ABSTRACT

The concept of the meso domain has been introduced (Altheide, 1988, Hall, 1987, Maines, 1982) as a means of bridging the macromicro gap. Hall identifies the meso domain as the area where situated activity, history and structure converge, and reiterates our earlier emphasis on the necessity of a processual analysis, linking pasts, presents and futures. The use of the plurals is important; there is always more than one reading of past events which can be made, ‘always more than one possible course of action’ (Altheide, 1988:343), and more than one meaning which can be attached to present time actions. Within the meso domain societal and institutional forces mesh with human agency to produce structural processes which are always emergent, identifiable and comprehensible only through their enactment, but enacted in a way which is conditioned by previous structurings. Negotiated order thus refers to the (temporary and repetitive) process of defining a situation within the context of a social order, which included the identification and selection of those experiences and resources which contribute to a definition of the situation, and the effects of that definition on the specific situation as well as on its external context. The way in which these definitions are constructed and enacted will depend on the content of values and goals of the social order in question and on the preferred mode of conduct. This attention to the interactive and dialectic processes which are involved in ‘making’ social actions is in contrast to the reification of ‘organisation’ and the associated assumptions of the basic separability of actor, organisation and society discussed in chapter two. However, attention to these processes does demand that we devise a framework for codifying and communicating what is going on.