Notes for a quadriformist manifesto — #3: TIMN’s advantages over three parallel theories (Raworth, Bauwens, Karatani)

For a theoretical framework to be worthy of a political manifesto, it must offer something new and better than alternative frameworks. TIMN can do that, by proclaiming quadriformism.

I suppose a manifesto should also mention those alternatives — but not at length. Yet, a good comparative analysis should exist somewhere for back-up purposes. This note starts to serve as that back-up analysis.

For indeed, TIMN is not the only theoretical framework about past, present, and future societal evolution that is built atop four cardinal elements, with the fourth anticipating the emergence of a new sector in the decades ahead. Three others are vying for attention (actually, it’s TIMN trying to vie, for the others are already rather well-known). They’re from:

• Kate Raworth, a British “renegade economist” based at Oxford — her analysis is based on four “means of provisioning”.

• Michel Bauwens, a Belgium-born social activist-theorist who heads the P2P Foundation, lives mostly in Thailand and Belgium — his theory sits atop four “relational modalities”.

• Kojin Karatani, a Japanese Marxist philosopher and literary theorist who has taught at various Japanese and American universities — his framework depends on four “modes of exchange”.

What’s striking is that, working separately, we have all come up with similar frameworks, and we’ve done so at different times without knowing about each other’s frameworks at the time (though Raworth had some knowledge of Bauwens’ views). My first publication on TIMN was in 1996, Bauwens’ on P2P in 2005, Karatani’s on “modes of exchange” in 2014, and Raworth’s on “doughnut economics” in 2017. The similarities begin with the fact that all our frameworks rest on four fundamental forms of organization and/or interaction. The four that each of us identify, though differently conceived, match up impressively. Moreover, we all argue that our four are always present, always necessary, in any society, and that societies vary according to how the four forms are combined and which one dominates at the time.

Furthermore, the three of us most interested in social evolution across the ages — Bauwens, Karatani, and myself — all argue that our respective sets of forms have existed since ancient times, and that each form has grown most powerful in a particular era, thus coming to define the nature of societies in that era. Indeed, the evolutionary progressions each of us identifies correlate very well, despite some disparities. Moreover, in looking ahead, three of us — Bauwens, Raworth, and more qualifiedly, myself — explicitly foresee that a commons sector will arise alongside the established public and private sectors, vastly transforming the design of societies. Karatani is less explicit about the emergence of a commons sector, but his vision of future transformations implies something similar.

Another parallel to notice: The four-form frameworks that Bauwens, Karatani, and I advance may seem simple at first, perhaps too simple — but actually they enable plenty of complexity. To varying degrees, we each recognize that our respective forms (or modes) are both material and ideational in nature. That each embodies different standards about how people should behave and society should function. That each enables people to do something — to address some problem — better than they could by using another form. And that each form has bright and dark sides, making each useful for doing ill as well as good. Furthermore, we all recognize that the forms co-exist, interact, and vary in strength over time, making for great variations in how the forms may be combined and emphasized in particular societies. All of which amounts to plenty of complexity; these are not simplistic frameworks. Which is why I groaned inwardly when, years ago, a friendly contact who was genuinely interested in TIMN and its potential, nonetheless quipped, “Of course, you can’t sum all of human history in four letters.” More about these matters later.

In the next posts, I will review Raworth’s, Bauwens’, and Karatani’s frameworks — in that order because it proceeds from the least sweeping and abstract of the three, to the most. Then I turn to pointing out TIMN’s comparative advantages for theory and practice.

One advantage I’d mention right now: TIMN is not based on or committed to any ideology. It leaves room for the endurance of conservative as well as progressive positions along a new quadriformist spectrum. The other three frameworks all belong, to varying degrees, on the Left, even aspiring to a final future triumph of the Left over the Right. So far, to my disappointment, I’ve found no theorists on the Right who are pondering the future within anything like a quadriform framework.


SOURCES:

David Ronfeldt, Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks — A Framework About Societal Evolution, RAND, P-7967, 1996.
https://www.rand.org/publications/P/P7967

Michel Bauwens, P2P and Human Evolution: Peer to peer as the premise of a new mode of civilization, draft book manuscript, 2005.
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/P2P_and_Human_Evolution

Kojin Karatani, The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange, Duke University Press, 2014
https://www.amazon.com/Structure-World-History-Production-Exchange/dp/0822356651/

Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017.
https://www.amazon.com/Doughnut-Economics-Seven-21st-Century-Economist/dp/1603586741/

TO BE CONTINUED: THIS IS THE FIRST OF FIVE POSTS ON THE TOPIC

Notes for a quadriformist manifesto — #2: toward socialism in one sector?

TIMN is not a theory that favors socialism. But it has positive implications for people who do advocate socialism.

For years Bernie Sanders, and lately Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have advocated socialism, giving it new standing in our political milieu. Ocasio-Cortez has even joined the Democratic Socialists of America (D.S.A.). Yet, what the two mean by socialism is fairly mild, far more à la Franklin Delano Roosevelt than Karl Marx. The social policies they tout — e.g., Medicare for all, free college tuition — are controversial but not at all unusual. The same goes for their economic proposals to benefit working-class families (e.g., raise minimum wages, regulate Wall Street).

Thus their approach to socialism is reformist, not revolutionary. Yet they, like other Americans who favor more socialism, still view it in fairly traditional ideological terms: as a government-led system that would span all sectors of society, emphasizing public-sector solutions to policy problems, while curtailing capitalism and its emphasis on private-sector solutions, all in order to reduce America’s mounting class disparities and inequities.

The prospect that Americans would shift from believing in capitalism to believing in socialism disorients most Democrats and alarms all Republicans. But that’s because all these proponents and opponents of socialist ideas are reacting in old triformist (T+I+M) terms, where policy solutions must fall to either the public or the private sector, or get tossed down to burden families and communities. Capitalism and socialism are seen as contradictory, incompatible. That’s the entrenched triformist way. It doesn’t leave much room for maneuver and choice in a society so advanced and complicated as America’s.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Quadriformism (T+I+M+N) points to a new way. TIMN’s view of social evolution foresees a new/next sector emerging: a +N sector. It will take form alongside the established public (+I) and private (+M) sectors. It will function to address and solve problems that the triform system has created but is no longer suited to fixing well. And it will bring a coming-together of its own distinctive activities and actors. That’s what occurred when tribes (T) gave way to states (+I), and then states had to allow room for markets and market actors (+M). Each new combination became progressively more efficient and effective than the old. The same strategic dynamics, spread over centuries, will now reoccur with the rise and maturation of the network form (+N) in the decades ahead.

Right now, this new sector remains inchoate, barely noticeable, rather in keeping with William Gibson’s saying that “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Best I can tell, it will be a “commons sector” (or “social sector”) that assembles together a variety of currently-dispersed efforts to find new ways to address and resolve America’s most complex social problems — notably, health, education, welfare, the environment, and related types of insurance. If so, these activities will eventually migrate (and be migrated) out of the public and private sectors and coalesce into a networked (+N) commons sector, It will operate differently from the other sectors, probably as a set of non-profits, cooperatives, trusts, platforms, and other associations committed to serving the common good, separate from but in cooperation with existing familial (T), public (+I), and private (+M) sectors. This new sector will be about the “assurances” (not “entitlements”) that an advanced quadriform society can and should warrant for the wellbeing and progress of its people.

Such an evolution could be viewed as spelling socialism in one sector, the +N sector. It would not mean socialism across all sectors, nor for a society in its entirety. And it would not be the kind of anti-capitalist economy-centered socialism that Marxists have traditionally sought. But it would still amount to a strong dose of a kind of socialism in one sector.

This may well pose jarring ideological challenges for both the Left and the Right, at least at first. Politicians and others on the Right may react that such a pro-socialist outcome would jeopardize America’s traditions of capitalism and individualism. What they may not see is that creating a quadriform system should lead to healthier families and communities, a smaller, less burdened government, and a freer, more efficient market system — key goals of most conservatives.

At the same time, politicians and others of the Left may object that this outcome would leave capitalism relatively intact, since the market system and private sector would still exist. They may also have to undertake a theoretical rethinking, for this outcome would not be consistent with standard Marxist concepts for analyzing the present and pondering the future — concepts that are mostly economic, relying on language about capital, labor, class struggle, etc. What they may not initially grasp is that the presence of a strong commons sector would benefit working-class families above all, while also generating pressures to condense and clean up the old public and private sectors.

Advocacy of a quadriform system with a commons (or other kind of +N) sector would pose ideological challenges for theorists on both the Right and the Left in yet another sense. From what I’ve seen, hard-core ideologues on both sides tend to call for one TIMN form or another to dominate much of policymaking if not the whole of society. This is contrary to TIMN theory.

Examples on the Right include anarcho-capitalists and libertarians who want the market form to prevail and government to shrink. Also apropos are religious extremists who want Biblical prophecy and doctrine to dominate in ways that may lead to theocratic tribalism. Many may also prefer plutocracy over democracy, another distortion contrary to TIMN’s best principles. The Right has much farther to travel than the Left before grasping the potential benefits of quadriformism.

On the Left, there are still some doctrinaire beliefs that capitalism should be eliminated, the state should wither, and people should return to a neo-tribal condition — all contrary to TIMN. More pertinent and realistic are progressive efforts to theorize what reforms America needs, what it’s next system(s) should look like. But most of these efforts keep dwelling on how to alter if not replace capitalism — very few sense the prospects for a commons sector. The ones that do — notably the pro-commons P2P movement — have many parallels to TIMN. But they have much grander expectations about who and what may belong in a commons sector, and how far society as a whole should be dominated by commons principles. The idea of “socialism in one sector” — or, “commonism in one sector” (yes, commonism, not communism) — would not fully saisfy their theoretical stance(s), as I presently understand them.

In contrast, TIMN theory illuminates that societies work best when each form functions within its limits, and all forms are kept in balance vis à vis each other, their bright sides dominating their dark sides, with no single form dominating the others. All four forms are crucial. TIMN is thus essentially about limits and balances, about the combination of forms. It thus depends on leaders who can articulate the importance of those limits and balances, the importance of proper combinations. The rise of leaders who call for any single TIMN form to prevail over the others is an ominous sign — utopian monoformism of a tribal, institutional, market, or even new network variety is often a sign of decay that leads to disarray, not to mention dictatorship.

In sum, for all the foregoing reasons, politicians who advocate a turn to socialism, such as Sanders and Ocasio-Perez, would be well advised to cease calling for socialism in society-wide terms, and instead call for socialism in one sector — a sector whose emergence they could assist, and whose design should ultimately appeal to conservatives as well as progressives.

Readings in overcoming political tribalism — #3: David Brooks on” Republican or Conservative, You Have to Choose”

In this sterling op-ed, David Brooks reminds us of the historical roots of conservatism and the values that traditionally animate it: seeking too build a social order, indeed a “sacred space”, that nurtures individualism along with community, mostly for the sake of freedom, while protecting it over the centuries first from abstract ideologies, then from industrialization, and lately from big government. But in America as well as England, such endeavors “have fizzled because over the last 30 years the parties of the right drifted from conservatism. The Republican Party became the party of market fundamentalism.” Brooks deems market fundamentalism “an inhumane philosophy” that leads to excessive individualism and social atomization, thereby next inducing a turn to tribalism.

Accordingly, “Republican voters eventually rejected market fundamentalism and went for the tribalism of Donald Trump because at least he gave them a sense of social belonging. At least he understood that there’s a social order under threat.” Problem is, says Brooks, it’s not the kind of belonging that conservatives traditionally value — instead, “His tribalism is the evil twin of community.”

Thus, “In 2018, the primary threat to the sacred order is no longer the state. It is a radical individualism that leads to vicious tribalism. The threat comes from those two main currents of the national Republican Party. At his essence Trump is an assault on the sacred order that conservatives hold dear — the habits and institutions that cultivate sympathy, honesty, faithfulness and friendship.

“Today you can be a conservative or a Republican, but you can’t be both.”

Brooks concludes his excellent analysis by placing his hope not in the GOP but in “beautiful communities” where he sees “good citizens and healthy attachments” being nurtured anew.

We need more of this kind of thinking on both the Right and the Left. Otherwise, I fear, we are being headed ever farther toward plutocracy for the rich and fascism for the poor, not tto mention illusions of democracy for the rest of us.

To read for yourself, go here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/trump-republican-party-conservative.html

A forecast about the future of the global commons under Trump’s Presidency

I placed the following post on my FaceBook page on May 9. Now I see, a month later, that I neglected to post it here as well. Since it’s still timely, here it is, unrevised:

First, Trump withdrew our country from the Paris Agreement on climate change, then from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on trade and investment. Yesterday, he rejected the Iran nuclear deal. In a few months, this time to acclaim, he will agree to a peace agreement for the Korean peninsula.

These moves all have two points in common:

(1) They serve the interests of Moscow and Beijing — I’d posit more than the interests of the United States. If there is a Korean peace agreement, it will be more because of Beijing and Moscow than Washington.

(2) Those four moves all serve to undermine the “global commons” — the spaces located outside national jurisdictions and open to all, like the high seas, upper atmosphere, outer space, and cyberspace (plus other stuff depending on who is doing the defining). For decades, this concept, though it almost never makes the news, has been critically important to future-oriented environmental scientists and civil-society activists, as well as to U.S. military planners and strategists (and to NATO).

However, the Trump Admin and its fellow strategists seem deliberately disinterested in the global commons. It is also a concept that Beijing and Moscow do not accept, for it hinders their respective grand strategies.

In sum, the four Trump moves I mentioned up front, in different ways and to varying degrees, will serve to damage the global commons, as a concept and reality, to the benefit of Moscow and Beijing.

Notes for a quadriformist manifesto — #1: some preliminary musings

Assuming the TIMN framework (Tribes + Institutions + Markets + Networks) is correct, America is in the early throes of trying to evolve from an aging triform (T+I+M) system into a more advanced quadriform (T+I+M+N) system. It won’t be a brief, easy, smooth, or assured transition. If we succeed, our society will be reorganized for the better, the American Dream revitalized. If not — if our leaders remain stuck in their old triformist ways of thinking and acting — we will lapse deeper into the stratified polarized rigidity that currently afflicts our nation, making systemic collapse more likely.

Americans are long accustomed to having a triform system — a liberal democracy where life revolves mainly around family and community (T), the government and public sector (+I), and the market economy and its private sector (+M). Those three domains have come to define how our leaders frame nearly all options for addressing policy problems: let government fix it, have the private sector do it, or toss it to family and community actors — or use a mixed partnership. For over two centuries, those three sectors and the options they offer worked well for propelling America’s growth as a great nation and world power. America became the paragon of a triform society, in a world where other liberal democracies have also emerged to develop their own triform systems, but most nations have had great difficulty getting beyond biform (T+I) systems, their clannish (T) societies subject to bureaucratic dictatorships and command economies (+I).

Today, America is near the end of its long successful triformist run. Indeed, it may have already ended, and we just don’t know it yet.

Our nation has become so advanced and complex, yet so afflicted with old and new problems, that those three options no longer suffice. Evidence of this is growing all around — especially in the hardened combative political fighting in Washington over whether to push the American people further in the direction of government or market solutions, without truly easing the burdens on family and community. America’s most dogmatic leaders — on the Right and the Left — keep doubling-down on ingrown beliefs that either the government or the market should prevail, as though those were the only two choices. Moderate leaders keep trying, and failing, to argue for mixed bipartisan solutions — but they too remain stuck in triformist frames. No leaders in Washington (and few elsewhere) see that our biggest social problems — notably, health, education, and what’s called welfare — have become so complicated, so confounding, that neither the government nor the market, not even public-private partnerships, seem suited to solving them anymore. Our society has advanced to the point that it is now fraught with discord and disarray across all three triformist sectors.

But where else to turn? How else to think?

The rise of each TIMN form is associated, in turn, with a revolution in the information and communications technologies of the time. Thus it’s the digital revolution that has enabled the rise of the +N network form. It’s rise has already had profound effects on all areas of society, inspiring new ways of thinking and doing. But it has yet to have its principal TIMN effect: the creation and consolidation of a new sector of activity. As it matures and takes hold, aging contentions that “government” (+I) or “the market” (+M) is the solution to particular public-policy issues will eventually give way to new ideas that “the network” (+N) is the solution. Quadriform (T+I+M+N) societies will then grow to outperform and supersede the world’s triform (T+I+M) kinds of societies.

As occurred during nascent phases of the prior TIMN forms, it’s still uncertain what this new +N sector will end up being named, what exactly its purposes will be, what actors and entities will constitute it, what laws and regulations will be needed to promote and protect it, and how it will achieve financial viability. Other social theorists who’ve seen that a new sector is emerging, consisting mainly of networked non-profit civil-society NGOs, have tried naming it the social sector, third sector, citizen sector, social-benefit sector, plural sector, public-interest sector, civic sector, nonprofit sector, voluntary sector, and commons sector. At present, TIMN aligns best with the expectation that this new sector will be a commons sector. The idea of the “commons” has taken a beating in the past, but it’s finally making a comeback.

In the TIMN progression, whenever a new form arises, the actors and entities that come to embody it increasingly take over those functions and activities for which they are best suited, and which the older form(s) and sector(s) were performing with increasing faults and inefficiencies. This dynamic takes hold because societal complexity at the time outgrows the limited problem-solving capabilities of the older forms. That dynamic attended the evolutions from early tribal, to state-centric, and next to market-centric societies. At present, this dynamic appears to apply mostly to America’s most complex social problems — especially health, education, welfare, the environment, and related types of insurance. They appear to qualify for an eventual migration into a commons (+N) sector, one that may operate best as set of networked non-profits, cooperatives, trusts and other associations committed to serving the common good, separate from but in cooperation with existing household (T), public (+I), and private (+M) sectors. This new commons sector would be about the kinds of “assurances” (not “entitlements”) that an advanced quadriform society can and should warrant for the common wellbeing of its people.

Make sense? Sound feasible? Time to start deliberately moving in +N directions?

American liberalism and conservatism, once great triformisms, have both reached their limits. They cannot be restored to greatness if America is to keep progressing, for they are increasingly incapable of fully framing and solving the negative externalities and other problems created by decades of advances in America’s complexity. The divisions afflicting our politics — between Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals/ progressives, the Right and the Left — keep fueling battles for the hearts and minds of triformists. Worse yet, today’s conservative Republicans and others on the far Right often act more like tribalists than triformists. Much of conservatism has been taken over by ideological deformers who want to overemphasize one TIMN form or another (usually “the market”), without understanding that the forms function best when each functions within its limits and in balance with the other forms. Meanwhile, leaders among the Democrats remain just as stuck. However, unlike their Republican counterparts, they may be floundering partly because they sense that something radically new (like +N) is in the offing, though they can’t quite grasp it yet. Elsewhere, in various progressive NGOs devoted to rethinking America’s future, matters aren’t much better; they too persist with triformist frames — most just keep attacking what’s become of capitalism.

Meanwhile, I am trying to be a quadriformist. Whether I end up a conservative or liberal quadriformist remains to be seen. What’s important right now is to be a quadriformist of some sort. I await your becoming one too. Fortunately, we are not alone. There are at least three other efforts underway arguing that a fourth something is emerging — a form, sector, relational model, or mode of exchange —that will lead to radical changes in how societies are organized. Those other efforts are well to the Left of TIMN, but they too help show that quadriformist impulses are stirring that will reshape the way ahead.

Readings in overcoming political tribalism — #2: With Honor (withhonor.org)

I just learned this morning (thanks to NPR) about what strikes me as a brilliant initiative for countering polarization and tribalism: an organization created by, and for, military veterans in late 2017 whose mission is “to elect principled next-generation veterans to office who will work in a cross-partisan way to create a more effective and less polarized government.”

It’s based on noticing that “partisanship in Washington is near a record high, while veteran representation in Congress is near a historic low.” The assumption is that military veterans make better politicians because they are attuned to service, respect, and teamwork.

With Honor started backing selected “next-generation veterans” running for public office in small numbers some months ago, and aims to expand its efforts over the next several years. Candidates who want With Honor’s support take “The Pledge” to put principles before politics” by agreeing to: (1) “speak the truth and prioritize the public interest”; (2) “focus on solving problems and work to bring civility to politics”; and (3) “defend the rights of all Americans and have the courage to collaborate across the aisle and find common ground.” This pledge also “includes a commitment to meet with someone from another party at least once a month and sponsor legislation with a member of another party at least once a year.”

I don’t recognize any of the names on the Executive Team. Rye Barcott is the co-founder and CEO, and may be who sleepy me heard interviewed on NPR this morning. However, the list of Advisors is chock full of impressive reassuring names.

I’ve lapsed lately in posting readings about overcoming excessive tribalism. This isn’t exactly a reading, but it’s one of the best practical ideas I’ve come across. So I hasten to share it, with hope it spreads and succeeds. To learn more, go here:
https://www.withhonor.org/

TIMN’s “forms” vs. their “fields” and “logics” (Part 3 of 4) — Fligstein & McAdam’s “Toward a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields” (2010)

Parts 1 and 2 in this series discussed “forms”, the concept TIMN is based on. Next up are two or three rival concepts, starting here with “strategic action fields”.

The best source for my purposes appears to be Neil Fligstein & Doug McAdam’s “Toward a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields” (2010). In it, they outline their “general theory of social change and stability rooted in a view of social life as dominated by a complex web of strategic action fields.” (p. 4)

I construct this Part 3 the way I did Part 2 on Levine: by excerpting numerous points about “fields” from their paper that resonate, more or less, with my usage of “forms”. Then I discuss whether their points overlap with TIMN and help validate it. (N.B.: Many of their sentences are dense with bibliographic references; I omit these from quotes I use.)

• Fligstein & McAdam propose a grand conceptual agenda for organizational studies — the study of “meso-level social orders” and “strategic action fields”. Their “radical view” is that all scholars of organizations, social movements, and institutional actors are “interested in the same underlying phenomenon: collective strategic action.” This term refers to “the efforts of collective actors to vie for strategic advantage in and through interaction with other groups in what can be seen as meso-level social orders. We call these orders “strategic action fields” and use the terms interchangeably.” Thus they present “a view of social life as dominated by a complex web of strategic action fields.” (p. 4) They seek “a generic field approach” (p. 38).

I take this to mean that TIMN’s four forms of organization — tribes, hierarchical institutions, markets, and information-age networks — are all strategic actions fields (as well as meso-level orders). Thus, what I study as “forms” Fligstein & McAdam study as “fields”, in a framework where TIMN’s “forms” amount to subsumed varieties of “fields”. Well, maybe, but let’s see what else they mean before I start raising objections.

• To define their central concept, Fligstein & McAdam state up front that “strategic action fields (hereafter, SAFs) are the fundamental units of collective action in society.” These fields are

“ … where actors (who can be individual or collective) interact with knowledge of one another under a set of common understandings about the purposes of the field, the relationships in the field (including who has power and why), the rules of the field, and a situation where actors have frames that produce an understanding of what other actors’ moves in the field mean.” (pp. 6-7)

Further clarifying their meaning, the authors state that “field processes are about who gets what” (p. 8). Moreover, in alternate phrasing, they define strategic action as “the attempt by social actors to create and maintain stable social worlds by securing the cooperation of others. Strategic action is about control in a given context.” So, the purpose of creating “identities, political coalitions, and interests is to promote the control of actors vis a vis other actors,” in and between particular fields. (p. 15)

That pretty much fits with TIMN. It’s forms are not exactly “the fundamental units of collective action”, but in their own way they’re pretty close, for they are the four fundamental forms of collective organization and endeavor that societies depend on using. And each form’s actors do indeed require “a set of common understandings about the purposes”, relationships, rules, and moves for assuring that form functions properly. This includes understandings about “who has power and why” as well as “who gets what” for each TIMN form. I’ve written as much.

Those are good ways to think about TIMN’s forms. Yet, as I write this, I sense that Fligstein and McAdam would not agree with me that TIMN’s four forms are the cardinal strategic action fields behind the organization and evolution of all societies. For they never make such a claim regarding any limited set of fields. Instead, they seem close to claiming that societies consist of unlimited plethoras of fields, though some (e.g., “states”) may be more cardinal than others.

And here’s another difference: Fligstein and McAdam repeatedly say that strategic action is about control. I find no mention of de-control. Yet, while each TIMN form is about a different kind of control, the TIMN progression depends on “de-control” — as a society becomes more complex, it’s crucial to let the next form’s actors and entities emerge to take over activities and address problems that the established forms are less suited to resolving. Here’s how I’ve written about this TIMN system dynamic before:

“To advance through the TIMN progression, control must give way to decontrol: The evolution of complex societies is often said to involve increases in control (and coordination), partly so that all the differentiated parts work together. But social evolution does not revolve solely around ever-increasing capacities for control. Each transformational step in the TIMN progression requires some kind of decontrol — realizing that a new form and realm are taking hold, letting go of its activities, and allowing self-organization to develop around that form’s own rules. This is essential for the re-simplification and resynthesis process noted above. Over the long run, harmonious decontrol becomes as important as control; in advanced societies, power extends as much from decontrol as control. Thus, to refer back to the preceding proposition, the evolution of social complexity leads to increases in differentiation and control, but it also eventually requires some systemic de-differentiation and decontrol. Societies whose leaders exalt the tribal and hierarchical forms may have the hardest times with this.” (source)

Fligstein and McAdam’s approach involves so much contention and conflict, so much vying for control among strategic actors, that fields and their relations often give way to reorganization (see discussion below). But if I understand their approach correctly, this turmoil is explained solely in terms of shifts in power and control — not as transformative adaptations that may depend partly on deliberate attraction to de-control.

• Matters get complicated when Fligstein & McAdam begin arguing that SAFs are everywhere in society — so myriad that many are nested “like Russian dolls”, while others overlap and intermingle side-by-side, with new ones being created whenever two SAFs interact. Moreover, since they’re all SAFs, they’re all generically similar, despite specific differences from SAF to SAF. Here’s the pertinent quote:

“All collective actors (for example, organizations, extended families, clans, supply chains, social movements, and governmental systems) are themselves made up of SAFs. When they interact in a larger political, social, or economic field, that field also becomes an SAF. In this way, SAFs can look a lot like Russian dolls: open up an SAF and it contains a number of other SAFs. … Each of these SAFs constitutes a meso-level social order in the sense that it can be fruitfully analyzed as containing all of the elements of an order from the perspective we outline here.” (p. 7)

Does that benefit or contradict TIMN? I’m not sure. Their approach to “fields” seems more like Levine’s expansive approach to “forms” (see Part 2) than like TIMN’s delineated approach. It’s four forms do correspond to strategic action fields, or sets of fields. And the entities and actors that embody TIMN’s forms may well intermingle and interact in ways that create smaller (or bigger?) new fields of endeavor.

But so far I don’t find this illuminating for TIMN. Fligstein & McAdam’s “fields” offer a different way of looking at tribes, institutions, markets, and networks — but I don’t see that it’s better than the “forms” approach. Besides, it looks to me as though their approach, as it presently stands, risks descending into a hunt for micro-fields rather than helping identify grand system dynamics that apply across TIMN’s four forms.

• If I understand Fligstein & McAdam correctly, there are so many kinds of “strategic action fields”, in theory and practice, that only some can be mentioned, few can be typologized, and many are creatures unto themselves and unto others as well. Here’s what I mean by that:

> As they lay out their theoretical perspective, much of their paper critiques rival views about organizational theory, notably new institutional theory (including institutional-logics theory), network analysis, and social movement theory, plus Pierre Bourdieu’s “habitus theory” and Anthony Giddens’ “structuration theory” (p. 5; p. 37ff). I skip over most of that, but must point out that they all get subsumed as ways to study SAFs.

> Indeed, as noted above, they treat “All collective actors (for example, organizations, extended families, clans, supply chains, social movements, and governmental systems)” as strategic action fields (p. 7). That’s further evidence that their SAF concept encompasses all four TIMN forms — those “extended families” and “clans” pertain to the T/tribal form, and “governmental systems” to the +I/institutional form.

> A little later, still writing in a theoretical sense, they use their “insight that action takes place in meso-level social order” to show that their SAF concept also encompasses what are variously called “sectors, organizational fields, games, fields, networks, or, in the case of the government, policy domains. In the economic realm, markets can be thought of as a specific kind of constructed order” (p. 7). Apropos TIMN, I see no mention of “forms” here, but at least “markets” and “networks” show up.

> Then, more concretely, when they apply their perspective to analyzing the civil rights revolution (1932-68), the five SAFs they highlight are: America’s competitive party politics; the Democratic Party; the cotton economy; the field of U.S. constitutional law; and the international system of nation states (p. 45ff). Wow, those are very very different kinds of “strategic action fields” than the ones mentioned elsewhere.

> Finally, in conclusion, they remark “ … it is clear that action in states, markets, and non state-non-market fields do have different dynamics.” They further note that “the invention of new forms of collective action and their spread has not been well theorized. The modern world has created the “social movement”, the “organization”, and the idea that one can deploy networks to expand one’s power.” (p. 51) Again, apropos TIMN, notice the highlighting of “states” and “markets”, plus a nod to “networks”.

At least all of TIMN’s forms — tribes, institutions, markets, networks — get mentioned by them in some fashion. But I hesitate to say there’s much overlap with TIMN. It looks to me as though TIMN might get buried in their approach.

• Fligstein & McAdam’s aim (stated late in their paper) is “to account for field emergence, stability and transformation” by laying out a theory of strategic action fields “that allows us to understand how new meso-level social orders are produced, sustained, and come unraveled.” (p. 43) Thus they seek to offer “a much broader view of social change and conflict, one that grants attention to a much larger cast of characters and centers on the interplay of a good many state and non-state SAFs.” (p. 44)

This approach leads to several theoretical consequences (laid out earlier in their paper). One is that “fields are constructed on a situational basis, as shifting collections of actors come to define new issues and concerns as salient.” (p. 9) Another is that “All of the meanings in a field can break down including what the purpose of the field is, what positions the actors occupy, what the rules of the game are, and how actors come to understand what others are doing.” If so, then “the whole order of an SAF is up for grabs” — possibly leading to a “whole new order”. (p. 12)

In so saying, Fligstein & McAdam clarify that the key actors in these fields are “comprised of “incumbents, challengers, and sometimes governance units.” The authors also clarify that they view “all fields as embedded in complex webs of other fields” — with relations depending on whether these other fields are distant or proximate, vertical or horizontal, and/or state or non-state. Moreover, states themselves amount to “dense collections of fields, whose relations can be described as either distant or proximate and if proximate, can be characterized by horizontal or vertical links.” (pp. 12, 16-17)

Quite a picture emerges from this analysis. Collective strategic action fields are characterized by so many links and ties, so much “connectedness”, that they become “embedded in one another”. Such high levels of interdependent interaction mean these fields are never really separate and settled — they don’t amount to “self-contained autonomous worlds.” As a result, these fields are open to “exogenous shocks, field ruptures, and the onset of contention”. They’re “in some flux” and “continuously contested” — often afflicted with “round after round of reactive struggle”. (pp. 6, 12, 20) All of which leads the authors to conclude as follows:

“The main theoretical implication of the interdependence of fields is that it is a source of a certain level of rolling turbulence in modern society. A significant change in any given SAF is like a stone thrown in a still pond, sending ripples outward to all proximate fields.” (p. 18)

Wow. All quite understandable from their “fields” perspective. Lots of overlaps with Levine’s “forms” perspective too (see my Part 2 installment). But I see only limited instructiveness for TIMN.

For one thing, “roiling turbulence” can be found somewhere in most societies, not just modern ones. Yet many systems afflicted with turbulence often do not change much for long periods of time, especially in societies that may be culturally too tribal or institutionally too hierarchical (from a TIMN perspective). In such societies, that roiling turbulence may be kept under control by deeply embedded, deliberately concerted rigidities. TIMN seems better suited to explaining this than does Fligstein & McAdam’s approach (though they/I will address that further in the next bulleted sub-section).

More to the point, TIMN is mostly about evolutionary change and stability over long periods of time. Fligstein & McAdam’s view seems directed at analyzing change (and stability) over much shorter periods of time. TIMN could be used to diagnose a society’s evolutionary status and potential at any given time, including short periods. But the picture that would emerge would be about how that society is using and combining TIMN’s four cardinal forms. I don’t see that TIMN could be improved by substituting a fields approach, especially in light of what appears to be its bias toward emphasizing turmoil, instability, even conflict.

• Nonetheless, Fligstein & McAdam turn to analyze “the conditions that make for stability and change in strategic action fields and the potential role of strategic actors in these processes.” Their view is that “SAFs tend toward one of three states: unorganized or emerging, organized and stable but changing, and organized and unstable and open to transformation.” (p. 22) [Hmm: note the presence of some kind of turbulence in each of those three states.]

So they pose a series of propositions about this. The ones that resonate with TIMN are as follows: “Proposition 2: Skilled social actors are pivotal for new fields to emerge. … Proposition 3: Skilled social actors can help produce entirely new cultural frames for fields. … Proposition 8: Emergent fields produce new forms of organizing.” (pp.24-26) I’d say all three apply to the rise of each TIMN form, for each requires “skilled social actors” who fashion “new cultural frames” and “new forms of organizing”. Those are good points — I’ve written as much, though not that way.

But I wonder about their Proposition 4, where they claim that “Initial resource allocations affect whether or not SAFs become organized hierarchically or cooperatively.” They claim that there are only two ways for SAFs to settle “the problem of order”: impose hierarchy, or form political coalitions. (p. 24) What I find unclear is whether Proposition 4 is about people settling the rules for managing a field, or about determining the very nature of the field. If the former, well, maybe so. But if the latter, no way — the hierarchy-coalition dichotomy is insufficient to capture the varied natures of TIMN’s four forms. Fligstein & McAdam’s field theory does not — cannot? — account for how and why the tribal form rises first, the institutional form next, then the market form, and now the network form. Nor can their theory account for why different problems of order lead to the rise of different forms (fields?) of order over the long course of social evolution.

I’d also comment on Proposition 11, which states that “Strategic action fields are generally destabilized by external shock originating from other strategic action fields, invasion by other groups of organizations, actions of the state, or large scale crises such as wars or depressions.” (p. 30) That makes sense, as does their follow-up point that “The more fields involved in these crises, the more likely the state is to become destabilized. To the degree that these crises reach epic proportions, the opportunities for collective action to transform the entire system may be present.” (p. 32) Yet, much as I appreciate these Proposition 11 points, they don’t strike me as unique or unusually insightful — they’re rather traditional points reiterated in SAF language. As I recall, Levine makes virtually identical points from a forms viewpoint (see Part 2 post), and I don’t see that their “fields” approach can outperform her (or my) “forms” approach.

I also think there is something valuable about Proposition 12, which posits that “The more connected an SAF is to other SAFs, the more stable that SAF is likely to be. Similarly, new SAFs or those with few connections will be unstable.” But a page later they also point out that “The "connectedness" of SAFs is a source of both strength and weakness.” (pp. 33-35) I could ask, so which is it? But I think a better point to make is that this disparity helps shows that, because of their fields orientation, they have spotted an important duality about connectivity — sometimes it strengthens and solidifies, and sometimes it weakens and disturbs relations. However, I can’t tell where they want to go with this observation. Yet, according to where I think TIMN is headed, but contrary to their Proposition 12, extreme levels of connectivity between forms is a bad sign. Too much connectivity — connectivity to the point of infestation, say between the tribal and institutional forms, or between the institutional and market forms — is likely to have all sorts of adverse effects that end up distorting and decreasing a society’s potential for next-step evolution.

From my TIMN perspective, then, Fligstein & McAdam have made a start at showing how their “fields” framework may help explain social stability and change, and whether, how, and why a society may become “open to transformation”. But from what I see, their fields approach isn’t designed to explain social evolution. TIMN’s “forms” approach is better designed for that.

• In concluding their overview, Fligstein & McAdam reiterate that they “have tried to sketch … the central animating principles of a theory of SAFs that we think makes sense of strategic collective action across these nominally distinct social realms.” But while their paper mostly treats all “collective strategic action as having similar theoretical underpinnings”, here at the end they finally observe “it is clear that action in states, markets, and non state-non-market fields do have different dynamics.” Which leads them to ask “if the modes of collective action are similar in markets and politics, then what makes them different?” They add that “It is also the case that the invention of new forms of collective action and their spread has not been well theorized” — including “the idea that one can deploy networks to expand one’s power.” (pp. 50-51)

I’m pleased to see their closing recognition that “action in states, markets, and non state-non-market fields do have different dynamics.” That is almost TIMN-ish, even though it comes with a reiteration that all collective strategic action has “similar theoretical underpinnings”. But they leave unresolved how and why different dynamics arise in the fields of “markets and politics”, despite both being “fields” that are supposed to be theoretically similar. Which means they still have quite a research agenda ahead of them. Perhaps, I wonder, they will end up having to go in directions that TIMN is already going.

Also, here in closing, they suddenly note that “the invention of new forms of collective action and their spread has not been well theorized”. Forms!? What do they mean by “forms” — a term they rarely use elsewhere? Don’t they mean “fields”? Or, here at last, is a conflation? I can’t tell. But I’d sure like to know how they see “forms” and “fields” as being different, and what they’d make of the differences they see.

In sum, I see no reason to switch from “forms” to “fields” as a basis for TIMN. Their theory is too filled with whirling swirling interactions in fights for power and control, and too lacking in long-range evolutionary structures and dynamics to warrant my switching. But I’ve benefitted from reading their work, and so may others whose focus is on “forms”.

To read Fligstein & McAdam’s paper for yourself, go here for easy access:

http://irle.berkeley.edu/toward-a-general-theory-of-strategic-action-fields/

Next up, a look into another alternative for TIMN: “institutional logics”.