Action in Society: Refl exively Conceptualizing Activities
4.4 Action-Reaction Effect Sequences
It is the aim of this section to craft a general, loadable, refl exive, and politically as well as onti- cally fecund concept of action that can draw on what is best in extant activitiy concepts while cre- ating a roadmap for empirical research. It pro- ceeds from a basic, consequently processualist and dialectical account of social life. 31 It assumes that the social exists in the complex fl ow of actions prompting each other in multiply inter- secting and spatially and temporally differentiated ways. Within this model, any action is reaction to a number of temporally prior actions of self and others while at the same time giving rise to a mul- tiplicity of other actions by self and others. 32 One
31 I have elaborated the following sketch of the model in much greater detail in Glaeser 2011 where I also put it to use in interpreting a major “macro-structural” transforma- tion. I have traced the historical roots of this model in the hermeneutic tradition of social thought in Glaeser 2014 .
32 To avoid misunderstandings: Reaction does not mean reactive. Neither does it imply any other kind of mecha- nistic response. Reactions can be eminently creative, like the clever repartee in a dialogue. Indeed, creativity lies in what is made of the available pieces in the immediate present or in the more distant past, not in a divine creation ex nihilio. And these pieces are even as memories, under- standings etc. ultimately traceable to actions, past and present. When Arendt ( 1958 ) leaning on Augustine (395) describes creativity as a capacity for new beginnings I
particularly nasty problem of conceptualizing activities, namely fi nding proper boundaries demarcating an action, is immediately addressed by this formulation, as any activity can become something determinate only in the reaction by others. 33
It is important to keep in mind that both the antecedent and consequent actions can have taken/
could take place at faraway places and distant times. If so, their effects need to be projectively articulated with the help of socio-technological means of storage and transportation for things, and memory and communication for ideas. Under cer- tain circumstances actions and reactions are repeated in a self- similar manner over a certain stretch of time possibly even by a changing cast of participating actors. If this is the case, they have become regularized and common parlance nomi- nalizes (and by implication objectifi es) such a complex of intersecting, self-similar action-reac- tion chains as an institution. Institutionalized webs of action-reaction sequences vary in scope, com- plexity and temporal staying power from family rituals to the papacy. So here is a very simple and in principle researchable way of seeing structure as activity and activity as structured. The question is now how that self-sameness, how that stability comes about?
An answer to the question of institution forma- tion emerges by fi rst wondering how reactions pick up and respond to antecedent actions and how the concrete temporal form of acting itself comes to be ordered. And here the answer is through the media- tion of consciously or unconsciously employed understandings which are discursive, emotive, and/
or sensory (including kinesthetic) modalities of dif- ferentiating and integrating the world. 34 Through understanding, antecedent actions obtain relevant specifi city and perlocutionary force, for example
would respond that what looks like the ability to start something new is better understood as the jiu-jitsu-like art to alter trajectories thanks to the artful triangulation of vectors pointing in all sorts of directions.
33 See Glaeser 2011 , introductory chapter for an extended example. The reasoning here is analogous to Bakhtin’s delimination of meaning units in speech (Bakhtin 1953 ).
34 Subjective means here merely employed by this actor.
Understanding therefore does not imply truth in any objective sense of that word.
when a gesture registers as threat rather than a greeting, a speech as a call for revolution rather than a mere description of grievances etc. The simultaneous use of a number of understandings of several modes can then provide orientation, direc- tion, and where necessary the means for coordinat- ing and justifying courses of action. In other words understandings can systematically guide, that is structure, activities because they themselves are structured.
Evidently, then, stable reactions can be thought of as prompted and guided by the primary media- tion of constant understandings. Hence, the next step in solving the puzzle of institutionalization is to wonder how understandings as self/world mediators become stable. The ordering of activi- ties suggested by understanding is fi rst of all a process, an open-ended fl ow of differentiation and integration that may originally fl ow from nothing more than acting itself. And yet, where orderings in action become validated in agreement with other human beings (I call this form of validation recognition), where they are confi rmed or discon- fi rmed in the ex post assessment of action success (here I speak of corroboration), or where they fi t in or are compatible with already objectifi ed understandings (that is when they begin to reso- nate), they congeal into more rigid, at the far end even objectifi ed forms. Thus, understand ing (con- tinuous verb) becomes an understanding (gerund) which as memorized exemplar or abstracted schema hence forth allows for its decontextual- ized application, which is nothing other than what we more commonly call learning.
And yet once more an answer to the question of institutionalization seems to be simply pushed backward to another level of analysis. And indeed so it is, because we now have to puzzle how vali- dations can become regularized. And here the answer can only be that they must issue from institutionalized sources. Recognitions for exam- ple may come forth from a constant source, say the stable character of a friend who reliably praises the same sorts of behavior/understand- ings and disparages others with the same con- stancy. But that is to say that the friend is an institution in the sense in which it is defi ned here, and one is thus forced to admit that there is no ending to this process, that there is no stopping
point, just seemingly infi nite deferment. And indeed I have called this endless deferment insti- tutiosis, in adapting the Peirceian concept of semiosis to institutional analysis. What gives society stability then, are either loops, that is recursive patters or, more importantly, the very inertia caused by the friction involved in the interplay of so many processes which are diffi cult to orchestrate at will by any one participant.
The two notions of projective articulation and of institutions are the central link between what goes traditionally for micro-analysis and for macro- analysis. Both of these notions can be employed systematically to think through the fl ow of action effects temporally from sources to consequences, as well as spatially to their distribution between people and institutional domains. If one wants to use these terms at all, macro and micro thus become mere labels for more or less temporally, spatially and domain dispersed action effects. 35
The mundanely observed fact that actions of one and the same person seem to follow different logics in different contexts as well as the dis- crpancy that may occur between the actors own understanding of her actions and the understand- ing that an observer suspects is underlying the actual also appear in a new light. The understand- ings through which we operate do not only have an ordering dimension but also carry with them an accent of validity which distinguishes them into those that are actualized because they appear valid enough for us to act upon and those which do not.
Continuously validated understandings become naturalized; we forget that we could understand differently which is to say that we literally embody these understandings. Now, since validation is situationally variant simply because different peo-
35 From the perspective of the consequently processualist model presented here it is therefore highly misleading to speak of micro and macro as “levels”. It makes no sense to talk, as Coleman ( 1990 ) does of “social conditions”
causing the micro- phenomenon of frustration. What causes frustration are the concrete actions of concrete oth- ers, if potentially many of them and repeatedly, for exam- ple competing with ego for few goods, creating price hikes, etc. that is the level of action-reaction effects is never left. To say this is of course not to argue that every- thing is “micro” which would totally overlook the fact that even single actions can be the consequence of a wide variety of spatially and temporally dispersed actions.
ple present in different situations differentially validate understandings, because the space reso- nates with some understandings more than with others and because different situations afford dif- ferent possibilities for corroborating understand- ings in action, while different contexts may actualize different understandings hence making us act differently. The upshot of this idea is that we can live quite well and in many modern cir- cumstances need to live with contradictory under- standings which become actualized differentially, leading quite “naturally” to different action pat- terns in different contexts. 36
These deliberations immediately shed light on the notorious issue of structure and agency. If agency is the capability to act, than besides the physical preconditions of time, space and energy, the capability to perform particular actions is dependent on particular actualized understand- ings of the actor, as well as of the actualized understandings of others whose participation is necessary to complete the act (Austin 1962 ). In other words, anybody’s capability to act is deeply enmeshed with the institutionalized activities of others. Conversely, any institution exists in repeatedly enabled action and thus agency. The opposition between agency and structure is there- fore entirely misleading. 37
The problem of agency articulated in this manner leads to a fresh consideration of power and politics. From the perspective of consequent processualism, politics is a very particular and socially most signifi cant form of activity, namely, as I have already indicated above, the intentional effort to form, maintain or alter institutions of various spatial and temporal depths and import.
Since institutions are formed by minimally two but potentially millions of people constituting the
36 This model therefore allows for a much more nuanced approach to the vexing ambiguity in the results of experi- ments on cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957; Petty and Cacioppo 1981 ). Dissonances can only occur if two con- texts actualize the same profi les of understandings. As such the model also provides the resources to think through the “tensions” ( Spannungen ) Weber ( 1920a , b ) thematizes as a major driver of innovation in institution formation and ideas.
37 For further critiques of this opposition see Bourdieu ( 1972 , 1980 ) and Sewell ( 2005 ).
targeted institution through their actions, the elicitation of support from others is the central axis around which politics revolves. And that axis has two poles. The fi rst is rhetoric that is the style and content of addressing others in speech and other kinds of performances to join in the politi- cal project. Apart from naked coercion there is no politics, big and small, without rhetoric (Burke 1950 ). 38 The second pole of the political axis is organization. It comes into play simply because the elicitation of participation in the constitution of institutions on a larger scale requires many helping hands making use of techniques of pro- jective articulation which need to be coordinated and focused to yield the desired institution form- ing effect. The hitch is, that organizations them- selves are institutions, and a very particular kind at that. What distinguishes them from other insti- tutions is that they have become self-conscious through a dedicated staff of people maintaining and or directing them. 39
Power is the ability to succeed in politics. That is to say power is potentiated agency; beyond the ability to act it includes the ability to deliver on intentions. This can happen by a whole spectrum of different ways structured by the degree to which the involvement of others proceeds dia- logically such that they become in fact fully equal co-politicians, or monologically by subjecting others to some form of control (Glaeser 2013). 40 Power is constituted in different ways in different
38 It is no accident, therefore, that the art of rhetoric as a self-conscious practice bloomed fi rst in participatory poli- tics of the ancient Greek poleis and in Republican Rome.
Accordingly within the Europeanoid tradition Aristotle’s On Rheotoric and Cicero’s Orator have become the defi n- ing texts.
39 This has very interesting consequences. As institutions organizations require a self-politics to maintain them for the purposes of engaging in target politics. That creates all sorts of interesting problems concerning the relationship between both kinds of politics. Many of the problems and frustrations commonly seen in politics are closely related to confl icts between target politics and self politics.
Pioneers in the fi eld of political organization had to wait for mass-modernity to appear. The most important fi rst generation encompasses Lenin ( 1902 ), Michels ( 1911 ).
and Weber ( 1922 ).
40 Control efforts can have rather interesting ironic effect in that they produce the illusion of power while actually undermining it.
situations. Indeed, different kinds of institution- forming projects require different capabilities and forms of control. 41 Money is power only if money can buy the kinds of actions required for the institutionalizing project under consideration.
Neither is knowledge per se power. Indeed it is important to note, that under certain circum- stances knowledge may even be detrimental to the exercise of power, for example if it raises doubts thus undermining the trust in understand- ings that enable acting (Glaeser 2011 ). However, situationally specifi c knowledge can become political knowledge, where it enables an imagi- nation of alternative states, provides understand- ings concerning the action-reaction effect chains central to the particular institution politically tar- geted, and where it involves knowledge about how to mobilize the people that need to partici- pate in carrying that institution. Knowledge satis- fying all three of these requirements is indeed a constitutive aspect of power.