Qual Sociol (2016) 39:211–215 DOI 10.1007/s11133-016-9328-5
The Matter of Emergence: Material Artifacts and Social Structure Philip S. Gorski 1
Published online: 11 April 2016 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Emergence BEmergence^ is the idea that wholes can be greater than the sums of their parts (Bedau and Humphreys 2008). BGreater^ in what sense though? First, in the sense of forming a pattern of some kind. Second, in the sense of influencing the behavior of the observer. Third, and finally, in the sense of possessing a causal power not possessed by its constituent parts in isolation. Philosophers refer to these types as Bproperty emergence,^ Bepistemological emergence,^ and Bontological emergence,^ respectively. A classic example of property emergence is bird flocking. Bird flocks have characteristic shapes. Humans can perceive those shapes. Perhaps the birds can, too. But all that is required to simulate flocking behavior is a few simple assumptions about individual bird’s powers of flight and their preferences about proximity to other birds. So, it appears that behavior of individual birds is not influenced by the shape of the flock; it is only influenced by the behavior of nearby birds. Nor does flocking generate any new causal powers. It merely enhances a power they already have (flight) by decreasing wind resistance. A sociological example of epistemological emergence might be individual people responding to a Bsocial fact^ in the Durkheimian sense, e.g., job seekers responding to regional variations in the unemployment rate. This Bfact^ or property might influence some individual’s actions. It might lead some job seekers to move from one region of the country to another, for example. What it would not do is generate any new causal powers not already possessed by those individuals. The stock example of ontological emergence is H2O. A gallon of water has the power to extinguish a small fire. But its constituent parts—H and O—do not have this power in isolation from one another. Add hydrogen to a fire and an explosion will result; add oxygen to a fire and it will burn hotter. Nor is the exercise of this power
* Philip S. Gorski
[email protected]
1
Department of Sociology, Yale University, 493 College Street, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
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dependent upon human observation: A rain storm has the power to put out a forest fire in any event.
Two Arguments for Ontological Emergence Is there ontological emergence in the social world? Many social theories tacitly presume that there is. Take Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Social fields have the power to produce and reproduce certain forms of capital; the individual Bplayers^ who pass through these fields do not have this power outside of the field. Or, consider Michel Foucault’s theory of disciplines (Foucault 1980). Disciplines have the power to produce and reproduce certain forms of power/ knowledge; individual actors do not. These examples could easily be multiplied. However, many philosophers dispute the possibility of ontological emergence and so do some social scientists. Here I will focus on the latter. In my experience, the anti-emergentists fall into three categories. First, there are the methodological individualists. The rational choice camp within analytical sociology movement is a good example (Hedström 2005). Their social ontology is the Bmacro–micro–macro^ model, the iconic summation of which is the Coleman Bbathtub^ (Coleman 1990). Here, the macro consists only of Bsocial facts^ that may influence social actors, as in the unemployment rate example given above. The reality of social structures with emergent powers is denied. There is epistemological emergence, but not ontological emergence. The second type of naysayer is the epistemological skeptic. For her, something is only real if it can be directly observed with the unaided senses. Since we cannot Bsee^ social structure with the naked eye, they argue, it cannot be real. The third type of naysayer is the pragmatist anti-foundationalist (Rorty 1989). Her response is a shrug of the shoulders. She regards social ontology as a waste of time. The usual line of argument for ontological emergence in the social world is derived from the later Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein 2010). It concerns the conditions of possibility of human language and, more specifically, the impossibility of a private language (Hervey 1957). No feral human is known to have invented their own language. And Wittgenstein contends that no isolated human could do so. Why? For one thing, because they would not be able to maintain a stable system of reference. BBlue^ today, might be Bred^ tomorrow; this week’s Blily^ could be next week’s Btulip.^ Stable reference presumes shared rules which presupposes in turn the possibility of correction— Someone who can say: BThat’s not red, that’s blue!^ Or BThat’s a lily not a tulip!^ More broadly, it requires what Wittgenstein calls a Bform of life,^ which is to say a culture and a community, which relates discourse to practice in a coherent way. This argument is easily extended to symbol systems more generally. BBut what on earth does this have to do with ontological emergence?^ Professor Coleman might object. Well, language is power, as they say; in fact, it can also be a causal power. This is easily grasped by means of a simple thought experiment. Imagine two small groups: One has a common language, the other does not. The group with a common language will be able to communicate and coordinate their action in ways that the group without a common language will not. So, human language meets the two main criteria for ontological emergence: It generates new causal powers, and these powers are not possessed by individuals in isolation. So, the
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intersubjective character of language marks the theoretical limits of methodological individualism. Now, enter Prof. Skepticus Empiricus. He is an old-school symbolic interactionist. He says: BI see people. And I can hear them talking. But I don’t see anything like a ‘social structure.’ So why should I believe that social structure is something real?^ Why indeed? For if social structure is nothing but individual actors and their symbolic interactions, then social structure will have no existence outside of human language. And since social science is just another kind of Blanguage game,^ social structure has no reality outside of social science discourse. QED, right? Maybe not. Most social structures also have a material dimension. For example, armies have weapons, cities have streets, universities have buildings, and factories have machines, and without these artifacts they would not be the kinds of structures that they are or possess the kinds of powers that they have. This is not to say that the artifacts alone make the structure; they do not. Human activity and intersubjective symbols are also necessary. But they are not sufficient. Perhaps Prof. Poste Modernité will respond that weapons qua weapons and do not exist Boutside of the text^ any more than streets qua streets and so on. Perhaps your sword is my ploughshare! But her colleagues in the Archeology Department would surely disagree. Their texts are mostly based on artifacts after all! They would argue that one can infer a great deal about social structures just based on the artifacts. Of course, even more could be inferred if there were texts as well. But this does not mean that a social structure is just a text. Or that it has no existence outside of a text. That is plainly wrong.
Three Elements of Social Structure The argument against private language implies that social life is more than just individuals subjects and their physical interactions; it has an intersubjective dimension as well. Similarly, the possibility of archeology implies that social life is more than individual subjects and their symbolic interactions; it has an artifactual dimension, too. A basic ontology of the social world would therefore have at least three categories: persons, symbols and artifacts. Drawing on this this minimalist ontology of the social world leads to a generic definition of social structure: some set of social positions, intersubjective forms and material objects with their internal and necessary relations and their emergent properties and powers. It is at this point that our pragmatic, anti-foundationalist, Ms. Richelle Rorty, bestrides the stage. BBah humbug,^ she says. BWhat difference does any of this make! Ontology is bunk! I’ve got better things to do. Like publish. In fact, I was just about to send out a new article!^ The problem is that an incomplete social ontology inevitably leads to defective social theory. Most contemporary social theory is tacitly premised on what we might call an interactionist ontology. That is, it defines social structure in terms of actors and their interactions. This is true of the most diverse and opposed schools of contemporary theory: analytical sociology, field theory and neo-pragmatism, to name just a few. Ignoring the artifactual dimension of social structure exposes us to various errors. First, it leads us to imagine that social structures are far more evanescent and mutable than they actually are. This error is exemplified by Bdeconstructive^ and Bperformative^ versions of social theory that portray discourse and/or practice as the principal or even sole cause of social exclusion and domination (Butler 2011). Social exclusion can be spatial and material as well as symbolic or performative. It may be coded into cultural binaries and repertoires; but it can also be baked into the built environment. This is why subversive movements so often engage in
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acts of bodily occupation or violent iconoclasm: Social change usually involves spatial and physical transformations. The same can be said of domination. It can be objective as well as subjective. It may have as much to do with property as propriety. This is why the dominant so often craft and display artifactual expressions of their dominance and why egalitarians so often advocate stylistic uniformity and/or minimalistic aesthetics. A second and related error that follows from the interactionist ontology is to imagine that interpersonal relations and intersubjective forms are the principal or even sole sources of structural stability and social reproduction. In truth, material artifacts are also a powerful means of stabilizing and delimiting a social structure—perhaps even the most powerful one in some cases. This is why durable forms of social exclusion frequently involve Bghettoization^: the translation of social boundaries into spatial boundaries between the Binside^ and the Boutside.^ It is also why the most durable forms of social domination usually involve some type of pyramidization: the translation of social hierarchy into physical distinctions between Bhigh^ and Blow.^ Think of those modern-day pyramids, the vaulting temples of banking and commerce that now define the urban skyline. They don’t set aside the top floor for the hired help. Thirdly and finally, the interactionist ontology generates a one-sided methodology that turns material artifacts into a residual category rather than a central focus of analysis (Latour 2005). Greater attention to material artifacts provides another methodological instrument for studying social structure: attending to the distribution and circulation of particular types of artifacts can be a means of discovering the internal structures and external boundaries of social structures.
Culture and Power What bearing does this have on the question at hand, namely, the question of culture and power? In my experience, much work in cultural sociology is tacitly premised on an interactionist ontology. As a result, culture is conceived in terms of discourses and/or practices, and cultural power is understood in constructive or performative terms. This understanding is not wrong, but it is incomplete. What it misses is the material dimension of culture and artifactual forms of cultural power. Greater attention to material artifacts gives us additional means of studying culture. Specifically, it provides a powerful means for studying the emergence, reproduction and transformation of social structures. Consider the invention of various material technologies for durably storing written information: clay tablets, papyrus, parchment and so on. They were crucial to the formation of large-scale political structures—Bstates^—because they made it possible to track taxes and tributes (Mann 1986). So far as we know, this was in fact the principal motivation behind most early writing systems. Needless to say, the invention of writing had innumerable unintended consequences. The externalization and objectification of concepts and language was crucial to the development of theoretical consciousness, for example, and to the formation of a new social group: the intellectuals (Donald 1991). In other words writing was a condition of possibility of…us. And it remains so. Material artifacts are also crucial to the reproduction of social structures. Consider the role that domestic architecture and home decoration plays in the production and reproduction of certain understandings of family, sexuality, privacy and so on (Ariès and Duby 1987). This was a well developed theme in the social histories of the Annales School of social history and a somewhat underdeveloped theme in Bourdieu’s writings as well. Many key principles of vision and di-vision, he shows, are embedded in and inculcated through the physical layout
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and aesthetic principles of the family home (Bourdieu 1977). This is well understood in neighboring fields like architecture and anthropology but does not usually receive systematic attention within sociology (Flores 2016). Finally, the development of new artifacts can also fundamentally transform existing social structures. For example, consider the impact which the invention of railroads and automobiles had on national identities (Weber 1976). Until the late 19th century, most citizens had little or no direct experience of regions and subcultures besides their own. This meant that national identity was strongly mediated by elite strata and political centers. Attending to materiality also has implications for theory. In particular, it points to the limits of the cultural arbitrary and therefore of cultural critique. Gender may be fluid, but the body is still sexed. Icons may be polysemous, but they are not fissiparous. And so on. What is more, matter is more than a blank screen onto which we project culture. It has powers and properties of its own which may resist or which we may enlist. We can reshape our bodies, but we do not really Bconstruct^ them in the fullest sense of that term. Metallic paints have aesethetic properties that others do not. And so on. Paraphrasing Marx for a new era, we might say that people make their own structures, but not with matter of their own invention.
References Ariès, Paul, and Duby, Georges. 1987. A history of private life. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Bedau, Mark A., and Humphreys, Paul E. 2008. Emergence: Contemporary readings in philosophy and science. Cambridge: MIT Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant, Loic. 1992. An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Butler, Judith. 2011. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Coleman, James S. 1990. Foundations of social theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Donald, Merlin. 1991. Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Flores, Luis. 2016. Musings on the material elements of a social structure. Critical Realism Network. Retrieved from http://www.criticalrealismnetwork.org/2016/01/29/musings-on-the-material-elements-of-a-socialstructure/. Foucault, Michele. 1980. Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon. Hedström, Peter. 2005. Dissecting the social: On the principles of analytical sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hervey, Helen. 1957. The private language problem. The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-) 7(26): 63–79. Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the social-an introduction to actor-network-theory. Reassembling the Social-An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, by Bruno Latour, pp. 316. Foreword by Bruno Latour. Oxford University Press. ISBN-10: 0199256047. ISBN-13: 9780199256044, 1. Mann, M. 1986. The sources of social power. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. 1989. Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, E.J. 1976. Peasants into frenchmen: The modernization of rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (2010). Philosophical investigations. John Wiley & Sons. Philip Gorski is Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at Yale University. His research focuses on religion and politics in the US and Europe and on social theory and methods. His publications include Bourdieu and Historical Analysis (Duke, 2013) and A Republic of Prophets: Culture Wars and Civil Religion from John Winthrop to Barack Obama (Princeton, 2017).
