ABSTRACT
I have already ventured a specific generative mechanism whose potential could be the transformation of late modernity into a Morphogenic society (Archer 2014, Ch. 5). This is not a prediction; Social Realism always acknowledges that such potentials may remain unrealized because of (a) countervailing mechanisms and (b) unforeseen contingencies – neither of which can be excluded from the open system that is society. In brief, the generative mechanism advanced was grounded in the existence of
‘contingent complementarities’ between structural and cultural elements of late modernity that were explored and exploited by two different groups working in synergy. On the one hand, it resulted from an exponential addition of new items and novel sources of ideational variety that vastly exceeded the pool of ideas available in previous historical periods. These originated from positive feedback between digital scientists working in universities. On the other hand, the linkages established between compatible items are always reliant upon agents who see advantages in making them. In this case, the new variety of ideas had technological applications that readily translated them into practice, thus encouraging their take-up by enterprises in the nascent global economy. In other words, this is an important instance of the interplay between ‘structure’ and ‘culture’, whose properties and powers are irreducible to one another. At the meso-level this morphogenetic potential was amplified by the synergy that
developed between digital science and neo-capitalism, its multinational enterprises and financial institutions. Since the primary concern of the digital scientistswaswith the diffusion of their innovations and that of the economic vanguard was in their profitability, they worked together, but their synergy pulled social morphogenesis in two different directions: a reinforcement of competition on the part of the economy and the introduction of new opportunities on the part of digital innovators. This makes for a more complex story than the usual empiricist accounts of the ‘rise of information society’. In this chapter I will focus upon the recent effects of the changes in Structure and
Culture introduced by Agency (the protagonists respectively of digital science and contemporary capitalism). However, any major change in the social order also has
repercussions upon agency through being differentially beneficial or prejudicial (objectively and subjectively) to existing social groups. In the broadest terms, this prompts the reorganization of certain social groupings, including the degrouping of others. This secondary impact of the generative mechanism is the ‘double morphogenesis’ that is the subject of this chapter. TheMorphogenetic/Morphostatic (M/M) approach seeks to make the components
of SACmethodologically tractable. TheM/M framework had been used in a variety of different settings to deal with problems at all levels of sociological analysis. However, this book series is the first time when the M/M approach has not been used to give an account of morphogenetic changes that have already taken place. Instead, in examining whether or not the emergence of a ‘morphogenic social
formation’ from latemodernity is not only conceivable but realistic, we break into an unfinished cycle in themiddle (that is, in its T2-T3 phase). The basicM/Mdiagram is reproduced below, for those unfamiliar with it (Archer 1995). It also helps to situate the discussion taking place in the present volume (Fig. 13.1). Some have suggested that there is a ‘clean break’ between the morphogenetic
origins of any social form (such as the Internet) and the morphostatic processes that then maintain such a form in being. To such theorists, the diachronic causes for the existence of a phenomenon are firmly separated from the subsequent synchronic account of what sustains it in that form. Whilst those such as Sawyer (2005) and Elder-Vass (2010) are obviously philosophically correct in distinguishing between the causes of origin and the causes of continuation of given phenomena, my empirical conviction is that large-scale social change is rarely (if ever) a matter of ‘clean breaks’ and that they can be neither understood nor explained in such terms – even in the case of revolutions. At the end of amorphogenetic cycle T4 will be different in form, organization and
state from at T1, but T4 is not a switch occurring overnight. This is important because were our one global social order to become a Morphogenic Society, this new social formation would not be a ‘clean break’ that suddenly greets us one morning. Although the diagram is extremely simple (Archer 1995, 192-4), it is also very
precise, but only three points need to be signalled here:
Why the top line representing prior structural (in this case) conditioning does not have a definite temporal ending, having ceased to be a conditional influence
when the bottom line representing ‘Structural elaboration’ gets underway. Traces of historic structures can linger on in the same way as other relics without their exercising any conditional influence at all (such as the now meaningless European titles that can be bought, shorn of their past legal privileges and obligations). Please note, however, that the top and bottom lines are always temporally continuous; there is never a moment without ‘structural conditioning’.
