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ABSTRACT
Social positioning theory, in defending a general social ontology, is a particular extension of critical realism. It is a theory of social constitution that clarifies how items including human beings and things are relationally organized as instances of community components. This extension of critical realism is directly comparable to fundamental but underexamined contributions of the classical American pragmatist John Dewey and specifically his elaboration of a social ontology incorporating an emphasis upon offices that individuals and things come to occupy. In this paper, it is argued that there are substantial correspondences between social positioning theory and Dewey’s concern with offices that come to be filled. By drawing on social positioning theory the significance of an overlooked feature of Dewey’s social ontology comes to be better appreciated. Equally by conducting this comparison Dewey’s discussion of offices is recognized as anticipating some of the insights that social positioning theory has recently systematised.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Tony Lawson, Yannick Slade-Caffarel and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 One contribution that does focus directly upon (and highlights the importance of) Dewey’s discussion of offices is Rucker (Citation1980), where substantial reference is made to Dewey’s, at the time, unpublished manuscript – ‘Things and Persons’. This was subsequently published as part of Dewey (Citation2012) and I too extensively refer to this important piece in the discussion below. For discussion of how the category of office informs Dewey’s political philosophy see Pedersen (Citation2020).
2 Slade-Caffarel (Citation2020) clarifies the central significance of organisation to the social ontology Lawson defends when outlining social positioning theory. For a detailed comparison of Lawson’s treatment of organisation and Dewey’s deployment of related categories, see Pratten (Citation2019). For further discussion of Dewey’s broad ontological commitments, see Alexander (Citation2020).
3 For critical discussion of Dewey’s account of community see Singer (Citation1985). Pratten (Citation2013) compares the way those developing social positioning theory deploy the term community with its use by contemporary writers inspired by classical pragmatism.
4 Dewey in emphasising how the existence of persons presupposes a form of group association in which jural relations have been established seems to deploy a broad understanding of the law. Elsewhere, Dewey argues that there are two main functions of law: ‘first people are granted a number of rights by law; and second, law imposes upon people a number of obligations’. According to Dewey in this broad sense ‘the law prescribes the scope or range of behaviour – the things a person may do, those he must do, and those he must not do’ (Dewey Citation1973, 148).
5 For discussion of Dewey’s account of social domination in patriarchal societies see Testa (Citation2017c).
6 At times Dewey expresses this same idea deploying the term position rather than office: ‘In the concrete, that end which possesses claim to regulate desire is the one which grows out of the social position or function of the agent, out of a course of action to which he is committed by a regular socially established connection between himself and others. The man who has assumed the position of a husband and a parent has by that very fact entered upon a line of action, something continuous, running far into the future; something so fundamental that it modifies and pervades his other activities, requiring them to be coordinated or re-arranged from its point of view. The same thing holds of course, of the calling of a doctor, a lawyer, a merchant, a banker, a judge, or other officer of the State. Each social calling implies a continuous, regular mode of action, binding together into a whole a multitude of acts occurring at different times, and giving rise to definite expectations and demands on the part of others. Every relationship in life is, as it were, a tacit or expressed contract with others committing one, by the simple fact that he occupies that relationship to a corresponding mode of action. Everyone willy-nilly, occupies a social position’ (Dewey Citation1978, 311–2).
7 In the most recent and systematic articulation of social positioning theory (Lawson Citation2021) the term function is linked to community components rather than social totalities that are instead seen as having characteristic ways of working. Dewey’s seemingly broader use of the term function may not map directly onto this specific deployment.
8 Equally it is recognised that parties other than individual human beings – including business communities – can be installed in the legal person position. For discussion of how social positioning theory can be deployed to develop an account of the complex processes of multiple social positioning associated with the constitution of the modern corporation see Lawson (Citation2019a, chapters 3 and 4) and Lawson (Citation2016a). For some initial discussion of how the human organism is distinguished from the human person within the social positioning framework see Lawson (Citation2019a, 245–6).
9 Slade-Caffarel (Citation2022) in arguing that those advancing social positioning theory by consistently recognising a practical dimension effectively differentiate their account of social reality from that advanced by Searle, explores in some detail the respective deployment of the term acceptance. The way Slade-Caffarel differentiates between social positioning theory and Searle has interesting connections to Testa’s (Citation2017a) comparative assessment of Dewey’s and Searle’s social ontologies.
10 At times the term office seems central to Dewey’s account of how things other than human beings become incorporated in social totalities, in later writings the terminology of transactions is deployed to review the same set of issues. Dewey and Bentley referring to a commercial trade as an example write: ‘This transaction determines one participant to be a buyer and the other to be a seller. No one exists as buyer or seller save in and because of a transaction in which each is engaged. Nor is that all: specific things become goods or commodities because they are engaged in the transaction. There is no commercial transaction without things which only are goods, utilities, commodities, in and because of a transaction. Moreover, because of the exchange or transfer, both parties (the idiomatic name for participants) undergo change; and the goods undergo at the very least a change of locus by which they gain and lose certain connective relations or “capacities” previously possessed’ (Dewey and Bentley Citation1989, 242).
11 Dewey’s contributions are especially wide ranging. A more comprehensive comparison of Dewey and social positioning theory would consider differences (e.g. the place of habit in the two accounts) and their converging understanding of emancipatory change. Beyond Dewey, who has been the focus in this contribution, Baggio (Citation2020) carefully draws out complementarities between aspects of the work of George Herbert Mead and relevant features of the theory of social positioning.
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Notes on contributors
Stephen Pratten
Stephen Pratten is a Professor of Economics and Philosophy at King’s College London.