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”.

Readings on tribes and tribalism in America — #27: Amy Chua on “The Destructive Dynamics of Political Tribalism”

This may be the last post in this series. It has served to make the point, over and over, that, as polarization has deepened, more and more Americans have reverted to tribal forms of organization, belief, and behavior — often in dark malignant ways. When I began the series, few analysts were noticing and writing about tribalism. But now I sense that trend is shifting, for more and more analysts are noticing and writing, showing they understand the systematic nature of the tribal form. For example, see the excellent articles I’ve posted in recent months by David Brooks, Jonathan Haidt, and Andrew Sullivan, not to mention others.

So I’m changing direction — away from harping on the dark-sides, toward looking for readings that try to identify ways to ease our dark-side reversions and restore the bright-sides of the tribal form. So far, I’ve not seen much about remedies and solutions, and what I have seen is slim and slow — e.g., improve civic education. But I’m going to try to refocus anyway, under a new series title. All this dwelling on the dark side is a distressing downer. I’ll still attend to some dark writings about tribalism, but more briefly, and under the “Brief blurts …” series heading .

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A strong-point of Yale professor Amy Chua’s “The Destructive Dynamics of Political Tribalism” (Feb 2018) is that it starts by observing, rather than concluding later, that “America is in the grip of political tribalism.” And she is troubled that we’ve fixated on its symptoms when we should be trying to identify its “root causes.” Then, more than anyone else I’ve posted, she blames capitalism — specifically, the presence of a “market-dominant minority” — for creating the socioeconomic conditions that lead to political tribalism. According to her analysis, political democracy has foundered “in virtually every country where there has been a market-dominant minority” (she names Indonesia, Iraq, Zimbabwe, the former Yugoslavia, and Venezuela).

Today, she argues, America is at risk of succumbing to the same dynamic, with our “coastal elites” acting as that market-dominant minority. Thus, we should worry, not that America will go the way of the developed European nations where right-wing ethno-nationalism is taking hold, but rather that America will go the way of the underdeveloped and developing countries she mentioned where “resentment toward a market-dominant minority” led to demagogues taking power.

Here’s an excerpt from up-front that lays out her argument:

“By now we all understand that America is in the grip of political tribalism. We lament and condemn this phenomenon even as we voraciously engage in it. But by fixating on the symptoms, we remain blind to the root causes. America is being ravaged by predictable, destructive political dynamics that follow from the combination of democracy and a market-dominant minority.

“Most Americans assume that democracy and free markets go hand in hand, naturally working together to generate prosperity and freedom. For the United States, this has largely been true. But by their very nature, markets and democracy coexist in deep tension.

“Capitalism creates a small number of very wealthy people, while democracy potentially empowers a poor majority resentful of that wealth. In the wrong conditions, that tension can set in motion intensely destructive politics. All over the world, one circumstance in particular has invariably had this effect: the presence of a market-dominant minority — a minority group, perceived by the rest of the population as outsiders, who control vastly disproportionate amounts of a nation’s wealth.”

Her research, presented more fully in her new book Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, leads to the following insight:

“Seeing coastal elites as a market-dominant minority is sobering. In my research, I’ve found no examples of countries successfully overcoming this problem. On the contrary, all over the world, when this dynamic takes hold of a nation’s politics, a result has been an erosion of trust in institutions and in electoral outcomes. Countries lurch toward authoritarianism, hate- mongering and an elite backlash against the popular side of democracy.”

She doesn’t offer much about remedies and solutions, but she sensibly observes that the “way out” will surely have to be “both economic and cultural”. In particular, “Restoring upward mobility should be viewed as an emergency.” Here’s her conclusion to this effect:

“ … If any way out exists, it will have to be both economic and cultural. Restoring upward mobility should be viewed as an emergency. Upward mobility is what made America different from developing countries that have disintegrated. Research shows that zero-sum political tribalism is worst under conditions of economic insecurity and lack of opportunity.

“But the emergence of coastal elites as an insular minority is also rooted squarely in the breakdown of national unity — in the fracturing of our country into two (or more) Americas in which people from one tribe see others not just as the political opposition, but as immoral, evil and un-American. America desperately needs leaders with the courage to break out of the tribalist cycle, but where are we going to find them?”

That final question is ever so daunting.

To read in whole, go here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/opinion/destructive-political-tribalism.html

Readings on cognitive warfare at the societal level — #11: Molly McKew on “How Twitter Bots and Trump Fans Made #ReleaseTheMemo Go Viral” (Feb 2018)

This is the fifth article by Molly McKew I’ve included in this series. Her article’s sub-title sums it up: “Russian bots and their American allies gamed social media to put a flawed intelligence document atop the political agenda. That should alarm us.”

The article focuses on “a targeted, 11-day information operation that was amplified by computational propaganda techniques and aimed to change both public perceptions and the behavior of American lawmakers.” That gripping term “computational propaganda” refers to “the use of information and communication technologies to manipulate perceptions, affect cognition, and influence behavior”. Or, as an interviewee put it, “Computational propaganda serves to distort the political process and amplify fringe views in ways that no previous communication technology could.”

The article documents, in surprising detail, how the hashtag campaign #ReleaseTheMemo started small on Twitter, gained momentum, and became huge — increasingly amplified by automated bots and semi-automated cyborgs as well as by real people, including targeted pro-Trump lawmakers and media commentators. McKew discerns from her data that “The frenzy of activity spurred lawmakers and the White House to release the Nunes memo” — which, I’d add, is evidently what they aimed to do all along.

Posing the question “What does it all mean?”, McKew answers as follows:

“A year after it should have become an indisputable fact that Russia launched a sophisticated, lucky, daring, aggressive campaign against the American public, we’re as exposed and vulnerable as we ever were—if not more so, because now so many tools we might have sharpened to aid us in this fight seem blunted and discarded by the very people who should be honing their edge. There is no leadership. No one is building awareness of how these automated influence campaigns are being used against us. …

“A recent analysis from DFRLab mapped out how modern Russian propaganda is highly effective because so many diverse messaging elements are so highly integrated. Far-right elements in the United States have learned to emulate this strategy, and have used it effectively with their own computational propaganda tactics — as demonstrated by the “Twitter rooms” and documented alt-right bot-nets pushing a pro-Trump narrative. …

“So what are the lessons of #releasethememo? Regardless of how much of the campaign was American and how much was Russian, it’s clear there was a massive effort to game social media and put the Nunes memo squarely on the national agenda — and it worked to an astonishing degree. The bottom line is that the goals of the two overlapped, so the origin — human, machine or otherwise — doesn’t actually matter. What matters is that someone is trying to manipulate us, tech companies are proving hopelessly unable or unwilling to police the bad actors manipulating their platforms, and politicians are either clueless about what to do about computational propaganda or—in the case of #releasethememo — are using it to achieve their goals. Americans are on their own.”

Yikes! As I’ve noted before, back in the Cold War decades and before, we had to be wary of Soviets trying to be “in cahoots” with elements of the American Left — and vice-versa. Now it’s the reverse: we must be wary of Russians acting “in cahoots” with elements of the American Right — and vice-versa.

To read in full, go here:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/04/trump-twitter-russians-release-the-memo-216935

TIMN's “forms” vs. their “fields” and “logics” (Part 2 of maybe 4) — an illuminating analysis of “forms” by literary theorist Caroline Elizabeth Levine

Ordinarily, to follow up Part 1, I might have to turn next to Plato and Aristotle as proponents of thinking in terms of “forms”. Fortunately, I need do nothing so philosophical. For a literary and cultural theorist has recently written a book that speaks to my view of TIMN’s reliance on “forms”. It’s by Cornell professor Caroline Elizabeth Levine. And just look at the title — Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (2015). Thus it’s not only about “forms”, but also touches on two of TIMN’s four forms: hierarchies (institutions) and networks. Still more fortunate for me, her introductory chapter (I’ve not seen the rest of her book yet) is online here:

http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/i10392.pdf

Levine’s marvelous book is the only writing I’ve found so far that focuses on “forms” much as I do. So I’m going to excerpt numerous quotes from her Introduction that resonate with my usage and draw validation from that for TIMN. (I apologize in advance for the wordiness and repetitiveness of my write-up, but that’s become a side-effect of how I get things done these days.)

• Levine starts by noting that in past usages ““form” always indicates an arrangement of elements — an ordering, patterning, or shaping”. She makes her own definition deliberately broader: “Form … will mean all shapes and configurations, all ordering principles, all patterns of repetition and difference.” (p. 3)

Likewise, TIMN’s forms amount to different arrangements, patterns, shapes, configurations, ordering principles, and/or patterns that get repeated. We coincide on that, even though I don’t use all those terms. But our efforts differ in that TIMN is based on four forms, whereas her approach finds all sorts of forms everywhere.

• Levine clarifies that it is “the work of form to make order.” Which means that “forms are the stuff of politics.” And this means that “forms”, being inherently if not explicitly political, work by “imposing order on space” and by “organizing time” — say, by way of imposing boundaries and hierarchies, and by setting terms and age-requirements. To such an extent, she says, that “there is no politics without form.” (p. 3)

Likewise, TIMN’s four forms represent different approaches to order, including different ways of structuring space and time (as noted here). Levine deems all forms of order more political than I have (or would); but in a broad sense all four TIMN forms, their uses and combinations, are political, for they are subject to politics and become objects of politics.

• Levine collects together and makes explicit five long-standing literary and cultural ideas about “how forms work”. (1) They “constrain”, control, and contain. (2) They “differ” in how they impose order. (3) Many “overlap and intersect” — “sometimes powerfully reinforcing one another”. (4) They are portable, for they can “travel … across culture and time periods”. (5) They “do political work in particular historical contexts”, for “they shape what it is possible to think, say, and do in a given context.” Furthermore, “None of these ideas about form are themselves new, but putting them together will bring us to a new theory of form.” (pp. 4-6)

Levine’s five points apply well to TIMN’s four forms (tribes, institutions, markets, networks). In the order she listed, (1) They all serve to constrain and contain what people do. (2) They all differ in how they do so. (3) They often overlap and interact — in many societies, the tribal form in particular tends to penetrate the other forms. (4) They get applied in societies around the world. And (5) they shape each society’s history throughout the course of its evolution. A point I’d add that is missing from her list is that the four TIMN forms also differ as to the kinds of incentives and opportunities they provide to people.

• Levine’s next step is to “use affordances to think about form” — a concept whose usage is new to me. If I understand it correctly, the previous five points are generalities that apply across all forms, whereas affordances are specifics that attend a particular form. In her words, “affordances” refers to “both the specificity and the generality of forms — both the particular constraints and possibilities that different forms afford”. Particular forms thus differ as to the “constraints and possibilities” they carry — the concept of “affordances” helps express that “Each form can only do so much.” (p. 6) In other words, “each form lays claim to different affordances”; and as forms get moved from situation to situation, “forms bring their limited range of affordances with them.” (p. 7) What Levine wants to do with this concept is assure a discussion of power — for if forms “are the stuff of politics, then attending to the affordances of form opens up a generalizable understanding of political power.” For example, she says, “A panoptic arrangement of space, wherever it takes shape, will always afford a certain kind of disciplinary power; a hierarchy will always afford inequality.” (p. 7)

I don’t cotton yet to Levine’s concept of “affordances”, and I think the foregoing is unclear. Her individual chapters on selected forms — Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network — may make matters clear, but I’ve not read them yet. Even so, the points she makes with “affordances” are much like points I make about TIMN’s four forms, instead using terms like “attributes” or “uses” or “implications” (while, I’ve learned, others use “potentials” or “advantages”). For example, take a look at Table 1 from an old blog post (here) comparing attributes of each TIMN form. If those attributes correspond more or less to affordances — it looks to me they do — then once again Levine’s and my separate usages of “forms” are running parallel, often overlapping.

• Levine’s approach leads her to stress that forms and their affordances not only organize but also disorganize the world. This occurs because forms “often fail to impose their order when they run up against other forms that disrupt their logic and frustrate their organizing ends” — such as when “particular historical situations” make “forms overlap and collide”, creating contradictions (pp. 7-8). Her concept of affordances thus helps illuminate the capabilities and limitations of forms as organizing principles operating “in contexts where other political and aesthetic forms also are operating.” In sum, she says, “Form emerges from this perspective as transhistorical, portable, and abstract, on the one hand, and material, situated, and political, on the other.” (pp. 10-11)

At the same time, Levine is careful not to overemphasize contradictions that may arise among various forms and their affordances. Instead, she muses that her academic “field has been so concerned with breaking forms apart that we have neglected to analyze the major work that forms do in our world.” Since societies cannot be “altogether free of organizing principles”, she advises analysts in her field to move away from placing “too strong an emphasis on forms’ dissolution”, because doing so “has prevented us from attending to the complex ways that power operates in a world dense with functioning forms.” (p. 9)

Much the same applies to TIMN’s four forms. Their purpose is to organize, and TIMN is about how they may be progressively combined in complementary ways to improve the performance of evermore complex societies. Yes, their different organizing principles do tend to contradict one another — e.g., tribes vs. institutions, or hierarchies vs. networks. So the need is to make the forms function together as complementary contradictions. And identify why some societies prove better at doing so than others.

• Against this background, Levine identifies her book’s two major goals: The first is “to show that forms are everywhere structuring and patterning experience, and that this carries serious implications for understanding political communities.” Theoretically, she says, “political forms impose their order on our lives, putting us in our places.” But in actuality, we live in complex environments “composed of multiple and conflicting modes of organization” — with myriad forms “competing and colliding and rerouting one another.” Thus she is out to “make the case that no form, however seemingly powerful, causes, dominates, or organizes all others.” (p. 16)

This too is consistent with TIMN. It focuses only on the four cardinal four forms serving to organize our lives, but people often do use them to try to compete, collide, and reroute others — particularly where the tribal form and its clannish “affordances” (?) remain so pervasive they corrupt the later forms. In any case, in those societies where TIMN forces progress well, the story of societal evolution is about the successful combination of forms, not domination by any single form. One form or another may seem most prominent at times, but a society that gives way to domination or paramountcy by a single TIMN form, or worse yet to its hegemony, is doing something wrong. This amounts to a major parallel between TIMN and Levine’s analysis, in that it is best that “no form, however seemingly powerful, causes, dominates, or organizes all others.” Theorists elsewhere err who have claimed that the TIMN progression from monoform (T-only) through quadriform (T+I+M+N) societies means a sequential domination by the latest form added — a debate for discussion another time.

• Her book’s second major goal is more political and strategic: “to think about the ways that, together, the multiple forms of the world come into conflict and disorganize experience in ways that call for unconventional political strategies.” She objects to “critics and theorists” on the Left who assume that “powerful social institutions” and “coherent ideologies” rule our experiences. Instead, her book stresses the significance of “social disorganization, exploring the many ways in which multiple forms of order, sometimes the results of the same powerful ideological formation, may unsettle one another.” She seeks to clarify “how competing forms can sometimes produce pain and injustice as troubling as any consolidation of power.” (p. 17)

In arguing for her view that we live in societies where “no single form dominates or organizes all of the others,” she goes against “one of the deepest political convictions in the field: that ultimately, it is deep structural forces such as capitalism, nationalism, and racism that are the truly powerful shapers of our lives.” She agrees that “our lives are certainly organized by powerful structuring principles.” But she finds that “an exclusive focus on ultimate causality has not necessarily benefited leftist politics.” Instead, “It has distracted us from thinking strategically about how best to deploy multiple forms for political ends.” (p. 17)

Thus Levine’s work is about both theory and practice, for she aims to show that a multi-form approach to “formalism” has strategic implications for political activism by the Left. Contrary to conventional ideological activists who think and strategize in terms of large central concepts and forces, e.g., capitalism and socialism, she advises activists to “shift attention away from deep causes to a recognition of the many different shapes and patterns that constitute political, cultural, and social experience” — including “a careful, nuanced understanding of the many different and often disconnected arrangements that govern social experience.” In Levine’s view, then,

“ … the primary goal of this formalism is radical social change. All politics, including revolutionary political action, will succeed only if it is canny about deploying multiple forms. … Which forms do we wish to see governing social life, then, and which forms of protest or resistance actually succeed at dismantling unjust, entrenched arrangements?” (pp. 17-18)

Here again TIMN has lots in common with what Levine says. I am interested in TIMN primarily as theory. Yet it has implications for strategy, much like Levine’s, for it too implies “deploying multiple forms”, rectifying or reforming the improper application of established forms, and not letting any single form dominate.

I have not articulated TIMN to be explicitly about values like “dismantling unjust, entrenched arrangements” (her words). But TIMN could easily be moved in value-laden directions. For its system dynamics favor respecting the limits of each form (i.e., what it can and cannot do best), and achieving proper balances among them (e.g., so that tribalized forces are kept from corrupting and distorting the performance of a society’s institutional and market systems). Each TIMN form is loaded with value orientations; it’s up to people how they get enacted, and this has a lot to do with their notions of limits and balances.

Unlike Levine, I don’t urge that TIMN should inform leftists about new ways to pursue radical social change. But because of its +N component, TIMN is inherently a harbinger of radical social change in the coming decades. And with further articulation, TIMN could be turned into a manifesto for radical social change. It needn’t be a leftist or rightist manifesto, but it would have to be a quadriformist manifesto — one very much about “Which forms do we wish to see governing social life” (as she puts it).

As I look ahead with TIMN in mind, it seems more important to try to be a quadriformist than a leftist or rightist. Today’s aging triformist societies are fraught with splits between leftist progressives and rightist conservatives who endlessly argue over whether government (+I) or market (+M) solutions should prevail — they’re stuck in triformist mindsets. Yet, tomorrow’s new quadriform societies will be transformed and remodeled by the rise of +N, completely altering public policy dialoge. These societies will surely have their own Lefts and Rights, but for now I think it’s more important to try to figure out what will be the essence of this next form than claim to be a leftist or rightist proponent of it. In my view, it will probably, hopefully, be a commons sector (as I’ve said in other posts).

• While Levine sees an unlimited variety of forms at work, she identifies four in particular as pervasive “political structures”: namely, bounded wholes, temporal rhythms, hierarchies, and networks. Here she gives more detail regarding what she means by each (before providing a separate chapter on each):

“ … bounded wholes, from domestic walls to national boundaries; temporal rhythms, from the repetitions of industrial labor to the enduring patterns of institutions over time; powerful hierarchies, including gender, race, class, and bureaucracy; and networks that link people and objects, including multinational trade, terrorism, and transportation.” (p. 21)

TIMN is based on four cardinal forms of organization: tribes, hierarchical institutions, markets, and information-age networks. So I’m pleased that two of her four (hierarchies and networks) roughly correspond to two of TIMN’s four forms — hierarchical institutions and information-age networks. But I can tell from the above passage that I’ll find significant discrepancies between her meanings and mine if/when I read her chapters.

For one matter, TIMN’s forms are sweepingly evolutionary in nature — her forms not so much, at least not from what I read in her Introduction. Moreover, reflecting historical analysis, TIMN prescribes a preferred progression in the addition and combination of its cardinal forms — from T-only, to T+I, to T+I+M, and in the decades ahead, to T+I+M+N societies. Her view is not like this, though it may well favor some forms over others. Also, I’m pretty sure TIMN’s forms are much more bounded than her four. Yet, as I said above, I’m pleased at the rough correspondence between the forms we each study — another plus for TIMN, in my view.

• Levine’s chief strategic insight is that “what we are facing is not a single hegemonic system or dominant ideology but many forms, all trying to organize us at once”. Thus she raises a concern that resistance to excesses associated with one form “may not emancipate us” but instead reinforce another form, undesirably. In light of this, achieving social change may be more difficult “in a world of overlapping forms” than theorists and activists have realized. What she asks her readers to wonder is, “Can we set one form against another or introduce a new form that would reroute a racial hierarchy or disturb exclusionary boundaries?” To find an answer, “we need a fine-grained formalist reading practice to address the extraordinary density of forms that is a fact of our most ordinary daily experience.” (p. 22)

Levine’s insightful points are already embedded in TIMN. It too is concerned with system dynamics and strategies for systemic change, particularly in advanced societies where TIMN’s four forms vie for application. Where our approaches may differ is that TIMN is about the presence and performance of four cardinal forms, whereas she finds an “extraordinary density of forms” of many kinds spread throughout society. Despite this difference, her points that people may try to “set one form against another or introduce a new form” resonate with what I’ve written about TIMN — for example where I’ve noted how some politicians push excessively for a government (+I) or a market (+M) solution to a policy problem. By TIMN standards, Ayn-Randian libertarians and anarcho-capitalists in particular uphold unwarranted beliefs in using +M solutions. Elsewhere on the political spectrum, many leftists are so against capitalism they dismiss the necessity for an advanced society to include a proper +M/market system. Neither side seems to understand the limits of their vaunted form and the need for a balance among the four forms.

• Levine’s final paragraph in her Introduction reiterates her goal to “understand the relations among forms — forms aesthetic and social, spatial and temporal, ancient and modern, major and minor, like and unlike, punitive and narrative, material and metrical.” More to the point, she wants to “persuade those who are interested in politics to become formalists”. And she wants this for strategic as well as theoretical purposes — “so that we can begin to intervene in the conflicting formal logics that turn out to organize and disorganize our lives, constantly producing not only painful dispossessions but also surprising opportunities.” (p. 23)

Likewise, I would wish to persuade others to become TIMNistas. However, I would not call myself a “formalist”, nor say that TIMN expresses “formal logics” — that sounds awkward to me, not quite apt, too borrowed from literary studies. Maybe there’s some truth to it, but for now I’d prefer something like “form-oriented” or form-based”. Nonetheless, language aside, her closing remarks resonate with me because it would be good if TIMN were developed to the point where it could be used to help guide the future transformations it implies — in her words. “to intervene in the conflicting formal logics that turn out to organize and disorganize our lives, constantly producing not only painful dispossessions but also surprising opportunities.”

CODA: For trying to understand the meaning and implications of “forms,” Levine’s is an excellent book, better than anything else I’ve come across. I see at Amazon that it received lots of praise, awards too, from academics right after its publication. What I don’t see is whether it received much recognition from leftist social theorists and activists who strategize about social change. My guess is no, but I’d like to know for sure, either way, and why. I’d suggest they (especially pro-commons P2P theorists) should give her approach more attention, as should future-oriented theorists and activists on the Right. I’d also suggest that Darwinian theorists take a look as well (see Part 1 of this multi-part post). From what I’ve read about “strategic action fields” and “institutional logics”, their theorists might benefit as well (see my discussion in Parts 3 and maybe 4, next).

TIMN's “forms” vs. their “fields” and “logics” (Part 1 of maybe 4) — TIMN and Darwin’s reliance on”forms”

When I first started thinking about TIMN in the late 1980s, I settled on “forms of organization” as its central concept —over time, becoming just “forms”. While no one has criticized me for using “forms”, I have noticed, and others have pointed out, that social theorists have lately produced prominent alternative concepts that are much preferred in academia. The ones that have caught my eye are “strategic action fields” (à la Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam) and “institutional logics” (à la Patricia Thornton and William Ocasio), and to a lesser extent “stacks” (à la Benjamin Bratton).

Forms, fields, logics — not to mention concepts I’ve already discussed elsewhere: Alan Page Fiske’s “relational models” and Kojin Karatani’s “modes of exchange” — comprise quite a set of alternatives. I’m sticking with “forms”, and this series of posts addresses why. The main reason why is that my usage of “forms” seems on track to do everything that other theorists would rather do with “fields” and “logics”.

So let’s start with some clarifications about “forms”, then move in subsequent posts to “fields” and “logics” in order to illuminate conceptual overlaps and differences.

My clarifications about “forms” in TIMN

While my focus started out being about “forms of organization”, I’ve tried to clarify that each of the four TIMN forms — tribes, (hierarchical) institutions, markets, and networks — is about much more than organization in a narrow sense. Here’s the longest clarification I’ve written so far:

“The development of each form has a long history. Early versions of all four were present in ancient times. But as deliberate, formal systems with philosophical portent, each has gained strength at a different rate and matured in a different epoch over the past 10,000 years. Tribes developed first (in the Neolithic era), hierarchical institutions next (notably, with the Roman Empire and then the absolutist states of the 16th century), and competitive markets later (as in England and the United States in the 18th century). Now, collaborative networks are on the rise as the next great form. Its cutting edge currently lies among activist nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) associated with civil society. …

“Each of the four forms, writ large, embodies a distinctive set of structures, processes, beliefs, and dynamics about how society should be organized — about who gets to achieve what, why, and how. Each involves different codes and standards about how people should treat each other. Each enables people to do something — to address some social problem — better than they could by using another form. Each attracts and energizes different kinds of actors and adherents. Each has different ideational and material bases. Each has both bright and dark sides, both strengths and weaknesses. And each can be gotten “right” or “wrong” in various ways, depending on circumstances.

“Once a form is subscribed to by many actors, it becomes more than a mere form: It develops into a realm, even a system, of thought and behavior. Indeed, the rise of each form spells an ideational and structural revolution. Each is a generator of order, because each defines a set of interactions (or, transactions) that are attractive, powerful, and useful enough to create a distinct realm of activity, or at least its core. Each becomes the basis for a governance system that is self-regulating and, ultimately, self-limiting. And each tends to foster a different kind of worldview, for each orients people differently toward social space, time, and action. What is deemed rational — how a “rational actor” should behave — is different for each form; no single “utility function” suits them all.

“Each form becomes associated with high ideals as well as new capabilities. Yet, all the forms are ethically neutral — as neutral as technologies — in that they have both bright and dark sides and can be used for good or ill. The tribal form, which should foster communal solidarity and mutual caring, may also breed a narrow, bitter clannishness that can justify anything from nepotism to murder in order to shield and strengthen a clan and its leaders. The hierarchical institutional form, which should lead to professional rule and regulation, may also be used to uphold corrupt, arbitrary dictators. The market form, which should bring free, fair, open exchanges, may also be distorted and rigged to allow unbridled piracy, speculation, and profiteering. And the network form, which can empower civil society actors to serve public interests, may also be used to strengthen “uncivil society” — say, by enabling terrorist groups and crime syndicates. So, it is not just the bright sides of each form that foster new values and actors; their dark sides may do so as well.” (Source)

That still looks pretty good to me.

I forget why I first chose “forms of organization” instead of “types” or “kinds” or “modes”. Maybe I sensed it was a potentially grander concept. Yet my choice has proven fortuitous, since the ensuing reduction to “forms” enabled me to write the preceding. I could not have done so as sensibly if I’d used “types” or “kinds” or even “modes”. The best alternative for TIMN might be “formations” — a word favored, along with “forms”, by Charles Darwin.

Darwin’s usage of “forms”

I take heart from learning that Charles Darwin treats the biological evolution of living “forms” and “formations” as central concepts in his theory of evolution. This is particularly evident in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), where Darwinian principles of inheritance, variability, adaptation, and selection may produce a “new and modified form”, and “parent forms”, and “elaborately constructed forms”, and “less-improved forms”, and “endless forms” — as attested in the following three quotes (my underlining):

“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.” (p. 5)

“Looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all the species of the same group together, must assuredly have existed; but the very process of natural selection constantly tends, as has been so often remarked, to exterminate the parent forms and the intermediate links. Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains[.]” (p. 179)

The third of these quotes is from the book’s closing paragraph, with its famous final sentence. I’m quoting it in its entirety, for it pretty much summarizes Darwin’s theory of evolution, and makes reference to “forms” up front as well as in that famous final sentence:

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. (pp. 426–427)

So “forms” is a key concept for Darwin. He also often refers to “formations”, “varieties”, and “species”. But it’s not clear to me what the differences are. He uses these terms in ways that are not exactly distinguished from each other — they often seem interchangeable. Yet “forms” appears to be the highest broadest concept, encompassing “species” and “varieties”.

Darwinian treatments of “forms”

Oddly, I’ve not yet found a full discussion by a Darwinian about the meaning of “forms” and its relation to other concepts. The closest I’ve come is Sean Carroll’s article on “The Origins of Forms” (2005). It implies that “forms” is a grand concept, and his early passages indicate that “forms” has to do with “shape” and “patterning”, also with “plans” and “architectures”, as well as “structures” and “contrivances”. The strongest usage is in the following passages near the end of his article:

“ … Evo-devo shows how complex forms and structures evolve, not only in ways that lead from one species to the next, but also in ways, such as the making of body plans, that have shaped the major differences in the higher taxonomic ranks.

“The major tenet of the modern evolutionary synthesis is that the evolution of forms above the species level (“macroevolution”) can be extrapolated from processes operating at the level of populations, within species (“microevolution”).”

Even so, Carroll’s is not the full conceptual discussion I’m looking for (though maybe there’s more in his book Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo, 2005). I’m told I should look into the writing of D'Arcy Thompson, John Tyler Bonner, and Ernst Mayr, among others. But that looks to be a daunting task at this point. I did peruse Thompson’s lauded On Growth and Form (1917), only to find it relies far more on physical forces (e.g., gravity) than on biological evolution to explain why living entities take the shapes (forms) they do — not very relevant or helpful to my cause. My halting efforts to find extended discussions in writings by Bonner and/or Mayr have not proven fruitful, so far. (I’m open to suggestions!?)

What I gather, in a general sense, is that Darwinians, like Darwin himself, treat “forms” in ways that I deem consistent with TIMN. They distinguish among early and later, primitive and modern, lower and higher, simple and complex kinds of forms. So does TIMN. They seek to explain transformations of forms in terms of processes that are common to, and operate across, all living forms — e.g., differentiation. So does TIMN. In particular, they emphasize Darwin’s seminal theoretical principles, notably variation, adaptation, and selection. TIMN could be written up that way, showing parallels between biological and social evolution.

Indeed, I offered some preliminary remarks to that effect in an old blog post (here). With Darwin and TIMN in mind, I’ve proposed at some length that “Imperfect adaptation to a form may be optimal for continued evolution”, and that “Successful combination depends on the development of regulatory interfaces”. I’ve also indicated that TIMN can easily accommodate Darwinian ideas about an “iron law of multilevel selection” (à la David Sloan Wilson) and about “a massive diversification of species of organizations” (à la Daniel Dennett and Deb Roy).

Meanwhile, the one theorist I’ve found who deliberately examines Darwin’s usage of “forms” is a literary theorist: Ian Duncan, specifically his article “Aesthetics and Form in Charles Darwin’s Writings” (2017). According to how he reads the Origin of Species book, “Darwin’s theory emerges as a theory of form”. He also says that “Crucially for Darwin, the diversity of living forms will be the ineluctable condition for apprehending nature as “one great whole.””

That helps; it’s further confirmation of how central and systematic the concept of “forms” is for Darwin. But it still doesn’t fully tell me what “forms” means, so that I may draw inferences for TIMN. For my Part 2 post, however, I’ve found another literary theorist who offers an incisive detailed analysis of “forms”, without ever mentioning Darwin.

SEE PART 2 NEXT

SOURCES:
Sean B. Carroll, “The Origins of Form,” Natural History, September 2005, pp. 58-63, online at http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/features/061488 /the-origins-of-form

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859).

Charles Darwin — WikiQuote, online at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

Ian Duncan, “Aesthetics and Form in Charles Darwin’s Writings,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (2017), online at http://literature.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-45?print

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form (1917), online at https://books.google.com/books?id=_9NMM9l5FMUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false