ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to understand how the morphogenesis of society comes about through social relations, which are the connectors that mediate between agency and social structure. The generative mechanism that feeds social morphogenesis resides in the ways in which social networks alter the social molecule of the structures already in place. According to relational sociology, social morphogenesis is a form of surplus of society with respect to itself. This surplus is produced through the relationality that agents/actors create in their interactions, so as to alter the initial structures. The morphogenetic surplus is not so much the product of structural effects as of emergent relational effects. Society increases (or decreases) its potential for surplus depending on processes of valorisation (or devalorisation) of social relations. Empirical references are given in order to show how the lib/lab societal arrangement is overcome by an aftermodern society that can be called relational.
