ABSTRACT
To recapitulate, the ‘double morphogenesis’ results from agents succeeding in introducing structural and/or cultural transformation but being transformed themselves and transforming other agents in the self-same process. In other words, it entails agential re-formation in terms of personal motivation and also a regrouping of alliances. The reason for dwelling initially upon the economic crisis is because it changed the social context affecting the actions of all agents through its systemic mal-integration. The effects of digital science on the ‘double morphogenesis’ are ‘bottom-up’ and were entirely different in kind. But they had to confront an agential environment where social integration and trust had slumped even lower. In thewelter of literature on the current crisis, few commentators have picked up on
the importance of the mal-integration of the financial system in exacerbating social mal-integration, probably through according exclusive significance to economic considerations. Yet integration and trust cohere closely because, as Colledge et al. (2014) emphasize, ‘trust seems to be no more or less than a generalizable term for a situational social glue in the form of how relations are engaged’, but one that lost its adhesive quality within the financialized economy. Certainly, Bachman had written about ‘a tremendous global trust crisis’ (Bachmann 2011), but did so from within Giddens’ structuration approach, whose central conflation does not permit any analysis of the interplay between the SAC components. Trust involves uncertainty, otherwise it would be redundant, and it is relatively
resilient to booms, bubbles or slumps, provided that public investors (financial advisors, bank managers, mortgage granters) appear to be winning or losing alongside their clients. Oversimplifying considerably, the global crisis provided many indicators of a growing divide between the concerns and practices of public investors and those of their clientele, all with repercussions for denting trust and fuelling the slump in social integration. Jamie Morgan and Ioana Negru have detailed these briefly and clearly for the
finance industry as follows (2012):
a A pervasive sales culture in both investment and commercial banking that took an adversarial attitude to the customer, as though the interests of the organization and client were opposed.
