Half a book's worth of epiphanies and thesis notes

Right on the money, William! Today, while doing some work on my thesis, I experienced exactly this. Reading, thinking, searching, wondering, suffering, thinking some more, and then all of a sudden, there's this one inconspicuous thought. And from it follows another, slightly less inconspicuous thought, and another one, and before I know it (literally!), I'm writing, drawing a diagram, thinking some more, writing again, and then I sit back and I smile. Oh yes, do I smile! Because I can literally feel it in my body: I'm on to something here. The thin veil that was blurring my vision on the central topic of my thesis, is suddenly ripped apart, torn to shreds by the strength and clarity of the insight. A flash, a flurry of energetic activity in my brain, and I'll never look upon this issue as I did before.

I'll explain, and in the process of doing so I will simultaneously make good on my promise of giving an overview of what my thesis is about. I don't suppose everyone will find this interesting, but I'll just write this on the premise of ‘whoever comes are the right people' an Open Space Technology principle loosely adapted to my current purposes ;-).

My thesis deals with what is called the ‘agency-structure debate' in social theory. Agency refers to the capacity of social actors to make a difference in the world. Structure refers to the enduring rules, patterns and institutions that provide the social context within which action takes place. Why is it a debate? Because agency allows us to influence our social context, and therefore structure (i.e. an organization) is an effect of agency (i.e. our actions). However, the argument runs the other way, too. Because social structures limit and constrain our actions, in that they influence -or in a stronger version, determine- the actions we take in the social world. That is, agency (i.e. our actions) is also an effect of structure (i.e. an organization). Common sense suggests that both are partially true, yet how is that possible? How does that work? This is the central topic with which the agency-structure debate in social theory is concerned.

And now for a ‘brief' historical intermezzo. Understanding the historical origin of the two positions in this debate helps us gain a more grounded perspective on it.

Although we take it very much for granted, our notion of individuality is historically situated. That is, even though I take it for granted that I take myself to be an individual, this has not always been the case:

"'Individual' meant ‘inseparable', in medieval thinking ... Slowly, and with many ambiguities, since that time, we have learned to think of ‘the individual in his own right', where previously to describe an individual was to give an example of the group of which he was a member." (Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, 1961)

In fact, only with the historical development of the division of labour could a true ‘individuality' in the sense in which we know it start to emerge. The division of labour, after all, gives rise to a differentiation of biography and experience which creates the sense of difference with others.

‘So what about agency?', you might ask. Let me quote Alan Dawe (1979) on this:

"In short, medieval man lived within a fixed, static, and immutable world, unquestioningly accepting it and his place in it as preordained and aware of himself only as part of his group. Moreover, the world was thus given because it was divinely authored. The medieval conception of man was of a being who was but one manifestation of divine nature and will, inseparable and indivisible from it. Clearly, when the only world view available to the closed, static, undifferentiated community of the medieval village was that the essence of and the agency behind all things lay in divine creativity and authority alone, there was no room for any conception of a distinctive human nature and agency." (For those versed in the language of Spiral Dynamics, this is the blue value system.)

And when the first ‘conceptions of a distinctive human nature and agency' did begin to rise with the division of labour, the feudal powers of the church easily repressed them. For a time. Because when Copernicus and Galileo started looking and thinking for themselves, defying the church-mediated, all-encompassing agency of God, the period known as the Enlightenment commenced (and with it, the emergence of orange, in Spiral Dynamics). And the key point here, is that there were two basic reactions against these historical developments, giving rise to the two positions in the agency-structure debate. I'll quote from my thesis-in-progress:

"The birth of the structural perspective is to be understood as a response to the problem of order following from ‘the collapse of the old regime under the blows of industrialism and revolutionary democracy' at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Nisbet, 1966). The Enlightenment celebrated the idea of progress by means of human reason and the noncompromising criticism of traditional institutions and values. At the same time, the new industrialism eroded the traditional communal bonds that were taken to be the cement of society. In light of these developments, the conservative reaction sought to restore order by constraining an increasingly fragmented and atomized society of individuals through the structure of the social system." (Diederick Janse, 2006)

Basically, the conservative reaction was that ‘the end was nigh'. It must have been a time of great upheaval and uncertainty, so it's not that hard to understand the call for order, constraint and social conformity (a blue response to the rise of the orange value system). This call gave rise to the perspective which focused on structure and constraint. Not surprisingly, the second perspective was essentially a progressive reaction to the same historical developments. Again, I'll quote from my thesis-in-progress:

"While from the structural perspective, the Enlightenment eroded and threatened social order, the agency perspective celebrates the human potential for progress by means of reason and science. ‘The dominant objectives of the whole age [i.e., the Enlightenment ...] were those of release: release of the individual from ancient social ties and of the mind from fettering traditions.' (Nisbet, 1966) Rather than being divinely ordained, history and society are human accomplishments.

Nevertheless, it was recognized that this was an ideal to progress towards, rather than the actual sitation, for the institutionalized and constraining products of the ‘ancient social ties' and ‘fettering traditions' were very real. The central problem addressed by the action perspective is therefore ‘how human beings can regain control over what are, at root, their own social products' (Dawe, 1979, emphasis in the original). The way forward, from this perspective, lies in the unceasing actualization of the potential for human agency." (Diederick Janse, 2006)

To sum up, the ‘structure' position dealt with the problem of order and focused on structure and constraint, while the ‘agency' position dealt with the problem of control and focused on human agency, intentionality and creativity.

So far, so good. During a period of over a century, sociologists have been trying to get a grip on this issue by analysing which of the two positions was ‘right', or more recently, how both could be right and what the relationship between the two is. To date, they haven't agreed on a satisfactory way to deal with it. In part, this is because the debate is not just theoretical, it's also normative; it deals with different views of human nature. Another reason for the lack of consensus, however, is that the issue is heavily intertwined with a few other fundamental debates in social theory, such as individual-society, subjectivism-objectivism, voluntarism-determinism and creativity-constraint. Many accounts fail to distinguish between them, and as a consequence, the agency-structure debate is more like a Gordian knot than a ‘mere theoretical issue'.

My thesis aims at ‘cutting the Gordian knot' by taking a processual perspective. Well, that's the pretentious-optimistic version of it, at least. More realistically, I'm trying to make a contribution by showing how most of the existing approaches to the issue are based on a logic, or a way of thinking, which emphasizes stability over change, substance over process. There have been calls in sociology to make sense of the debate by incorporating time and process, only the metaphysical foundations of most approaches are unable to deal with time properly. This follows Henri Bergson's argument that the logic underlying most of modern science is heavily indebted to the Parmenidean philosophy, emphasizing the permanent and unchangeable nature of reality. Rather than seeing motion and change, it sees a trajectory of points, a series of static snapshots.

By drawing on the work of Henri Bergson, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze and Ken Wilber, I'm trying to outline a processual approach to the agency-structure debate. This processual approach owes much to Heraclitus, who said ‘panta rhei' - everything flows.

Until today, I thought I could do this by showing the interplay of agency and structure to be two aspects of the process of time. Structure would correspond to what Wilber calls ‘the karmic inheritance of the past', while agency would correspond to the creative novelty of the present. For more background on this, have a quick look at this earlier post, where I outline this in more detail.

I thought this would shine a different light on the whole action-structure debate, by showing how the past constrains us and the present allows us to change and create, to the extent that we're conscious of our habits of the past. However, although I believe this is true, I haven't been entirely convinced that this would really address the depth and span of the issues at stake in the agency-structure debate.

Until today. Because like I said at the beginning of this post (it's been a while, scroll back if you need to ;-), the veil that blurred my vision was finally ripped apart today, and I have a clear view of what's at stake now.

In a nutshell, I was basically reframing the debate from the horizontal dimension into the vertical dimension. Horizontal and vertical here refer to Wilber's use of it. For him, reality unfolds holarchically, which means there are different levels of unfolding, where a higher level transcends the lower levels, while at the same time including them (like russian dolls). Horizontal refers to the dynamics at one level: intra-level. Vertical refers to the dynamics between levels: inter-level. For more on this, pick up A Brief History of Everything, by Ken Wilber (that's the one I usually recommend as an introduction into his integral model).

What I came to see today, is that there is a horizontal and a vertical dimension to the agency-structure debate in social theory. Now disappointingly, this sounds very logical and obvious. However, I have been looking into this for months, I'm very familiar with Wilber's work, and I couldn't see this. I've tried seeing the horizontal and vertical components of the debate, but it just wasn't clear to me as it's so blurred and intertwined with all these other debates. The crucial point is that the agency-structure debate as it is known in social theory, needs to be unpacked into two debates. One deals with the vertical aspects, the other with the horizontal aspects. Simple enough. Here's an overview.



Horizontally, Wilber distinguishes between agency (N.B. this is a different use of the term ‘agency' than in my thesis, strictly speaking!) and communion. These are like yin and yang. (Wilber's version of) agency is about wholeness, stressing identity and autonomy. Communion is about partness, stressing relationship, conformity and dependence (in their positive senses as well). You'll probably have noted that agency is slightly more masculine (not male, but masculine), while communion is slightly more feminine. On the horizontal level, then, the agency-structure debate refers to wholeness and partness, autonomy and conformity. This makes perfect sense, as this is the closest to what most approaches have addressed when dealing with the agency-structure debate. That's why I'll probably use those terms for the horizontal dimension of the unpacked debate.

Vertically, Wilber distinguishes between self-transcendence (evolution) and self-immanence (involution). Transcendence occurs by means of increasing differentiation towards higher levels of complexity, while immanence occurs by means of increasing integrations towards higher levels of integrity. As explained in the post I linked to earlier, these also relate to the past and the present in a Whiteheadian manner. This is the crucial link to the agency-structure debate, not in its horizontal sense, but in the vertical one, relating to the inheritance of the past and the creative novelty of the present moment, building on the past but also going beyond it. Obviously I can't use the words ‘agency' and ‘structure' to refer to this, too. However, that's not a big problem, for some sociologists have argued that the agency-structure debate is ‘really about' creativity and constraint.

I always felt there was something to that, but it didn't square with some of the other conceptions of the agency-structure debate. Now I understand: creativity and constraint relate to the vertical component of the agency-structure debate.

So there you have it: the agency-structure debate unpacked into, horizontally, agency and structure, and vertically, creativity and constraint. I feel truly liberated as I can now differentiate between the two and integrate them at a higher level. There will be implications for social theory, but I first need to get my head around this properly (which I've started doing by writing this piece). Hopefully I'll be able to come back to you soon with some ideas on what this actually means in practice. I'll need to do that for my thesis as well, so I'll definitely get there at some point.

I'm pretty deep down the rabbit hole where this topic is concerned, so if the above was utterly incomprehensible and has made you feel like you want to kill or maim me, please let me know about that and I'll:
1) make sure I don't get near where you live
2) make an attempt at clarifying this

I'd also appreciate it if you left a comment. I know this is expecting a lot (for me it can be), so I'm helping you out by giving you some scripted options here:
A) The length of this post freaked me out and I decided I'd never come back here, let alone read this.
B) I think I read it, but the commonly-induced effect of having gained some level of understanding, evidenced by the experience of making associations and connections, is somewhat/entirely absent - I think you killed my brain.
C) I read it, it makes some level of sense, but I'm blacking out - I have nothing to say.
D) It falls short of being KenWilberesque, but I'll grant you this [...insert text here...].
E) Pure, shining, transcendental brilliance, and here's why [...insert text here...].
F) Send me your address, I'll send you a ticket so you can come and visit me, and [we'll get married/we'll have a couple of beers and watch Baywatch (strike through non-applicable answer).
G) [...abide in the present moment and manifest your luminous creativity by inserting custom reply here...]

Feedback, suggestions, death threats, leads or gifts would be much appreciated. Thanks for putting up with me ;-)