Abstract
The concept of social mechanism (SM) has been defined until now as a causal connection between a set of inputs (first order elements and activities) and certain ‘regular’ outputs. The explanation for the causal relation involved in this process has been of a deterministic (mechanical) type, although in more complex terms than a ‘push-pull’ explanation. In this contribution, I argue that in the field of social phenomena, unlike the physical world, determinism is a limiting case that should be framed in a generalised theory of how SMs operate. I maintain that SMs (conceived as causal configurations that tendentially transform a set of elements and relations into regular outputs) are, instead, sensitive to agency and the social context upon which they continue to depend. The reason is that regular outputs emerge through second order feedbacks (relational feedbacks) that establish the selection of the variety and variability produced by first order positive feedbacks among the agents/actors involved. In this framework it is possible to understand that there exist not only SMs that generate specific causal chains having predetermined outputs, but also SMs that create new social forms as outcomes endowed with a dynamic stability open to contingencies. Some practical examples are given to develop the argument.
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Notes
- 1.
As more people come to believe in something, others also “hop on the bandwagon,” regardless of the underlying evidence.
- 2.
The word ‘code’ refers to a set of rules for converting a piece of information (for example, a word, a gesture, an action or a sign/symbol) into another form or representation (one sign/symbol into another sign/symbol), not necessarily of the same type. In communication and information processing, encoding is the process by which information from a source is converted into signs/symbols to be communicated. Decoding is the reverse process, converting these code signs/symbols back into information understandable by a receiver. A binary code 0-1, as is well known, is used in computer technology to convert any information into signs that can be processed by the machine. When I talk of an ‘instrumental code’ or a ‘capitalist code’ I mean a set of rules that convert any information on social relations respectively into signs of mere utility or of profit making. A relational code converts any information into relations, e.g. any social action/fact into social relations that, being of a relational form, is not reducible to its single components. The rules of a relational code are part of what is called ‘relational analysis’ (Donati 2011, pp. 146, 163).
- 3.
The social relation’s structure that generates the emergent social form endowed with its own autonomy and stability corresponds to what I have called the relation’s ‘social molecule’, which, in accordance with the SAC (structure, agency, culture) requirement suggested by Archer (2013: 4), confers on the emergent form properties and causal powers of its own with respect to those of acting subjects (Donati 2014, pp. 153–159).
- 4.
I will not discuss here, for reasons of space limits, the importance of interpretation in the analysis of generative mechanisms. According to relational sociology, culture is a basic factor in giving the process its generative character, and therefore I agree with Gross (2009, p. 369) when he claims that “the study of social mechanisms must be undertaken alongside a project of cultural interpretation” in an anti-positivist mode. But, in my approach, the cultural interpretation does not apply only to individual actions (how actors interpret the problem situation, their habits of cognition and action, the responses) – as is maintained in the Weberian tradition. It applies also (and most importantly) to the social relations as such (with their own structure) (Donati 2014, pp. 151–159). That is why I argue that a generative mechanism is not a mere ‘chain’ – aggregation or sequence of the relations Actions-Problems-Habits-Responses (see Gross 2009, pp. 368–69) – but a social configuration deriving from reflexive relationality.
- 5.
In my relational approach, relational feedback takes the place of what Luhmann calls ‘the autocatalytic factor’ as the solution to the problem of double contingency (Luhmann 1995, p. 120). As Vanderstraeten (2002: 87) reminds us: “Following Luhmann, social systems use double contingency as stimulus for the restructuring or reconditioning of their own processes (…) Thus the problem of double contingency has the properties of an autocatalytic factor: without itself being ‘consumed’, it enables the construction of structures on a new level of ordering, which is regulated by that perspective on perspectives. Thereby – and this is why one can speak of ‘auto’-catalysis – the problem of double contingency is itself a component of the system that it forms. The experience of contingency gives rise to the formation of a social system, but this experience depends itself on the generation of meaningful issues in the social system. Seen in this light, research about the very origins of social order loses its relevance. In respect to this perspective, my relational approach avoids Luhmann’s mechanistic (anti-humanist) determinism in that the catalytic factor is traced back to human agency in connection with a social structure and a culture.
- 6.
For more details see figure 4 in Donati (2013).
- 7.
- 8.
Among their other effects, positive and negative feedbacks answer a need for control (which is Ashby’s problem) while relational feedbacks answer a need to solve participants’ problems by achieving a satisfactory state of their relation, which should help single agents reach their objectives. Obviously, the satisfactory state can be more or less stable, but it is necessarily dynamic. In other words, relational feedbacks are retroactions aimed at goal-attainment, which consists in a relational configuration able to regulate the system’s state, not simply in order to control its stability, but to increase its capacity for being more satisfying for those who participate in it.
- 9.
A many-valued logic (also multi- or multiple-valued logic) is a propositional calculus in which there are more than two truth values, without violating the principle of non-contradiction. In Aristotle’s logical calculus, there are only two possible values (i.e. “true” and “false”) for any proposition. In cases where a value is neither true nor false, an extension to classical two-valued logic is an n-valued logic where n is greater than 2. Those most popular in the literature are three-valued (which accept the values “true,” “false,” and “unknown”), the finite-valued with more than three values, and the infinite-valued, such as fuzzy logic and probability logic. A transjunctional logic is a logic based on the operation of transjunction, which consists in refusing a given dualistic structure of proffered choices (i.e. the choice between yes and no, left and right, 0/1, etc.) and going beyond the conjunction/disjunction alternatives; it transcends (not necessarily in the Hegelian form of sublation) the given objective two-valued system (for instance lib/lab). It is a relational pattern which requires that more than two values be filled in (because it does not remain within the framework of acceptance/rejection of the given opposite values and their combinations).
- 10.
In mathematics, a (binary) relation R between sets X and Y is a subset of X × Y. Thus, a relation is a set of pairs. The interpretation of this subset is that it contains all the pairs for which the relation is true. We write xRy if the relation is true for x and y (equivalently, if (x, y)∈R). X and Y can be the same set, in which case the relation is said to be “on” rather than “between”.
- 11.
To explain why the relational subject experiencing a complementary contradiction does not need a reference to a whole in order to exist, let us quote Needham: “… it is a truism that the opposition right/left [or, for our own purposes in this text, Ego/Alter] cannot be defined in itself: the terms can be defined only in relation to something else. But it is not true that they can be defined only in relation to something that constitutes a whole. The arbitrary stipulation of a point of reference, combined with a given point of observation, is perfectly sufficient. The point of reference could be a map reference in a featureless desert, or the beam of a flashlight in a dark enclosure, or coordinates in space. In each instance, once the point of reference was established, the observer, at the given point of observation, could determine right and left, and without reliance on anything that could be called a whole” (Needham 1987, p. 25).
- 12.
This formula refers to the notion of ‘polar opposition’ elaborated by Romano Guardini (1925).
- 13.
Guardini, Ibid.
- 14.
Ugazio (2013).
- 15.
- 16.
As I have repeatedly claimed in this text, properly speaking ‘logic’, in its classical (Aristotelian) sense, is the set of rules (normativity) used to achieve valid knowledge. By extension, I understand logic as the set of rules that connect – in various ways – the components of any social relation (its goal, means, value-pattern). Knowledge is a particular social relation, one that connects the knower with the object to be known.
- 17.
Here I maintain that logic concerns a form of reasoning that adopts a set of rules. Classical logic is the science of reasoning that allows us to analyze a way of thinking in order to determine whether it is correct or not. To use the technical terms, we determine whether the reasoning is valid or invalid. There are other sorts of logic, such as fuzzy logic, or relational logic, which obey different rules of reasoning.
- 18.
In the causal chain that is formed within the black box, the dominant element or relation is not fixed for all time. It varies according to the overdetermination of the relations between the single causal factors and their uneven development. When a tendential (or regular) phenomenon happens as an outcome of a plurality of causal factors that stem from different relations, the overdetermination of the relational outcome giving birth to a new social formation means that none of the causal factors can INTP simply develop. For instance, a riot triggered by different marginalized social groups (such as impoverished social strata, the unemployed, ethnic minorities, disabled or ill people deprived of welfare benefits, etc.), in different times and places can result in quite different patterns of social changes and reforms of the societal system. The outcome depends on the overdetermination of the relationality that causes the emergent effect, which is the product of the reflexive processes operating within the complex whole, that is, by the overall relations in the complex whole. This is what I call here ‘uneven causality’.
- 19.
The term “lib/lab” is used to express the dual structure inherent in postwar Western democratic society, which involves the continuous negotiation and compromise between, on the one hand, the freedom of market (lib) and, on the other hand, the state or political-administrative system in its function of control exercised for the sake of social equality (lab). Lib/lab therefore represents a generative mechanism of a relational configuration that allows a certain range of regular outputs in which free competition and regulations for the equality of opportunities are strictly linked together according to the Hobbesian social order above mentioned.
- 20.
As I have theorized elsewhere, there are three main semantics of ‘distinction’: dialogical/dialectical, binary and relational (Donati 2009). In my critical realist perspective, the relational one is the most comprehensive.
- 21.
Invariants can be found in primitive or simple societies, where social life is regulated by what Durkheim called ‘mechanical solidarity’.
- 22.
A glass ceiling is a political term used to describe the unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.
- 23.
I take this example from Turner (1986, p. 976) in order to argue that sociology cannot be merely a positivistic natural science, as he maintains.
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Donati, P. (2015). Social Mechanisms and Their Feedbacks: Mechanical vs Relational Emergence of New Social Formations. In: Archer, M. (eds) Generative Mechanisms Transforming the Social Order. Social Morphogenesis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13773-5_4
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