Daniel Little
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Social Science History Association
November,
2007
The paper takes up the issue of
"reification" in sociological thinking: the tendency to imagine that
social entities have fixed, semi-permanent characteristics, and that they fall
into "social kinds" that recur across historical settings. Examples
of concepts that are often reified include revolutions, states, riots, labor
unions, and classes. Against the presupposition that social things like these
have fixed and recurring properties, the paper argues for the contingency,
path-dependence, and plasticity of social things.
The topic of this
panel—“Persistence and Change in Large Social Patterns”— might
appear to suggest a huge inconsistency in the way we frame our thinking about
the social world. It brings to
mind two fundamentally opposed strands of ancient Greek philosophy about the
natural world—Plato’s universal and unchanging universe and Heraclitus’s
view of the universe as flux. But
actually the point of the panel is more mundane than this. It is intended to bring us to recognize
two points about the social world that are simultaneously true: first, that
social institutions and practices are inherently plastic in their constitution;
and second, that there are nonetheless recognizable social mechanisms that
secure a sometimes remarkable degree of persistence in the features of a given
social arrangement or outcome. My
paper emphasizes the reasons why we should expect that social arrangements are
plastic, but I will also address some of the mechanisms that permit persistence
in the face of deliberate, unintended, or entropic pressures for change. Other papers will emphasize the dimension
of persistence in large social patterns.
The topic makes a
difference for social scientists, because the “ontological” assumptions we
bring to a domain of investigation have a large effect on shaping the theories,
methods, and analyses that we arrive at.
If we expect to find “atoms” or “vortices” in our study of nature, then
our theories are likely to reflect these ontologies; likewise, if we imagine
that the social world consists of essential social structures, then we are
likely to attempt to organize our observations and theories around such
structures. So it is important to have as well-grounded an ontology of the
social as we can.[1]
My approach today is grounded in a theory of social ontology that I refer
to as methodological localism (ML) (Little 2006). This theory of social entities affirms that there are large
social structures and facts that influence social outcomes. But it insists that these structures
are only possible insofar as they are embodied in the actions and states of
socially constructed individuals.
The “molecule” of all social life is the socially constructed and
socially situated individual, who lives, acts, and develops within a set of
local social relationships, institutions, norms, and rules. With methodological individualism, this
position embraces the point that individuals are the bearers of social
structures and causes. There is no
such thing as an autonomous social force; rather, all social properties and
effects are conveyed through the individuals who constitute a population at a
time. Against individualism,
however, methodological localism affirms the “social-ness” of social
actors. Methodological localism
denies the possibility or desirability of characterizing the individual
extra-socially. Instead, the
individual is understood as a socially constituted actor, affected by large
current social facts such as value systems, social structures, extended social
networks, and the like. In other
words, ML denies the possibility of reductionism from the level of the social
to the level of a population of non-social individuals. Rather, the individual is formed by
locally embodied social facts, and the social facts are in turn constituted by
the current characteristics of the persons who make them up.
This account begins with the socially constituted person. Human beings
are subjective, intentional, and relational agents. They interact with other
persons in ways that involve competition and cooperation. They form
relationships, enmities, alliances, and networks; they compose institutions and
organizations. They create material embodiments that reflect and affect human
intentionality. They acquire beliefs, norms, practices, and worldviews, and
they socialize their children, their friends, and others with whom they
interact. Some of the products of human social interaction are short-lived and
local (indigenous fishing practices); others are long-duration but local (oral
traditions, stories, and jokes); and yet others are built up into social
organizations of great geographical scope and extended duration (states, trade
routes, knowledge systems). But always we have individual agents interacting
with other agents, making use of resources (material and social), and pursuing
their goals, desires, and impulses.
Social
action takes place within spaces that are themselves socially structured by the
actions and purposes of others—by property, by prejudice, by law and
custom, and by systems of knowledge. So our account needs to identify the local
social environments through which action is structured and projected: the
inter-personal networks, the systems of rules, the social institutions. The
social thus has to do with the behaviorally, cognitively, and materially
embodied reality of social institutions.
An institution, we might say, is an embodied set of rules, incentives, and
opportunities that have the potential of influencing agents’ choices and
behavior.[2] An
institution is a complex of socially embodied powers, limitations, and
opportunities within which individuals pursue their lives and goals. A property
system, a legal system, and a professional baseball league all represent
examples of institutions.[3] Institutions
have effects that are in varying degrees independent from the individual or
“larger” than the individual. Each of these social entities is embodied in the
social states of a number of actors—their beliefs, intentions, reasoning,
dispositions, and histories. Actors perform their actions within the context of
social frameworks represented as rules, institutions, and organizations, and
their actions and dispositions embody the causal effectiveness of those
frameworks. And institutions influence individuals by offering incentives and
constraints on their actions, by framing the knowledge and information on the
basis of which they choose, and by conveying sets of normative commitments
(ethical, religious, interpersonal) that influence individual action.
It is important to emphasize that ML affirms the existence of social
constructs beyond the purview of the individual actor or group. Political institutions exist—and
they are embodied in the actions and states of officials, citizens, criminals,
and opportunistic others. These
institutions have real effects on individual behavior and on social processes
and outcomes—but always mediated through the structured circumstances of
agency of the myriad participants in these institutions and the affected
society. This perspective
emphasizes the contingency of social processes, the mutability of social
structures over space and time, and the variability of human social systems
(norms, urban arrangements, social practices, and so on).
First, what do I
mean by “plastic”? I mean that the
properties of the social entity or practice can change over time; they are not
rigid, fixed, or timeless. They are not bound into consistent and unchanging categories
of entities. Molecules of water preserve their physical characteristics no
matter what. In contrast to
natural substances such as gold or water, social things can change their
properties indefinitely. So the contrary to “plastic” might be “unchanging and
fixed by an essential set of properties.”
This
interpretation emphasizes “plastic” as the contrary to “static and fixed”. A
second way in which an entity might be unchanging is as a dynamic
equilibrium. A social structure
might be a self-correcting system that restores its equilibrium characteristics
in the face of disturbing influences.
The temperature in this room is subject to external influences that
would result in change; but the thermostat provides cool or warm air as needed
to bring the office temperature back to the equilibrium value. When I say that
social entities are plastic, I also mean to say that they are not generally
determined within a dynamic equilibrium (as sociological functionalism
maintains, perhaps), with powerful homeostatic mechanisms that correct for disturbing
influences. There is no “essential” form to which the structure tends to return
in equilibrium.
This ontology
emphasizes a deep plasticity and heterogeneity in social entities. Organizations and institutions change
over time and place. Agents within
these organizations change their characteristics through their own behavior,
through their intentional efforts to modify them, and through the cumulative
effect of agents and behavior over time and place. Social constructs are caused and implemented within a
substrate of purposive and active agents whose behavior and mentality at a
given time determine the features of the social entity. As individuals act, pursue their
interests, notice new opportunities, and innovate, they simultaneously
“reproduce” a given institution and also erode or change the institution. So I maintain that institutions are not
fully homeostatic, preserving their own structure in the face of disturbances. This is not to say that institutions
lack such homeostatic mechanisms altogether; only that we cannot presuppose
that a given institution or organization will persist in its fundamental
characteristics over extended time and space.
A brief example
will illustrate the kinds of plasticity and variation that I am thinking
of. Take the tenure process in
American universities. We can see
an overall similarity in processes, rules, and goals in the tenure processes at
various institutions. Organization
is to some extent influenced by function.
But we also see substantial variation and drift in both process and
content (criteria and processes for awarding tenure). For example, there are some universities that are
incorporating “community service” into tenure criteria. Different universities give a different
balance of faculty review and provost and dean review. There are different cultures of
seriousness in review by faculty committees and academic administrators. Different institutions define different
institutional goals: enhance national reputation of the faculty (through research
productivity), improve teaching, orient faculty to community service, … There is a visible push-pull by
stakeholders on these institutions: deans, provosts, presidents; faculty
governance units; individual faculty.
There have been changes in the past 20 years that have affected many
institutions: post-tenure review, greater willingness to do reviews leading to
removal, … So tenure institutions
display the variability and plasticity that I believe is inherent in all social
institutions.
So far I have
focused on institutions and organizations. But features of social consciousness and social identity are
also variable across time, place, and group. The mechanisms through which social identities and
mentalities are transmitted, transmuted, and maintained are varied;
inculcation, imitation, and common circumstances are central among these. But the transmission of an identity is
a bit like the transmission of a message through a telephone chain. Because of “noise” in the system,
because of individual differences among the transmitters, and because of
multiple other influences on micro-identities, we should expect great variation
within and across groups with regard to the particulars of their social
identities.
The plasticity of
identities, norms, and mental frameworks is particularly great. The mechanisms of transmission invite
variation across successive instances and generations. Local variations will take root in
sub-populations. There are limited
mechanisms of homeostasis. And
individuals and groups have the ability to modify the content and meaning of
these elements of social consciousness more or less indefinitely over time. Small
variations in locally-embodied content proliferate through imitation and
parent-child transmission.
The example of early-modern
ocean-going boat design serves to illustrate the concept of plasticity with
regard to socially embodied practices and knowledge. If we observe the design features of Scandinavian boats over
a four-hundred year stretch of time, we see a shifting of basic design
characteristics at every level of description (Elster 1983), (Sverrisson 2002). Skilled builders and designers notice opportunities for
improvement in design in response to a specific feature of the ocean
environment or the needs of the warriors or fishermen who use the boats; new
materials become available and get incorporated into design; new technologies
for steering or sail-management diffuse from other cultures; and the overall
result is that the look, feel, and capabilities of the boat change
significantly over time. The ocean
environment dictates some design features as obviously best—we never see
a boat design with a flat prow, given the need to cut through the water; but
most features have alternative embodiments that would do about as well. The analogy is illuminating for social
institutions; the forces of innovation, redesign in response to needs and
environmental conditions, diffusion, and the play of individuals in relation to
the structure all play important roles in both the evolution of a technology
and the transformation of a social institution.
We might also say
that individuals too are “plastic”.
The social psychology of the existing person is the product of the
individual’s earlier experiences, education, and training. So this particular person—perhaps
now a “rational maximizer with racial prejudice and a fear of flying”—has
been constructed through a concrete set of experiences. But (a) this concrete present individual
herself can be brought to change some basic motivational and psychological
characteristics through additional experiences—perhaps diversity training
and a positive experience with a person of another race; and (b) other
individuals from a similar background can be brought to have a different set of
motivational characteristics through different circumstances of
development. So the individual’s
basic characteristics of personality, belief, and motivation are plastic.
In each case we
find that institutions, practices, and social identities show a substantial
degree of plasticity over time and place.
And this is what we should expect--fundamentally, because we can sketch
out the social processes and mechanisms through which institutions are formed,
maintained, and modified. Institutions are human products and are embodied in
human actions and beliefs.
Sometimes an institution is designed through a deliberative process;
sometimes it results through a series of uncoordinated adaptations and
appropriations by a number of participants. Institutions solve social problems; they coordinate
individual activity, control resources, allocate benefits and burdens. And institutions either maintain their
structure or change depending on the interests and actions of the participants. The participants in institutions
interact with the particulars of the organization in ways that improve the
effectiveness of the organization, or better serve a particular set of
interests, or some combination of both.
Leaders may determine that a modification of the institution would
increase the capacity of the organization to deliver services, reduce costs, or
improve their own ability to control activities within the organization. Participants may modify the
organization in their own ways—through spontaneous local modifications of
process; foot-dragging as a way of impeding the functioning of unpopular
aspects of the organization; collaboration with other participants to modify
the institution in directions more favorable to their interests; etc.
We can identify
specific mechanisms of institutional evolution and diffusion that plainly
raises the likelihood of plastic change:
·
The spread of institutions through imitation invites
innovation in local implementation.
·
Spread of institutions through “absorption” likewise
permits innovation and adoption of local variants.
·
Reproduction of the organization through successive
leaders and members introduces the likelihood of change and adaptation.
So if institutions
and individuals are inherently plastic, then it is a serious problem for
research to identify the mechanisms through which persistence is achieved.
As we know from a variety of sources, including Kathleen’s study of
skilled-labor regimes, there is significant persistence in a variety of social
institutions (Thelen 2004). There are social mechanisms that produce quasi-stability in
institutions and practices, and it is worth identifying and studying these. For example:
There are also
some perfectly ordinary mechanisms through which we may find similarity in
organizational form across distinct institutional embodiments. For example, it may be that there are
important similarities across the news rooms of American and European
newspapers. What might explain
these similarities? There are several possible mechanisms.
This is part of the conceptual
basis of comparative sociology; it is worthwhile looking at the details of
particular institutions in different settings (for example, Kathleen’s study of
skilled labor training institutions; (Thelen 2004)) and asking the related
questions of how the instances are different or similar, and what the
historical causes are that account for these differences and similarities.
Let us think more about the extent and pace of plasticity
in social organizations and institutions by considering an example: hospitals.
Hospitals are complex social organizations geared towards providing health care
for moderately to very needy patients. And the internal organization of
hospitals provides a fertile locus for examining issues of institutional
change.
The
complexity of a hospital derives from numerous factors: the specialization of
medical knowledge (resulting in numerous departments), the multiplicity of
business functions (billing, marketing, finance and budget, supervision of
doctors, nurses, pharmacists, support staff), the logistical demands of patient
care (food, medications, room and bed cleaning), social work needs of patients
and families, the regulatory environment, governance institutions, and
communication to the public, simply to name the most obvious functions. So a
hospital requires the coordinated efforts of hundreds of experts and perhaps
thousands of skilled and semi-skilled workers, embodying tens or hundreds of
functions. (A mid-sized regional hospital employs several thousand people.)
Diversity
and plasticity comes into this story in several ways. At the mid-level of
analysis there are alternative ways of organizing the various functions of the
hospital--different ways of organizing human resources, billing, or patient
services. That is, structure is underdetermined by functional needs. There are
organizational alternatives, and we can expect that there will be actual
variation in hospital organization and implementation across the US health
system. This variation can be observed at a range of scales: within a region
(Atlanta), across regions (Atlanta versus Detroit), or throughout the national
system (midwest versus Pacific coast). At the most macro-level, we may observe
differences in organization across national systems--US versus Germany or
China. (Frank Dobbin's Forging Industrial Policy explores this sort of national-level comparison in
application to technology policy frameworks in three countries (Dobbin 1994).)
But
diversity may also be observed over time at the level of the individual
hospital. This is sometimes described as "organizational
learning"--internal reorganization and redesign so as to better serve
patient and business needs in a changing environment. Plasticity comes in here:
the organization "mutates" in response to changing needs and new
environmental challenges. (Consider some of the ways that hospitals will change
as a result of new public reporting requirements concerning cost and
morbidity.)
This
mutation may be the result of deliberate choice on the part of hospital
administrators (redesign of process). But it may also be the result of broader
societal changes leading to changing behavior within the hospital, eventually
leading to a change in the routine practices and organizations of the hospital.
For example, the operating room of the US hospital of the 1990s is a social
space governed explicitly and implicitly by the surgeon (usually male). But
imagine the result of a broad values shift towards greater gender equality and
less respect for hierarchical authority. We might expect a gradual shift in the
operating room towards a team-based approach to surgery. That approach might be
confirmed by a record of greater safety (as safety experts in fact expect). And
the change might become entrenched in new formal operating rules and
procedures--thus changing the institution for a while.
These
arguments show the impulse towards differentiation across hospital structures.
There is also an important "centripetal" force that works towards
convergence to some degree. This is the process of imitation and the search for
"best practices". Consultants are summoned; " how are other
hospitals handling this problem of IV infections?" And successful efforts
are imitated.
This
example suggests a process of mutation, differentiation, imitation, and
occasional convergence. Overall, it supports the vision of institutions as
plastic and malleable and responsive to changing individual and societal needs.
I
believe that the social sciences need to be framed out of consideration of a
better understanding of the nature of the social—a better social
ontology. The social world is not a system of
law-governed processes; it is instead a mix of different sorts of institutions,
forms of human behavior, natural and environmental constraints, and contingent
events. The entities that make up
the social world at a given time and place have no particular ontological
stability; they do not fall into “natural kinds”; and there is no reason to
expect deep similarity across a number of ostensibly similar institutions
– states, for example, or labor unions. So the rule for the social world is—heterogeneity,
contingency, and plasticity. And
the metaphysics associated with our thinking about the natural world—laws
of nature; common, unchanging structures; and predictable processes of
change—do not provide appropriate metaphors for our understandings and
expectations of the social world; nor do they suggest the right kinds of social
science theories and constructs.
Instead
of naturalism, I advocate for an approach to social science theorizing that
could be described as post-positivist. It recognizes that there is a degree of
pattern in social life—but emphasizes that these patterns fall far short
of the regularities associated with laws of nature. It emphasizes contingency of social processes and
outcomes. It insists upon
the importance and legitimacy of eclectic use of social theory: the processes
are heterogeneous, and therefore it is appropriate to appeal to different types
of social theories as we explain social processes. It emphasizes the importance of path-dependence in social
outcomes. It suggests that the
most valid scientific statements in the social sciences have to do with the
discovery of concrete social-causal mechanisms, through which some types of
social outcomes come about. And
finally, it highlights what I call “methodological localism”: the insight that
the foundation of social action and outcome is the local, socially-located and
socially constructed individual person.
The individual is socially constructed, in that her modes of behavior,
thought, and reasoning are created through a specific set of prior social
interactions. And her actions are socially
situated, in the
sense that they are responsive to the institutional setting in which she
chooses to act. Purposive
individuals, embodied with powers and constraints, pursue their goals in
specific institutional settings; and regularities of social outcome often
result.
My most central conclusion, however, is ontological. We ought not think of the social world as a system of phenomena in which we can expect to find a strong underlying order. Instead, social phenomena are highly diverse, subject to many different and cross-cutting forms of causation. So the result is that the very strongest regularities that will be ever be discerned will remain the exception-laden phenomenal regularities described here and the highly qualified predictions of regularities that derive from structure-agent analyses. There is no more fundamental description of the social world in which strong governing regularities drive events and processes.
Abbott, Andrew Delano. 1999. Department & discipline : Chicago sociology at one hundred. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Brinton, Mary C., and Victor Nee, eds. 1998. New institutionalism in sociology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Dobbin, Frank. 1994. Forging industrial policy : the United States, Britain, and France in the railway age. Cambridge [England] ; New york, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
Elster, Jon. 1983. Explaining technical change : a case study in the philosophy of science, Studies in rationality and social change. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York; Oslo: Cambridge University Press ; Universitetsforlaget.
Ensminger, Jean. 1992. Making a market : the institutional transformation of an African society, The Political economy of institutions and decisions. Cambridge [England] ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Knight, Jack. 1992. Institutions and social conflict, The Political economy of institutions and decisions. Cambridge [England] ; New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.
Little, Daniel. 2006. Levels the Social. In Handbook for Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology, edited by S. Turner and M. Risjord. Amsterdam; New York: Elsevier Publishing.
North, Douglass C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1998. Economic performance through time. In The New Institutionalism in Sociology, edited by M. C. Brinton and V. Nee.
Sverrisson, Árni. 2002. Small Boats and Large Ships: Social Continuity and Technical Change in the Icelandic Fisheries, 1800-1960. Technology and Culture 43 (2):227-254-3.
Thelen, Kathleen Ann. 2004. How institutions evolve : the political economy of skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan, Cambridge studies in comparative politics. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
[1] Andrew Abbott draws attention to the fluidity and permutability of social “entities” (Abbott 1999) : 223). A social entity is not a fixed thing with stable properties. It is rather a continuing swirl of linked social activities and practices, themselves linked to other “separate” social traditions. And particularly important, Abbott endorses a social localism—that all social facts are carried by socially constructed individuals in action.
[2] “Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that
structure human interaction. They are made up of formal constraints (for
example, rules, laws, constitutions), informal constraints (for example, norms
of behavior, conventions, self-imposed codes of conduct), and their enforcement
characteristics. Together they define the incentive structure of societies and,
specifically, economies” ((North 1998) : 247)).
[3] See (Brinton and Nee 1998), (North 1990), (Ensminger 1992), and (Knight 1992) for recent expositions of the new institutionalism in
the social sciences.