Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 12:52:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Howie Chodos <howie-AT-magi.com>
Subject: Re: BHA: Collectives still


Despite Colin's plea for respite, I want to offer a few more comments on the
structure/agency debate. It is, of course a complex question, and what I
tried to do in my previous post was to provide a relatively simple starting
point for broaching these complexities. Here I agree with Bob Jessop, who,
in the same chapter that Colin quoted from, argues that the way to analyse
the state (and I would add that I think that in this regard the state is a
paradigmatic social structure) is to proceed in a twin movement from the
simple to the complex and from the abstract to the concrete. Here Jessop
draws his inspiration from his understanding of Marx's methodology in
Capital. In order to do this, though, we need a starting point that is both
abstract and simple. My own version was contained in my previous post. Its
main point was that there exists a duality of both structure and agency. I
now want to try to show a bit more concretely why this is a useful starting
point.

It is my contention that at this level of abstraction *all* social
structures must be taken to be the same. The point of this kind of analysis
is to discern what, if anything, makes the state like a corporation, like a
union, like the family. Are there properties that they all share which can
be grasped in a (necessarily highly) abstract way? If we are able to
identify them we can subsequently begin the process of concretising, which
will allow us to differentiate between the different kinds of structures,
and complexifying, which will allow us to understand the development of each
of these structures over time as well as their interaction with other
similarly constituted structures.

The crucial thing about the notion of duality is that it means that we can
perceive properties which are characteristic of individual agents in the
effects generated by structures, just as we can perceive the effects which
are the manifestation of the causal activity of structures in the behaviour
of individual persons. I would argue that we do not need additional concepts
at this level in order to grasp the nature of social action, and that any
attempt to introduce them tends to make matters less, rather than more clear
(I am afraid that is how I reacted to Colin's attempt to introduce the
notion of 'structuratum'). 

What is necessary is to try to get a handle on the the twin processes
through which human beings reproduce and transform social structures in the
course of their activity, and the effects that these structures generate. To
start with the latter, I think it is important to stress that social
structures are both enabling and constraining. Human activity as we know it
is impossible without social structures. They represent various ways of
organising our collective activity in order to generate new  powers. These
new powers can be used to benefit or to harm people, but the net increase in
powers over time (which is not, BTW, to argue that there is a necessary and
progressive direction inscribed in the nature of human, or any other,
evolution) is, in part at least, the result of the accumulation of social
resources which enhance individual capacities and which are transmitted
trans-generationally via social structures. As Howard noted in his most
recent post, there is a political dimension to this which involves figuring
out the best way to organise, develop and manage these social resources.

But what exactly is a social structure? It is useful here to recall another
point that Bhaskar makes. He argues that the evidence for the existence of
social structures is to be sought in the effects that they generate. Social
structures only exist in and through their effects on subsequent social
action. Approached abstractly, these effects are, in my view, the
differential distribution of enablements and constraints over a given
population. Social structures, which are themselves the product of our
activity, become part of the environment of that acitivity in such a way as
to favour certain kinds of behaviours, practices, attitudes and to
discourage others. 

Different social structures do this in different ways. Capital, as a social
relation, only allows society to meet its citizen's needs as a by-product of
its never-ending journey of self-expansion. Ownership of capital, as a
concentrated social resource, defines class structures which provide widely
divergent opportunities depending on where one is located. Institutionalised
heterosexuality stigmatises certain sexual and social practices while
valorising others. And so on. These different forms of social stratification
overlap and produce even more complex social formations. Some social
structures affect more people than others, some attain greater levels of
complexity. What differentiates them qualitatively is the area of social
activity out of which they arise and whose subsequent evolution they then
influence.

To return to the state, I think that Jessop's analysis is very helpful, in
particular when he talks about the 'paradox of state and society'. Jessop
frames the paradox as being the result of a tension between the state's
particular role of coordinating the activity of the other, multiple,
structures which co-exist in any complex social formation, with its
necessary existence as simply one of these structures itself. Although he
doesn't quite formulate it in this way, I would argue that this paradox
arises out of the particular form of the duality of the state as a social
structure. It is the duality of the particular and the general. The state is
one social structure amongst many, yet it is called upon to try to give a
common direction to the activity of all of them. Needless to say it never
fully achieves this task (as Jessop argues), since, amongst other reasons,
no truly general will can ever be expressed in societies riven by social
stratification. But it is this kind of analysis of the particularities of
the dualities of each social structure that constitutes the movement from
the abstract to the concrete, and from the simple to the complex.

I am not sure where all this places me in the triangulation of positions
between Tobin, Howard and Colin (though I do find myself in considerable
agreement with all of them on certain points at least). I do want to stress
that I cannot see the need to distinguish qualitatively between
'organisations' and 'structures'. It is the very process of ordering our
social activity which generates new powers. This ordering takes many forms.
Degree of organisation is one of the variables which determine the extent of
one's ability to consciously shape own's environment. This is precisely what
I mean by saying that structure enables as well as constrains. By creating
structures or organisations we may enhance our ability to do things. This is
the way I would want to think of Tobin's example of the unorganised
unemployed. By getting organised the unemployed would have a greater chance
of acting as collective agents. But this is not an addition to the
structure/agency debate, but is at its very heart. 

To conclude, then, with a definition, and a remark. In my view, social
structures are causally efficacious generative mechanisms which
differentially distribute enablements and constraints across a given
population and which are reproduced or transformed through the activity of
that population. This applies to all social structures. It presupposes the
existence of individuals whose existence is marked by their integration into
various social structures, but whose features are not reducible to the
effects of these structures. And it defines a series of dualities which vary
>from structure to structure but which define the dynamics of all social action.

There is yet another dimension which none of this touches on, which is also
ontologically independent: the realm of intersubjectivity. Interactions
*between* individuals can no more be reduced to the social component which
necessarily is present in them than can the nature of individuals themselves
be reduced to the effects of social structures. Relations of
intersubjectivity generate their own dynamics (sexual, emotional,
psychological, etc.) which also constitute new powers (and other forms of
oppression and privilege). A more complete map still of human interaction
would therefore need to encompass the singular (the individual, the self),
the intersubjective (presupposing the existence of at least two
individuals), and the social (which presupposes at least three).

Howie Chodos



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