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ABSTRACT
David Lockwood's distinction between System Integration and Social Integration is brought together with the Morphogenetic Approach (M/M) to account for the current societal fragmentation experienced globally. The generative mechanism from c. 1980 accounting for this tendency is the growing synergy developing between globalized capitalism (its profitability) and innovations in digital science (its diffusion). The two pulled the social order in different directions. Macroscopically, political parties transformed into ‘politics without conviction', bureaucracy into anormative social regulation and social institutions became subject to governance by ‘performance indicators'. At the micro-level, social media fostered expressive reactions and a short-termist ‘presentism' rather than social movements. The outcome of synergy both reduced System and Social Integration. The contingent pandemic increased misery without affecting the generative mechanism, precluding a return to any earlier ‘normal’ more morphostatic state.
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Correction Statement
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Notes
1 Morphogenesis is defined as ‘those processes which tend to elaborate or change a system’s given form, structure or state’ (Buckley, Citation1967, 58) with morphostasis referring to those tending to restore the status quo.
2 Archer (Citation2013).
3 See Archer (Citation2000, Chs. 4 and 5). Accordingly, such primacy to our doings is quite different from the ‘practice turn’ in sociological theory.
4 See the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell (1854), North and South, which focuses on the textile industry in northern England.
5 Archer (Citation2000), Ch, 5.
6 Only in a theoretical sense could engineers such as Eiffel and Brunel be called the leaders of the industrial revolution and were considered as such because both supplied ‘working models’, understandable to all through observation.
7 See Archer (Citation1995).
8 These are economically summarized in Mortensen (Citation1995).
9 See Philip Gorski’s (Citation2015) similar definition
10 Founded after I became Professor of Social Theory at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland: List of Volumes: 2013, Social Morphogenesis; 2014, Late Modernity: Trajectories Towards Morphogenic Society; 2015, Generative Mechanisms Transforming the Social Order; 2016, Morphogenesis and the Crisis of Normativity; 2017, Morphogenesis and Human Flourishing. All Archer (ed.), Dordrecht, Springer.
11 See Archer (Citation2014).
12 For example, the European Sociological Association’s annual conference, 2011 was entitled ‘Social Relations in Turbulent Times’.
13 Mark Carrigan (Citation2016)
14 An exception was Bobbio (Citation1996).
15 Such as such as EU regulation No. 730/1999 on the retail of carrots, banning the public sale of forked specimens or those with secondary roots.
16 It was this version of institutionalized professionalism to which those Etzioni (Citation1969) termed the ‘semi-professionals’ had aspired (teachers, nurses, social workers, etc.), as they sought certificated and later graduate status.
17 The headline of The Independent (09.02.2013) read ‘NHS’s darkest day: Five more hospitals under investigation for neglect as report blames ‘failings at every level’ for 1200 deaths at Stafford hospital’.
18 The BBC is a good instance of populism’s incursion in its attempt to win over younger listeners. Seemingly we cannot now have serious radio news without distracting busts of popular music.
19 A statement made by a previous French Minister of Education about the role of first-year University examinations (l’année propeudeutique).
20 The fiasco (in the third week of August, 2021) over ‘A’ level results and University entry in Britain is a perfect example of many earlier ones.
21 There is a practical role for Critical Realist Discourse Analysis here.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Margaret S. Archer
Margaret S. Archer studied at the London School of Economics and as a post-doc. at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, also working with Pierre Bourdieu.). She first developed her ‘morphogenetic approach' in Social Origins of Educational Systems (1979 re-printed 2013). She was Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick from 1979 until 2010, writing over thirty books, including The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity (2012), Making our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility (2007), Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (2003), Being Human: The Problem of Agency (2000) and Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (1995). In 2011 she became Professor of Social Theory at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Directrice of its Centre d'Ontologie Sociale. She continues to develop her ‘Morphogenetic Approach' as the explanatory framework of Critical Realism's social ontology. The Centre's main project is exploring ‘the Morphogenic Society’ as a possible future for late modernity, in a book Series edited for Springer. She was President of the International Sociological Association (1986-90); a Trustee of the Centre for Critical Realism; a founding member of FAcSS; the British Nominee for the Balzan Prize, 2013; and a founder member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, becoming its President in 2014. Her latest publications include Social Morphogenesis (ed. 2013), Late Modernity, trajectories towards Morphogenic society (ed.2013), and Generative Mechanisms Transforming the Social Order (ed. 2014) and a Co-authored book with Pierpaolo Donati The Relational Subject (2015), CUP.