of the seemingly endless possibilities presented by modernity” (Ibid.: 5). In other words, religion has crossed the threshold to the era of contingency (Joas 2014a),14 and has made the transition from a naïve to a reflexive framework—as Charles Taylor says, characterizing the experience of faith in a secular age (Taylor 2007). The crucial point is to understand the implications of this ‘pluralism in the mind’. Here a profound ambivalence sets in. On the one hand, Berger maintains that pluralism “changes the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’ of an individual’s faith” (2014: 32). The example he makes concerns the so-called ‘third-generation phenomenon’, which means that grandchildren adopt the beliefs and values of their grandparents, formerly rejected by their parents. In this case, the contents of faith remain the same, but what was previously a destiny has now become a reflexive deliberation. On the other hand, reflexivity definitely turns into sheer religious bricolage. When Berger describes the transition from certainty to reflexivity with the exemplary sentence through which the quintessential late modern believer would inform friends that “I’m into Buddhism right now” (Ibid.: 30), it is clearly not just the ‘how’ of faith that is changing. What he is really saying here is that religious beliefs tend to become shallow and volatile. To put it in more neutral terms, this corresponds to the “fragilization of beliefs”, the tendency to easily switch from one belief to the other that Charles Taylor indicated as a hallmark of his Secular Age.15 The implication would be one of high volatility and widespread eclecticism, in more articulate or in rather coarse versions. 14 This

concept has been illustrated in Chap. 3. The present argument about religion is, thus, consistent with that framework of macro-social change. 15 Note that Taylor proposed this notion while countering Berger’s then pessimistic view of the secularizing impact of pluralism.

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This ambivalence is of the utmost relevance to qualify any paradigm of pluralism, and cannot be bypassed by the obvious remark that both outcomes can be empirically observed in our societies. Even the most hard-nosed supporters of secularization theory would be ready to admit that religion might resist in a few, reactive niches of the Western populations. The question is on what ground one can seriously claim that pluralism leads to religious choices. As Detlef Pollack notes in his response to Berger, if the idea of undermining and relativization is still on board, how far has he really modified his previous thesis? (Pollack 2014: 115–116). Pollack goes on to claim, on the ground of field studies, that in pluralist countries religious contents—the ‘what’, not the ‘how’—tend to become vague and indetermined (Ibid.: 119). I would add that the phenomena of religious revitalization Berger mentions as evidence to counter secularization theory are surely important, but he never shows that they have a meaningful relation to pluralism. Some of them concern non-Western societies, in which the form of pluralism is different—as we will see shortly. Others occur in the West, but look more like reactions to pluralism than like the outcome of cognitive contamination and bargaining. Most, if not all, believers in truly pluralist societies have come to accept the sheer co-existence of different worldviews as something they have to live with. But there are different ways to live with otherness. Relativization and the loss of distinctive identity is one, while at the other extreme one could find closed communities, which only entertain functionally specific communications with the rest of society—for example, oriented to economic exchange and proselytism. Even though the choice to join may well manifest the reflexivity of individuals, those groups are not known for being prone—or open, depending on your politics—to the relativization of their beliefs. In fact, it is precisely on this point that they often conflict with ‘old and cold’ institutional forms of religious attendance—like parishes in Catholic milieux or some mainline Protestant denominations. Of course, there are many life-styles in-between, e.g. indifference, with little meaningful communication about one’s personal beliefs and commitments outside the inner circle of fellow believers—to which one may dedicate his/her spare time. Whatever one makes of such phenomena, to say that the mutual influence caused by sustained conversation generates reflexive re-articulations of individual faith is quite another matter. In other words, it is not fully clear (i) if the examples of religious revitalization mentioned by Berger differ substantially from the fundamentalist reactions he had already envisioned in his previous work (see note 13), and (ii) if they emerged from the experience of pluralism and contingency, through cognitive contamination. The paradigm of pluralism involves a theory of socialization and of institutionalization. This is the core issue, if one really wants to break the link between pluralism and secularization. Another problem concerns the meaning of pluralism itself. As we have seen, Berger assumes that ‘true’ pluralism involves not only peaceful co-existence and mutual respect, but also deep and thick communication covering important topics, dialogue revolving around beliefs and value commitments. I will call this pluralism 1. As I said above, this seems to me a rather ambitious definition, which risks to overestimate the extent to which regular people are inclined to share their identi-

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ties—especially in verbally articulate ways.16 A more generic, less committal definition appears on p. ix, where pluralism just means “the co-existence of different worldviews and value systems in the same society”. Let me call it pluralism 2. It is not just a matter of abstract definitions. The type of pluralism that characterizes late modern societies is a decisive feature for the role and fate of religion—which in turn is a factor which co-produces the various forms of pluralism. Leaving aside those societies in which cultural or religious difference was, and still is, governed through endemic conflict and violence, pluralism 2 is clearly not new. Pluralism 1 could be understood as a subset, or a special case of pluralism 2, the latter being a more comprehensive category. Berger obviously knows that pluralism has existed in different forms at various points in history (Ibid.: p. 4), but his argument implies that pluralism 1 is typical of modernity. My point, on the contrary, is that pluralism 1 should not be taken for granted, and that it cannot stand for pluralism tout court even in modern societies. In addition, the ‘naïveté’ of pre-modern believers should not be overestimated. In terms of mere ‘awareness of alternatives’, the existence of other cultural and religious options has always been known.17 What is important is rather: (i) the presence of a hierarchical frame of understanding—i.e. the notion that others are just plain wrong. This allowed to deploy such concepts as barbarous (Luhmann 1996) or infidels; (ii) the intensity of interaction, or the spatial and social distance between the various options. If interaction is low, it is easier for believers of all kinds to integrate other options within their own explanatory narrative, which remains unquestioned. Now, if we assume (as Berger does) that hierarchy and low interaction uniquely characterize pre-modern societies, while symmetry and intense inter-cultural interaction are typical of modernity, we are building one more reified picture of ‘true modernity’. This means that historically and empirically oriented analysis is downplayed, and the lesson of multiple modernities has not been fully internalized. As a matter of fact, Berger’s expected implications regarding religion depend on what may turn out to be an uncommon form of pluralism. This is why its conditions of existence make an important research question. At the same time, it would be interesting to study whether or not secularization has been a correlate of pluralism 1 more than of pluralism 2. In a nutshell, forms of pluralism and religious change must be examined together, in a way that is more open to contingency. One final remark concerns the governance of pluralism (Berger 2014: 78–93). As an element of the paradigm of pluralism, the political dimension—involving relationships between state and religion and between different religions—is clearly important. Berger rightly highlights the necessity to find “formulas of peace”. He goes on to mention various solutions, ranging from official indifference, through 16 In

his 1994 book, Berger provides a similar definition—one close to pluralism 1 with just a little less specification. For the sake of simplicity, I will not dwell on that slight variant, since it does not change anything with respect to the present argument. 17 Unless one gives into the myth of cultural integration. For a still valid critique, see Archer (1988).

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peace by subordination, to territorial differentiation (cuius regio, eius religio) and to the separation of church and state. Such a list could well make an exhaustive historical landscape of institutional arrangements. However, the problem is whether sociological analysis can tap into the novelty of the present situation. In other words, what is new in the new paradigm of pluralism, if its political dimension boils down to the historical, modern and pre-modern formulas of peace? In my view, inter-cultural, inter-religious symmetry—one of ‘peace among peers’—and intensive interactional density—that is, pluralism 1—do constitute a novel framework, which entails specific challenges to politics and governance. No ‘new’ paradigm can ever be expected to provide all the answers, but it should allow to identify the central issues, and ask the crucial questions. Some of these are closely related to the novel pluralist predicament. For example, are different religious institutions still appealing to the state, to negotiate a privileged establishment, or are they developing the capacity to entertain mutual relationships and to stipulate their own covenants concerning their respective social space? In the latter case, what is the role of the state in this process? Is global society a totally post-Westphalian space—is the territorial separation of different religions now impossible as a political formula of peace? Can this be taken for granted?18 What other formulas are emerging ‘after’ that? Are different religions coming up with shared positions on certain political or cultural issues—e.g. on the typical battlefields of the Western culture wars—thereby building novel forms of moral universalism through the particularity of their respective identities?19 The list of intriguing questions could be much longer. My point is that these issues have to be (re)considered in a way that is adequate to the novel situation, which exceeds the early modern, perhaps even the late modern cultural and political frame. In this respect, the paradigm of pluralism must be developed further. It is instructive to contrast the former perspective with the work of Hans Joas. There are three main reasons for this. First, his approach goes to fundamentals in questioning the sociological and cultural narrative of secularization. Moreover, Berger’s theory has been critically confronted in part of Joas’ conceptual building, hitting precisely the conceptual blind spots of socialization and institutionalization, which I have mentioned above. Third, the two perspectives share the emphasis on pluralism, contingency and reflexivity as the quintessential condition of religious faith in global society. I use the label of contingency of disenchantment for the latter approach, referring to its culmination in Joas’ most recent contribution in this domain (2017). Through this comparison, the major theoretical dilemmas for a sociological theory of religion in the morphogenic condition will appear in fuller light. The starting point would appear to be very similar. Joas’ main thesis (2008, 2014a) is that contingency is the hallmark of the new, inescapable socio-cultural framework 18 The thesis that global society involves a post-Westphalian condition has been effectively illustrated

by Beyer (2011, 2013). I cannot discuss this point here. I just note that some of Beyer’s typical examples—e.g. Turkey or India—currently display what I would regard as mixed evidence. 19 All these questions are formulated here as empirical problems, but could as well be turned into normative form: “should religions come up with shared positions…”, etc.

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for religious faith. However, it must not be interpreted within the all too common frame of decline and loss, since it does not necessarily result in relativism, secularization, or the decline of value commitments. It is precisely in this vein that he criticizes Berger’s pessimistic version, arguing that the pluralist predicament really engenders contingent certainty—i.e., certainty that is aware of its contingent genesis. We could also call it reflexive certainty. Of course, Joas does not claim that the era of contingency establishes an opposite linear trend, leading to the revitalization of religious traditions. There is no necessary evolution. Contingency must be taken seriously. Isn’t this the same argument of Berger’s recent reformulation? Thus, would the latter escape Joas’ criticism? This question is not asked for purely philological reasons, but is meant to indicate an important watershed between different contingencyoriented theories of religion. In fact, Joas is critical of Berger’s way to conceive of institutions, as well as of religious options as choice. Institutionalization and socialization, it was said above, are the core of a theory of religion in times of contingency. And as these elements remain the same in Berger’s recent work, criticism would still apply. As regards institutions, Joas rejects Gehlen’s conception—adopted by Berger—of stability being due to the lack of reflexivity. Institutions are the realm of the takenfor-granted. If values, norms and action programs may be questioned, their internalization becomes unstable and superficial. From this angle, pluralism entails the de-institutionalization of religious identities. Joas’s opposite view is that flexible, reflexive internalization can build a different, dynamically stable kind of institutional environment. This may avoid the wild swing between sheer morphostasis—or social reproduction—and sudden collapse. He attributes the polarization between rigid institutions and unlimited individual freedom to a flaw in Berger’s Protestant code (to remember Bellah’s famous phrase), which cannot conceive of institutions as playing a constitutive—not just regulative—role in the development of individuality. If reflexive institutions are possible, then even pluralism may be institutionalized as a distinct value. With respect to socialization, Joas’s critique revolves around what must be considered to be a pivotal concept in his whole theoretical approach, namely the experience of self -transcendence. Religious faith, so the argument goes, is not based on an act of choice. The whole utilitarian semantics of interest, preference and ‘rational choice’ is just misplaced. Faith—as well as all serious value commitments—is grounded on the deep experience of ‘something’ that blurs one’s identity boundaries, generating an overwhelming feeling of attraction.20 As Joas clarifies, such experiences are

20 On

this concept see Joas, above all (2008, 2017). His reflections on the genesis of values also make a relevant background (Joas 2000). Let me remind that negative, shocking experiences of identity disruption (e.g. violence) are also contemplated in his theory. I just don’t dwell on them here, since they are not central to the present topic. As regards the related attraction, theological arguments come to mind within the Christian tradition that articulate the notion of a (paradoxical) tractio (i.e. attractive force) by the Cross. I cannot follow up with this theme in the present chapter, but the way religious traditions make the case for the attractive force of their core symbols or

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not religious by definition. They may be prompted by nature, art, love, or various aesthetic moments. Religious experiences fall within this broader category. This does not detract from the importance of institutions, since experiences are not self-interpreting, but are articulated within groups, churches, and cultural traditions. But the crucial point is that contingency does not (necessarily) shake value commitments, because of the psycho-sociological way in which attachments are constituted. Berger’s notion of cognitive contamination would apply if commitment were created by narratives. Joas replies that they emerge from experiences, which remain undeniably evident in the face of theoretical arguments. Therefore, social dis-integration and the loss of value commitments must not be regarded as a direct consequence of increased contingency. This thesis is undoubtedly strong, for at least two reasons. First, it is impossible to deny the pluralist condition of society, and the related contingency. Therefore, ideas of necessary decadence make the theory blind to any evidence of revitalization and resilience in the present predicament. This easily results in various coping strategies to manage the perception of failure of one’s beliefs and hopes—from the depressing semantics of regret to the widespread apocalyptic rhetoric, either religious or secular—theological, ecological, etc. These represent examples of the need of simplification as a defense from contingency—here shaped as radical, catastrophic de-differentiation. Second, the social—or psycho-social—mechanism of commitment is specified, explaining what makes it resilient in a pluralist world. This does not happen even in Berger’s ‘de-secularizing turn’.21 That relativization also leads to religious, not just to secular choices thus appears as a mere fact—with the ambivalences I have shown above. The only hint in this direction lies in Berger’s few lines on differentiation as a “cognitive balancing act” that allows people to be both religious and secular, depending on the relevant sphere of action. Such an argument is not fully clear to me. He refers to the early modern formula “etsi Deus non daretur” (as if God did not exist), and seems to read it as the battle cry of the various realms of human—e.g. professional—practice breaking free from religion, and beginning to be inspired by properly secular principles. At the same time, the acting people would still be able to follow their religion, in the specific domain of rituals, community service, and in the ethical intention they may put in their work. Now, unless we embrace a historically untenable notion of religion as mere magic, we should acknowledge that this is hardly a modern breakthrough. From military strategy to architecture, from agriculture to medicine, to various fields of technology, such a ‘balancing act’ has always existed. Looking at an extreme case, even primitive societies, in which good hunting had to be propitiated by appropriate rituals, clearly employed rational techniques when actually facing the concrete task of hunting. Nevertheless, the idea

founding experiences is an interesting theme for research, to be linked with the present sociological discussion. 21 As well as in other theorists in the same line of thought. As I said from the outset, I comment on Berger’s version as a consistent version of a larger sociological stream.

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of cognitive balancing acts, which would reflect the macro-situation of institutional differentiation, may be fruitfully developed and could prompt further study. At the same time, Joas’s argument also invites further investigation. Two directions can be highlighted here. First, the model must allow to distinguish between the multiple possible paths and outcomes of religious individualization. One relevant point must be to examine the possible consequence of articulating transcendence in different forms. Second, the experiences of self-transcendence are clearly not just isolated points in time, but are factors in a whole life course. The integration of such experiences within more or less institutionalized, formal and informal processes of socialization—through which personal identity emerges—raises various important issues, and must be carefully examined. For example, is it possible to cause such experiences to happen—at least indirectly, e.g. placing individuals in potentially inspiring situations? How can, and should such experiences be properly accompanied, helping people to make sense of them, and to make them the centre of consistent courses of action? How should educational environments mix homogeneity and plurality, openness and closure? What kinds of mix are viable in terms of the ‘transmission’ of values and beliefs? In other words, how can religious and life-style communities regenerate themselves in non-fundamentalist ways?22 The latter point becomes even clearer, if we briefly reconsider one particular aspect of the distinction between cognitive contamination and experience of selftranscendence. It is true that Berger centers his account on narrative, from which cognitive contamination derives. However, he is not just making the case of a scholarly debate, but of an existentially thick relational dialogue. In this sense, meeting others, talking with them, living together could also constitute one of the many possible kinds of experience that lead to self-transcendence. As a consequence, the various forms of dialogue make an interesting theme in their own right, constructing different environments for value commitments to emerge, and for identities to grow. A contingency-oriented theory of religion should not neglect these dimensions, unless it wants to downplay the impact of cultural change, and the possibility that the symbolical heritage of cultural and religious traditions be not only transformed, but altered beyond recognition. Such an outcome may then be regarded as good or bad, depending on the observer’s own perspective or on future historical record. But sociology must be able to see it.23 The latest book by Joas (2017) could be read as the culmination of his systematic approach to religion in the ‘era of contingency’, which completes the frame of reference he has been developing for a long time. A detailed review of such a complex work is beyond this chapter, and would require an essay in its own right. Here I just outline its implications for my main questions. The objective is quite ambitious, namely to articulate a narrative of the evolution of religion in modern society that is alternative to Max Weber’s famous image 22 These points should be of major interest to those who deal with religious education. For an overview of approaches and practices in Europe see Seligman (2014). Joas briefly touches on this subject (2008, esp. 110–111). 23 Joas (2000, Chap. 7).

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of Entzauberung (disenchantment). With this, Joas is tackling not only a theory of religion, but one of the bulwarks of modernization theory, indeed of the whole sociological outlook on the historical process. Therefore, he mobilizes a complex and refined panoply of conceptual tools—ranging from sociology to psychology to semiotics—which revolve around the human relationship with the sacred and the capacity to build ideals. The whole theoretical construction provides the foundations of the alternative perspective. I cannot but take a very selective approach to the text, linking it to my argument at two points24 : (1) The idea that disenchantment as the dominant historical process must give way to the more contingent analysis of historical constellations, leaving history open to ideal and psychological alternatives, is rooted in an anthropology that keeps together the capacity of ideal building and the foundation of value commitment. Such an account is connected to a theory of sacralization. The crux of the argument is that self-transcendence, not religion must be regarded as the anthropological universal. Such an experience is systematically linked with two elements. On the one hand is a broader conception of human action and experience. Here Joas draws upon his longstanding theory of the creativity of action, and upon the pragmatist notion of the self as constituted in social interaction. On the other hand, the forces that produce self-transcendence evoke representations of the sacred, and attention must focus on the symbolical articulation of experience, which does not flow directly from experience itself.25 With this analytical step, the complex mechanism of religious attachment (not ‘choice’) is detailed, paving the way for the idea of (contingent) religious ongoing vitality in global society. Possibilities of new ideal building or of the revitalization of old sacralizations allows to give up all-embracing views of the loss of meaning. From this angle, secularization can be reinterpreted as migration of the sacred (444). The sacred may be transferred on different objects.26 But it can also happen that nothing comes to take the place of the previous affective and symbolical attachments, resulting in a loss of motivation and of the binding intensity of values and norms. (2) Sketching the history of multiple sacralization processes as alternative to sheer disenchantment, Joas also shows that the symbolical content of the representations of the sacred is not culturally, socially or politically indifferent. In other words, the place where we identify the sacred is highly consequential 24 These are worked out throughout the volume, but culminate in the final argument presented in Chap. 7 (419–488), to which I mainly refer in my present comment. 25 Joas thus intends to correct what he calls the hermeneutic deficit of Durkheim’s sociology of religion (435). 26 An interesting (and disturbing) application of this idea came from one the most significant voices of Islamist jihad. In a video broadcast by Al Jazeera (March 2006), Al Zawahiri accused the Western civilization not of disenchanting everything, but of sacralizing different (and obviously, from his viewpoint, wrong) things. Western civilization is false and decadent, he claimed, because it has elected semitism, the Holocaust, and sexual perversion as its sacred objects. Divergent instantiations of sacredness, not the contrast between sacredness and secular disenchantment, define his version of the ‘clash of civilizations’.

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for society. Within the uncontrollably vast array of the possible paths of analysis, Joas focusses attention on the relationships between sacredness and power. Such a connection has tended to produce various formulas of collective self sacralization. We might say there is a sense in which human cultures have been instinctively Durkheimian. But we did get a chance to exceed this tendency. Within the enormous variety of historical ideals, there have been moments when concepts of transcendence emerged, that went beyond innerworldly ideas of the sacred. The Axial Age introduced a radical moralization of the sacred, and such a chasm between innerworldly and transcendent dimension that no earthly king could fill—a threshold nobody could cross (465). This allowed to avoid the forms of collective self-sacralization, or the sacralization of political leaders, reacting to all the fusions between sacred and power. The mutual interaction between sacredness and power is also marked by contingency. Joas then briefly illustrates four historical constellations of the relationship between power and sacred (480–488): (a) collective self-sacralization in egalitarian tribal societies; (b) sacrality of power carriers (kings, military or charismatic leaders); (c) sacralization of people or nation—and I would add collective entities like race, class, or political party; (d) sacralization of the person (human dignity, human rights).27 Today new forms of collective self-sacralization, and new creative, ‘Axial’ reactions emerge. Joas mentions the alternative between the sacredness of the person—which he sees as the second big breakthrough in the desacralization of power after the Axial Age—and renewed forms of theocracy and fundamentalism (e.g. Iran and the search for a new caliphate), or of sacralization of political leaders (e.g. North Korea). This, in the end, is the ‘power of the sacred’ evoked in Joas’s title. It is the ambivalent, compelling force that drives to collective self-sacralization, on the one hand, while it also opens the human potential to transcend such a fate. A theory of multiple sacralizations—as I would call it, in clear analogy with multiple modernities—must examine these constellations. Under certain conditions—which are constituted by relationships between human creativity, social and cultural ecologies—experiences of self-transcendence motivate to noble acts, and provide meaning for life. As Joas concludes, a “better self” struggles within us, which embodies our ideals, against other behaviours and attitudes we despise. In this sense, self-transcendence is a deep source of our vital force (Lebenskraft). Joas thus builds a conceptual frame to study the potentials for different sacralization processes in global society. The processes of ideal building and of personal 27 As Joas himself notes, it is sociologically interesting to examine the mixed forms (479–480), whereby, for example, the sacralization of the nation takes the shape of moral universalism. Various examples occur, like the USA as democratizing force, but also all colonial countries as civilizing forces on a mission—remember the notorious ‘white man’s burden’—and France as secularrevolutionary republic and the nation of human rights.

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commitment become the centre of the analysis of pluralism and contingency. The experience and representations of transcendence, as well as the mediation formulas between transcendence and immanence, lie at the core of such analysis. Besides the discussions such a theoretical fabric naturally attracts, the task ahead would be to explore the global landscape, beyond the few countries that often serve as the most striking examples of extreme polarization. A full-blown study should examine the ongoing processes of multiple sacralizations/de-sacralizations, and their interactions with other social processes and structures. In this respect, we could envision a continuum of the morphogenesis of the Axial formulas, calling its extremes Axial catastrophes. With this phrase I mean the exit from the tensions and mediation formulas between immanence and transcendence, in either direction. Such a frame of reference allows for a further corollary. Secular and religious—or better, secular and sacred—can no longer be separated by a sharp distinction in principle. Their mutual constitution—in the symbolic, practical, and institutional dimension—becomes evident, and their unrelatedness a singular event. These relational bundles could be called formations of the secular,28 which in turn can construct their symbolical matrix in Axial versus non-Axial ways. Let me provide a brief illustration, that will necessarily remain halfway between an explorative outline and the indication of a research program. As to the political and institutional aspect of pluralism and contingency, a whole research agenda could be re-oriented, taking the cue from the insights I have discussed. It is instructive to begin from a macro-level overlook. If we crossed the ‘state of religion’ with the geo-political landscape, we could see that the Cold War era manifested a particular type of equilibrium. The world was profoundly shaped by the confrontation between two geo-political entities. One was an officially atheist system, while in the other the religious heritage had become increasingly functionalized and individualized—tamed in its actual constraining power on individual lifestyles, but still lingering in the background as a possible supply of meaning. At the same time, non-modern forms of religion were simply pushed to the margins of the bipolar world and dismissed as the remnant of a primitive age. As of today, that constellation has exploded, and the morphogenic syndrome is generating new variety, which is hard to grasp in one simple formula. A thoughtprovoking representation has been proposed by Madsen (2012: 432 ff.). Drawing on Charles Taylor’s masterful canvas (2007: 455 ff., 487 ff.), Madsen speculates about an emerging contrast between an archaic paleo-Durkheimian submersion of the self into politically organized communities versus a post-Durkheimian exaltation of the self in expressive spirituality. Taylor, however, also mentioned ‘neo-Durkheimian’ forms, which are partly different from the old identifications between religious faith and civilizational order—some of which would be consistent with Joas’s notion of collective self-sacralization.

28 This phrase is taken from the well-known work of Asad (2003). However, the meaning I have just

attributed to this formula differs in part from the original, which connects secularism as a political doctrine to the ‘secular’ as epistemic and anthropological category.

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To the extent that there is some truth to Madsen’s (and Taylor’s) image, it would be tempting to talk of a post-Durkheimian West versus a paleo- (or neo-)Durkheimian ‘Rest’—particularly where political turmoil and nation- or empire-building processes still search for theological legitimation. But in fact, similar developments appear ‘out of line’ in various regions of global society, making the latter more of a patchwork than a confrontation between opposite monoliths. Furthermore, the cultural fabric in question is more nuanced than this, and requires more refined distinctions. Religious pluralism in late modernity results from the complex interplay of different forms of pluralization. Religious institutions, groups and communities currently increase their differentiation-and-integration along various axes: (i) cultural content—distinctive faiths/religions/cults, plus an increasingly radical naturalistic semantics of the human phenomenon (Habermas 2008); (ii) (type of) relation to society—paleo-, neo-, or post-Durkheimian; (iii) constructions of immanence/transcendence—pre-, post-, and neo-Axial. As a result of this, many aspects of religious experience change, as well as its meaning and consequences to people and society alike. The efforts of religious institutions and traditions to reconceive their role in contemporary society take place within this complex framework, and weave these elements together in various forms. Simultaneously, this is also the symbolic space within which they are constructed by political and social actors. As a consequence, a wide array of relations emerge between religions, and between religions and political institutions. From this viewpoint, two issues are currently crucial: (a) how religious communities build the social and symbolical space of their presence and experience in a given society; (b) how they deal with individualization and the possible relativization (as two distinct, though contingently related problems) in the dimensions of (i) dogma and doctrine; (ii) internal organization; (iii) ethical issues concerning secular domains and activities. If we take Christianity as an example, it must be remembered that relations to the ‘world’ represent a longstanding problem in the thought and practice of Christian communities.29 The problem of space amounts to the need to ensure the necessary conditions for Christians to pursue their mission. Such a question underlies all Christian reflections on society. In this respect, the basic dilemma has historically been the following: should Christians just foster a “calm and peaceful” life for all nations, so that they can get to know the Church, or should they struggle to de-limit an exclusive social space (‘Christendom’)?30 This difference defines the boundaries within which the doctrines and social practices of Christian communities typically unfolded. 29 The same could be said for all monotheistic religions, each in its own way. On the way Christian doctrines about society have developed, beyond the classic contribution by Troeltsch (1992; orig. ed. 1912), see Höffner (1979), de Laubier (1990), O’Donovan and Lockwood O’Donovan (2000). 30 See 1 Tim 2, 1–4, as commented by O’Donovan (1996: 146–147). The distinction between divergent ways for religion to inhabit, or appropriate social and political space does not often appear in social theory. See for example Hunter (2010).

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Historical conditions obviously prompted complex combinations and polarizations. Both the nature of the public sphere and the internal structure of religious communities, as well as the mode and timing of their integration within the society at large are clearly involved.31 Now, globalization, migration flows, and the related processes are accelerating the morphogenesis of those two fundamental modes. The challenge of estrangement and cultural shocks tends to materialize in the issues of social and symbolic space. The creative reaction on the part of various communities is producing new structural and cultural elaborations. As to the challenge of individualization—more or less connected to the relativization of beliefs—the tendency to accept or reject reflexivity as a structural condition constitutes the other relevant watershed. The resulting formations of the secular are presently comprised by these distinctions-and-relations, mixing the three axes (cultural content, relation to society, Axiality) in multiple ways and thereby coping with the two basic dilemmas (space and individualization). In both dimensions, the self-representation of the various collective subjects—religious and political—involved in the current dynamics still seems to lie along the conservative/progressive continuum. One may argue that the most interesting, creative elaborations are emerging outside that distinction. I upheld this thesis in a previous contribution, concerning Christian communities (Maccarini 2012).32 In terms of the future viability of those groups and churches, I still find that claim convincing. But in purely empirical terms, at least in the short run, the latest years manifest a certain retrenchment into modernist strongholds—with public controversies playing a polarizing role. One interesting case in point is that of neo-nationalist governments in Europe—Poland and Hungary being the most visible examples, but in a context of convergent dynamics in the party politics and the public opinion of various other countries, from Italy to Sweden. In some of these cases, secular discourse remains the foundation of collective identity, while in others a neo-Durkheimian formula is clearly being established (or reinforced), coupled with an emphasis on cultural distinctiveness and on transcendence. This configuration is supporting the defense of an exclusive cultural, ethnic and religious space, in the face of the failure of multiculturalist approaches in various European countries. This means that new challenges are being met with old strategies, while cultural and institutional creativity would be needed. It also shows that the exit from early modern settings is not so easy. Greetings from Westphalia! Of course, one may wonder about the inner coherence and stability of such formulas. Can a neo-Durkhemian arrangement sit comfortably with the emphasis on 31 A good example concerns the institutionalization of Catholicism in the US, as reconstructed by Casanova (1994): the ‘republican’ phase involves individualism and in-distinction, while the ‘immigrant’ phase entailed collective mobilization on ethnic and confessional grounds to protect the interests of the Church and of the ethnic/cultural groups that identify with it. For an interesting research on the Muslim case in contemporary America, see Glenn (2018). 32 In this respect, my reflections are reminiscent of Randall Collins’ critique of modern binary thinking (1992).

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transcendent faith, or is it going to push an agenda of (re)sacralization of the nation? Other combinations are also possible, each with its own problems. We must bear in mind that what I am outlining is not a logical game, but a socio-historical process. Inconsistency and instability are always possible, whilst they are not necessarily related—incoherent constellations may be politically as stable as consistent ones, or even more. Seen from the standpoint of European Christianity,33 the present situation involves an intense reflexive work, struggling between re-politicization and de-politicization processes. Such a predicament involves a characteristic dilemma. The morphogenesis of European politics and societies is increasingly diverging from the modern ‘business as usual’—to put it in more formal terms, from the relatively stable institutional arrangements that had characterized post-War social democratic regimes. Among other things, such regimes had constituted clearly identifiable structural and symbolic ecologies to which religion adapted—with clear challenges and opportunities. Now, the accelerating change of those regimes is also prompting the need for religious communities to elaborate new formulas to cope with new environments. As part of this problem, Christian communities seem to perceive the acute need to preserve their critical as well as proactive potential. This in turn would involve the capacity to articulate new political theologies, i.e. to revive and reconceive creatively adequate theories of political authority and of its ‘just’ conduct in several once hot, then forgotten, and now freshly urgent issues—think of cultural pluralism in educational systems, migration policies, war, etc. The dilemma consists in avoiding to become (or being perceived as) an active part of the political struggle—a role Christian churches have rejected—while also escaping the pitfalls of hopelessly non-political categories, inadequate to make a serious contribution to most major public issues. The concepts of Axiality and mediation formulas are still central to this debate. Refined fundamentalism, from the right as well as from the left, simply reject mediation. For example, the symbolic dimension can be fused together with the geopolitical one or radically detached from it. A politics of absolutes is the outcome—absolute peace, liberation, world-citizenship, environmental or ethnic purity, nationalcum-religious identity, national interest, security, rights, and so forth. In this context, the sacralization of the person becomes a crucial, and itself contested, watershed. Its outright rejection marks a decisive turn toward new collective self-sacralizations and various forms of de-Axialization. Its adoption involves further distinctions, that still revolve around the Axial difference. It may express a moral critique of de-humanizing processes ‘in the name of the human’, i.e. potentially shared in a pluralist public sphere regardless of its ontological or metaphysical foundations, even when coming from religious actors.34 In this sense, religions may 33 This

limitation is mainly due to the limits of my own competence. Since the aim is to present an illustrative example, I hope this does not detract from the interest of the argument. Of course, generalization from this situation to the whole global context is excluded, although the dilemmas—not the solutions—are now arguably similar in many regions of the world. 34 According to the logic of value generalization (Joas 2013: Chap. 6).

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contest the symbolic boundaries of modernity, from a different point of view oriented to the future and to the needs of humanization. On the other hand, the sacredness of the person may develop as a Western-led conventional discourse, assuming that a hegemonic secular version can flatten all particularities.35 Finally, various political theologies may propose their own discourse of human rights, sometimes producing strenuous defences of traditions that conflict with what has come to be globally accepted as a human right.36 Saving transcendence and the autonomy of historical processes requires balanced mediation formulas. The underlying problem of defining what is human, and humanizing—with the related rights—remains intractable, beyond a few general features. There is currently no meta-language that can produce consensus. The multiple formations of the secular can, however, be put to the test, in their capacity to foster social solidarity and viable forms of life, whose quality can be perceived as humane. The latter process intertwines with another trend. We have considered the strategies of traditionally established religious communities in Europe, with special reference to Christianity. This is also the most common theme to be found in social science theory and research. However, an important task is to explore a much more uncommon territory, namely the multifarious morphing of the sense of transcendence that develops within secular spheres and groups, as well as among spiritual identities that are clearly far from historical religions. Such a theme is usually studied under the heading of ‘spirituality’. Two lines of research are mostly practiced. One conceives of ‘spirituality’ as superseding ‘religion’, and examines the empirical dynamics of such inverse relation (Flanagan and Jupp 2007; Heelas et al. 2005; Houtman and Aupers 2007). The other links spirituality in personal attitudes—i.e. the fact that people define themselves as ‘spiritual’, and engage in some related practices, like meditation—with various life outcomes, e.g. health (one example among many is Miller and Thoresen 2003), productivity at work, civicness and sustainability, and more. But very little research is oriented to the analysis of cultural contents, and even less takes the notion of transcendence as its guiding distinction.37 What can be said at this point, in rather general terms, is that hyper-complexity is prompting cultures and mind-sets that give up rational discourse, which is deemed inadequate 35 Insofar as religious subjects accept this, they become prone to subtle processes of inner secularization and de-Axialization. For an unsuspected witness, one could read Latour (2002: particularly 72–75), who criticizes the discursive strategies associated with such secularization from within—e.g. mental restrictions, rationalization, universalization based on least common denominator, etc. 36 On the tensions between secular human rights and political theologies see—from a definitely secular standpoint—de Sousa Santos (2015). 37 To mention just two examples, let me quote Hedlund-de Witt (2011), who studies how ‘New Age’ spirituality may lend support to civic attitudes favourable to environmental sustainability, and Zinnbauer et al. (1997). The latter study revolves around cultural contents, but when it comes to the definition of the sacred, their distinction is between ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ ones. This lends a limited contribution to ‘unfuzzying the fuzzy’ (which is the title of the article), insofar as the ways in which transcendence and immanence are combined remain in the shadow. My thesis is that in fact, such a feature is very important in linking the emerging cultural syntheses in the spiritual realm with personal and social outcomes.

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to shed light upon the divine as pure ‘mystery’. In the process, certain branches of post-modern culture tend to reconsider some kind of archaic wisdom, which is claimed to provide access to the underlying mystery of the world. This explains the odd mix of hyper-modern scientific language and archaic myths and symbols that is often found in the narratives of ‘new age’ cults. In most versions of such discourse, transcendence is rewritten in immanent words. Various alternatives appear, depending on whether relations with some personal being are involved, or reference goes to impersonal forces, and whether the focus is on de-centering human subjects or on a renewed emphasis on some new forms of humanity.38 Be that as it may, in all these offspring of the Western historical cultures immanence becomes a deep and vast subterranean world in which fresh forms of individual and collective self-transcendence are searched for, re-discovered from some old philosophical heritage, or invented anew. Such may well become a dominant developmental path in the cultures unfolding within the horizon of the MS and of a closed world. This must be the object of further empirical study. But such a link looks like a promising working hypothesis—a theoretical variation, to put it in Luhmann’s parlance, that would provide a unifying interpretation of multiple phenomena and streams of research data. Socialization and identity building allow to look at another facet of the crystal, and again, the Axial perspective prompts useful insights. Going back to the idea of multiple sacralizations, and of the transcendent option among them as opposed to collective self-sacralization, it seems clear that such an option requires certain personal capacities. In this sense, a de-axialization of personality would bring about the disruption of those capacities and conditions. Indeed, this is part of what makes the question of the Axial Age not just academic: as Bellah and Joas observe in the Introduction to their important edited volume, “the deep self-understanding of educated people of all the world’s cultures is at stake” (Bellah and Joas 2012: 6). In forms that may involve lesser explicit articulation—or discursive penetration, to put it in Habermas’ words—I would argue that the deep self-understanding of even wider populations is at stake. However, after an early quick reference by Eisenstadt (1986a, b), who mentioned deep changes in personal identity as one of the multiple effects of the Axial revolution, the link between Axiality and education/socialization does not seem to have raised much interest in the social sciences. The Weberian heritage could have been conducive to fruitful developments. Yet, even those who care about the personality of the purported “Davos men”, or “network men”, who succeeded the old Calvinists, have not tackled the issue of their education/socialization—even less so in connection with any idea of transcendence (Sennett 1998; Boltanski and Chiapello 2005). The argument could be linked with William Sullivan’s thesis that education itself—as 38 In this context, transhumanist thinking and practices as ways to self-transcendence make an outstanding research field in its own right, which is beyond the limits of the present work. The literature on this topic is obviously enormous. Let me quote Fuller and Lipinska (2014), Bostrom and Sandberg (2009) as two different expressions of a quintessential transhumanist thinking. For a sociological argument compatible with the present approach, with apologies for a self-citation, see Maccarini (2018).

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an effort to “form and reform” (2012: 411)—must be regarded as a product of the Axial Age. Sullivan goes on to claim that modern higher education has been globally shaped to fit an immanent frame, which results in symbolical analysts developing a “strategic and instrumental cast of mind” (421–422) marked by deep utilitarianism and extreme individualism, which become the growing soil of nihilism.39 This interesting thesis should be developed by specifying how such an exit from the Axial tension impinges on conceptions of human improvement and the construction of moral meanings that are shared among the educated communities in various cultural environments. In the context of the history of thought, an important example of a relevant theme is Charles Taylor’s account of the “work of reform” (2007), whereby the improvement, rationalization, and ‘taming’ of personality was pivotal in the great transformation of the social order initiated within Latin Christendom. When Peter Berger presents his idea of the Pentecostalist Protestant ethic reinterpreted (2014: 25 ff.), he is describing a particular re-articulation of that formula, in which behavioural improvement and rationalization are combined with an emphasis on the supernatural dimension, ritual, etc. The same goes for his note on women being dominant in the Pentecostalist family and domesticating (civilizing) their husbands (27), which still resonates with Taylor’s emphasis on the taming of impulses and the making of regular life courses. A link between these strands of studies and the sociological field research on religious socialization would make an interesting case of cross-fertilization. The mutual influence between such contribution, however, is currently rather weak. Furthermore, processual approaches to education/socialization are also not quite common. The sense of belonging to a church, individual religiosity or religious attendance typically feature in research designs either as explanans—e.g. in studies about academic success—or as explanandum—as in research concerning the effectiveness of various socialization agencies in intergenerational transmission. But the cultural content, e.g. the immanence/transcendence tension, with its meaning to life-styles, as well as the socialization process mostly remain out of the picture.40 Be that as it may, the most interesting insights coming from these studies do not consist in the idea that religious socialization is scarcely successful in Europe—which is no impressive discovery. The point is rather that (i) the experiential dimension is the core problem, more than the cognitive aspect of religious education, and (ii) secularization among European youth shows no significant connection with pluralism. As to the former point, socialization environments—the family life-styles, the information and communication milieu, and the whole practical and symbolical framework of everyday experience—are increasingly far from religious experience, so that the cognitive notions that are possibly acquired are often treated as indifferent to personal identity, as it might happen with school subjects like Latin literature or geography. This should not be mistaken as dismissing the importance of cultural contents. A 39 See

Chap. 8 for some considerations on ‘character’, as it could be affected by these trends. the most interesting studies see Tenfelde (2010), Campiche (1997); with emphasis on the life course, Myers (1996), Lytch (2004), Eisenhandler (2003). I omit other references focussed upon the situation in particular countries.

40 Among

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significant degree of religious analphabetism is also present. But the problem is that the pre-conditions for cognitive notions to make sense are being shaken. The second point makes an interesting case for a paradigm of pluralism and contingency, because it is important to observe that the secularization of youth is not a distinctive feature of culturally diverse social milieux, but often characterizes ‘old and cold’ homogenous societal frameworks. In addition, in many European countries the role of competitor of traditional religious identities is typically played by a secular discourse (and practical-institutional environment) of exclusive humanism—in Taylor’s phrase—rather than by other religions. It is this that serves as the overarching frame of meaning, and becomes the default option for personal identity building. Given this theoretical and empirical predicament, the relevance of experiences of self -transcendence comes into full light. At the same time, the process of reflexive socialization—through which contingent certainty may emerge—must be specified. More precisely, three factors are crucial for a deeper understanding of religious socialization: (a) experience, (b) its articulation (cultural content), and (c) groups or communities. These factors are woven together by a process in time. I cannot offer the results of an ad hoc research at this point, but I will model these factors through the M/M approach to personal ontogenesis,41 showing how this would make a useful conceptual framework for empirical studies. Let us examine Fig. 7.1. Quadrant 1 shows the ‘I’ living an experience of self-transcendence, and only beginning to make sense of it. Two clarifications are in order at this point. In the first place, to say that such experiences are essential for value commitment does not mean that values be not perceived as normatively binding. It means to assert the primacy of experience in the emergence of such a binding force. Such a primacy must be explained. On the one hand, to put experience in that place means to assert that personal experience is not totally conditioned by the social context. In this case, transcendence—whatever it ‘is’—can always burst into personal life, unexpected and unprovoked. Something new, even something profoundly unsettling, can be experienced regardless of conditioning structures.42 Nonetheless, I would argue that experiences of self-transcendence must not necessarily come chronologically earlier in personal life. Individuals may hear and learn cognitively how a certain tradition has interpreted a longstanding experience (e.g. the collective experience of a community of faith). They may even be formally integrated in an organized religion, with rituals they attend through mere habit. Finally, some particular kinds of experience could only be allowed through former interpretation. These are called sacramental experiences (Joas 2008, 2017), i.e. ones that cannot even happen without a previous introduction to their shared meaning. Thus, 41 See Chap. 8 for more specific focus on education and personal identity. For the M/M approach to reflexivity and personal identity see above all Archer (2000, 2003, 2012, 2015). Figure 7.1 is my application of a scheme presented in her volumes to the theme of religious socialization/education. The resulting synthesis between a theory of self-transcendence and the M/M approach is my responsibility. Arguably, it represents one of those corridors between paradigms I am trying to reveal. 42 This corresponds to the primacy of practice in the general M/M model. Its function is the same, namely to reject the hypersocialized views of personal—in this case, of religious identity.

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Quadrant 4

Quadrant 3

Corporate Agent

Actor Role-taking within a religious community

You

We

commitment

socializaƟon

I

Me

Primary Agent

Self Self-transcendence as original experience

Quadrant 1

Common arƟculaƟon of experience (groups)

Structural and cultural context of religious experience

PRIVATE

Quadrant 2

Fig. 7.1 Religious socialization as articulation of the experience of self-transcendence over the morphogenesis of the self

the crucial point is not chronological order, but the fact that for each individual his or her own personal commitment will only be triggered by, and anchored on an experience of self-transcendence, which will then enlighten all the cognitive, normative, or aesthetic symbols learnt. Therefore, religious education might start sooner than actual socialization. The temporal sequence in the scheme refers to the latter, not to the former. A second consideration may start from a question: does the experience of selftranscendence involve relationships with an order of reality that exceeds the natural, practical, and social ones? In Joas’s definition, which I have accepted, it is the relation with a reality that is experienced as transcendent, or sacred. We could even rephrase, it is that specific type of relation through which reality is experienced as sacred. Such a definition has two important implications. First, it is impossible to answer the ontological question with a sociological conceptual toolkit. What sociology can say is that, whether we are dealing with an ontological layer or with subjective perception, such a relation really engenders a certain concern, which may take different places in people’s modus vivendi.43 Second, one cannot decide to live such an experience, 43 One simple objection might be that self-transcendence is not synonymous with religion, and can refer to natural, practical or social phenomena. In that case, the referent is clear, and lies within those three orders. But this only moves the problem one step further, because the question now concerns the qualities of those phenomena that allow to perceive them as sacred. Once again, are they inherent qualities or they just lie in human perception? This also allows a linguistic clarification. The very phrase ‘self -transcendence’ could be read in two ways. The emphasis may fall on transcending

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since it always involves some passive character. If it were intentionally induced, even through self-illusion, it would also lack authenticity. It is an original experience, in that it is not the expression of something else, and is not under subjective control.44 Having said this, ‘I’, who am trying to interpret my experience, am not living in a void or neutral space, but live within a structural and symbolical context (quadrant 2). This context provides resources to interpret experience, to which it can be more conducive or hindering. One could be born into a religiously organized community, which intends to pass down its beliefs and values. One may be placed in the most different social, ethnic, and cultural conditions, variously related to religion. All of this will affect one’s interpretation of what happened to him/her. At this point, subjects are primary agents, whose agency is relevant insofar as they are and counted among the members of a certain religious organization or not, thereby contributing to the latter’s public influence just in terms of numbers. Primary agents might share a certain degree of behavioural schemes, life-styles, and mental categories, and are perceived by others as members of a given group, regardless of their will and initiative. In the further step of the process (quadrant 3), people actively elaborate on their experience, reflecting upon the cultural interpretations received from their community, or from various socio-cultural spheres in which they may be involved. This process is highly contingent, and may lead to deep change or to the personal appropriation of one’s formerly ascriptive identity. This phase typically involves various kinds of interaction and dialogical activities. These phases realize the articulation of the experience of self-transcendence—in properly sociological terms—from the original perception through personal interpretation, received cultural legacy, and sustained interaction. The outcome of the cycle consists in becoming an actor, assuming a more or less active role within a religious community or vice versa (quadrant 4). Be that as it may, a given modus vivendi will be defined with respect to the religious question. The cycle then starts anew, because further experiences (or the lack thereof) might lead to question formerly established attitudes, shaking certainties and received traditions (religious, anti-religious, agnostic, indifferent, etc.), comparing the religious actor one has become with what he/she should be according to one’s ideals, or simply wearing one’s commitment away in routine. Through such a continuous morphogenesis people go through their life course, living phases of discernment, deliberation the Self , or on transcendence being realized by oneself . Consistent with my former argument, I assume the former meaning, while the latter may just be an empirical case among others, and is theoretically intractable. Let me note that my formulations are meant to be compatible with the argument presented by Baechler (1992). 44 This formulation, which I approvingly take from Joas, raises an intriguing issue, that can be illustrated with the example of shamanic practices. These involve codified practices to provoke experiences, often through drugs, that must be defined as contacts with the sacred. Shall we dismiss them as ‘fake’? Beyond the special interest of cultural anthropology, the problem is, how culturally sensitive is the concept of experience of self-transcendence? A (clearly insufficient) first approach to the issue would be to note that, once the procedure has been followed, the outcome is not under control of the individual—different forces may manifest themselves, the experience may take different turns—so that the ‘passive’ aspect is still there.

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and dedication—a language that is easily adapted to religious phenomena—while structuring, de-structuring and re-structuring their form of life. This model obviously leaves some open questions. However, I think it could usefully orient research. Its crucial point ultimately consists in showing how ‘religiosity’ must be conceived of as a way of leading, or shaping, a life, which is an emergent property of human persons. It emerges from the articulation of experiences of self-transcendence, interweaving in the social time-space with other experiences and relations. It is not (only) an individual characteristic, nor does it result (only) from social conditioning, although structures and cultures may foster or hinder its development. Over time, such a process constitutes the cycle of religious socialization/education. A few conclusions may be drawn, and they raise questions as well as they allow some claims. (a) Experiences of self-transcendence cannot be induced, but situations can be created versus avoided that are conducive to such experiences. Depending on what society wants from education, such experiences may be encouraged or outright prevented. This is one useful criterion by which educational programs can be assessed. Remembering that self-transcendence is not equivalent with religion, and that it represents a deep dimension of human identity, deprivation of this potential should be considered to be a serious threat to the development of healthy personalities; (b) As regards religious education as imparted by communities of faith, cognitive teaching must not be eliminated, but should revolve around those experiences, i.e. provide interpretations for them and help establish meaningful relations with them. This involves assuming a non-reductionist relationship between religious socialization and education. Experiences are not self-interpretive, while purely cognitive notions could lack any fertile ground. Confusing those elements, or downplaying either of them, is no brilliant policy; (c) One special issue concerns how homogeneous and how diverse the socialization environment should be, at what points of the life course, and what implications this may have on self-transcendence. What kind of dialogue is conducive to what potential outcome? In all these respects, research and practice still have to produce a relatively robust corpus of knowledge. I intentionally avoided to introduce partial evidence concerning this or that region of global society, or the West. The conclusions I drew are essentially methodological. But I would argue that the distinction between immanence and transcendence has provided instructive insights, and a useful perspective from which these phenomena may appear in a more significant light.

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7.4 Conclusion: Axial Morphogenesis and Axial Catastrophes I have reviewed what I regard as the most advanced insights of the sociological theory of religion, trying to show why the distinction immanence/transcendence sheds a revealing light on its major dilemmas. The argument revolved around the institutional configurations of pluralism and on socialization, as the crucial dimensions of the challenge represented by the morphogenic condition of society. The last step in my argument has to do with a reconsideration of the cultural dimension. A sense of transcendence may be inherent to most historically known forms of personal and social identity, and therefore serve as a touchstone to examine the relevant processes and structures. However, as anticipated above, there are different concepts of transcendence and ways to inflect the distinction-and-relation between transcendence and immanence. Neither the experience of transcendence nor its symbolical environment are left untouched by the wave of unbound morphogenesis and by the closure of the world. Ultimately, both pluralist institutional arrangements and the process of reflexive socialization refer to a deep-seated symbolical matrix, in which a given idea of transcendence may embedded or not, and moulded in various ways. In other words, we need to ask: how transcendent is the sacred? How transcendent is self -transcendence—individual and collective? These questions could make the subject of a book in its own right. What I can do here is sketch out a scenario in a few brush strokes. In this as in many other realms, the modern equilibrium has been shaken, and the social and cultural morphogenesis is producing more variety. Intensified morphogenesis is fostering new imaginaries. One overarching condition concerns the human awareness of the closure of the world. In Chap. 1 I have illustrated this predicament as a basic frame within which all social processes now occur. As I said, this is currently often coupled with the idea of the Anthropocene, which expresses a particular state of the collective selfunderstanding of humanity. In a nutshell, humanity perceives itself as deeply impacting on the planet, and therefore fully responsible for its otherwise hyper-complex dynamics. One crucial corollary is that the earth itself can no longer be conceived as a foundation, a horizon within which we are integrated, but as a construction within the powers of human agency, which agency could as well disrupt. Social theory is not directly concerned with the scientific accuracy of that notion, but with its highly consequential impact on social forms of life. From this viewpoint, we can see that the MS has an ambivalent relation with what I have called Axiality. This ambivalence swings between morphogenesis and catastrophes of Axiality—i.e. radical exits from, or collapse of the Axial tension. On one hand, this situation makes the very idea of transcendence more difficult to imagine. On the other, hyper-complexity and increasing combinatorial variety makes it hard to develop representations of society as a unitary entity. As I noted above, this situation generates its own semantics, sometimes paradoxically shaping transcendence into an immanent frame. The related imaginary is one of an ‘immanent outside’ mixed with intractable

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‘mystery’.45 A strictly intertwined development in Western societies tends to identify the sacred with impersonal forces, which cause the ‘oceanic feeling’ of boundary loss typical of deep ecology. Thus, a relevant question is whether or not experiences of self-transcendence are dialogical, i.e. involve a (transcendent?) Other as a respondent partner.46 Another tension revolves around the idea of individualization, in its instrumental and in the expressive form. The concept of self-transcendence as we have defined it in this chapter is intentionally distant from both versions. However, cultural combinatorial games present us with its immanent varieties, which could collapse on either instrumental rationality or self-expression. The sacralization of the ‘pure’ individual in his/her pure will of creative self -production with no limits—heralded by the prophets of transhumanism—is beginning to cause quite ambivalent outcomes. In this sense, the new enemies of humanism in the 21st century are not just those on the authoritarian side, but also prosper on the alliance between technology and the symbolical complex of expressive-and-instrumental individualism. Such a syndrome is making its way through professional identities and practices (e.g. medical and technical professionals), and among the élites of symbolical analysts.47 Another version is that of pure emotion, in aesthetic and post-modern forms detached from full-blown articulation. In this context, the challenge for historical religions consists in an inner transformation that tends to slide into therapeutic forms, so that “no illusion may survive of some end beyond an intensely private sense of well-being to be generated in the living of life itself” (Rieff 1966: 223).48 Thus, immanent catastrophes of Axiality may come from the expressive loss of any ‘vertical tension’, as well as from anthropotechnic tendencies to reconstruct verticality without transcendence (Sloterdijk 2013), searching for personal improvement in pure practice. To sum up, self-transcendence may be conceived as vertical or horizontal, aspiring or anaphoric, entailing the reconstruction of identity or the revelation of the ‘true’ Self (Dalferth 2012). But these are not just language games. Far from the catastrophic versions contemplated above, mediation formulas do not cease to operate in the everyday life of vast populations. We need to know more about these formations of the secular, not as a separate dimension, but as specific forms of mediation between immanence and transcendence. In thought and practice, in facing the hardship of reflexive life courses, immanence and transcendence are continuously interwoven. 45 Important insights on the transformations of the relation immanence/transcendence can be found in Donati (2010), particularly the idea that religion tends to become the representation of an “indeterminate chaos which generates a feeling of mystery” (45). See Chap. 1 of the present volume for further reflections on the ‘closed world’ and the lack of an ‘outside’. 46 The relevance of this issue appears in Hartmut Rosa’s concept of resonance—clearly within an immanent frame. More on this in Chaps. 8 and 9. 47 Remember Sullivan’s emphasis on the immanent frame of higher education mentioned in Sect. 7.3. 48 It is high time that sociology took into more serious consideration Rieff’s oracle. By the way, the fact that Sloterdijk (2013) implicitly formulates a convergent diagnosis would prompt an intriguing comparative discussion. More on this in a future essay.

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The cultural system may sustain such formulas or not, try to exploit them for political or other purposes, use them or develop them in any conceivable direction. The crucial point for social and cultural creativity lies in what kind of link is still possible between the various spheres of human action and the ultimate meanings of existence—ultimately, the meaning of human experience on this planet. This can be said to epitomize the ultimate challenge of a morphogenic society, insofar as it calls into question the symbolical foundations of personal and collective life in a radical way.

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Part III

Humanity Counts. Anthropological Consequences of Unbound Morphogenesis

Chapter 8

The Pressure on the Human. Education, Self, and Character in the New Social Order

Keywords Education · Socialization · Excess · Character · Social and emotional skills

8.1 Unbound Morphogenesis and the Issue of Education The guiding idea of this chapter is that the emerging MS is consistently related to a renewed emphasis on the “whole child”—indeed, on the “whole human subject” in his/her entire life course—as medium and form of educational processes. This seemingly clear and obvious insight really has far-reaching roots and implications, which I will try to articulate.1 One consequence can be highlighted to begin with. The sociology of education has long been shaped by a research agenda centered on equality of opportunity and the actual achievement of such an ideal versus social reproduction. To focus on other themes might, therefore, sound as an attempt to downplay such a basic issue. The following analysis is not meant to dismiss the problem of equality, but has the aim to reflect on education and, more generally, on the formation of healthily mature human subjects from a different vantage point. One implication is that most educational issues—among which equality itself—will not lose their relevance, but will be significantly redefined, once examined in this perspective . The necessary starting point for such an approach lies in the macro-social context. In this respect, the crisis of co-evolution between interaction and society has been indicated as one of the most relevant issues characterising global society and its impact on human subjectivity.2 This involves a growing distance between those two 1 Such

an insight has been a key assumption in Niklas Luhmann’s work on education (Luhmann 2002; Luhmann and Schorr 1979; Luhmann and Lenzen 1997). 2 For a paradigmatic theory of such a crisis, the seminal reference is again to Luhmann’s work (1996). © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. M. Maccarini, Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13624-6_8

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dimensions, and the relative ineffectiveness of mediation forms emerging in such a societal landscape.3 The present chapter addresses a specific problem that lies within this wider front. Its aim is to examine some of the consequences of that crisis on educational cultures, processes, and institutions. The main thesis is that such consequences can be understood as entailing a problem of excess and of increasing pressure on human subjects. The argument presented here leads to reconsider the research agenda, as well the policy priorities, regarding education in the light of these challenges. The guiding idea will be that education must be understood as a reflexive process of the formation of mature human identities, revolving around an original relation of concern. The argument is divided into five sections. The first presents a quick outline of the main features of the morphogenic society (MS), in the perspective of their impact on education and self-formation. The second discusses some of the main strategies through which educational systems are tackling the related issues. In the third, the social mechanisms are spelt out that make those strategies increasingly shaky, and formulates a first re-definition of the goals of education in the MS. The fourth and fifth sections develop such a task. Section 8.4 introduces the concept of character, and Sect. 8.5 moves a few steps towards an integrated model of the reflexive formation of the self. Given the limits of space, my discussion will only be able to point out some explanatory connections in order to interpret the current dynamics of education. Education is obviously influenced by many conditioning factors beyond those I will focus upon, and those factors are not the only product of the macro-social change characterizing late modernity. No claim is advanced here about the relative weight of these trends as compared to others—although it is obviously assumed that they are indeed worth studying. My goal is just to show that the connections I indicate do exist, and to follow one thread out of the late modern social tapestry, highlighting some of its critical knots. There are various ways in which social theory has been tackling the complexity of contemporary global society and its ongoing change. Among these conceptual frames, we assumed the morphogenetic approach as a helpful interpretation of the current societal predicament, and throughout this volume we have been probing the relevance of the related substantive thesis about macro-social change, namely that of an emerging morphogenic society. Let us sketch out again a few big ‘social facts’ that can be traced to that core mechanism of change. Three sets of phenomena are especially important for our present argument on education: (a) the explosion of possibilities for action and experience; (b) the acceleration of social life; (c) the saturation of social and symbolic space.

3 Sociology has often dealt with the problem within the frame of reference of a theory of socialization.

For a recent example see Maccarini (2017).

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I will briefly outline all of them, and explain how they meaningfully connect with an intensified reflexive focus on human formation, i.e. with the emergence of personal powers and properties. (a) The multiplication of possibilities for action and experience lies at the core of the MS and of its ‘engine’, i.e. the logic of opportunity. Scientific and technological innovation are clearly supporting this process. The related transformations of the economic sphere, particularly of work and working environments, the increased centrality of the human resource (represented in the educational discourse by such concepts as personalization, creativity, problem solving skills, etc.), and deep cultural change (e.g. one concerning values), coalesce to generate new personal lifestyles and forms of social life. (b) Social acceleration theory has been proposed as a particular perspective from which modernization theory can be reinterpreted. The basic idea is that ‘large’ social dynamics, meso-level processes, and interactions in everyday life are increasingly accelerating, changing individual and collective ‘rhythm of life’, disrupting old equilibria in temporal structures as well as in our personal use of time—e.g. the work/family balance, the shape and trajectory of personal biographies, etc. Arguably, it should not be (too ambitiously) treated as a ‘first mover’ of social morphogenesis, but as an empirical generalization that keeps together a large set of evidence concerning the temporal structures of society. Its connection with the generative logic of the MS has been articulated before.4 (c) A further element must be added, although its inherent relationship with the MS would need more explanation than I can offer in this chapter. It may be called the saturation of social and symbolic space, and it is really the emergent effect of two different factors. One is the enormous growth of relational and communicative networks—increasingly consisting of virtual relationships—that fill every gap of silence and claim a growing amount of our time.5 The other might be introduced by a quote from Karl Jaspers: «A total metamorphosis of history has taken place. The essential fact is: There is no longer anything outside. The world is closed. The unity of the earth has arrived».6 Despite the obviously suspicious nature of such grand and sweeping declarations, this is a very consequential point, about which sociologists would probably have to reflect more systematically than they have done so far. What I want to emphasize here is that these two big ‘social facts’ converge on generating a unified,7 saturated communicative, symbolic, and physical environment for people to inhabit. How do these trends connect with education and self-formation? First and foremost, they seem to prompt an intensified emphasis on building personal powers and 4 See

Maccarini (2014). For a recent formulation of social acceleration theory see Rosa (2013).

5 Such a phenomenon, well known to all communication experts, and indeed to all of us inhabitants

of late modern societies, was effectively described, among others, by Gergen (1991). Jaspers (1953, p. 127). The italics is mine. 7 To speak of a unified social space here does emphatically not signify one that is free from conflict. I just mean to suggest the strict interdependence and the lack of distance between regional societies, social spheres, social groups, and so on. 6 See

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properties. For example, it has been argued that the MS involves the crisis of routine action and the rise of the reflexive imperative (Archer 2012). The continuity and congruity of social contexts are increasingly disrupted by boundless morphogenesis. Novel situations emerge, and people can hardly find guidance for their courses of action in habits and routines, as well as in consistent normative clues from socialization agencies. As a consequence, they must increasingly rely upon their personal reflexivity, as the capacity to evaluate one’s life plans in relation to a changing world. The imperative to select among possible experiences and actions generates the need for enhanced effectiveness in decision making. We might now venture to extend that hypothesis, considering the widening and intensification of reflexivity to be covering just one aspect of a more complex phenomenon, namely a multidimensional pressure on the human. Such a pressure includes reflexivity and the ‘selective imperative’, with the related issue of decision making. However, the trends of social change outlined above also push to flexibility and adaptation, and are increasingly demanding in terms of the personal effort required to participate in social processes of any kind—from education to work, to health, civic life, and so forth. Performance is no more confined to the sphere of the market economy. Activation, mobilization, investment, initiative, have become keywords of social life, as well as passwords to get services. The dynamics of European welfare systems make an instructive example. The idea that people must be enabled to help themselves, learning to protect themselves from risks, and that this requires their wholehearted mobilization, is now rather commonsensical in most welfare literature, e.g. in the new mainstream of ‘social investment’. As a result of this, education has achieved a central position in lifestyle and the life course, while new, hybrid policy mechanisms arise that are centered on education and training (Miettinen 2013). While this situation is quite clear, few seem to have seen its consequences in terms of the personal stress and strain these social dynamics bring about at the personal level. And while concern-oriented reflexivity is the response to the choice-and-decision making issue, it is more unclear how people can positively cope with the rest of the problem. In other words, the present situation could be described as a crisis of Entlastung. The concept of Entlastung (literally ‘exoneration’) must be traced to Gehlen (2007, 2013). Basically, his point is that as vulnerable, flawed beings humans need help in crucial dimensions of their surviving and thriving. This is the task of institutions. Now, here it is argued that the capacity of institutions to perform such a task might be sharply declining. Some authors would counter that institutions are simply switching to ‘enabling institutions’, and that the related ‘malaise’ can be explained away as a peculiar characteristic of some particular countries (see e.g. Ehrenberg 2010). These qualifications notwithstanding, it remains true that institutions are now bound to take on a different, and less ambitious function than they had in the past. Moreover, it is also the capacity of society to build and regenerate effective institutions that is here called into question. Participating in institutions and their organized forms of life, making one’s way through them and their consolidated paths—for example, successfully completing a ‘curriculum’—ultimately makes less sense than ever. The human person

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is becoming central in global society, but this means she must increasingly fall back on herself. And she needs a broader range of skills than she once used to.8 As a result of this, the human subject in his/her formative process is facing a twofold problem, namely one of normative vacuum and one of excess. The former is clearly the condition-and-outcome of the reflexive imperative. The latter must now be clarified. Broadly speaking, the concept of excess indicates an overwhelming quantity of information to process, choices to make, competencies to develop, personal effort, or necessary performance. In the contemporary sociological theory, the most systematic treatment of this concept can be found in Andrew Abbott’s work. Thus, I will refer to this author in order to define my own approach to the theme. Abbott’s starting claim is that many problems in our current societies—from pollution to information overload, and more—are caused by some form of excess. Therefore, they must be redefined in this perspective, whilst the social sciences usually tend to articulate their theories in terms of scarcity (Abbott 2014, 2016, 122–159). As the word “excess” is here employed to indicate a problem situation, it should not be confused with the positive notion of “abundance”. We would all like to be in the abundance, while excess means trouble. The concept then articulates in the two aspects of surfeit (having too much of something) and welter (which Abbott calls the “too-maniness” of things). Two considerations are in order at this point: (a) such a notion of excess seems somewhat underdetermined. It is understandable that Abbott goes for conceptual generalization, but the very examples he brings up, drawing on classical authors, indicate social problems and phenomena that are very different from each other. The strategies that are deployed to tackle them, as a result, are also different. Reducing pollution is very different from reducing the complexity of knowledge we need to learn. In the former case, the bigger the reduction, the better the outcome. The ideal target would be to eliminate pollution totally. In the latter, the issue is obviously different. Furthermore, the loss of meaning or the routinization of a given practice have yet other implications. All these cases deal with the “excess of something”, but their sense and policy implications are so different from each other as to drift afar even from serious analogizing. This chapter will focus upon those meanings of excess that are relevant to the educational domain. It is beyond the present work to discuss the validity of the notion of excess as a general category for sociological theory.

8I

do realize that this thesis would not go unchallenged. For example, Phelps (2013) would claim that the prevailing trend in Western countries is exactly the opposite, i.e. one leading to a renewed relevance of “state and community” over individuals’ autonomy to explore, create, and risk. I cannot discuss this at length here, but the crisis of welfare systems all over Europe—as well as other deeply rooted social and cultural trends—does not seem to confirm a turn toward “state and community”, and the decline of individualism and its creative spirit. In any case, Phelps’s argument about the rise and decline of Western creative individualism is an important one, and will be taken up in Chap. 9, while discussing ideas and experience of the “good life”.

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(b) Abbott has a specific take on the subject. He is not interested in a study in the sociology of knowledge, that would try to explain why and how excess and scarcity emerge as themes of the sociological discourse. Nor does he want to relate excess to the empirically observable features of a given type of society. Although he would admit that modernity could be interpreted in terms of excess, he is more interested in the development of sociological theory based on the idea of excess as a general category. On the contrary, my own attention is focussed upon the systematic connection of excess with an emergent social-historical formation. The two perspectives are not mutually exclusive, but involve a different development of the main argument. These two clarifications identify the fundamental coordinates of my approach.

8.2 Education and the Management of Excess Thus, the MS represents a challenge for educational processes and institutions, which may be understood in terms of excess and of normative incongruity. Its core could be summarized in the following, deceptively simple question: what should we learn, and how? Contemporary educational thinking articulates its response along four dimensions: knowledge, competences, meta-cognition, and character. The way these are conceived represents the main theme around which our argument revolves. As regards the academic side of the issue, the problem is that curricula and subjects of study change very slowly compared to social and cultural change in other domains. The problem is one of excess, that is a quantitative one: should we keep learning all we have learnt to date, while also continually adding new knowledge and skills? There is a saturation of educational contents, which depends on the double bind knowledge entertains with cultural traditions on the one hand, and with scientifictechnological innovation on the other hand. The latent “humanistic” identity seems to accept no cognitive subtraction, while the necessity to decode and orient innovation entails the introduction of ever new topics and learning.9 Can we really proceed by addition, or we have to be selective? Arguably, part of the change is to do with the inner transformation of the single subjects to be learnt. To mention one example: there are parts of mathematics—e.g. statistics—the relevance of which is definitely increasing in a world characterized by uncertainty. This kind of considerations can lead to strike a new balance within learning subjects, but at the end of the day the selective imperative is unavoidable: What can be forsaken and forgotten?

9 The

idea cannot go without its own paradox, that is revealed in those socio-cultural contexts in which economic innovation and entrepreneurial creativity are contingent upon the synergy between the scientific-technological complex and “traditional” cultural formation. See for example Senor and Singer (2011), making the case for Israel. It would be interesting to examine these cases, which I would venture to call “neo-humanistic syntheses”.

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Many plans to redesign teaching and learning emphasize the following cognitive competences: (i) basic competences: recognizing patterns, memory, rapidity in processing information; (ii) acquiring knowledge: access, extract, interpret information; (iii) elaborate knowledge: reflect, argue, conceptualize. Be that as it may, these responses only scratch the surface of a deeper issue. What kind of person should be the goal of education in this societal context? What kind of powers10 and qualities should a person possess to make her way through that social world? In an important line of scientific and policy related thought, the basic idea is that given the pressure on the human being prompted by the explosion of variety and the possibilities for action and experience, we can learn our way out of such a predicament through the acquisition of skills and the building of a skills society. Such a notion is obviously complex, but its core lies in the widening range of skills individuals are said to need in order to meet the challenge. The emphasis falls on learning. As regards what skills are needed, answers are widespread in a huge literature, particularly in developmental psychology and the educational sciences. They usually include long lists of personal characteristics, couched in different paradigms and theoretical frameworks. The impact of technology and the spreading automation of increasingly advanced functions plays a pivotal role in this educational discourse. Its basic scheme articulates in two fundamental moves11 : (a) education must emphasize non routine, non standard behaviours and competences, preparing students for problem solving and to deliver highly personalized professional services; (b) education must focus upon empathic and relational skills. Analytic and strictly cognitive forms of literacy and numeracy involve limits to the possibility of improvement, especially for vast layers of the population, while social and emotional skills cannot (yet?) be substituted by machines or artificial intelligence. Social and emotional skills (SES) will be taken up again in Sects. 8.4 and 8.5 below. But before we examine them in more detail, I just want to mention them within the specific discourse on excess. They appear in the educational discourse as the awareness of the depth and variety of human characteristics that are necessary to navigate in complexity. As personal properties, SES indicate various dimensions of the human relation to the world. However, as we will see, such properties are difficult to specify. The outcome is to produce endless lists of personal traits—whose status of “skills” is often rather questionable—which would have to be explicitly introduced in the formal schooling processes,12 to be integrated with the family and community learning environments. 10 The idea of ‘empowerment’ in educational doctrines and practices should also be read in this perspective. 11 See for example Elliott (2017a, b). 12 More on this below, Sect. 8.4. The line of thought starts from James Heckman. See above all Heckman and Cunha (2008), Heckman and Kautz (2012), Heckman and Rubinstein (2001). A

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Further educational strategies to face excess usually invoke meta-cognition as an overarching goal. Meta-cognition has often been defined as the epitome of the contemporary educational discourse. Learning to learn, to unlearn, and to learn again can now be said to play the role that was once played by basic alphabetization. The literature on this theme is hugely extended. Educational scholars are developing in multiple directions an insight that was systematically articulated in the social sciences since the second half of the 1970s.13 The connection between excess and meta-cognition is indeed quite apparent. It also presents an inherent paradox, in that learning how to learn as an adaptive move to world complexity really involves the “closure” of educational systems—as Luhmann and Schorr remind—which become unable to indicate substantive goals for education that are external to the very learning process. This trend is increasingly associated with digital strategies that are currently reshaping the knowledge and learning landscape in advanced societies. The imperative here is to connect data bases, so as to produce universal catalogues that can be easily activated and mutually translated into each other. This results in platforms allowing to “augment” reality and to treat it as a multifarious resource for learning. Ultimately, this means transforming the whole reality into a matrix that makes it possible to operate and change it.14 On the whole, all these lines of action aim at the total mobilization of the human person, in her psychic, physical, and moral properties and powers. This involves the two, interweaving aspects of personal self-management and interpersonal cooperation. The frontier is constituted by increasingly innovative and (allegedly) effective forms of working on oneself . As Rosa (2016) points out, such a Selbstarbeit is a complex enterprise that takes on many forms, from inner life transformation led by practices of self-improvement to pharmacological or surgical self-enhancement. All these practices can be meant to produce increasing resources for individuals, and in turn, to shape individuals as powerful resources for society. But they could also point to the emergence of meaningful relations between people and society, as well as with non-social dimensions of reality. As we will see below, this is a crucial distinction for educational processes and institutions in the context of the emerging MS. In addition to this, special consideration must be given to the issue of equality. The hard context of the pressure upon the human is apparently unfavourable to the educational ideal of equality. On the other hand, the current situation makes such an ideal still central in many societal spheres.

useful outline with a vast set of references is now to be found in Heckman and Kautz (2016). The dedicated literature is hugely extended. It is worth mentioning the effort to produce a synthetic conceptual frame that can be found in (De Fruyt et al. 2009; John and De Fruyt 2015; Narvaez and Bock 2014; Nucci et al. 2014; OECD 2014, 2015; Schleicher et al. 2015). 13 For a literature review, mainly oriented to educational and psychological work, see Deacon Crick et al. (2014). Within sociology, the most systematic and thought-provoking view is still that by Luhmann and Schorr (1979). See also Luhmann (2002: 194 ff.). If the concept has been introduced in the international language and policy agenda, it is also due to various global actors. See for example the text by the European Communities (2006). 14 This is also the deepest meaning of what the European Commission understands as “reflexive society” in some of its funding lines for research in the humanities.

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8.3 The Social Mechanisms of Excess and the Critique of Education It is now time to go back to the focal point, explaining what the idea of excess allows to understand in the contemporary landscape of education. Abbott (2014: 15–22) mentions two fundamental strategies to cope with excess, namely reduction and rescaling. The former consists in trying to ignore excess, or in its reduction to tractable terms. The second tends to redefine what would be desirable, adapting to excess or playing with it. We might note that Abbott does not consider one particular case of excess, that is excess as resulting from the saturation of material or symbolical space, so as not to allow for further relations, interactions, or consumption, and feeding possible conflict. One possible coping strategy here would be that of resetting excess. Such a radical de-complexification could be obtained through border crossing and migration to an outer space—again, symbolical or material. This would imply that such an external space does exist, as well as a degree of openness, accessibility and “emptiness”—or unmarked space—available in the world. As regards complexity reduction, there are multiple possible examples. Canons and traditions, as well as stereotypes and habits, are ways to dismiss, bypass or avoid excess. Abstractions, hierarchizations, but even specialization and division of labour could be interpreted as forms of complexity reduction. Rescaling also comes in many different shapes, like analogizing, classifying, serialization and sequence setting, the differentiation of behaviour in various social spheres, etc. These latter involve accepting continuous change, between social differences and over time. There is a certain correspondence between these ways to manage excess and some of the strategies observed in the educational field. To mention a few examples: curricula are clearly one type of canon. The focus on certain skills entails the assessment of change, and a decision about what will still be necessary to know and what can be ignored. Learning to learn is itself an adaptation to continuous change, which accepts change as the very form of the person—or more precisely, a lack of form as its defining trait. All of this provides a key to interpreting educational doctrines and practices as adaptive moves in a situation of excess. However, a crucial question remains unanswered. Why is excess a problem? For what reasons, and through which mechanisms does it cause problems to society? At this point Abbott offers a further, interesting insight. Harking back to Aristotle’s theory of causality, he maintains that the essential reasons have to do with structure or purpose. If it is all about selecting and combining the elements of an action, that are necessary to produce a given good, the dynamics triggered by excess involve a structural difficulty in establishing a clear production plan, or a final problem in developing a clear purpose, for which the good in question should be produced. To put this in more analytic terms, excess creates (i) overload, (ii) routinization and loss of meaning, or (iii) the difficulty to select due to value contextuality. It is through these three mechanisms that too many things to know, too many emotions to feel, too many possibilities of action and experience, too many

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decisions to make produce a paralysis of the Self and stop the production of certain social goods.15 Overload leads to confusion and paralysis, hindering cognition, emotions, and the symbolic elaboration that are all needed for action. Routinization and value contextuality destabilize the selective criteria, thereby damaging effective action. A study of the mechanisms of excess allows to shed light on the inadequacy of some educational lines of thought and practice. (a) Metacognition continues to play an important role. But if the mechanisms of excess are those briefly sketched above, learning to learn cannot be the ultimate refuge of humanity, as it is widely believed among educators as well as by big global actors of education (Fadel et al. 2015). In fact, such a formula does not in itself engender, but rather assumes the purpose, the symbolic and motivational resources necessary to foster learning processes and lead them into a non-random direction. Why should we want to learn, and keep learning? What should we learn, and for what? (b) The so-called SES are surely important. They usually result in long lists of personal qualities which are regarded as desirable—e.g. typically from the vantage point of multi-national and multi-cultural working environments. Such an approach has a clear rationale, but again the motivational energy, as well as the integration of the various features within a consistent personal profile evoke a cultural dimension that cannot be reduced to the notion of “competence” or “skill”. To speak of open-mindedness, of being creative and open to new solutions, is all very well, but is clearly not enough. The hardship of the world can be faced in more ways than one. Who will provide an unambiguous, and not culturally neutral meaning for all the personal features in question? And who can decide what the “good” mix should be of assertiveness, humility, agreeableness, passion for the goals, individual ambition, capacity of team work, and more? All these concepts call for an integrative formula that may constitute a relatively unified and meaningful character profile. Once again, the risk of a lack of purpose or of inadequate production plan for a certain social good cannot be met within the formula itself. (c) One last remark concerns educational equality. In the context of the MS, such an issue undergoes strong and ambivalent tensions. On the one hand, the condition of exceeding pressure and the call of performance seem to make a compelling case for difference and stratification on the ground of “excellence”—however defined. The social world of activation, self-investment and performance is not a comfortable home to everyone. On the other hand, equality of opportunity becomes more and more relevant, both as a necessary balancing mechanism fostering social integration, and as an increasingly ambitious formula for effective and efficient allocation of persons and talents in social roles. But what I’d 15 At this point, the argument could be connected to Archer’s theory of the modes of reflexivity. Indeed, such a “paralysis” of the Self appears consistent with the category of the “fractured reflexives” (Archer 2003). Abbott’s distinction between mechanisms operating at the individual versus collective level is not relevant to my argument and will therefore be ignored here.

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like to emphasize here is that the new situation prompts an axial repositioning of the whole issue. Given the mechanisms of excess, the school learning environment is increasingly shaped as a space where the capacity to entertain meaningful relationships with those resources which make for a high quality of adult life is cultivated. Thus, inequality does not only depend directly on unequal distributions of material resources. Nor does it only produce an unequal distribution of life chances in a material sense. Rather, inequality is constituted by the opening or closure of channels of intrinsic interest for themes, problems, and skills (Rosa 2016: 402–420). Schools are a space in which relations to the world are cultivated, which means focusing on talent, personal bonds with things, self-investment. Those for whom this mechanism does not work may be described as alienated, and if this happens as the result of attitudes, linguistic codes, or other relational factors that are systematically connected with social class, then it is clearly a problem of inequality. Thus, the problem of excess and that of normative vacuum have been typically tackled through strategies aiming at a more effective balance of resources. This entails various ways to reduce complexity, as well as forms of empowering the human subjects. Pushed beyond its modern limits, empowerment might become a way to enhance human persons as a medium, i.e. as active platforms upon which powers and properties are based, to be augmented through continuous learning, or through multiple kinds of endogenous/exogenous self-building work.16 However, the specific mechanisms through which excess becomes a problem for people and society set a limit on the effectiveness of such strategies. Resources are still necessary, and complexity still needs to be reduced, but that is just one of the conditioning factors. Something different is needed. The alternative I want to explore is meant to face the crisis of purpose and the paralysis of the Self that we have mentioned, cultivating the human competence and motivation to engage with the world. This entails a complex knot of emergent, typically human capacities.17 For a realist-morphogenetic sociological theory, its core consists of a relation of concern, through which people then grow, with the support of relevant competences, to shape a life course oriented to some chosen concerns and goods.18 Thus, a model of reflexive ontogenesis of the Self must be articulated in such a way as to include not only the structural and cultural conditioning factors, but also the competences which are necessary to produce the outcomes. The ultimate 16 This,

in my view, is the most likely outcome of accepting a perspective Morin (2003) has called “over-adaptive”. 17 We might venture to call this an anthropological competence, that is a fundamental capacity that is necessary to qualify as fully human on the ground of a specific mode to engage with reality. Such a mode is typically human, and in turn has a humanizing effect, unfolding over the life course. This idea resonates with a fast-growing field of studies, which is known as the anthropology of ethics. See for example Laidlaw (2014). 18 Among the various contributions which articulate this approach, see (Archer 2000, 2003, 2012, 2015a; Maccarini and Prandini 2010; Maccarini 2016; Sayer 2011). The reference to “relevant competences” is something I am adding to the main realist-morphogenetic argument, and will be developed in Sects. 8.4 and 8.5.

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refuge of humanity is to be found in a relational bundle comprising these dimensions, not in any single factor, skill, or power.

8.4 Concern, Character and Skills: Facing the Challenges The research agenda to be developed must respond to the complex issues we have examined so far. Leaving aside the academic dimension of education,19 the claim I advance is that an adequate conceptual frame entails the integrated modelling of the following aspects: (a) a basic relation of concern, which establishes a meaningful connection of human subjects with the social and non-social world; (b) character, as a set of morally qualified personal properties that allow people to shape a consistent life course and develop a meaningful modus vivendi, while also finally expressing what they become through that very process; (c) social and emotional skills as complementary to the idea of character; (d) a processual model that articulates the morphogenesis of identity in the social and non-social space and time. I will examine these elements first, and then try to articulate their interaction. Points (a) and (d) refer to the M/M approach and to its solution to the problem of agency and identity. Moreover, I must explain what the idea of character and of socioemotional learning have to do with such an approach. In a nutshell, the argument must provide a framework for understanding how character is formed, what skills are needed, and how this all contributes to the articulation of a meaningful life course in conditions of high complexity. In the sociological domain, the idea that the development of personal identity, indeed that the very possibility of human flourishing are rooted in attachment, response, care and commitment (Sayer 2011), to other people as well as to things and ideas, has been systematically laid out within critical realism and the realistmorphogenetic social theory.20 Philosophically, it comes close to Harry Frankfurt’s work (1988) and to Charles Taylor’s view of healthy human identity as entailing the connection to some (hyper)good (Taylor 1989). As we will shortly see, such a notion is becoming increasingly relevant in the social sciences. The basic idea is that humans are unavoidably connected with the various layers of reality, that is with the natural, practical, and social realms (Archer 2000). These inescapable relations generate inevitable concerns with our personal survival in the natural world, with our possible achievements in the practical realm, and with the self-esteem, and the related expectations we may cultivate in the social sphere of 19 In this respect, I will not go beyond the notes presented in Sect. 8.2. My argument now is about the ways education can make sense in the context of excess and normative inconsistency, motivating learning in various domains and affecting identity building. 20 See note 17 above for the essential references.

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life. The crucial concept of concern (Sorge) bears a double meaning: (i) what calls for our attention and presses us to deal with it (i.e. something we cannot simply ignore), and (ii) what we care about, what we are affectively and ideally engaged in. We can summarize both meanings by defining concern as what is urging us. What is important here is to mark the distance of this perspective from the economicinstrumental semantics of interest, as well as from the functionalist emphasis on complexity reduction. It is concern that ultimately defines identity, as an arduous and ever provisional achievement that is subject to recurring reflexive monitoring and revision. Moreover, concerns clearly entail a problem of coordination. Decisions must be made about what our ultimate concern is, and how the other concerns that inevitably emerge from our relations with the world can dovetail with it. In other words, in a situation of limited time and energies, priorities must be identified and multiple commitments must be adjusted within a relatively consistent plan, in order for life to have some shape and order. To assume relations of concern as pivotal is highly consequential. Two aspects are particularly important to tap into the educational relevance of the concept. First, relations of concern are inescapable, in that they are existentially necessary and rooted on a dispositional level. Second, such relations can be of different quality, which in turn means that they can be fostered or hindered. (i) Archer (2000) has exhaustively explained why relations of concern are existentially necessary. Our very existence in the world entails our encounter with natural, practical, and social reality, from which problems, and the related concerns, necessarily arise. Within a different theoretical paradigm, Rosa (2016) offers a quite compatible argument about human relations to the world (Weltbeziehungen), when he specifies the anthropological basis of relationality.21 In his view, this lies in the human capacity to be attracted-and-moved by the world. Such an original disposition is articulated in the two aspects of Af -fizierung and E-motion—affection and emotion—which involve being reached and touched, and in turn being pushed to reach out to the world, beyond oneself. This very definition clearly makes the idea quite relevant for educational relationships. The capacity to “resonate with” the world is rooted in human neurobiology, namely in mirror neurons. On the other hand, intrinsic interest for the world, the will and energy to act in it is explained with regard to the concept of self-efficacy (269 ff.). What this adds to the argument is that such a seminal connection with the world is deeply rooted as a basic human disposition, at the biological and psychological levels. (ii) As to the second aspect, these dispositional bonds constitute what Rosa calls the human capacity of resonance. Resonance is defined as a mode of human relations to the world, in which both subject and world speak with their own 21 This argument is developed in the context of his systematic work on “resonance”, especially in Chap. 5 (Rosa 2016: 246–298). The discourse seems to be mainly referred to the social world, but is also extended to non-social dimensions (e.g. p. 261). The concept of resonance will be taken up again in Chap. 9, while discussing human flourishing in the morphogenic society.

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voice, and are tuned into each other. As a consequence, the world responds to the emotions, experiences and actions of human persons. Now, being a capacity and a mode of being-in-relation, resonance can be more or less developed, which also means it can be cultivated or stifled by various factors and processes. Adding this perspective allows to argue that relations of concern are necessary in their existence, but contingent in their quality. They may bloom fully or not, and because they represent the fundamental human relationship with reality, this has a profound influence on the quality of life. Therefore, the notion of resonance may also be meaningfully applied to education, which is then conceived as a space where such a capacity is constructed—i.e., relations of resonance are established (Rosa 2016: 402–420). The schooling process, as well as the experience lived within other socialization agencies, can build resonance or alienation, and is extremely important for care and concern to emerge. First and foremost, education in an age of excess must focus on relations of concern, enhancing young people’s capacity of resonance. As it has been empirically observed, relationality and intrinsic interest are also the main building blocks of effective character development.22 In this sense, “teaching for commitment” (Thiessen 1993) becomes the comprehensive aim of all education. It goes beyond both introducing youth to single cultural traditions and the exclusive emphasis on critical thinking or learning to learn. Its deep meaning becomes the cultivation of experience and of the capacity to reflect on it, identifying and prioritizing one’s concerns. This entails the capacity to appeal to the symbolical resources needed to make sense of experience. As we have seen, the pressure upon human subjects the MS brings about results, among other things, in growing attention for the “whole person” and her properties and powers. In contemporary social science and educational thought, different paradigms are emerging to tackle this issue, producing multiple models. Overall, they articulate different psycho-semantics. That is, different conceptual frameworks epitomize different, comprehensive conceptions of human personhood. Character and social and emotional skills23 (SES) currently represent the most relevant ones within the educational discourse. Although they entail further inner differentiation, they can be said to represent the main cultural alternatives, that are systematically linked with more general psycho-semantics. I will try to illustrate their meaning, divergence and convergence as different ways for educational semantics to react to social change. Sociological and educational analysis has been ambivalent in its use of the concept of character.24 On the one hand, the impact of social change on character has often been regarded as sheerly adaptive and clearly corrosive (Sennett 1998; Hunter 2000). 22 For an overview of empirical findings see Berkowitz and Bier (2014), who also explicitly highlight

this point (252 ff.). treated as social and emotional learning (SEL). 24 The literature on the concept of character is also quite extended. To gain some purchase on the main theoretical lines see for example Dahlsgaard et al. (2005), Sennett (1998), Seider (2012), Arthur (2005, 2014), Elias et al. (2014), Maccarini (2016), and the various contributions contained in Nucci et al. (2014). 23 Also

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On the other hand, character education still holds out the hope that persons can become something ‘more’ or ‘better’ than what they are. In this respect, it maintains a connection with some notion of self-improvement and “verticality” (Sloterdijk 2013). Furthermore, character may even become the symbolical centre of counter-cultural resistance, insofar as ‘people of character’ are defined as those who will not go with the drift of the socio-cultural mainstream, and will be able to stick to their lifestyle even as a minority group. In this sense, character would constitute the formula of transcendence education uses to exceed the established social arrangements. But what does character mean in the first place? Generally speaking, it has been described as the ethical aspect of our personal traits, or the ethical value placed on our desires and relations to others. It is meant to qualify our moral connection to the world, and refers to the long term aspect of our emotional experience (Sennett 1998: 10; see also 140 ff.). Loyalty, commitment, pursuit of long term goals, delayed gratification for the sake of a future end all fall within the range of what sociology usually means with the term “character”. In a more systematic vein, the concept has been endowed with a formal and a substantive meaning, which we may call character 1 and character 2. Character 1 refers to an integrated set of moral capacities or habits. Different theories, and educational models, articulate character into multiple facets (Arthur 2014; Arthur et al. 2016). Theoretical syntheses consider three broad dimensions, defining character as comprised of moral discipline, moral attachment, and moral autonomy.25 Discipline refers to the capacity of individuals to inhibit their personal appetites or interests, or to delay gratification. Following Hunter and colleagues, we could say that moral discipline is the inner capacity for restraint—an ability to inhibit oneself in one’s passions, desires, and habits within the boundaries of a moral order. Moral attachment points to a positive element, namely a greater good or ideal to affirm and live by, a commitment which justifies sacrifice.26 Finally, the element of moral autonomy highlights the idea that actions and decisions can only be ethical when they are made freely. Controlled behavior cannot be moral behavior, for it removes the element of discretion and judgment. To these dimensions I would add a fourth, that could be called resilience. Although it has something to do with commitment, resilience constitutes an autonomous facet of character, one that cannot be reduced to the capacity of attachment to some good. I define it as the ability to endure failure and frustration, reconstructing one’s life plan in the face of various kinds of disappointment—either one’s own fault or by the adverse winds of fate. This means being able to redefine one’s goals, rescale ambitions, and still make sense of one’s life course. It could also be described as 25 This

definition can be found in the Moral Foundations of Education Project by the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia, and it is a further articulation of previous work on the subject (see above all Hunter 2000; Seider 2012). It is genuinely bizarre that the connection of this definition with Durkheim’s classical work on moral education (1938) is rarely ever noted. More on this below. 26 This aspect was emphasized by Porpora (2001). This originally shaped an interesting complementarity between his work and Hunter’s cited book on character (Hunter 2000), which has now been registered within the comprehensive definition we are currently discussing.

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the sense of growing within a limit, or the ability to entertain a healthy relation with imperfection.27 The importance of resilience should not be underestimated, in a social environment characterized by excessive options, the logic of opportunity, the related delusions, and therefore also by what Durkheim famously called “the disease of the infinite”.28 The processual model of the reflexive morphogenesis of the Self will further clarify its relevance. Discipline, commitment, autonomy, and resilience would, therefore, make the four vectors along which character develops. Character 1 is constituted by the relational bundle of these moral properties. In this sense, character has often been opposed to personality and the Self, the latter being «a strictly psychological term, deliberately stripped of the moral and metaphysical implications (…), one that asks to be evaluated strictly by the nonjudgmental therapeutic standard of ‘health’.» (McClay 2007: 9). This perspective qualifies social change as conducive to the shift from person and character, on the one hand, to personality and “psychological man”, on the other hand, which is supposed to emphasize morality versus psychic health as the focal points of alternative anthropologies. It is with this thrust that Charles Taylor noted how social science involved a reductionist view of the self (Taylor 1989, pp. 33–35), in which horizons are restricted and moral dimensions are transformed into personality features. One practical consequence is that the emphasis on personality will produce weak characters. Character would indeed continue to include an idea of flourishing as the normative goal of human development. Such ‘betterness’ indicates the moral dimension of selfhood. Then of course further divides emerge about what conceptions of such flourishing must prevail. Be that as it may, the notion of character 1 sometimes works as a humanistic counterpart to the social scientific view of the human person. However, I will be claiming that this is not a necessary connection. Character 2 refers to a substantive meaning, which involves the enactment of some particular moral ideals. Embracing ideals and enacting them within the institutions of particular communities or spheres of social life establishes a circular process. Some types of character develop as a result of a given social experience, and in turn have an influence on the way social roles are played out. The related moral properties are valorized in a society’s institutions and celebrated in those exemplars who practice them well.29 Therefore, the substantive sense of character involves its cultural content, insofar as it defines the personal properties, habits, lifestyles, forms of reasoning and even of emotional life to which a given society—or a subsystem of society—attaches a positive judgment and a consistent normative reinforcement. 27 This point is reminiscent of Charles Taylor’s argument about the importance of the “middle condition”, whereby people realize they are not actually living up to their own definition of flourishing, yet they feel in continuing contact with meaning and fullness, and keep believing that they are slowly moving towards it over the years (Taylor 2007: 6–7). 28 This well-known quote is from Durkheim’s Suicide ([1897] 1951: 287). Abbott (2014: 6) also mentions this very point in the context of his argument on excess. 29 In this sense, a sociology of character might usefully interact with Boltanski and Thévenot’s work on ‘grandeur’ (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). Certain personal traits are likely to be associated with success in a given social domain, and those who display such characteristics are thus granted the status of “great” within the relevant social spheres (cités).

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The level of aggregation on which this can be observed depends on the researcher’s perspective and interest. In this sense it is possible to maintain that there is a protestant, a modern, a bureaucratic, an American, an authoritarian versus anti-authoritarian character, and more, depending on the research focus and the field of inquiry. Character 2 has typically served the need for social theory to highlight the reaction at the personal level to phases of rapid social change in the dynamics and differentiation of society. Cultural historians have argued that a “culture of character” was meant to be the personal companion to Weber’s grim view of Western capitalism, following the pattern of Entzauberung. In this context, the concept of character indicates the trajectory of personhood from early capitalism—with the related disruption of existing social structures and cultures—down to consumerism and technology supported hedonism. In a nutshell, the “changes in character”, and its eventual decline giving way to “personality”, are meant to describe the trajectory from instrumental individualism, with its syndrome of self-control, to expressive individualism, featuring the well-known earmark of anxiety, depression, and fragility.30 As the twentieth century drew to a close, character and character education became part of the dynamics opposing virtue-based to principle-based accounts of morality, within the frame of the liberal versus communitarian debate. Then, since the beginning of the twenty-first century the virtue versus duty issue has been absorbed within a more complex discussion concerning globalization and its implications for morality. Such a discussion is focussed upon the consequences for moral education of a world inhabited by multiple cultural, religious, and lifestyle communities. This situation involves problems and challenges that include, but go beyond those of “solidarity between strangers”. The current situation reflects the effort to react to the pressure related to the MS, social acceleration and the end of Entlastung. The emphasis usually falls either on the economic or on the political system, and the effect of capitalism and consumerism on character is invariably held to be disruptive. It is in this vein that Sennett (1998) worried about how we decide what is of lasting value in a society which focuses on the immediate moment. How can long term goals be pursued in an economy devoted to the short term? How can mutual loyalties and commitments be sustained in institutions which are constantly breaking apart or continually being redesigned? These are the questions about character posed in the new, flexible capitalism.31 At the same time, a whole literature—from Tocqueville to Bellah and colleagues, from Riesman to Porpora—has considered character and the related educational programs to be crucial for the democratic quality of social and political life. This seems to show that American society still perceives its own essential qualities as meaningfully related with personal properties, while Europe has been developing along a path of social immunization from human traits. Such a hypothesis of divergent evolution within the West must be investigated further, as it could have far-reaching implications for the future of our societies. 30 This is the view many cultural historians hold. See, with reference to American society, Susman (1984), Lasch-Quinn (2007). 31 Such a critique is also somewhat echoed by Boltanski and Chiapello (2007).

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The interrelations between character 1 and character 2 shape the interpretation of moral crises, tensions, challenges, and responses in different societal contexts. Both notions converge in the current re-emergence of character as a psycho-semantic that is meant to defend (i) a moral foundation of self-consistency, integrity, and human dignity, and (ii) the critical capacity to resist social and cultural drift, reconstructing a way to enact social roles with some moral quality. As a latent human property, character becomes particularly important every time the Entlastung of institutions seems to be declining. Its relevance lies in exceeding education as mere socialization, and empowering alternative forms of education, agency, and personal as well as social life. To sum up, the idea of character has been a tool for social critique in the face of social change that is claimed to jeopardize both the human quality of social life and the social conditions of human flourishing. Not surprisingly, it also appeals to countercultural groups, who perceive the current cultural mainstream as inherently hostile to their ways and lifestyles. But insofar as the concept of character has been developed within the educational discourse, its connection with social structures and cultures has been shaped by a somewhat universalistic educational intention. The basic questions one wants to answer through the study of character are about the moral state of society, and how to improve it. Therefore, the educational literature evokes numerous human characteristics and qualities that are regarded as important for society—from justice to motivation, to mindfulness, etc. Such qualities can also be studied as indicators of what culture provides as a resource to connect with society. Social and emotional skills (hereafter SES)—and the related learning processes (SEL)—entail a clear divergence and a latent convergence with the discourse on character. Their convergence lends some support to the hypothesis that these two educational psycho-semantics represent reactions to the same social changes characterizing the MS, particularly those I have claimed to result in the increased pressure upon the human person. In any case, it appears that the same personal properties are appreciated—albeit on the ground of different concerns—in very different regions of the global social structure and cultural system, by actors working within different scientific paradigms. Social and emotional skills are mostly defined as individual capacities that (a) are manifested in consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours, (b) can be developed through formal and informal learning experiences, and (c) influence important socioeconomic outcomes throughout individual’s life (OECD 2014, 2015). Now, SES are increasingly at the centre of scholarly and education policy attention. The tendency to some sort of “SES mainstreaming” appears in the policy oriented research agendas by global actors (e.g. Schleicher et al. 2015) as well as by groups of scholars (Elias et al. 2014; John and De Fruyt 2015). The root of such a growing interest for SES lies in the fact that the global economic and working environments involve enhanced complexity and interaction, thereby highlighting the strict connection between all types of human skills. The main concerns being raised here have to do with employability and human functioning in complex, cosmopolitan, highly interactive organizational spheres. Instead of relying on values and norms characterizing different cultures, communities and collective identities, the idea is that a few universal human properties can constitute an adequate, “healthy” personality (De

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Fruyt et al 2009). The underlying assumption is that it is possible to identify universal personal features which foster human flourishing—helping people to achieve the most they can and to become the best they can be—that can be measured and shaped through educational processes. Individual and collective happiness is the expected outcome of these dynamics. In this perspective, SES look like a form of the rationalization of the self in a Durkheimian mood, through which old “virtues” are redefined as personality features that are abstract and rational, and shape people to function properly in highly individualized, multicultural, complex organizational environments.32 Indeed, through this conceptual framework an ambitious educational agenda has replaced the exclusive focus upon standardized test results measuring learning outcomes in academic disciplines. An integral, “durkheimian” idea of education develops into a plan of cultivation, empowerment, and full mobilization of all human capacities. As in the case of character, multiple models provide long lists of skills, based on various assumptions about human personality and its relations to the world. The synthetic conceptual framework laid out by John and De Fruyt (2015) makes an instructive example of where this is all going. They list the following areas, with further inner component skills: (i) pursuing goals: perseverance, self-control, passion for the goal; (ii) working with others: sociability, respect, care (“tending and befriending”); (iii) managing emotions: self-esteem, optimism, trust. In a nutshell, the global self should be trained to react against hardships, sustain regular effort and endurance of hard work, and enhance his/her engagement with society. Happiness and multidimensional life success should be the offspring of this syndrome. A huge lot of life outcomes are expected to depend on the enhancement of these skills, including social cohesion, active citizenship, health and work related achievements, and more. Here is an important cultural crossroads. The educational semantics we have outlined, respectively revolving around the concepts of character and SES, could be labeled psycho-economic and ethical-culturalist. Their divergence and convergence could be understood through the following three points: (i) The idea of SES entails a significant shift from what was formerly the key notion of human capital to the centrality of social and emotional, or also ‘soft’ skills (Heckman 2008; Heckman and Kautz 2012). This involves passing from something one can accumulate and stock to something pertaining to the persons’ agency. Skills have to do with what one can do, and they come to define what one is, in a pretty dynamic way. Furthermore, SES seem to be related to multifarious life outcomes, while human capital is typically more limited in the purposes for which it is supposed to be effective. The approach to human capacities remains basically functionalistic, but its boundaries tend to blur in 32 I am referring to Durkheim’s work on moral education (1938), in which he translated the principles

of moral philosophy into rational notions of (what he claimed would be) a timely and universally valid moral education.

238 Dimensions Semantics Psycho-economic

Ethical-culturalist

8 The Pressure on the Human. Education, Self … Reactive

Pro-active

Integrative

Constitutive

Reacting to challenges and managing emotions (self-control)

Effort, perseverance, passion for goals

Being sociable, working with others

Open-mindedness, curiosity, meditation, metacognition

Resisting negative drives (normatively defined)

Attachment to a good (autonomous investment of self)

Autonomous enactment of values within a community

Commitment to substantive ideals and hyper-goods (culturally defined)

Fig. 8.1 SES and character as educational psycho-semantics

terms of what contributes to life success—now itself defined in very inclusive terms. (ii) The scope of what is meant by the concept of SES is overly extended, embracing both processes and outcomes, and including features as diverse as endurance, optimism, trust, open-mindedness, respect, and care for others, which it is often hard to call “skills”. Indeed, the label of SES really includes three different elements: (a) skills, capacities, expertise (some kind of “know-how”); (b) moral orientations; (c) personality features. This expansion is effectively indicated by the confusingly inclusive expression of “character skills”, which is sometimes employed by the same authors (like Heckman himself). Thus, the concept runs the risk of becoming a funnel, through which a multidimensional set of personal properties and powers is poured into a psychometric bottle. This theoretical move involves consequences far beyond a conflict of academic disciplines. What is at stake is the possibility to make sense of the processes through which such properties emerge, and can be intentionally generated in a human subject. (iii) The previous two points indicate that character and SES have something in common. One way to see this is that they both involve a reactive, a pro-active, and an integrative dimension, the definitions of which are linguistically, but not essentially different (Fig. 8.1). However, the ethical-culturalist semantic, based on the concept of character, also includes a constitutive dimension that refers to substantive, culturally defined ideals, while the psycho-economic notion of SES lacks such an aspect, which is only represented by such procedural terms as “open-mindedness”, “curiosity”, and the like. To put it in Charles Taylor’s words, the space in which persons move and act—practicing and testing their skills—has a definitely moral qualification. With this, the capacity to make sense of experience—ultimately, of oneself and one’s personal and social condition—is enhanced by the possibility to appeal reflexively to some symbolical resources. The import of this divergence can be articulated in various points, which I only sketchily outline. They represent some of the key differences characterizing two possible forms of an emergent global Bildung:

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(i) the human person can be regarded as an ideal form to be reached (a coordinated set of qualities that are to flourish) versus a medium, i.e. as an active platform of powers and properties to be enhanced by learning; (ii) the educational ideal can be conceived of in basic continuity versus discontinuity with respect to the modern traditions; (iii) the global dimension can prevail over local or national cultural traditions, thereby constituting different paths to moral universalism; (iv) critical thinking appears in the theory as the capacity to reflexively exceed existing mainstream ideas and doctrines versus the competence of strategic thinking and openness to new solutions to existing problems. Although the different meanings involved in each point are mutually related, one of them tends to be skewed towards technical competence and performance. Ultimately, lifestyle itself may be conceived of as competence and performance. Social performance involves the coordination of cognition, emotion and behaviour, which develop over time. Character instead emphasizes a culturally and politically active conception of the person. To sum up, the intensified reflexive focus on the human subject is producing different educational psycho-semantics. Among them, character and SES epitomize the (dis)juncture between a neo-humanistic and a mainly functionalistic view of personhood. Although these articulate different ways for human beings to make a successful way through our complex, morphogenic, high speed society—that is, different ways to flourish in such a complex environment—they also refer to similar personal properties. They obviously differ in the consideration of identity and culture, but their latent convergence remains in itself a stimulating line of thought. We could now provisionally wrap up the emergent argument that is gradually unfolding in these pages. I have claimed that the educational challenge of the MS must be met through a complex set of skills, that go beyond the academic dimension and involve the whole human relation to the world. In order to make sense of this predicament, I have invoked a few concepts that are central in the current sociological and educational discourse. Thus, I have discussed relations of concern as the motivational and purposive core, then character and SES, arguing that these variously register the characteristic problems and needs inherent in the present situation. A further thesis is that such concepts need to be integrated as analytic tools within a comprehensive approach. Finally, the personal characteristics evoked through the notions of character and SES are meant to indicate certain capacities of relation with the world, but the relevant concepts are developed either at the psychological level or in the perspective of personal moral behaviour. However, an essential role is played by the social processes and the conditioning factors that establish a certain form of relationship. Therefore, a processual model is necessary, as well as an understanding of how social environments must be shaped to support the emergence of the desired skills and character profiles.33 In sum, it is necessary to spell out a processual view that shows how such crucial human traits are generated. In order to meet this challenge, I try to include character and SES within the morphogenetic approach, 33 This statement is close to Hartmut Rosa’s critique of social and emotional skills (2016: 236–237).

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building a comprehensive model. First, I will briefly outline the main points of that approach. Then in Sect. 8.5 I will move a few steps towards the construction of an inclusive model. Archer’s approach formulates the problem of personal identity building in quite innovative terms, proposing an ontologically stratified, dynamic, and connective theory of the human being and of his/her relationship with the world (Archer 2000, 2003). Its key points could be summarized as follows: (1) the human subject emerges through relationships with various layers of reality: nature, practice and society, developing in the first place a continuous sense of self which is not socially derived; (2) practical relations have priority, and play a pivotal role in constituting the primary identity of the self and its fundamental categories; (3) the process of personification then undergoes various stages, and finally gets to constitute personal and social identity; (4) the basic operators in this process are the personal emergent properties (PEP), which result from the human relations with the three layers of reality, since these generate concerns. Emotions are the first commentaries on experience, and they trigger personal reflexivity, as it develops through the internal conversation. The order that is finally (though ever provisionally) established among multiple concerns defines what people care about most, the ‘exchange rates’ among various possible courses of action, ending up with the establishment of a person’s own modus vivendi, that is the way people inhabit this world, which is unique to each; (5) such a process has discernment, deliberation and dedication as its focal points at the middle stage of morphogenesis. They consist of reflecting upon various possibilities of action and experience, deciding how to prioritize things and domains of personal investment, and translating one’s decision into an adequate life plan, following up with consistent practices. Even this overly quick summary should demonstrate that a non-reductionist model of socialization and identity building can accommodate the idea of a self that is constituted in moral space, and the related notion of character.34 But this insight must now be given proper articulation.

8.5 The Morphogenesis of Character: Towards Theoretical Synthesis How is it possible to include character and SES within a morphogenetic model of identity building, and why bother? In a nutshell, my answer is that the concepts at issue fit into each other’s blind spots. First, the ideas of character and SES entail some 34 This means that Taylor’s claim about the inherent reductionism of the sociological approaches to

identity can both inspire Archer’s theory and be challenged by it.

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mutual convergence, the development of which could bring about a more accurate account of what is required of human subjects to thrive in global society. Furthermore, it must be specified how character, and the related skills, emerge. In this respect, studies on character usually examine concrete programmes and practices, while the literature on SES provides rather poor evidence, being mainly focused on the typical psychometric issues of definition and measurement and mostly relying on statistical correlations between single skills and single educational/professional practices.35 Both are lacking meaningful connections with an overarching, systematic theory of socialization. The morphogenetic approach could provide an adequate conceptual framework to model the processes involved, bringing the sociological theory of identity to integrate both psychometric and moral-philosophical perspectives. On the other hand, a theory of character could also make a relevant contribution to the M/M theory of emergent personhood. To understand how, we must remember that the morphogenesis of identity culminates in the development of a modus vivendi, which epitomizes one’s personal lifestyle. As Archer explains, a relatively stable modus vivendi expresses the mature integrity of the person,36 and it should not be taken for granted. Indeed, it is an arduous, ever provisional accomplishment, one that is subject to lifelong reflexive monitoring as well as to the hardships of late modern life courses (Archer 2000: 246–248, 295 ff.). This means that Archer has fully realized the contingency of identity in its emergence through relational reflexivity (Archer 2015a). However, the conditioning factors that are likely to affect the outcomes of the socialization process have not been fully articulated. In this respect, the theoretical advancement achieved by the M/M approach could be summarized in three related claims: (i) to reclaim the role of distinctive PEPs, beyond structural and cultural conditions, (ii) to highlight reflexivity as a crucial PEP, and (iii) to focus on different modalities to exercise reflexivity, to be connected with socially relevant outcomes—e.g. the propensity to social mobility. What I am highlighting now is that people must be enabled to lead an autonomous and reflexive life, and this is contingent upon many factors. Arguably, among these factors are various PEPs other than reflexivity alone, which affect the likeliness that someone will be able to work one’s way through the whole process of discernment, deliberation and dedication effectively. In other words, the acquisition of all the powers as self, agent, actor, and person requires capacities to parallel the developmental process. Beyond the powers of reflexive monitoring, there is some other personal property that enables human subjects to make commitments and pursue them through consistent life plans. The fact that such capacities should not be conceived as pre-existing, “natural” powers of the human person, but are themselves shaped over the life course, starting from some given potential, is fully compatible with the notion of character. The elements of character are human properties, without which a socialization process revolving around personal reflexivity would find no 35 For

an updated overview of this field of studies see Panebianco (forthcoming). this word choice I am implicitly pulling together Archer’s approach and Erikson’s famous epigenetic model of identity (Erikson 1963: 247–274). Such a comparison looks thought-provoking, but cannot be followed up in this chapter. 36 With

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adequate subject to enact it. At the same time, such a socialization theory shows how character can emerge as a result of social and practical relationships. In a nutshell, people without character could not successfully go through reflexive socialization, while reflexive socialization provides a sound social scientific ground for the emergence of character. This is not meant to fall into pointless circularity. We should here remember that Archer’s morphogenesis of identity works both as a developmental account and as a framework for the ongoing reflexive life of the subject over the life course. Thus, character surely involves subjective potentialities, but then emerges through the cycles of identity building. The emphasis on capacities further highlights the connection between character and SES. We have defined character as a set of moral features that make up a fourdimensional bundle comprising discipline, commitment, autonomy and resilience. SES, on the other hand, represent a practical know-how that approaches the idea of exercise. Thus, it is clear that skills and moral qualities are not synonymous. Nonetheless, their interaction is deeper than educational doctrines often figure. They are both meant to lead to human flourishing, and many of the forces at work in socializing children which are opposite to SES also tend to be opposite to character. The mass culture pressure for short-term goal setting, impulsive behaviour, extreme and poorly managed emotions, violent problem solving, etc. make good examples. The necessity of their integration is sometimes grasped through the distinction between morality and performance. Elias and colleagues provide an interesting argument in this respect (Elias et al. 2014, particularly pp. 272–274), although couched in a somewhat ambivalent language.37 Being disciplined, autonomous and committed is important, but doing the good in complex circumstances also requires more specific competences. People might want to do the right thing, but not know how to do it. In other words, one may well care about some good, and have the moral capacity to stick to that good, but s/he also needs to be able to do what must be done to pursue their concerns in the concrete situation. The specific expertise relating to particular issues, tasks, and contexts constitutes a domain that can be usefully covered by the notion of SES. The other side of the coin is that SES need character too. This can be understood in terms of motivation and direction. Social and emotional skills may be mastered well, but can still be used for good or ill: «maladaptive direction, such as might come from extremist or criminal ideologies, can be pursued effectively through SEL competencies» (Elias et al. 2014, p. 286).38 Therefore, if the social impact of these personal traits is at issue, exposure and commitment to moral ideals still make a difference. Skills require direction, which is not itself a skill—unless the definition of skill is stretched beyond recognition. In addition to this, each SES does not emerge and operate in isolation. Finally, SES might be “used” to function in certain social 37 The ambivalence is due to the fact that the authors argue for the “inexorable, long overdue” integration between character education and SES as two distinct notions, but then treat moral features and skills as two faces of the same coin, calling them “moral character” and “performance character”, respectively. I agree with their main argument here, regardless of this linguistic riddle. 38 The expression ‘SEL’ in this quote stands for ‘social and emotional learning’, which we can well regard as equivalent to SES, only pointing to the learning process instead of the skills acquired.

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contexts, in a totally utilitarian perspective. Overall, the meaning of each feature depends upon a moral purpose and a unifying character profile. To put it again in the words of Elias and colleagues (Ibidem: 285), only a comprehensive system of socialization constitutes a “nomological knot” which prevents SES from operating in a space of mere contextuality and instrumentality. Motivation is also essential. The whole point of studying SES lies in their capacity to predict life outcomes—like a successful marriage, a fulfilling career, civic engagement, social cohesion, better health conditions later in life, and more—and all these enterprises entail motivational energy and meaning which will hardly come from the fascination of practice itself. One may well be able to care for other people, or know how to be sociable and cooperative, but could choose not to display these capacities in certain cases, if s/he believes it’s not worth doing it. Things get even more intertwined, because only through the actual practice of care may one come to discover what good lies in a given relationship. This inner relationality involves more than skills, while it may indeed reveal the value of achieving certain skills and motivate efforts to develop them. To sum up, the focus on the ‘whole child’ involves both purpose and quality, meaning and effectiveness. This can only be achieved through a comprehensive system of socialization, in which a complex set of supportive factors, environments, conditions and processes work together to build a personal profile. Having taken these points into consideration, let me illustrate my case about the integration of character within the morphogenetic model of socialization. Although several drivers are mentioned in the literature which are deemed essential for their intertwining pathways with moral and character education, neither seems to be easily integrated into a consistent model of how character and SES emerge over time. I will start from two points, which indicate thought-provoking intersections between the morphogenetic theory of socialization and theories of character, social and emotional learning. These intersections involve two core elements of the M/M theory, namely the reflexive process leading to formulate life plans and the “square” model of the morphogenesis of identity. Their significance lies in illustrating some pathways along which the argument for a comprehensive view of the morphogenesis of character could unfold, not in presenting a full-blown model. What I can do here is just move a few preliminary steps in that direction. (1) One interesting perspective comes from the theories which apply neuropsychological research to address the development of moral personhood. For example, the theory of adaptive ethical expertise discussed by Narvaez and Bock (2014) looks at ethical attitudes and behaviours as a competence. Such an ethical expertise is articulated into four processes, in which moral experts are supposed to be highly competent. These are ethical sensitivity, ethical judgement, ethical focus, and ethical action. As for all expertise, these dimensions can be further analyzed in their component skills (see Fig. 8.2). The articulation presented highlights the hybridization between character and SES. At this point the argument can be linked-up with the DDD-process (discernment, deliberation, dedication) that constitutes the middle stage in morphogenetic cycles of identity building (Archer 2000: 231–241). The correspondence between these

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Ethical sensitivity

Ethical judgment

Ethical focus

Ethical action

Expand emotional expression Take perspectives of others Accepting diversity Listening to others Communicating well Understanding situations Rejecting social bias

Understand ethical problems Using codes and identifying judgment criteria Reasoning critically Reasoning ethically Understand consequences Reflect on process and outcome Coping and resiliency

Respecting others Help others Being a community member Develop conscience Search for meaning in life Respecting traditions and institutions Developing ethical identity and integrity

Resolving conflicts and problems Assert respectfully Taking initiative as a leader Planning to implement decisions Cultivate courage Persevering Working hard

Fig. 8.2 The articulation of moral expertise. Source Adaptation from Narvaez and Bock (2014): 143

dimensions of ethical expertise and the phases of the reflexive process of emergence of personal and social identity could be explained as follows. Experts in ethical sensitivity are good at quickly and thoroughly discerning the moral nature of a situation, and the role they could play in it. That is a perceptual skill, which may stand in a complementary relation with the moment of ‘discernment’ in Archer’s model, because such a skill could influence the way people reflect upon their emotions and develop the right moral intuitions in relation to such emotional responses. It could even influence the emotional response in the first place—in the same way a cultivated taste for refined food guides our spontaneous response to different kinds of food (e.g. junk food). Expertise in ethical judgement can be connected with the moment of deliberation, while expertise in moral action resonates with dedication. Finally, moral focus could correspond to the basic desire for acting morally, or to the capacity of commitment. Therefore, it is somewhat implied in the general orientation to a concern-oriented way of acting and thinking. In other words, the process of discernment, deliberation, and dedication comes to be ethically qualified insofar as it is performed with the help of this expertise—itself a personal property of individuals. Moral action emerges from the relationships between these properties of persons. Furthermore, the skills listed in Fig. 8.3 above could be said to be necessary for people to perform successfully in each stage of the process, and are in turn reinforced by the same ongoing process. Discernment, deliberation, and dedication do not just happen, and their conditioning factors include character skills, which both make the process possible and qualify it morally. The directions it might take, and the related outcomes, depend on such factors—among other things. This establishes a comprehensive, psycho-sociological model of that particular stage in the emergence of personal identity constituted by the DDD sequence. Education can target those skills, both through the immersion of subjects in a relevant domain and through the presentation of rational explanations for actions and decisions in given situations.

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Reflexive phases

Discernment

Deliberation

Dedication

Moral expertise

Ethical sensitivity

Ethical judgment

Ethical focus

Fig. 8.3 Phases in the morphogenesis of the self and the corresponding moral expertise

(2) The realists’ square of the emergence of identity represents a key point in Archer’s theory, indeed a synthetic overview of its conceptual frame in dynamic perspective. Such a scheme could allow to pinpoint a systematic connection with character. Let us recall that I have defined character 1 as a multidimensional concept comprising the capacity of resistance, attachment to the good, moral autonomy, and resilience. On the other hand, I speak of character 2 to refer to substantive profiles resulting from specific, integrated sets of personal features, thereby “characterizing” people. Moreover, I have claimed that SES are possibly complementary to character, because purpose, moral direction and motivation must be complemented by relevant competences. How do these conceptualizations fit into a dynamic model of socialization? Let us follow the realist-morphogenetic square of the acquisition of personal and social identity (Fig. 8.4). In the first quadrant we find the starting point of the developmental process. Here the self is enmeshed in his/her very first relations with the practical, natural, and social order, and his/her original relation of concern with the world has no precise shape, but only exists at the dispositional level—that is to say, the dispositional roots of resonance are visible. The basic psycho-biological and relational conditions of early childhood begin to shape personal development, gradually carrying beyond the elementary stage of the continuous sense of self. In quadrant two, the powers of primary agency emerge in what may be understood as the Meadian “Me”. Character 1 kicks off, because the basic positioning of the subject within social structures and his/her initial participation in social networks and organizations begins to take its toll in terms of behavioural limits and requirements. Discipline, and the related adaptive skills, are the corresponding character/SES features. The following quadrant tracks the passage between primary and corporate agency. This involves reflection upon the situation of the Me, and its discontents, and the elaboration of an incipient (but not complete) collective identity. A process of regrouping takes place, changing primary into corporate agents—and possibly vice versa, depending on the interplay of social conditionings with group and inter-group interactions.39 This stage entails the capacity to identify and attach to some purpose, which is perceived and assessed as good, and evokes a whole lot of related competences. Such capacities are intentional, so a certain level of personal autonomy is also in order. The third quadrant sees the full-blown investment of the actor within 39 See

the clear explanation in Archer (2000: 267–268 and ff.).

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Skills: integrative

Skills: purposive Corporate Agent

Actor - Autonomy; resilience

You

We

commitment Original relation of concern - dispositional level (resonance)

- Attachment to the good, emergent autonomy.

socialization

I

Me

Primary Agent

Self

Basic psychobiological and relational conditions

- Discipline

Skills: adaptive PRIVATE

Fig. 8.4 The morphogenesis of character and related SES

an array of social roles, which in turn can be modified by the impact of corporate agency. Full autonomy is required, as well as resilience in the face of the hardships, failures and disappointments that can emerge in this phase. This will enable the person to run through the square again—now seen beyond its developmental meaning and in a life course perspective—reflecting, deliberating and dedicating his/her-self to their ever contingent life plans. The need to function within a role set, and the full accomplishment of social identity, need the support of integrative skills, those which foster collaboration and other social competences. It is now crucial to clarify the meaning of the scheme I have presented. In assigning one character feature—and the related set of SES—to each quadrant, the implication is not that such a feature is the only relevant capacity at that developmental stage, or to claim that it can only emerge in that phase. Rather, the point is to indicate those strengths which are essential because without them, and their re-emergence in subsequent cycles of the reflexive life course, the corresponding stages in the morphogenesis of identity will lose moral meaning, or even fall back into a morphostatic outcome—e.g. increase primary versus corporate agency. It also highlights what stages are likely to entail the most intensive interplay with what strength, which includes challenging the respective human capacities. On the other hand, to know that the human purposive capacities and virtues—namely, those concerning the ability to discern and develop commitment to some good—are particularly crucial in some life stages can also play a role in defining the experiences and interactional contexts that are expected to generate those capacities. Finally, what I called character 2 is the relatively stable outcome of this dynamics. Character in its substantive sense is an integrated set of personal properties, which

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qualifies a personal modus vivendi in moral perspective. Arguably, different types of modus vivendi are conducive to—and in turn require the development of—different kinds of character. To sum up, I have tried to spell out a way in which character might function as a conceptual element in a “sociology of concern”, which studies the morphogenesis of personal and social identity, conceptualized as the development of a modus vivendi—that is, of a particular, concrete way of being-in-the-world. In my view, the promise of integrating the concept of character within social scientific frameworks could profitably follow the path that has been opened here. The argument that was presented in this chapter was not meant to be more than the suggestion of a possible way to develop an integrated approach, which looks at the contribution of various disciplines and approaches, while keeping humanistic concerns as a major compass. More analytical, and more empirically grounded work must follow up, in order to develop the model and draw the many corollaries that could be derived. However, it seems clear that the forms of personal and social life which will develop as a creative-and-adaptive response to increasingly boundless morphogenesis will be contingent upon the development of such complex, nonreductionist approaches. The dilemmas, and the possible ways out, that have been outlined here point to a way to connect persons, culture and society in such a way that none can be reduced to the others, and that the relations-and-distinctions between them still design a viable space for humans to inhabit.

8.6 Conclusion The theoretical framework that has been laid out and discussed in this chapter entails multiple consequences. I quickly sketch three considerations: (1) The idea of education as grounded on a fundamental relation of concern, or of resonance, does not entail sweeping away all other strategies and practices, but rather redefining their role and meaning. Learning how to learn, cultivating character and developing SES, directing learning practices to problem solving, creative and critical thinking, non routine tasks, and all other ways of personalizing education remain important drivers in the way complex educational systems face the challenge of excess and of the MS. The approaches and policies that foster equality of opportunity remain as important as ever. I have only made a case for the idea that all of this is sustained and can only be achieved through a process revolving around relations of concern. It is from them that a “well-made person”—not just a well-made head (Morin 2003)—emerges. In this sense meta-cognition, social and emotional skills, and equality of opportunity as single research themes represent borders the sociology of education can cross.

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The redefinition we are dealing with has multiple consequences on policy and practice, which cannot be covered in this chapter. Two elements can, however, be briefly mentioned. (2) The role of teachers exceeds some contemporary rhetorics, which tend to see teachers as mainly mediators and facilitators of a wholly individual, autonomous learning process. It is certainly important to emphasize the autonomy of students in the face of “old and cold”, “authoritarian” teaching ways. However, student autonomy does not exist as a natural element, but is itself an emergent entity which stems from adequate educational relations. Therefore, a teacher should first and foremost inspire, since it is through his/her incitement that the world begins to resonate (Rosa 2016). Furthermore, his/her role is to respond to students’ interests and needs, developing a process of refinement and cultivation over time. Again, s/he should lead students to engage with the various dimensions of reality, leading their incipient or advanced explorations. The corpus of knowledge is still there to be learned with great effort, but it is the personalizing interpretive key that makes a difference. (3) This also involves the development of a sensibility to talent. Identifying and helping the emergence of talent, making students aware of their talents and helping them to cultivate them becomes a primary aim for teachers and schools. At the end of the day, education as Weltbeziehung, as development of the capacity of resonance revolving around a relation of concern points to the great capacity to set one’s life course on a meaningful path. What is necessary is to learn what one wants to do, how, why, and why bother, as well as why make it humanly meaningful. In the coming MS of the mid-twenty-first century, finding meaningful orientation cannot result from simple acceptance of a supposedly integrated symbolic system. It is rather the outcome of the capacity to connect with and appeal to the symbolic resources that are still available in cultural traditions, deploying them to articulate one’s experience.40 This task could be understood as the educational companion of a more general cultural, indeed civilizational agenda. The latter consists of finding mediating processes to build moral universalism in and through particularities, and to develop culturally qualified pathways to create global social environments. More than ever, education takes on a wider meaning for society. It is perhaps not by chance that the latter is sometimes expressed through the formula of “well-learning well-being”. This foreshadows a new connection between education and ideas of the “good life” as an emerging discourse in global society.

40 This remark contains an implicit reference to Hans Joas’s notion of “affirmative genealogy” (Joas

2013), which cannot be developed here. More on this in Chap. 7.

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Chapter 9

The Contingency of Human Flourishing. Good Life After Modernity

Keywords Good life · Flourishing · Calling · Social morphogenesis

9.1 A Missing Link and the Semantics of Decadence In this book I have been exploring some central features of a society that displays the hallmarks of a ‘morphogenic’ condition. I have tried to show how this configuration shapes social institutions, structures and processes, and explains significant social facts. One related problem concerns the manifold ways in which personal and social identity could be affected by such an emerging societal framework. In this perspective, Chap. 8 has dealt with excess and acceleration as spearheads of the MS, discussing their consequences on education and self-formation. In the same vein, it is instructive to examine the connection between the macro-social framework and human flourishing, or the ‘good life’. The topic of eudemonia has obviously made the object of longstanding reflection in philosophical thought. The aim of this chapter is neither to offer a review in the history of ideas, nor to articulate one more normative notion of what the ‘good life’ essentially is, or must be. Instead, the sociological issue I will address concerns the conditions under which the morphogenic logic—particularly in its emphasis on growth, multiplication of the possibilities for action and experience, pressure and performance—can constitute a locus of fullness, of the good life, for the human subjects who live to see these times. This does not evade the problem of definition—of what eudemonia actually means—but my point here is not to make a case for its ‘true’ nature in the face of misconceptions. The sociological focus is rather on how social conditionings work, and what paths cultural creativity and socio-cultural practices are following to make sense of eudemonia in such a context, with the related production of ambivalence, selections, and consequences. Thus, our basic problem is whether a society marked by those structural and cultural characteristics can also serve human flourishing, and how. Can its typical features be conducive to human flourishing? Should we conclude that the MS makes © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. M. Maccarini, Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13624-6_9

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an especially favourable or adverse environment for human beings to flourish, and for their possibility to live a good life—individually and collectively? What are the main challenges and opportunities, the axes of tension, the structural and cultural cleavages, and the social conditions of existence for people(s) to flourish? The present chapter revolves around these questions. I will argue that the morphogenic societal formation, whose emergence represented my working hypothesis throughout the volume, constitutes a special kind of environment, which involves specific challenges as well as opportunities for living a ‘good life’. Consistently with the approach taken in the whole book, I hold that neither influence should be regarded as deterministic. On the contrary, the high complexity and dynamism of the MS makes the chances of flourishing more contingent than ever. This contingency is not due to the random-like effect of complex co-determination, but to the reflexive responses by individuals and groups, with their mutual relationships and creative appeal to some cultural heritage. In other words, the contingency I am evoking does not amount to epistemological incompleteness—that is, to the sheer unpredictability of complex aggregate effects—but to the assumption of a given social ontology. As to the structure of the chapter, after an introduction on the problem of human thriving, and some elaboration on the relevance of the missing link, which serves as the starting point (Sect. 9.1), I briefly outline the modern solution of the problem, and its crisis. I also identify what I claim to be the main foci of tension emerging from the novel, ‘morphogenic’ situation (Sect. 9.2). In Sect. 9.3 I discuss some conceptual frameworks which are rising to the challenge, illustrating their ways to make sense of human flourishing within a highly contingent and dynamic macrosocial framework, and spelling out some consequences of these different theoretical strategies. Finally, Sect. 9.4 will draw some conclusions about the current sociocultural crossroads concerning the possibilities of the good life, and point to a few practical, if necessarily general, indications. Throughout the text, the relevance of the macro-social and cultural context is emphasized, as well as that of the human character, and of the way to conceive of one’s life shaping concerns. Let me now present the core issue in a little more detail. First and foremost, what does it mean to talk of human flourishing, fulfillment, or the good life1 ? In the perspective assumed by this chapter, the idea is that somewhere, in some activity or condition, lies a fullness, a richness of sorts. In that (material or symbolic) ‘place’ human life is fuller, richer, more admirable, more worthwhile, more what it should be.2 This involves the dimensions of experience and culture. On the one hand, such

1 Words are important. Although happiness, eudaimonia, good life, flourishing, (self)fulfillment, thriving, and other terms are currently used in analyses revolving around similar problems, they all have different, sometimes even incompatible meanings and implications. Beyond the basic clarifications offered in this section, I will articulate my own word choice in Sect. 9.4. Until then, I will use the above expressions as uncommitted synonyms. 2 This formulation is clearly close to Charles Taylor’s idea about the moral shape of lived experience (Taylor 2007). Moreover, here lies a meaningful connection between the present argument and that developed in Chap. 7.

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a fullness can be felt in moments of lived experience,3 and is the object of personal reflexivity. On the other, all cultural systems generally articulate definitions and elaborations on what it means to live a good, fulfilling life, to be excluded from it, dream of it, long and struggle for it, achieve it, or lose any sense of it as a personal aim or as a human possibility. These ideas and experiences are what my discourse fundamentally refers to. However, it is beyond the range of the present chapter to sort out the conceptual variety characterizing this domain. My discussion is instead focussed upon a crucial connection. In the Introduction to their edited volume The Quality of Life, Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen agree that to think about human thriving ‘we seem to need a kind of rich and complex description of what people are able to do and to be’ (2009: 2). Moreover, they insist that such an account must not only be a plural, but also an explicitly multidimensional one: We need, perhaps above all, to know how people are enabled by the society in question to imagine, to wonder, to feel emotions such as love and gratitude, that presuppose that life is more than a set of commercial relations, and that the human being […] is an ‘unfathomable mystery’, not to be completely ‘set forth in tabular form’. (Nussbaum and Sen 2009: 1–2)

This statement involves two distinct, though related claims. The former is that human beings and human relations are essentially something that exceeds utility or functionality, the second is that not only ‘society’ in general, but the particular shape a given society takes—‘the society in question’—can have an enabling or constraining influence upon their thriving. Taken seriously, this formula refers not only to the obvious, generic fact that social conditioning constrains or enables individuals in various ways, but entails that different types of societies, due to their structural and cultural features, have specific implications for the meanings of the ‘good life’ and the very possibility for people to live it. Both claims are important. But while the former has been articulated in several complex and systematic theories, the latter seems to have attracted relatively minor attention, most relevant conceptions being arguably incomplete and one-sided. Even Sen’s approach, which perhaps comes closest to examining the nexus in question, tends to conceive of the social conditioning of human capability—that is, of the freedom persons have to lead one kind of life or another (Ibid.: 3)—exclusively in terms of equality. The related questions—mixing ethics and economics—about how to accomplish equality in various policy domains are obviously important.4 However, the present chapter wants to highlight the thickness of the connection between human flourishing and the main features of contemporary global society, showing that, whilst equality remains a relevant part of the discourse, such a relationship is multidimensional. Arguably, the fact that such a link has been missing—or better, poorly examined—also explains something about the socio-cultural processes which are currently affecting the ideas and practices of human flourishing. In late modern societies of 3 These

moments of fullness mean something very near to what Hans Joas calls experiences of self-transcendence (Joas 2008). Again, more on this can be found in Chap. 7. 4 The capability approach will be quickly taken up again in Sect. 9.3 below, in its inner connection with critical political economy.

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the Western type, happiness is apparently a big deal. There is currently a hugely extended literature on the topic, so overwhelming in quantity as to make references meaningless. From scientific research down to popular magazines, happiness is a tremendously fashionable theme. Ideas and practices concerning what makes human beings flourish could be traced in most social processes, organizations and institutions. Nevertheless, in this respect late modern societies and cultural systems are facing a double difficulty. First, although the search for ‘happiness’ is everywhere, our society seems rather uncertain about how to conceive of it—let alone achieve it. For one thing, European welfare systems do not seem to be very effective in this respect, and even the paradigms which are leading the reconstruction ‘after’ their longstanding ‘crisis’ mostly revolve around the coping strategies of societies and individuals in the face of unpredictable risks, while the very definition of what makes human life ‘happy’ or fulfilled—and indeed of what this means in the first place—is usually assumed away as part of the premises, not of the actual argument. True, most analytical models about human well-being implicitly present a mix of subjective, objective, material and immaterial dimensions. Individual well-being thereby adds up to the aggregation of material conditions and the quality of life. In turn, the sustainability of such well-being over time requires preserving different types of capital, namely economic, human, social and natural capital.5 However, the most relevant indexes, like OECD’s ‘better life’, mainly consist of material variables (e.g. housing, services, income, education, health, pollution, safety), and place most immaterial aspects under the label of ‘life satisfaction’.6 And if the extension of welfare systems is criss-crossed with available indexes of ‘happiness’, the operation reveals that the correlation between ‘more welfare’ and ‘more happiness’ is less than strong at the international level. Furthermore, evidence from big survey projects like OECD’s ‘How’s Life’ framework has long shown how different well-being can be in countries with very similar levels of GDP per capita. Therefore, the relevance of the factors beyond GDP has been emphasized in the related models. More generally, in the context of the sociological welfare literature it is increasingly difficult to find systematic views articulating any kind of ‘new promise’ for the future of society.7 From a different viewpoint, there is a vast literature concerning the psychological dynamics of happiness, that is of the ways and means through which human individ5 See OECD (2015), where the quality of life is made up of a list of elements from work/life balance

to education and skills to social connections, to the quality of the environment and subjective well-being. Other national surveys gave been developed in recent years on the basis of the OECD framework. In the case of Italy see for example the ‘BES’ index of just and sustainable well-being (Istat 2015). 6 See www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org. The technicalities involved in the way such indexes are constructed cannot be covered here. 7 See e.g. Esping Andersen (2002), in which the neo-liberal and the Third Way approaches are mentioned as emerging blueprints for welfare reform and criticized for not articulating a sound principle of social justice. It is indeed questionable whether my rather skeptical statement is entirely true of the paradigm of social investment (see Hemerijck 2013, 2017), or if the latter is really articulating its own idea of human flourishing. The ambivalence also applies to criticism of the same paradigm, for example in the well-known article by Nolan (2013).

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uals come to develop their personalities and life course in ways that are subjectively rewarding. In this respect, positive psychology now holds sway on the Western public. Its emphasis on good relationships is surely important. At the same time, its popular derivatives have flooded bookshops with practical guides suggesting all ways to be happy and remain in unfailingly good spirits—including such brilliant ideas as eating good food, slowing down one’s pace of life, having good conversations, entertaining good friendly relations and having positive ties with a spouse, taking some time off for ourselves, going shopping, doing meditation, and so on. In further cases, spontaneity is superseded by training. In some British schools, ‘happiness’ is a class among others (like math, history, etc.), designed to learn resilience and deal with anxiety, and in the academic year 2017/18, the class of ‘Psychology and the good life’ has been the most attended class at Yale.8 Does happiness have to be taught and learned like Latin? Still another branch of scholarly reflection on the good life has produced long lists of human needs, whose definition has generally been unrelated to the specific traits of a given macro-social framework.9 These scattered examples are just meant to show that popular as well as scientific interest for our topic is ubiquitous. The approaches in question are illustrative of a wide-ranging intellectual as well as a policy oriented movement leading to a multidimensional understanding of human thriving. An exhaustive study of the ways in which contemporary society is making sense of human flourishing, then, would have to deal with multifarious cultural trends from sources as diverse as academic moral philosophy and the cultural industry, a wide array of collective actions and policies, emergent social forms and lifestyles, and more. In addition, the actual practices meant to nurture human flourishing should be considered, together with explicit theoretical notions. The result would probably be fascinating, but the enterprise requires a book-long treatment. Taken together, these currents of thought make significant contributions to a theory of human flourishing. What they generally miss is an adequately complex argument about (i) the connection with specific societal challenges, and (ii) what generates well-being, unifying and giving human meaning to that vast array of factors. Because the relationships between society and conceptions of the good life is not being itself examined, this literature often represents more an expression of a given society and culture than a reflection upon it. Furthermore, such a highly developed awareness of the relevance of individual well-being is accompanied by a growing malaise that characterizes the macro-social frame of individual lives. Western modernity has unfolded under the sign of progress, and the idea of progress, as it was articulated in Europe between the middle of the XVI and the end of the XVIII century, has always involved an inner, generally assumed to be unproblematic connection with personal happiness. The self-representation of Western modernity—with its cultural program and institutional complex—as a eudaimonistic machine is too well-known to need further discussion. In his famous ‘Digression on ancients and moderns’ (1688), Fontenelle was referring both to sci8 The 9A

same thing is reported to happen with the ‘positive psychology’ class at Harvard. good example in this perspective is the work by Smith (2015).

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entific progress and to human happiness when he drew his self-evident, categorical conclusion: «il est évident que tout cela n’a point de fin». Since then, and even through recurrent crises, this has been the fundamental faith of all moderns. But in our days, this proud certainty would hardly be shared by the Western public, which is now experiencing the painfully keen edge of social and historical contingency. After the Second World War, it was said that fear was behind us, while hope lay before us. Although Western citizens are still by far those who are currently getting the best life chances in the world, that landscape is clearly changing. Fear is everywhere, and hope seems to be declining. At the end of the 1980s, after the increasing awareness that we were ‘growing to the limits’,10 the fall of the Berlin Wall inspired many to expect an age of regeneration, democratization and world peace. Such hopes lasted one decade, only to burn in the explosions of the Twin Towers. The following period has brought about the feeling of a ‘change of season’, that feeds both on structural data and on people’s perception. In cultural terms, Western societies have become increasingly unable to imagine a future, unless in the form of ecological, technological, or political catastrophes.11 Illustrating this point in an empirically exhaustive way would make a volume in its own right. Suffice it to note that utopian thinking has now been silent for decades, while most imaginative work—e.g. books as well as movies—has taken on a dystopic form. Correspondingly, as Bauman has timely noted, the hope that humanity could achieve happiness in some future ideal state has been lost, and is now superseded by a vision focused on the past. Utopia has been replaced by ‘retrotopia’ (Bauman 2017). Both in terms of material wealth and of life satisfaction, we are witnessing the first generations since World War II who believe things are getting worse, not better, and are rather pessimistic about future prospects. In what used to be the home of Western optimism, namely the US, 52% of voters have been reported to feel that America’s best days are in the past, while belief that the nation’s best days are still to come (35%) hovers near its lowest level.12 In economic terms, the International Monetary Fund is on record as saying that the United States has just five more years until they are no longer the world’s largest economy. Europe, with its slow economic growth, its identity crisis and its demographic winter, is not doing any better. Whatever its multiple causal factors, the demographic decline of European peoples makes it hard to believe that they regard life itself as a good. Whatever the most plausible interpretation of such a social fact may be, it does not witness to happy peoples who share a confident outlook for the future. This somehow parallels the intellectual movement which heralds the necessity 10 And this applied to the great institutions of European welfare systems. See the classical volumes by Flora (1986). 11 For a social scientific interpretation of our incapacity to articulate a positive vision of the future, which emphasizes the inherent limits of the so-called ‘knowledge society’, see Willke (2002). 12 According to the Rasmussen Reports’ national telephone survey, 20–21 October 2015, the question was: «When you think about our nation in the context of history, are America’s Best Days in the future or in the past?». The percentages indicated marked the highest level of voter pessimism in two years and is up 13 points from the days when Barack Obama was elected president. At that point, the percentage of voters who felt the nation’s best days were still to come (35%) was down 13 points since President Obama’s inauguration in January, 2015.

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of ‘degrowth’, paving the way for the West to settle for some kind of collective ‘active ageing’.13 To sum up, the Western public manifests decreasing belief in the capacity of their countries to tame complexity and face the major challenges of our times. Decadence is becoming our Zeitgeist.14 It is in this historical context that we start our reflection upon the meaning and hopes of a ‘good life’. While most indexes of happiness, human development, and the like, are usually oriented to individuals and their closer spheres of interaction, it is the macro-societal, even civilizational framework that is being radically called into question. Because its stability and vitality cannot be taken for granted, its once undisputed connection with human flourishing is becoming increasingly puzzling. Our question then concerns how anyone can flourish, and what flourishing may mean, given our specific societal predicament. My point is that such an issue has hardly been studied beyond rather generic statements. In the face of most present challenges, both popular culture and the intellectual élites either miss their meaningful connection with our ‘lifestyles’ or tend to reassert the beauty of the Western ‘way of life’ as something we should root for. Little work seems to focus on what goods it is possible for people to achieve and which ones, instead, are being disrupted or made increasingly arduous to obtain in this kind of society. Thus, a renewed reflection upon eudaimonia and the ‘good life’ is in order. But what kind of reflection is involved? One way to qualify my personal contribution is to say I intend to treat the problem in question in a sociological perspective. This certainly draws a distinction. However, referring to social science is not enough, since there are at least two different ways in which sociology could deal with human flourishing. One is to work out a meta-theoretical framework that allows us to ask questions about the good life, both at an individual and a collective level, within sociological theory. This is the approach most social theorists take. Some of them have made a compelling case for a non-positivist approach to social science, and convincingly argue about the necessary mutual relationships between various disciplines. Their main point is to assert the relevance of ethics and values to real life problems, which in turn prompts social science to shed its deceptively neutral or dismissive attitude to such issues. Criticism of Hume and of the distinction between facts and values is clearly a crucial point in this context.15 As anticipated above, the issue I am tackling in this chapter is a different one. I agree with most of those meta-theoretical arguments, but I want to address the substantive connection between human flourishing and some of the current societal trends and conditions. What can sociology say about this? One possible research agenda involves the following steps:

13 If one looks at the pictures used to promote the notion and practices of active ageing for European elderly populations, one often finds them pathetically mimicking young attitudes and behaviours. I cannot dwell here on what would probably be an interesting piece of visual sociology—as a socio-cultural interpretation of icons and images. 14 For refined and empirically robust formulations of such a mood see Ferguson (2011, 2012). 15 See Gorski (2013), Sayer (2011), Smith (2015), as some of the most significant examples of this stream of sociological work.

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(i) studying what is being elaborated within our cultural system, what symbolic variety is emerging as regards the ideas and practices constituting, or leading to, a ‘good life’; (ii) examining their internal relationships with structural dynamics; (iii) finally, drawing some implications from this structural and cultural landscape in terms of what human good is made possible, is fostered or hindered, through these socio-cultural processes. Of course, the two approaches I have briefly sketched above are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are internally related, for a substantive study of human flourishing within a given societal domain only makes sense once a conceptual framework is in place that allows us to ask the relevant questions and to conduct the related analyses. With this said, I’ll leave it for readers to determine whether my approach could fall within the range of concrete utopianism. The latter, ultimately deriving from such authors as Ernst Bloch, has found a definition within critical realism, according to which it amounts to ‘constructing MODELS of alternative ways of living on the basis of some assumed set of resources, counterbalancing ACTUALISM and informing hope’.16 Its function is precisely to ‘pinpoint the real, but non-actualised, possibilities inherent in a situation, thus inspiring grounded hope to inform emancipatory praxis’ (…)’.17 And it may be true that ‘in many areas of our everyday lives we already act in ‘the way social utopians have believed we could act’—in terms of reciprocity, non-egoism, trust and reconciliation (…)’.18 Be that as it may, what I intend to do is simply to use the resources of sociological theory, in order to sketch an outline of what could possibly happen. I deem it very important to remember that even if we act in certain ways in our everyday life, this should not be treated as immediate evidence that social life could be qualitatively different at the macro level. Moreover, for most of us everyday life itself may well be as ambivalent as it gets, while we still have reasons to regards it as ‘good’.

9.2 Modernity’s Compromise of Happiness, and Beyond It is useful to consider the modern background of the present situation. As we will see in the following Sect. 9.3, most of the current views on human flourishing involve the continuous appeal to, and re-interpretation of, that controversial heritage. As regards the factors fostering human flourishing, modern thought has conceived of it as the natural outcome of progress, which in turn consisted of the continuous advancement of science and technology, coupled with increasingly rational political institutions and steady economic growth. The emergent effect of these dynamics would build a world where human beings could flourish. True, the two divergent branches of Western modernity—namely European and American liberal democracies versus 16 Hartwig 17 Ibid., 18 Ibid.

(2007, p. 74). p. 75.

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the Soviet model—widely differed in the role they attributed to individual freedom and to political planning.19 However, both models pointed to an ‘end state’—albeit hidden in the mist of historical ‘long term’—where human individuals would finally be materially wealthy and free to develop their ‘pure’ individuality, satisfying their natural needs. As to the cultural content of such a ‘good life’, diversity allowed for various equilibria between different notions. For present purposes, these may be summarized (and perhaps overly simplified) through three distinctions: subjective/objective, expressive/instrumental, and material/immaterial. Human flourishing may be held to result from the pursuit of purely self-defined goals or from the fulfillment of a given ‘nature’, which involves universally valid needs and ends, related to objectively good ways to act and states of mind. Furthermore, such human needs may be mostly material—health, wealth, safety, physical pleasure—or essentially immaterial—i.e. psychological and/or spiritual. Finally, the activities in which a fulfilled life consists could be the rational, thorough, systematic effort in a working organization or the search for psychic well-being in various spheres of experience. One side of the coin was represented by what Charles Taylor referred to as the rise of the disciplinary society, that was guided by a ‘rage for order’ involving the three levels of disciplined personal life, well-ordered society, and a correct—that is, humble but active—inner stance. In this perspective, a good life was that of dependable men who have settled life courses and become pillars of the social order.20 The expressive backlash that was evident—to pick a moment close to us in history—in the events of 1968 represents the decline of such a ‘disciplinary’ arrangement. The ongoing tension between those alternatives generated various combinatorial games, resulting in more or less unstable equilibria. Western modernity in its successful moment managed to strike a balance among such configurations, finding relative compatibilities and establishing forms of social life which were generally tolerable for human personalities. For example, material wealth consistently increased, requiring systematic, but relatively bearable effort to the average worker-citizen, and providing safety through economic and political institutions. At the same time, individual creativity and self-determination were unchained, whilst the bulwarks of the cultural heritage were kept reassuringly, if somewhat precariously, in place. This provided some sense of social belonging, while decreasingly setting real limits to behavioural variety—as if individuals could become emancipated without totally ‘leaving home’, or destroying its fabric. The perspective of this chapter is that the MS constitutes a societal environment which prompts the radicalization of extremely unstable combinations, thereby disrupting what may be called the ‘modern compromise of happiness’. The defining features of what we call a ‘morphogenic society’ (MS) have been clarified before. In a nutshell, let us just remember that the rise of a MS involves the diffusion of a particular institutional configuration, in which structures and cultures tend to stand in relationships of contingent complementarity, thereby producing a 19 On

the Soviet model as a particular variation of Western modernity see Arnason (1993). (2007, especially Chaps. 1 and 2). On this topic see also Gorski (2003).

20 Taylor

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situational logic of opportunity. The emergence of this new societal constellation obviously entails massive social change along many different dimensions. In Chap. 8, I have briefly outlined three sets of phenomena that are especially important for education and self-formation. Because they involve deep aspects of the self, they are also relevant to our present argument: (a) the explosion of possibilities for action and experience; (b) the acceleration of social life, at the macro, meso, and micro level; (c) the saturation of social and symbolic space. The outcome of these trends was summarized as an intensified multidimensional pressure upon human beings. It was also explained how the related challenges entail developing character skills, as well as a sense of purpose, meaning and motivational energy which could hardly come from the fascination of practice itself. We ended up claiming that all skills development can only work as the practical companion of concern-oriented reflexivity, through which people’s identity, attachment to and pursuit of meaningful goals is effectively sustained. Now those living conditions, such pressure, the relevant coping strategies and emergent lifestyles make a good starting point for understanding how the novel, morphogenic societal formation issues a fundamental challenge to the meanings and possibilities of human flourishing. What does it mean, and how is it possible to live a ‘good life’ when human capacities are overstretched, the rhythms of social life make the personal pace of life hard to sustain, and the whole socio-cultural dynamics result in a widespread loss of meaning? As far as we can see at this point, human fulfillment in a MS requires the capacity to perceive, define and pursue meaningful goals in conditions of high pressure and normative incongruity. This involves embracing an active attitude and developing a broad range of skills to build an adequate, continually evolving coping structure. Furthermore, it entails the capacity to strike a balance between rapid change and latent identity, stabilizing one’s life effectively in conditions of high speed. I will examine this challenge in some detail with the help of a few thinkers, who epitomize paradigmatic ways to articulate an interpretation of and a response to the morphogenic condition. But before we come to that, one more general remark is needed, in order to spell out in advance what I believe are the crucial points that must not be missed in the development of any particular argument. These could be considered to be the main structural and cultural foci of tension concerning human flourishing, and the task ahead is to specify what is characteristic of the MS along these axes. In this respect, considering how societal frameworks generate-and-entail different ideas of eudaimonia, and what consequences the MS is going to have from this point of view, I am going to lay out two main theses. The former is that the current situation requires us to call into question the meanings of what used to be two major bulwarks of Western ‘successful modernity’,21 i.e. (i) science and technology, and (ii) individual 21 It is perhaps time to note that my continuous, boring addition of ‘Western’ to qualify my every reference to ‘modernity’ is not just a reflex, but wants to do justice to the notion of multiple modernities, which might be particularly important while discussing ideas of the good life, but lies

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autonomy, in its expressive as well as instrumental aspect. These have been the very spearhead of the notion of ‘progress’, modelling the (alleged) inherent historical trend to perfection and happiness of humanity. The second says that one key point to discern among the various forms of eudaimonia that are developing in the MS concerns the ways to conceive of the ‘discipline of character’, which nowadays become the character skills required in order to participate in the organizations of global capitalist economy. So, techno-science and individual autonomy are the pivotal points around which the challenge ultimately revolves.22 These two points touch upon essential features of the great utopias of the Twentieth century. Therefore, they are crucial to explaining their outcomes and failures, as well as to study how the cultural system of the MS is working to articulate new ideas of happiness and human fulfillment. Another way to come to the same point is to say that the set of factors I have indicated is having an influence upon: (i) The will to empower (or enhance) oneself, to achieve more skills and powers. Whilst global society involves the call to be active and autonomous, the required capacities are becoming increasingly arduous in the face of growing complexity and uncertainty. In any case, a huge role in well-being, collective prosperity and thriving in the MS is going to be played by skills and capacity development; (ii) The sense of belonging, the temporal duration and intensity of attachment people can display toward ideals, institutions, or other people. A related aspect of this scenario has to do with the respective role of competition and cooperation in that very process of personal development. We must carefully distinguish this issue from that which has already been tackled by Archer (2014), while explaining that the generative mechanism of late modernity is constituted by market competition and the diffusion of applied science needing to ‘work together’. Such a synergy is quite different from the idea of deeper cooperation, by which it is meant a logic of mutual help in learning processes and in the development of one’s capacities. A big divide separates essentially individualistic and competitive views of capacity building from the idea of cooperative learning, which involves ‘doing things together’, collective effort, and mutual support. All this generates-and-implies a sense of belonging to some entity beyond one’s individuality; (iii) The way to conceive of transcendence, both in one’s own existence and in the historical context. As it was argued in Chap. 7, the MS is developing its own ways about exceeding the given order of things. This point is not indifferent to ideas and practices of human flourishing, as a reference to ‘another time’ or

far beyond the scope of the present essay—and of my own competence. Within the now extended literature on multiple modernities, it will be enough for present purposes to refer to the seminal work of Eisenstadt (2000). 22 Again, this statement somehow echoes Charles Taylor’s well-known thesis about the ‘malaise of modernity’, which has to do with individualism and instrumental reason. See Taylor (1991, especially pp. 1–12). However, although the background is certainly similar, my own argument develops in a rather different direction.

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‘another place’ toward which one’s life course or the fate of entire peoples is marching. Arguably, these three points are crucial to the idea of human flourishing, and it is necessary to understand how they are embodied—in a more or less explicit fashion—in the main ongoing sociocultural trends, which represent empirically existing responses to the ever present human need for fulfillment. At the same time, such arguments usually convey some evaluative considerations about what utopias or ideals are still conceivable in the current societal conditions. Again, the way they highlight, consider, or downright dismiss those points is going to make a significant difference. All of this has important consequences for the meanings and hopes of human flourishing in the MS. All three distinctions above—subjective/objective, instrumental/expressive, and material/immaterial—are going to be affected by the new predicament. The old equilibria are being pushed beyond their limits, towards more extreme solutions. Let us now turn to examining different ways to cope with the logic of opportunity that is typical of the MS. As we will see, the chosen themes around which my analysis revolves have to do with the points identified above, namely the will for empowerment, the capacity of attachment, and the push to transcendence. Arguably, these are the major foci of tension in the cultures of human fulfillment within the MS. The way they are socially and culturally constructed, interpreted, and lived out could be decisive for the human good. And reciprocally, such different paths to human good will deeply affect the ‘human’ quality of the MS.

9.3 Responses to the Challenge: Emergent Visions of the Human Good in the Morphogenic Society The issue characterized as eudemonia, the good life, or human flourishing is raising growing interest and producing a vast literature with an impressively interdisciplinary scope. I do not aim at an exhaustive reconstruction of the current debate, but follow a highly selective, theory-guided choice of intellectual interlocutors. Our discussion revolves around a few authors who explicitly tackle the issue of how the current societal conditions are affecting human flourishing, and whose positions are paradigmatic of the responses the emergence of an MS can attract. This twofold feature makes discussing these conceptual frames particularly productive, so I will use them as pegs around which I hang my analysis. Overall, they articulate very different narratives of flourishing in a MS. First, let us consider the hypothesis that the characteristic hallmarks of unbound morphogenesis be the quintessential inspiration for individual and collective flourishing. Is the logic of opportunity, with the related rise of combinatorial games, multiple possibilities for action and experience, high speed of social processes and the imperative of growth and performance, essentially conducive to human flourishing? This case has been forcefully made by Phelps (2013). The relevance of his contri-

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bution lies in the way he connects paradigms and disciplines to articulate a theory of flourishing that sounds like a perfect companion to the morphogenic syndrome. The straightforward thesis of his volume is that modern economy brought about a kind of life and experience which resulted in individual and collective (‘mass’) flourishing. Therefore, such a form of life should be consistently institutionalized, and preserved against contemporary tendencies to emphasize rival views and policy principles. The book begins with a basic definition of flourishing as something that “comes from the experience of the new: new situations, new problems, new insights, and new ideas to develop and share” (Phelps 2013: vii). So, it is clear that flourishing depends on involvement of people in the processes of innovation. Such processes are to do with the economic sphere of production. Phelps claims that the core of human identity lies in the work experience, in developing new ideas and products. The keywords are engagement, challenge, discovery, imagination and enterprise, all related to the economic sphere. Such experiences constitute personal growth, i.e. human flourishing, which in turn is the heart of prosperity—that is, ‘mass flourishing’. This means that the economic culture takes centre stage. Where economic culture and values emphasize individuality, self-expression, exploration for its own sake, and creativity—so the argument goes—work takes the shape of an exciting experience of the new, thereby producing self-realization, i.e. human flourishing. Such cultures indirectly influence the way institutions are shaped (Ibid.: 194).23 Historically, the spread of a lifestyle based on these values gave birth to modern economy and modern life. That is the good life. Such an economy may need improvement, because governments could fail to distribute benefits fairly, but it is crucial to stick to the related form of life. In Phelps’s narrative, the XIX century has been the cradle of this kind of civilization, while the XX century, with its ‘concerted’ economies and welfare systems, has curbed those impulses. So, the good life requires to restore those ‘good old times’.24 To be sure, Phelps admits that it may seem paradoxical to lionize a kind of economy, and a related form of life, «in which the future is unknown and unknowable, (…) and (…) in which people may feel “adrift”, or even “terrified”. Yet the satisfaction of having a new insight, the thrill of meeting a challenge, the sense of making your own way, and the gratification of having grown in the process—in short, the good life—require exactly that.» (Ibid.: xii; see also 55). What is being maintained here is that the good life stands on the bright side of unfettered morphogenesis, of uncertainty and continual change. Indeed, the good life consists in the very participation to society’s dynamism. If that is what human flourishing is all about, it is only natural that an institutional configuration of contingent complementarities must be the most favourable societal environment for such ‘spirits’, here regarded as the

23 This

account of prosperity explicitly challenges Schumpeter’s view of technology driven change with an emphasis on endogenous, grass-roots innovation within the economic domain. 24 Still in the mood for ‘retrotopia’? Regardless of this historical qualification, I will take into consideration the author’s approach as a conceptually clear statement of how the morphogenic condition of society can be linked with an idea of the good life.

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better angels of our nature. The state and all institutions should learn to ‘ride the bull’, and be oriented to full-blown dynamism. It is crucial to the argument that what could be seen as a very one-sided way of life—typical of economic actors holding ‘creative’ positions within big organizations—really corresponds to a culturally thicker ideal of eudemonia. So Phelps claims that «the flourishing that is the quintessential product of the modern economy resonates with the ancient concept of the good life (…). The good life requires the intellectual growth that comes from actively engaging the world and the moral growth that comes from creating and exploring in the face of great uncertainty. The modern life that modern economies introduced perfectly exemplifies the concept of the good life» (Phelps 2013: xi, italics added). Such a ‘perfect match’ is maintained on the ground of two specific arguments. The former is a discussion on comparative data concerning job and life satisfaction in various countries. The author argues (i) that job- practically equals life- satisfaction, and (ii) that both are higher in countries whose institutional framework is more oriented to individual freedom than to community and ‘corporatism’ (Ibid.: 196–201). In fact, the data presented only demonstrate that job and life satisfaction are positively correlated, which was indeed quite predictable, but not that one could be reduced to the other. As to point (ii), it is argued that the fact that Scandinavian countries rank very high in both data sets should not be regarded as evidence that societies endowed with large welfare systems are performing better in terms of happiness. Such a conclusion is dismissed as methodological naïveté. However, my critique is that neither job nor life satisfaction seem to be meaningfully related to individualism or liberal systems. There is no clear evidence for an opposition between concerted economies, based on protection and community, and individualist systems, which prompt exploration, self-expression and all that. No specific system gets unequivocal support from the data, which means that other variables would be necessary for an explanation of the differences displayed. In my opinion, this suggests that other life dimensions must be tapped into for an adequate understanding of eudemonia. The second argument is a discussion of ancient humanistic notions of the good life, beginning with Aristotle. In a nutshell, the alleged convergence lies in the idea that the good life lies in acquiring knowledge. However, Aristotle’s ‘limited’ and ‘simple’ background prompted him to think that knowledge is an end in itself, and that it is only acquired through study. If we add, instead, that knowledge must serve practical innovation, and that a life of exploration and investigation involves being part of a work environment in a free economy, then we get to a more refined idea of the good life, still consistent with Aristotle’s basic insight. Furthermore, the emphasis on exploration for its own sake—which overlooks the difference from creativity oriented to economic innovation—invites Phelps to include other thinkers within the same theoretical framework, from Nietzsche, to the Romantics, to Bergson. With this, he wants to highlight that the good life is a process, not an end state (279 ff.). But keeping together vitalism, Aristotle, pragmatism, romanticism, and productive change in modern economies means walking on too thin ice in terms of conceptual consistency. In short, if all these intellectual roots have obviously interacted, contributing to the modern identity—which is no breakthrough in the history of ideas—it is hardly

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possible to prove that they can be unified as bearers of a common notion of the good life. In the end, the continuity between Aristotelian views, other humanistic theories, and Phelps’s version of flourishing seems to be quite overstated. Two more remarks are in order. First, Phelps’s account of flourishing assumes the perennial value of a limited range of exemplary forms of life and types of human fulfillment, within given activities. Those who do not feel in tune with this appear to be people ‘of different nature’, who should be allowed to live their own way, but whose inclinations have no systematic significance for the conceptual frame. So, fulfillment does not mean doing one’s best in what one cares about most, but being a restless entrepreneur. Other ways of life are unfulfilling by definition, and the restless innovators allegedly corresponds to the ideal proclaimed by the humanities versus those who Phelps calls the traditionalist, which represent some sort of recessive genetic mutation of human nature. Finally, one related implication is that the modern economies brought even to ordinary people of varying talents a kind of flourishing—emerging from the experience of engagement, personal growth, and fulfillment. While artisans and people living in traditional economies were buried in routine action, with very slow change in the way things were made, which involved sameness and tedium, modern economies brought mental stimulation and intellectual challenge, because of the rapid change of products and the problem solving activities this entails (Ibid.: 57–61, 193). This claim is important, in that it represents a bold counter-narrative against Richard Sennett’s famous thesis of the craftsman (Sennett 2009), according to which capitalism has mainly resulted in de-skilling and de-motivation. Furthermore, Sennett’s argument was that flexible capitalism, with its competitive logic and the reduction of once lifelong careers to short term commitments, is resulting in the decline of skills and the loss of human capital. As a consequence, the process of skills development should be made less competitive, putting a premium on cooperation. Cooperation must be cultivated as a ‘craft’ in its own right, to be fostered through a politics of time and space,25 and obviously goes far beyond the social skill of ‘being nice and respectful’ of others, that is of just being able to function with others. The point here is that the potential of each person needs the cooperation of others to be developed. Therefore, the policy impact of such a view would be to shape cooperative educational, work, and organizational environments, finding the right balance between the logic of competition and the logic of cooperation. Evidence may well be controversial in this respect, possibly confirming either claim in different contexts and for different groups or populations. The distinction is, however, quite apparent. To sum up, in terms of the foci of tension outlined above, people flourish because they develop individual creativity, self-expression and skills in practical activities, trying to foster innovation in the economic sphere of production. Institutions or communities do not play much of a role, except for supporting individual freedom and initiative, which implies keeping the markets open. Finally, personal self-transcendence happens in the practical domain, as the emergent effect of the fervor and excitement

25 Again,

this case has been made by Sennett (2007, 2012).

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inherent in the experience of productive novelty. Culture is important insofar as it is instrumental in feeding and supporting this form of life. Dwelling on this model has been important because of its wittingly radical approach. Thus, it represents one fundamental version of ‘flourishing in the MS’, one that might be labeled ‘overadaptive’,26 because it sees human eudemonia as quintessentially cognate to society’s unchained dynamism. This theory obviously attracts critique on various accounts, some of which has been stated above. Before I present alternative views, let me quickly consider two more critical points of particular importance. For one thing, Phelps’s boldly one-sided understanding of the good life makes his theory both internally consistent and methodologically weak. The issue concerns the plurality of possible definitions, which the privatization of the issue in modern times makes even more puzzling. The normative nature of the concept in question results in a problem of incommensurability between different forms of eudemonia. It is interesting that such an observation, and the appeal for a reflexive, pluralistic view of the human activities and goals to be deemed worthwhile, appears in the work of Andrew Abbott, who otherwise shares with Phelps a deeply vitalist approach to life.27 In addition to this, the inner relation between freewheeling individualism, free market, innovation, and the quality of life should be more thoroughly discussed, as it has been questioned in various ways. A good example comes from the point of view of either the critical political economy approach or the capability approach.28 In this theoretical perspective, social institutions and the consequences of their operation must be judged in accordance with their capacity to foster or hinder human potential. Since these institutions have various effects on different groups of people, distributional judgements are involved in assessing their consequences. For example, it has been noted that as the Industrial Revolution was increasing the productivity and average incomes of people in the leading industrializing countries, not everybody’s income was increasing, and more importantly, the quality of life of even those whose incomes were increasing was deteriorating in important respects. This should be instructive about the contradictory directions in which human development was pulled by the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, research in this perspective has shown that the current type of governance of health systems entails some lack of incentive for big drug companies to spend money on R&D, particularly for treating the diseases of the poor, whilst the current patent regime, encoded in the WTO agreement, is working as a deterrent both to innovation and diffusion of new drugs. Overall, 26 This phrasing is reminiscent of Morin’s work (2003), which was mentioned in a different context

in Chap. 8. 27 See Abbott (2016). By ‘vitalism’ here I just mean that he emphasizes process versus achievement.

«It is the whole walk that is the outcome, and (…) understanding that walk is the crucial matter, a matter (…) of staying alive» (Ibid.: 197). 28 Among the numerous references, see at least Bagchi (2008). The following statements about quality of life and health care are taken from this contribution. The whole two-volume work of which this chapter is part offers several examples, focussed on specific issues and geo-economic areas.

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modern economy’s record on fostering material well-being life remains obviously impressive, but its global reach and its multidimensional character are rather fuzzy. Although she never refers to these authors, such criticism is included in the rationale and in the basic articulation of Margaret Archer’s work.29 Her approach to the theme of eudemonia contrasts sharply with Phelps’s both in method and in the diagnosis concerning the global outlook, and could be summarized in three main points. In the first place, Archer notes that it is hard to sort out what features of human subjects make a good life for them (Archer 2017: 115). A substantive choice can hardly be made a priori. In addition, the emerging conditions of a MS can both prompt and restrain the chances of human flourishing (Ibid.: 116). Having cleared the ground of too narrow and binding premises, the second key point consists in appealing to the theoretical framework about the morphogenesis of the Self.30 Human beings necessarily entertain relations of concern with the three orders of reality—natural, practical, and social—and shape their lives according to goals and plans related to them, within the conditioning context of structural and cultural factors. As a result of this, the new opportunities provided by intensified morphogenesis can only contribute to eudemonia if they enable the enhanced development of human capacities and reduce the import of liabilities (Ibid.: 117). In other words, if they foster the substantive freedom to lead one’s life according to one’s concerns, thereby enhancing human potential in various realms of action. With this, Archer does not want to offer a strict definition of the good life, but does specify one of its essential conditions. What substantive conclusion can be drawn from this is that the good life amounts to “the freedom to pursue one’s concerns where one would—following the situational logic of opportunity in order to give due importance to what one cares about most” (Archer 2007: 325). In the end, what she has in mind is a population, and a life-style, that does not correspond to the young, cosmopolitan, corporate élite, but also, and even more, people who are “seeking to avoid or quit corporate employment, preferring the pursuit of their own concerns” (Ivi). Opening the range of possible life plans and pursuits is an essential element. Thus, the idea is established that people can only pursue their own flourishing if they can entertain satisfying relations with the three orders of reality. In connection with this, a further element of the approach involves the development of the argument in a macro-social perspective. The global social, political, and economic framework disrupts some identities, supports others, and creates new ones. The support of plural identities has strong structural conditions. In Archer’s terms, structural and cultural conditionings can make personal life plans and life-styles more or less difficult to pursue. The related situational logics can be played out in ways that are conducive

29 See

above all Archer (2017), on which I draw in this paragraph. The whole volume she edited deals with the issue in question. 30 Archer (2000, 2003). Such a conceptual framework has been evoked in Chap. 8, in the context of education, self and character.

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to or hindering the emergence of certain identities, and the internally related life plans.31 The pivotal concept here is the imperative of growth, which entails relations within and between the three orders of reality that are distinctively antipathetic to human flourishing.32 Here capitalism, consumerism, nation states competing on GDP, and the neo-liberal governance of global processes are faced with the allegation of producing relational evils and related bad outcomes—like climate change (Archer 2017: 125–131). In sum, Archer sees the good life in a MS as the possible opening of possibilities to pursue a wider range of personal concerns. In this context, personal reflexivity is meant to lead people beyond sheer instrumentally oriented autonomy, articulating diverse forms of life ideals. Related to this, voluntary and cooperative activities are advocated, in order to establish positive sum games in various domains of global society. Moreover, through the concept of ‘concern’ the path is open to consider the role of plural ideas of the good in shaping life courses and social relationships, not only at the micro level, and in transcending the social and cultural status quo. I now want to complete my analysis of the intellectual landscape by examining yet another way to connect contemporary society with the issue of the good life. This revolves around social acceleration, which was mentioned several times in this volume as one of the features that are typically associated with the MS. In order to illustrate this point, I’d like to consider the views of the most influential theorist of acceleration, namely Hartmut Rosa. As we will see, his approach dovetails with Archer’s in some important respects, while developing within a different meta-theoretical framework. It would be impossible to write a full review of this complex work here. My aim is just to highlight its main argument, and to draw some consequences for my own reasoning. Rosa’s most important book on this topic33 begins with the following statement: «If acceleration is the problem, then resonance is perhaps the solution» (Rosa 2016: 13). With this, the central notion of his theory of a good, fulfilled34 life is made explicit. The idea of resonance is the pivotal concept.35 Resonance is defined as a 31 As

Bagchi (2008) has noted, this is also an integral part of Sen’s capability approach. I cannot follow up on this line of thought, but the partial convergence between the two approaches on this point must be indicated. 32 This is graphically represented in Archer (2017: 125, Fig. 6.2). 33 Among the many works of this prolific author see especially Rosa (2016). See also Rosa and Henning (2018). 34 A quick note on language is in order here. Rosa often uses the verb gelingen (das gelungene/gelingende Leben, or die gelingende Weltbeziehungen) to indicate a good life, i.e. a life which can be deemed worthwhile and gives happiness to the subjects who live it. Although this verb should be literally translated as work, or succeed (hence ‘the successful life’), I prefer to render it as ‘fulfilled’ or ‘flourishing’, to avoid the implicit reference to career, competition, social stratification, or any kind of utilitarian semantics which the term ‘success’ could suggest. Of course, one could simply use ‘success’, while re-defining what success is about, but I prefer to make a lexically clear distinction. 35 Note that Rosa’s idea of resonance is deployed in Chap. 8 as one underpinning of my argument on character education.

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form of relation with the world, built through affection and emotion, based on intrinsic interest and expectations of self-efficacy, in which subject and world can touch and transform one another (Ibid.: 298). Resonance is not an echo, but a ‘relation of response’. This presupposes that both sides speak with their own voice, which is only possible where subject and world are sufficiently closed, i.e. internally consistent, to actually have a voice of their own, and sufficiently open to affect one another, or to be reached by one another. Therefore, resonance involves a moment of constitutive indisposability.36 A resonant reality entails some alterity, which is no mere construction on the part of the observer and is not fully controllable. Finally, it is emphasized that resonance is not an emotional state, but a relational mode. Such a mode is neutral as to emotional content. This—Rosa notes—is why we can love sad stories. Now, human flourishing essentially consists in finding resonance in our activities and relations to others and to the various spheres of reality. The definition contains a thick theoretical bundle, which constitutes the core insight unfolded over the various chapters of this important work. Let me point out some of the most relevant aspects in my own perspective. First, Rosa is crystal clear that his idea of the good life does not amount to deceleration, as the mere opposite of acceleration. This theoretical decision is quite consequential, in an ambivalent way. On the one hand, it aptly avoids the unsophisticated appeal to some ‘big slowing down’ which can perhaps shape some fashionable lifestyles, but clearly couldn’t turn back the clock of an entire macro-social formation—short of catastrophic macro-events. On the other hand, though, in this way Rosa’s original insight about the temporal structures of society risks to be downplayed, becoming mixed with another theme, whose relation to the former is not obvious. The problem Rosa emphasizes is that of a society based upon the constraint to growth, to increasing the sphere of dominion, and a dynamic form of stabilization. This involves characterising modernity and capitalism through the joint principles of activation and appropriation, together with acceleration, and a resulting, more abstract ‘escalatory logics’ (Rosa et al. 2017). As a consequence, the theory of acceleration as a fresh perspective on modernization seems to lose the conceptual priority it previously had. To be sure, acceleration is consistent with the constraint to growth, but it becomes the concurrent effect of a deeper factor. Be that as it may, the theory of resonance proposes a paradigm change: well-being and the good life do not consist of having more resources, they do not lie in the ‘more and bigger’, but in a certain quality of relations to the world, namely relations that are non-possessive, non-utilitarian, not objectifying and alienating.37 Relations of resonance articulate along multiple ‘axes’, which Rosa calls horizontal, vertical, and diagonal, depending on their connecting subjects with other people (horizontal), with objects and practice (diagonal), or with something that transcends them (vertical). 36 The concept of indisposability already appeared in Chap. 5 of the present volume, in the context of a discussion on human rights and human ontology. For a definition see especially Chap. 5, Footnote 20. 37 According to Rosa, this can be the limit even of the egalitarian discourse, insofar as it is focussed upon resources, on ‘giving more’ to the people, instead of revolving around the opening of axes of resonance that be available to all..

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These include the various human activities and realms of life, from friendship and family to work, to religion, nature and art. The opposite of resonance is silence. Here Rosa invokes the concept of alienation, essentially consisting in the ‘silence of the world’, and in the ‘deserts’ caused by the consequent loss of meaning. The crisis depends on the whole way in which society builds its relationships to the world. The imperative to grow involves the effort to extend the range of human dominion on everything, e.g. nature, which does not appear as something that speaks with its own voice, but as a set of useful materials. Such a relation-to-the-world (Weltbeziehung) is articulated in two dimensions: institutional and cultural. On the one hand, the basic problem is that of dynamic stabilization, i.e. the fact that modern society is shaped for growth, and growth is the only way for it to stabilize. We could add that such a logic is being pushed to the limits, so the problem becomes how an entirely morphogenic society can be stabilized without hindering the personality systems in their own tension to inner consistency. In this connection, alienation emerges from the structurally conditioned, objective contradiction between people’s strong evaluations and life practices (Ibid.: 717–722). In the language of the M/M approach, it can be hard for people to live up to their ultimate concerns. Their modus vivendi are fragile, because of the rift between what we care about and what social and cultural contexts induce us to do in the wake of the increase-improvement-domination logic. On the other hand, there is a cultural side to the ‘dumb relations’ to the world, which has to do with the inability to articulate nonfunctionalist meanings for the ways people ‘give value’ to other people, to things, places, time, experience and activities. The resulting dispositions become inscribed in human personalities, producing alienation and malaise. It is interesting to note that modernity is considered to be the locus of a ‘catastrophe of resonance’, as well as that of an enhanced sensitivity for resonance,38 although late modernity (treated in Chap. XV) seems to be emphasizing the dark side. Rosa examines both in great detail, and then tries to outline some suggestions for a postgrowth society. Such a notion is meant to indicate a kind of society in which the axes of resonance are regenerated and not disrupted by social dynamics, and which has the capacity to grow, to change and to overcome problem situations, whilst increase and growth are not the necessary conditions for its stabilization. It is not compelled to grow in order for its institutional status quo to be reproduced and maintained (Ibid.: 727). In a nutshell, the imperative to row and dominate must be prevented from determining the fate of society, and of human persons. At the policy level, this entails measuring out competition and diffusion, and building cooperative environments in all realms of social life. To sum up, Rosa’s approach emphasizes the relational essence of the good life, articulating this idea with individual freedom and autonomy, but giving relationships ontological priority. Forms of community and belonging are regarded as very important, although they are in themselves ambivalent, depending upon the kind of relations (resonance) they inspire and consist of. Finally, verticality is mentioned, as a vector of self-transcendence comprising religion, nature, art, and history. 38 The

two sides of the argument appear in Chaps. 10 and 11 of Rosa’s volume, respectively.

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The theories examined in this section represent a range of responses to the challenge of flourishing in a society marked by (generally) unfettered morphogenesis. Their background is clearly represented by different assessments of what a fully morphogenic society is, or could be, and of its consequences. Phelps is clearly a herald of economic action as the playground of individual freedom, creativity, and all that is conducive to human flourishing. It’s the bright side of capitalism in its vital strength that finds its best argument here. Archer and Rosa share a much more critical view on such a macro-social framework. Both could be said to be ambivalent toward the normative project of modernity. They are surely still consistent with it, insofar as it is liberal, democratic, and pluralistic. However, their differently qualified emphasis on relationships, and their non-functionalist reduction, seems to be their vanishing point, which may lead beyond that socio-cultural landscape. Granted, both Archer and Rosa advocate the relevance of generating relational goods, building cooperative environments, and in sum subtracting something to the competitive game of ‘giving (economic) value’ to everything. As regards Rosa, though, it is still unclear how his ‘post-growth society’ might emerge. What should its institutions do, and how? What should happen in what spheres of social life, in what subsystems of the global society? Is it just a new name for a social-democratic regime? And what should the specific forms of stabilization be for such a society? How can it resist the imperative to grow, increase, and accelerate, while remaining capable of growth, increase and acceleration? Can it reconcile capitalist dynamism with the ‘pacification of existence’? These questions call for further study and further discussion. In terms of our foci of tension concerning human flourishing, we can conclude that individual autonomy is always highly valued. Some theories stress its relevance in the economic sphere of activity, as the quintessential experience of innovation and the locus of all that is exciting and worth doing in the world, while others underline the basic relevance of relationality, and the essential role of non-functionalist commitments for human potential to flourish. The dimension of collective identity, of ‘belonging to something’, is characteristically downplayed, either because it is deemed to be non-essential for good life and even a constraining factor, or because it is typically ambivalent, its possible effects being contingent upon the kind of relationships involved. Finally, the dimension of transcendence and self-transcendence hardly appears as an explicit factor. However, in Archer’s model it comes into the picture through the notion of ultimate concerns, which may have different cultural contents, while in Rosa’s work it is somewhat symbolically generalized as the vertical axis of resonance, although any ontological reference seems to be excluded for good.39 With this said, it is now possible to draw a provisional theoretical synthesis, and to try to move a few steps forward.

39 That

is to say, when Rosa discusses the role of religion, nature and art he seems to draw near to Charles Taylor’s well-known notion of ‘subtler languages’ (Taylor 1989, part V), but he also clearly removes any ontological ambivalence—and with it the deep sense of ‘subtlety’. See my discussion in Chap. 7 for more details.

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9.4 Being (Fulfilled as) Human in the Morphogenic Society It is time to draw some conclusions as to the fate of human flourishing in the sociocultural horizon toward which we are bound. As it was said above, I do not think sociologists should come up with their own normative theories of the good life. They can, however, illustrate the possible, often unintended meanings and consequences of certain ‘good’ life-styles within a given historical context, and argue about the chances for this or that type of life to be successfully established, under the relevant social and cultural conditionings. Further, they can reveal the positive effects that are actually lying in neglected or unacknowledged forms of life. All of this is obviously grounded on one general ‘normative’ presupposition, namely that it is good for human beings to survive and thrive. From this viewpoint, I have reviewed some more or less optimistic perspectives about the connection between an emergent MS and human flourishing. Let me complete this discussion by taking up some open questions, and laying out a few conceptual distinctions that epitomize what I believe are the crucial dilemmas in this realm. First, some readers may have found my choice to discuss Phelps’s work rather odd. True, he is a distinguished economist and a nobel laureate, but isn’t his approach to this particular theme extremely one-sided? Why take him as an intellectual interlocutor? In fact, the position he articulates is much more widespread than one might expect. His represents a radical and consistent statement of the idea that human selffulfillment lies not only in the capacity to express and develop one’s talents—which would be hardly questionable, at least for a Western modern reader—but specifically in working activities and in the economic sphere, that is in the labour market. Such an assumption works on two levels, indicating what is objectively good for human subjects, as well as what they normally desire.40 Some currently mainstream theories of change in European welfare systems are implicitly based on the same assumption. Such ideas as activation and gender mainstreaming, for example, ultimately presume that human self-realisation is essentially to do with the realm of work in the labour market. In this respect, my point is emphatically not to deny the crucial relevance of work, nor to downplay creativity, problem solving and the experience of the new. I want, however, to stress that many of the personal and social goods that are necessary to human flourishing do not depend exclusively, nor even principally, on the active-economic dimension in the market sphere. Stable personalities who are capable of self-esteem, altruism, responsibility, gratefulness, respect, grit, and so many other character features, as well as the fundamental capacity to make sense of one’s life experience, are also played out effectively in working environments, but are generated within multiple domains of human life, like families, relations of friendship, circles of civic commitment, religious communities, cultural groups or institutions, and more. Research on socialization and education, and the related life outcomes, provides clear evidence of this. Therefore, opening the range of the life 40 This, by the way, is the reason why Phelps’s claim to be in fundamental continuity with Aristotelian

and ‘traditional’ (Phelps’s wording) humanist views seems to me a misplaced statement.

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paths and plans that may be legitimately regarded as good is a necessary step to avoid reductionism. Archer’s theory does exactly this, with its double emphasis on relations with all dimensions of reality and the pursuit of personal concerns. One question that could be asked of this approach concerns the ‘goodness’ of different life trajectories, and of different blends of activities commanding personal commitment. In Archer’s terms, the answer could be twofold. On the one hand, judgment could simply be given up to the choosers. That is, the model argues that it is good for everyone to be able to pursue his/her concerns, reflexively shaping one’s life as a time-constituted blend of commitments, priorities, domains of self-investment. On the other hand, it is empirical research that would have to illustrate the multifarious outcomes of different ‘typical’ life plans in given social circumstances. This opens a whole research agenda. One related question is whether social or cultural conditionings are presently preventing any particular ideals, experiences, or modes of living from becoming meaningful concerns for people to prioritize. Granted, the three orders of reality constitute by definition unavoidable sources of concern for all normal people. But what I mean is that some particular ways of making sense of them and prioritizing them, with certain resulting life shapes, might be hindered. So, what happens if the portfolio of concerns available for self-investment is narrowed? I regard this problem as extremely important for the debate on eudemonia in the social and human sciences. A similar question could be usefully asked for Rosa’s theory of resonance. Resonance is structured along the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal axes. To some extent, these mirror Archer’s social, natural, and practical orders of reality, serving as sources and spaces of resonance.41 Now, does each of them play the same role in human flourishing? Do they have the same outcome, that is, just resonance? In other words, do we need resonance to expand in multiple spheres—along various axes—or not? Is this choice purely subjective, a matter of taste and preference? What happens if one or more of these axes are silenced? Here again, this could mean different things. One is alienation, a concept Rosa brings up to describe the situations in which the ‘strong evaluations’ underlying the search for resonance in a given locus cannot be matched 41 This analogy may raise some eyebrows. In fact, axes of resonance and dimensions of reality are here seen as sources of resonance and of concern, respectively. The horizontal axis of resonance corresponds to various spheres of social relations, while the diagonal axis involves practice in various domains—e.g. work. The natural domain is the most problematic, in that Archer seems to regard it—and the related concerns—as principally relevant to one’s physical survival (e.g. health). However, I think it would be consistent with her approach to extend the relevance of ‘nature’ for human concerns to more abstract meanings—e.g. contemplative, in terms of psychic well-being, identity-seeking, or as a lifestyle pursued on principled grounds. It is true, though, that Rosa’s vertical axis includes religion, art, and history, which are hardly ‘natural’ entities. Indeed, Rosa defines his ‘vertical’ axis as the particular perspective of experiencing the world as a whole, as a totality. For all the differences this implies, such a totality is similar to ‘nature’ in one respect, namely that it can only be experienced as ‘exceeding’ and ‘overwhelming’ human subjects in a way different from the social and practical domains as realms of action. In any case, I do not want to push the analogy too far. All I claim is that the threefold structure of the sources of relations of concern/resonance shows some correspondence, which in turn allows for meaningful dialogue between these theories.

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by the actual ways it is lived out or experienced, due to adverse conditioning factors. This is one reason why a successful modus vivendi—Archer would note—is no easy achievement. Alienation could be the outcome, when a reasonable compromise on the desired life plan becomes permanently impossible.42 But while Archer’s three orders of reality constitute unavoidable sources of human concern, as well as Rosa’s axes of resonance are ontologically grounded parts of the world (Weltausschnitte), the particular domains included in these axes—e.g. family, friendship, intimate relations, and politics comprising the horizontal axis—do not seem to share in the same status. This allows for one more nuance of the former question. What about the chance that some axes, or some of their constitutive elements, become outright meaningless? What if people become emotionally indifferent to relations with certain spheres of action and experience, along a given axis of resonance? What if they become cognitively unable even to establish meaningful connections with them? Would this represent a deeper form of alienation? Could it have profound long-term consequences? Given the phenomenology of the MS, such a numbing and narrowing might well be the deepest challenge we are facing, if we still share a ‘humanistic’ interest in human flourishing. This is not a conclusion, but sort of a terrace hanging out over our morphogenic landscape, which appears in the mist of ‘long term’ social change. What follows, in turn, is not a recipe for achieving the good life in a MS, but an incomplete attempt to arrange some conditions for its emergence. Therefore, my final propositions could be as follows. The emergence of an MS represents a challenge to human flourishing in various respects. In structural terms, its restless dynamism requires that times and spaces be safeguarded against excessive pressure, which means at least the following: (i) creating social environments that balance competition with cooperation, preventing the former to invade all social domains; (ii) buffering human psychic systems and non-utilitarian relationships from excess and the performance imperative; (iii) differentiating and integrating different social institutions that keep an open access to symbolic resources, which allow to make sense of human experience beyond functionalist reason. On the cultural side, the problems we have been discussing may be usefully summarized—on a higher level of abstraction—through two guiding distinctions: flourishing/enhancement and flourishing/calling. This will also finally clarify my own choice of words. Throughout the text I have been using the term ‘flourishing’ as a synonym of ‘good life’, or even of ‘human good’. But the meaning of ‘flourishing’ can be specified referring to its opposite within particular distinctions. These are not just my theoretical decisions, but indicate cultural trends I have tried to unearth. In distinguishing flourishing from enhancing, the difference lies in conceiving of the human good in two divergent ways: flourishing means the accomplishment of one’s natural potential, i.e. to develop one’s full strength, to ‘bloom’ according to the qualities inscribed in one’s nature—which does not eliminate the element of 42 This,

by the way, is why resilience is a very important character skill. See Chap. 8.

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personal effort or autonomy of will, but involves a specific direction and some idea of limits. The other term—enhancement—conveys the idea of grafting ‘powers’ on a ‘platform’ which has no principled ‘form’—i.e. no ‘nature’—and therefore can be ‘empowered’ with no inherent ‘limit’. In this sense, the idea of flourishing is meant to think of human good within the limits of human reality. That is to say, it involves a realist concept of human (personal) ontology to contrast ‘morphological freedom’.43 The idea of activation stands within this ambivalence. Cultures of work and cultures of value are deeply involved in this symbolical game, being on one or the other side of the fence. The other guiding distinction is that between flourishing and calling. In this context, flourishing is taken to mean purely mundane success, that is, a successful life in purely immanent terms (health, professional success, wealth, etc.). Here flourishing amounts to sheer self-assertion, and opposes any idea of a ‘mission’ human beings are meant to accomplish, although this might mean putting one’s well-being in jeopardy, and which ultimately constitutes their good, even beyond human intuition and discursive penetration. This meaning—which is the one that attracted Douglas Porpora’s critique44 —appears, for example, in Charles Taylor, who distinguishes flourishing from ‘Axial’ notions of the human good as were articulated within Christianity and Buddhism.45 That said, in this context the problem ultimately consists of keeping flourishing and calling together. This also explains the meaning of my own word use. I do not consider flourishing to be necessarily opposed to the idea of ‘calling’. Hence, the term ‘fulfillment’ may be used as a relational term connecting flourishing and calling. More precisely, it would refer to the type and ‘quantum’ of flourishing that is required to respond to a personal calling. Such a word use is justified by the fact that both nature and missions can be said to be fulfilled. Moreover, it would have the advantage of avoiding the questionable opposition of calling versus personal happiness, and in fact to hint at the possibility that fulfilling one’s calling is what really paves the way to true and complete happiness—however sometimes in rather counterintuitive ways.46 More generally speaking, my thesis is that human good in the MS depends on a delicate balance between all these symbolic elements. Unilateral formulations would either forget where the light of meaning comes from into personal life courses, or dismiss the pressure and the change in the role of institutions human beings must face in an MS. 43 Morphological freedom refers to the will of human beings to ‘give themselves a form’ beyond ‘natural’ limits. Western cultural systems now tend to translate such a will into a right. This point has been discussed in Chap. 5. 44 See Porpora (2017). 45 Taylor’s use of the word is to be found in various parts of his work. Here I refer to the clear statement in Taylor (2007, pp. 150–151). I note, however, that Taylor does not seem to highlight the connection I have expressed—namely, that a calling may entail sacrifice, but is also (allegedly, i.e. for those who believe in the calling) the ultimate good of the called, even though this may exceed human understanding in the given circumstances. 46 In Charles Taylor’s words, like “dying young on a cross” Taylor (2007, p. 151). But see note 45 above.

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The issue of calling has been latent in the previous discussion. However, its relevance is now revealed. Even in purely secular terms, to say we must find resonance, and that there is resonance when the world speaks to us ‘with its own voice’, is to evoke the dimension of a call. Thus, the dilemma is whether our cultural system can go without some sense of calling, which in turn entails a sense of alterity and transcendence. In Chap. 7 I examined the transformations of transcendence in the MS. Here its consequences for eudemonia are only gestured at. To put it in Hans Joas’s words, we must wonder if our societies, and their inhabitants, do not need some sense of (self)-transcendence. If the range of possible concerns, and the axes of resonance, must be kept open, the answer must be negative. But here again we find ourselves at the crossroads of two diverging cultures: (a) One defines the act of transcending as a recognition of one’s limits and of the irreducible transcendence of otherness. The relationships multiply and magnify the difference, unity generates other differences and differences call for relationships. The more ego approaches alter, the more s/he remains in his/her difference, and the more this prompts ongoing exploration. Transcendence involves reaching out to someone or something external, and changing oneself in the process—i.e. leaving previous states to acquire new ones over (life)time; (b) an alternative sense of transcendence occurs when ego tries to include everything within him/herself, a bulging Self whose depth must be continually nourished through the swallowing of other experiences and alterity. The individual has no principled limit, but thrives upon the continuous effort to live different states simultaneously, without letting go of any previous way of being.47 The self is continually enhanced in his/her ‘component powers’. Archer’s selective imperative is rejected, as well as the idea that one’s life must have a definite shape. All these are not just lexical details. Such distinctions can serve as tools to interpret the various cultures of the human good which take center stage in the MS. These formulations actually distinguish between alternative lifestyles, and should be illustrated at length by reference to such social phenomena as the couple and the family, the experience and the cultural construction of adulthood, life course trajectories, lifelong education, the ethics of generative succession, genetic engineering, and more. Whilst culture (a) above follows a neo-humanistic track, in culture (b) the idea of a ‘good life’ conceived as immanent self-enhancement clearly opens the door to a brand new different way to make sense of one’s place in the world, in which anthropology is superseded by anthropotechnics (Sloterdijk 2013). It is crucial to add that each of these cultures articulates a particular idea of perfection.48 In the former case, it consists of spending one’s lifetime in ongoing cultivation of foundational relationships and in endless discovery of the landscapes encountered along the path of one’s calling. This involves a continuous possibility of making 47 As

Simmel would say, translating temporal consequentiality into spatial coexistence. to Sandel (2007) is here intentional, although I am not making the same case here.

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one’s exit (hetero-reference). In the latter, it has to do with the capacity to include every ‘virtue’, that is to enact every potential within oneself (self-reference). Which culture will prevail in terms of the practices of identity building among younger generations, given this symbolic variety, is a matter for empirical study—as well as for educational commitment.49 It now makes more sense to conclude that, beyond the notions of well-being as long lists of factors, the challenge of the MS leads to the idea that it is a certain quality of our relations to the world that must be changed, if hopes of a good life are still to be cultivated. My argument has tried to specify at least a few conditions that would make such relations not alienating, but humanly fulfilling. Such a relation must be articulated throughout all spheres of human life and activity, it has an individual and a collective dimension, and entails horizontal, diagonal, and vertical axes. To sum up, the argument may be outlined as follows: (a) the MS challenges the modern ideas of human fulfillment because of the explosion of possibilities for action, social acceleration, and the saturation of social and symbolic space; (b) this results in unprecedented pressure upon human psychic systems, of which the reflexive imperative is a factor (concerning the aspect of decision making), and in the crisis of the modern function of institutions; (c) the emergent needs of self-empowering, cooperation craft, and new forms and possibilities to ‘exceed’ the current predicament can be interpreted and institutionalized in different ways, whose guiding principles may be grasped through the distinctions flourishing/calling and flourishing/enhancement; (d) the hopes of ‘good life’ depend on a balanced combination of these polarities, without ‘catastrophic’ exits from the relational weave towards radical conceptions. In this sense, human fulfillment or the good life can be said to appear as the emergent effect of flourishing and calling, more precisely of flourishing within, and oriented to, a given sense of calling. This entails the emergence of new sources of the self, whose decisive feature lies in the relation individuals entertain with transcendence and the related notion of limit; (e) ultimately, a sense of transcendence interweaves all the major dimensions of the big issue of human fulfillment in the MS. This is because some specific features of the MS call transcendence into question in their own special way. In this special sense, the future is religious, or it won’t be human at all.50 This does not involve any myth of cultural integration, but our capacity to conceive of a future that exceeds our individual lifetimes and can still make sense to other generations. Indeed, the hopes for good life will probably be contingent upon the ability to regenerate our symbolic heritage and connect meaningfully with it. This entails a certain sense of continuity with our historical and civilizational legacy, as well as the capacity to produce novelty. Maybe it is impossible to steer a morphogenic society, but persons and social groups need the resources—both 49 Self-reference in this sense comes close to what Rosa defines a ‘dumb relation to the world’ (2016). 50 Donati (2010, 30).

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in the cultural system and in the institutional fabric—which enable them to make sense of their fate and trajectory within it, setting purposes for themselves, drawing life plans and developing resilience against societal drift. Maybe not drive, but navigate.

References Abbott, A. (2016). Processual sociology. Chicago: University of Chcago 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. (Ed.). (2014). Late modernity. Trajectories towards morphogenic society. Dordrecht: Springer. Archer, M. S. (2017). Does intensive morphogenesis foster human capacities or liabilities? In M. S. Archer (Ed.), Morphogenesis and human flourishing (pp. 115–136). Dordrecht: Springer. Arnason, J. P. (1993). The future that failed. origins and destinies of the Soviet model. London and New York: Routledge. Bagchi, A. K. (2008). The capability approach and the political economy of human development. In K. Basu, & R. Kanbur (Eds.), Arguments for a better world. Essays in honour of Amartya Sen. Vol. II. Society, Institutions, and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bauman, Z. (2017). Retrotopia. Cambridge: Polity Press. Donati, P. (2010). La matrice teologica della società. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Eisenstadt, S. N. (2000). Multiple modernities. Daedalus, 129(1), 1–29. Esping Andersen, G. (2002). Towards the good society, once again? In his. (with D. Gallie, A. Hemerijck, J. Miles). Why we need a new welfare state (pp. 1–25). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferguson, N. (2011). Civilization. The west and the rest. New York: Penguin Books. Ferguson. (2012). The great degeneration. How institutions decay and economies die. New York: Penguin Books. Flora, P. (1986). Growth to limits. The western European welfare states since World War II (Vol. 2). Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Gorski, P. (2003). The disciplinary revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gorski, P. (2013). Beyond the fact/value distinction: ethical naturalism and the social sciences. Society, 50(6), 543–553. Hartwig, M. (Ed.). (2007). Dictionary of critical realism. London and New York: Routledge. Hemerijck, A. (2013). Changing welfare states. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hemerijck, A. (Ed.). (2017). The uses of social investment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Istat. (2015). BES 2015. Il benessere equo e sostenibile in Italia. Roma: Istituto nazionale di statistica. Joas, H. (2008). Do we need religion? On the experience of self-transcendence. Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers. Morin, E. (2003). A well-made head: rethinking reform, reforming thinking. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil. Nolan, B. (2013). What use is ‘social investment’? Journal of European Social Policy, 23(5), 459–468. Nussbaum, M. C., & Sen, A. (Eds.). (2009). The quality of life. New York: Oxford University Press. OECD. (2015). How’s life? 2015: Measuring well-being. Paris: OECD Publishing.

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Phelps, E. (2013). Mass flourishing. How grassroots innovation created jobs, challenge, and change. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Porpora, D. V. (2017). Some reservations about flourishing. In M. S. Archer (Ed.), Morphogenesis and human flourishing (pp. 45–61). Dordrecht: Springer. Rosa, H. (2016). Resonanz. Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Rosa, H., Dörre, K., & Lessenich, S. (2017). Appropriation, activation and acceleration: The escalatory logics of capitalist modernity and the crises of dynamic stabilization. Theory, Culture and Society, 34(1), 53–73. Rosa, H., & Henning, C. (Eds.). (2018). The good life beyond growth: New perspectives. London and New York: Routledge. Sandel, M. J. (2007). The case against Perfection. Ethics in the age of genetic engineering. Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Sayer, A. (2011). Why things matter to people. Social science, values and ethical life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sennett, R. (2007). The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sennett, R. (2009). The craftsman. New York: Penguin. Sennett, R. (2012). Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation. New York: Allen Lane. Sloterdijk, P. (2013). You must change your life. Cambridge: Polity Press. Smith, C. (2015). To flourish or destruct. A personalist theory of human goods, motivations, failure, and evil. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Taylor, C. (1991). The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Willke, H. (2002). Dystopia. Studien zur Krisis des Wissens in der modernen Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Chapter 10

Conclusion. A Glimpse on Morphogenic Futures

“There is (…) a ‘chaos point’ involved here when for a period at least systems may move in one or various directions but this period is limited in duration (…). A variety of interlocking systems have irreversibly taken the world into uncharted territory”. Urry (2007: 287).

Keywords Morphogenic moment · Regional warlordism · Panòpticon · Citizenship · Post-humanism · Social time

10.1 Lost in Dystopias? What is the Future? This is the title of John Urry’s last book (2016), in which the British sociologist argued for a necessary ‘mainstreaming of the future’ in social science, reclaiming the construction of predictions, plans and visions that should not be left to managers, bureaucrats, and complex organizations. At the end of this journey, I have no single answer to such a question. Through the chapters of this book, I have tried to highlight some long-term trends and processes that are likely to structure multiple, intersecting futures: the future of war, of education, of social norms, and so forth. The emerging phenomena in all these domains do not amount to a unified set of convergent tendencies. Social life is more complex and more contingent than this. The deep change I mention in the book title refers to the multiple processes and mechanisms which are not always observable, whose interactions may result in visible changes. The morphogenic conditions surely involve the freedom to play combinatorial games in a favourable environment with fewer limits and more opportunities. On the other hand, living in a society that can only find stabilization in ever increasing innovation and in accelerating processes has its drawbacks. The idea of the closed world completes the picture. Given the technological capacities and the overall impact of human civilizations on the planet, our world has become vulnerable to human powers. The result is ontological insecurity. Human persons and © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. M. Maccarini, Deep Change and Emergent Structures in Global Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13624-6_10

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groups may well be ‘empowered’ and ‘enhanced’, but only at the risk to increase a radical form of alienation, due to the loss of a constitutive dimension. Our ‘smart mobs’ may well remain in the nirvana of entertainment within the ICT sphere, but the crisis of deep self-understanding of educated people—and a creeping sense of bewilderment for all—is not easy to bypass. This, at the end of the day, is the core insight of this volume: that our destiny depends on how we tackle the situation that results from the combined effect of unfettered, freewheeling morphogenesis in a closed, fragile, and disposable world. Awareness of this is a first necessary step. I have also tried to outline a few strategies in various fields, illustrating their potentials. But in the meantime, as a result of this fundamental dilemma, we have been prone to dystopias. As I noticed at various points in the book, there seems to be no vision for the future, at least in Western scholarly quarters. In this context, even the “utopia of borderlessness”, based on consumerism and choice (Urry 2016: 33), has turned to much more ambivalent scenarios. A good example is that of mobility. Although it could be the symbol of a world liberated by old conflicts and constraints, it is now seen in a crudely realistic light. To put it in our perspective, the MS is no utopia of borderlessness, and mobility does not necessarily involve openness. As John Urry has convincingly argued (2007), mobility has its discontents. Terrorists, slaves, migrants, viruses, represent the dark side of ‘movement’. Mobility creates dangerous mobs, and calls for control and closure. Even tourism, particularly in poor or non-democratic countries, balances openness and closure in peculiar ways, making people move within parallel worlds. My picture of vortices and enclaves seems fully in line with this scenario, as control mechanisms operating in the context of “potential movement and blocked movement” (Ibid.: 43). Consistently, Urry wonders if the ‘good life’ should not involve a certain sense of dwelling, which people are afraid of losing. Is the prevalence of a sense of loss and decadence just inevitable? True, Niall Ferguson reminds that the idea of doom—of the ‘decline and fall’—is deeply connected with our own sense of mortality (2011). However, it is positive that such feelings are not equally distributed in space and time. So, why just now? And, is there no alternative?

10.2 Morphogenesis as Transitional Moment It is curious that precisely those scholars who are most sensitive to the outright ‘mobilization’ of the world—like Urry himself—come up with rather gloomy predictions that shed a bleak light on the future. In his view, future possibilities are severely constrained. The predicted alternative is that between regional warlordism and digital panòpticon (2007: Chap. 13). Within the common overarching context of climate change, which would begin to hit, the former case refers to a situation where localist, neo-nationalist forces prevail, establishing a strong, though hopeless, control over the scarce resources left, which would make mobility a luxury again. The other

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case involves a technological leap forward, that would allow to surf the waves of climate change, avoiding its worst effects. Such an arrangement would involve huge advancements in ICT and all digital technologies. With the best intentions, this kind of solution would have to develop a highly effective form of social control, which would probably bring about a situation where the necessary openness of lives and subjectivities—due to the necessity of control and coordination—takes the disturbing shape of the panòpticon. Note that here openness and closure do not correspond to differently qualified social futures in normative, or in eudemonic terms. At this point, another central insight of the present work comes into view. I would not be able to advance a substantively different vision of the global future. As I said, in the various chapters I have tried to spell out what I saw as the decisive cross-roads, and the possible developmental paths that would shape those partial futures. But the idea of the MS, and the underlying M/M approach, usefully enter the picture by introducing a healthy dose of contingency in these rather deterministic analyses. Seen from a different angle, we might say that the idea of a MS reveals another sense of its potential as a hermeneutic of transition—as I have argued in Chap. 3—right in this predicament. In other words, the morphogenic condition could be a good way to capture the fact that we now find ourselves precisely in the quickly transient ‘chaos point’ I mentioned at the outset of the chapter. Thus, that point of high contingency does not mean just chaos, in the sense of intractable randomness. It is still the point where human agency, personal and collective creativity can make a difference, and this needs a model that is capable of interpreting the ongoing processes. Maybe the morphogenic moment will be short-lived, and society will soon crystallize into a blocked institutional configuration of incompatibilities and towering vested interests. If that were the case, for an M/M approach it would mean that the responsibilities of the acting social groups—for example, of cultural, political, and economic élites—are even bigger, and cannot be evaded. It would also mean that the theses illustrated in this volume are particularly timely.

10.3 What Remains to Be Done Having said this, finally I would like to indicate a few directions for future research. These correspond to problems and questions that arise from the arguments developed, and I see them as important tasks ahead. First, I have intentionally left the issue of citizenship out of my discourse. This is because it is too important to be the object of a quick overview, and deserves a systematic reflection. Although its relevance is universally recognized, the theme does not seem to enjoy the pivotal position it used to have in the social sciences during the wave of democratization that followed the fall of the Berlin wall in the last decade of the 20th century. Be that as it may, As the MS develops, the rights, duties, loyalties and identities typically connected with the symbol and practices of citizenship undergo profound transformations, differentiating along various territorial and ideal lines. The

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monolithic citizenship of the nation-state has long shown its insufficiency, but the full-blown logic of opportunity and the related macro-social changes are moving the issue to new ground once again. Second, I must explore the social and cultural developments that usually go under the name of post- (or trans-) human. They clearly represent one of the most challenging issues for the future of (human) society. To some extent, they are also a response to the challenges of the MS. The scope of such a revolution is obviously immense, and its complexity is intimidating. It is often studied in terms of the social impact of technologies, while I think it is important to see it as a fully social and cultural fact, technologies being just the organon of its realization. Post-humanism has its prophets, heralding the full accomplishment of ‘the human’ precisely in crossing the threshold to ‘something (someone?) else’. From another standpoint, it may appear as a totally individual survival strategy in the face of hyper-complexity, based on the extension of the life span and on continuous ‘empowerment’. In this, it might pass for the last expression of Western extreme individualism. However, the complexity of the theme cannot be reduced by too strict hypotheses. The point is that the whole deep self-understanding of humanity—as well as its ‘transcendence’, as I have hinted in Chap. 7—could be dramatically changing. Third, the reintegration of relationally unstable societies is likely to depend on the capacity of social subjects to produce their own time and to legitimate their own temporal perspectives. More precisely, one of the challenging features of the MS is clearly the difficulty to build synchronizations that allow the co-existence with other, non-synchronized spheres of social life. The reconciliation of work and family is one crucial example, but the problem is not limited to the sphere of intimate relations. The very sense of dwelling, and the possibility to develop primary attachments, involve some intentionally constructed and defended boundaries of indisposability—with respect to communication, presence, availability in various forms, work, and functional activities—of one’s time, space, and relations. This is a key point for both social theory and social policy, to which I will have to return. In this context, the transformation of cities, as environments that can manage openness and closure in different ways, be conducive to a ‘good life’ or not, foster or hinder some relations, life-styles, and forms of social life is an important aspect (Sennett 2018). These lines of research are obviously not the only possible ones. If they look so important to me, it is perhaps because they are linked with some features of the MS, which make their relevance clearer, and their implications more detectable. In this sense, this book has been a starting point, and itself a cross-roads of connections that now call for further study. Global society cannot be fully embraced, perhaps not even reached, by social representations, but those three vectors of change indicate dimensions that neither scholars nor policy makers will be able to neglect—at least, if the ultimate meaning of the human experience on this planet does not accept to be reduced to a purely naturalistic phenomenon.

References

References Ferguson, N. (2011). Civilization. The west and the rest. New York: Penguin Books. Sennett, R. (2018). Building and dwelling. Ethics for the city. London: Allen Lane. Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Urry, J. (2016). What is the future?. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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