Action in Society: Refl exively Conceptualizing Activities
4.3 Action in Modern Social Thought
4.3.2 Communalism 14
4.3.2.2 Social Activity Concepts
While the radical political and social transforma- tions during the long nineteenth century prompted and in a sense even demanded a fresh conceptual- ization of action and social life, the quickly loos- ening immediate grip of Christianity freed the social imagination and made it more plausible for scholars to develop a whole range of social activ- ity concepts. Hegel plays a crucial role as an inspiration for theorists of social action. His Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and later his Philosophy of Right (1818–1832) set an example for the idea of historically changing forms of sociality which are confi guring and being confi g- ured by the actions of people. He also conceives forms of sociality as entangled in a dialectical relationship with changing forms of peoplehood characterized by the differentiation and growth of mental capacities. Hegel thus systematically reinterprets as historical achievements and rela- tionally confi gured the very characteristics of humans that Enlightenment thinkers have attrib- uted to them as fi xed, inalienable patrimony, while insisting that these changing characteristics of humans entail changing possibilities for orga- nizing social life. Ontologically speaking, then, Hegel opposes traditional nominalism by showing how individuals are abstractions from the dialectical processes that constitute them. At the same time he opposes traditional realism by historicizing the forms concepts take. In the Phenomenology ’ s account of human develop- ment of which the master-slave dialectic is but the best known part, he argues, for example, that self-consciousness, the very basis for rational thinking, is attainable only in the recognition of others. Since property rights are for Hegel the crucible of recognition, this leads to violence and subjugation. In general Hegel assumes that inten- tional actions inevitably lead to failures or resis-
court, but only oxygen in something else. It would be pointless then to be puzzled by the fact that the properties of oxygen and hydrogen would not “add up” to form those of water, simply because nobody had ever seen oxygen and hydrogen and carbon by itself. At the level of biology:
yes humans are made of cells, but these cells operate dif- ferently from mono-cellular beings in spite of very many structural similarities. Humans emerge no more from fl ag- ellates than society from individuals.
tance in the sense that they all entail what we now call unintended consequences in nature and soci- ety. Thus, the struggle for recognition does not lead to the anticipated death of one of the con- tenders, but to domination; and once more con- trary to the intention, domination stunts the master, but forces the slave to transcend himself and to develop and fi nally overcome domination etc. Failure and resistance, however, lead human beings to form better concepts about the world and themselves. The formation of these concepts is wrapped up in an ongoing process of revision because they need to be adjusted constantly to the effects that humans have brought about through their past intentions formed on the basis of these concepts. This “history of spirit” as a history of concepts, of social forms, of social organization, will continue to unfold until ideas and world are perfectly aligned and humans have thus realized their potential in harmony between their univer- sality and their particularity. In the Hegelian world action assumes basic subjective meaning because it is driven by intentions, it is existen- tially meaningful as a step, however minute, in a process of human self-liberation and in its high- est form move in the objective drama of self- unfolding sprit in the history of the World.
Marx honed his skills in historical and dialec- tical reasoning in the encounter with Hegel, and even where Marx’ language begins to shed its Hegelian sound in his later writings, the methods remain with him. Yet, in Marx’ mind Hegel’s work suffered from two fatal conceits. First among these is Hegel’s insistence that history had already reached the point where reason had come into its own by having reshaped the world in its image (Marcuse 1941 ; Avineri 1968 ). Yet, the dramatic situation of the working classes in Europe indicated that the present order could not possibly be anywhere near the realization of human potential that Hegel had assumed. Second, Marx accused Hegel and his followers of misun- derstanding human beings as principally idea driven whereas in his mind they needed to be pri- marily understood as material beings in need to produce their own livelihood for survival.
Following Hegel, he took a deep interest in labor, but now understood not as a vehicle to intellec-
tual growth, but as a material necessity. Activities in the world assume a much greater role in Marx’
theory and concept formation takes a back-seat as a super-structural phenomenon. The dialectic that unfolds in his theory is still one of self and other embedded in a wider system of social forms. Yet the main failures, forms of resistance and con- fl icts (i.e. “contradictions”) are no longer lodged between mind and world, but between material interests and within systemic institutional incom- patibilities. And as in Hegel there is in Marx’
theory the positing of an inevitable development towards a secular paradise; yet it is no longer achieved by state bureaucrats (as a universal class) acting in the interests of all, but by a prole- tariat universalized by generalized exploitation and suffering which enables them to launch a world revolution.
Marx’s theorization of activities is grounded in a reinterpretation of the notion of praxis. For the ancient Greeks, praxis was an integrated and organized set of activities such as shoe-making or lyre-playing that was systematically connected to particular forms of knowing. 19 During the Enlightenment praxis was juxtaposed to theory as modality of engaging with the world, and by emphasizing practice Marx thus signals both his movement from a focus on ideas to one on mate- rial production and with it a turn away from naturalized conceptions of intentional action to socially preconfi gured activities ( 1845 ; Marx and Engels 1846 ). The early Marx distinguishes between free activity and determinate activity where the former marks only the end point of his- torical development in communism, the latter the form of human activities take on the path to the fi nal proletarian revolution. Indeed, Marx ana- lyzes determinate activities as standardized forms of operating that integrate knowledge, specifi c locations where they are performed etc. Most importantly, however, he shows through a discus- sion of the historicity of the division of labor, of
19 Aristotle ( 322BCEa , b ) gave praxis the added specifi c meaning of a set of activities that is not undertaken for the sake of something else that is what he calls poiesis, but completely for its own sake. As central as this distinction is to Aristotelian practical philosophy, it is specifi c to him and his school.
ownership, of family relations, of forms of com- merce, and of government, how a wide variety of practices are interdependent and presuppose each other across society with a particular mode of production at its center. Modalities of producing knowledge, raising children, or doing politics are in this sense dependent on modalities of running commerce, laboring in factories and managing them under conditions of changing markets and ever new technologies.
Closely related to the notion of praxis/practice is that of habitus/habit. Like its cousin’s its theo- retization began in ancient Greece, where it des- ignated the mental disposition corresponding to practices. 20 Yet, with all the individualizing ten- dencies I have mentioned above, habit came to be side-tracked as an important component of theo- rizing actions. Worse, perhaps, it appeared as old- fashioned, anti-modern, as that which resists reason. 21 This changed dramatically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Growing psychological empiricism (e.g. James 1890 ), but even more so a changing social threat scenario cultivated in contemporary imaginaries placed danger to society no longer in the pigheaded farmer resisting scientifi c innovation and demo-
20 The ancient Greeks saw good habits as a basis for good practice and as such of virtuous behavior. Accordingly, habits became the target of educational efforts. Yet, the Greeks also saw that these habits are the results of prac- tices as much as of direct instruction. Although manifest- ing themselves as characteristics of persons, then, the Greeks saw habits as the result of a social process of instruction as well as of experience, of repeatedly acting in social context (Aristotle 322BCEa). Politically good habits were seen as the basis of a stable and reliable social order (Aristotle 322BCEb).
21 It appears that habit was generally suspect to thinkers aspiring to effect changes. Missionizing Christianity is, unsurprisingly, not interested in habit. In the work of Augustine, and this is very signifi cant for the place of habit in Europeanoid social thought after the Reformation, will and choice are emphasized and habit no longer plays a roles as a signifi cant theoretical concept. Of course there are sound theological reasons for this preference as well.
Yet, with Christianity fi rmly established and through the reappropriation of Aristotle’s practical philosophy in the thirteenth century, habit once more played a signifi cant, if secondary, role notably in the work of Thomas Aquinas.
Subsequent revolutionary movements kept to Augustine rather than Aquinas.
cratic responsibility (as the Enlightenment did), but in the rootless, dissipated individual (e.g.
Durkheim 1897 ; Thomas 1923). In American pragmatism, especially in the work of Dewey ( 1922 ) habit is both the vehicle to reintroduce the sociality of action as well a means to eclipse the signifi cance of will and rational planning. 22
Norbert Elias ( 1935 ) brings signifi cant inno- vations to the concept of habitus by understand- ing it as a response to particular institutional confi gurations. At the same time Elias sees in habitus the means for the structural continuation of these confi gurations. In particular Elias employs habitus to come to an understanding how increasing requirements for coordination in lengthening action chains can be met institution- ally. His answer is that this is possible only to the degree that control becomes internalized. In other words, Elias provides us with a way to investigate the co-constituting relationships between institu- tional arrangements on a larger scale and their presuppositions in the psychological makeup of the persons carrying these institutions. Equipped with this dialectical imaginary, Elias directs our attention to what he calls “mechanisms of inter- weaving” that is everything that brings human beings into the range of each other’s activities allowing on the one hand lengthening chains of interaction requiring on the other new tools of coordination. 23
Pierre Bourdieu ( 1972 ; 1986) follows Elias in seizing upon habitus as the mediating link between the personal and the social. Yet, while Elias’ animating questions pertains to large scale historical transformations, Bourdieu’s centers around the reproduction of class boundaries. To answer his questions he suggested a productive set of metaphors that described habitus shaped in the struggle for status (“symbolic capital”) in which the contestants have to differentiate them- selves along several dimensions from other con-
22 Dewey even collapses will into habit.
23 Elias is concerned here with processes of colocation (e.g. urbanization) or connection (e.g. trade) following political centralization and expansion as much as in socio- technological means of coordination (e.g. money, stan- dardization, clocks).
testants. Habitus is both the result of this struggle and its animating principle. As among the Greeks, Bourdieusian habitus conveys know how for practices. 24 And it does so—Bourdieu is in agree- ment here with previous habitus theorists—in form of tacit, embodied knowing which is hard to penetrate for critical refl ection.
The notions of practice and habitus belong together; they form two sides of the same coin.
The problem with this approach is that most prac- tices do not only build on tacit knowledge, habi- tus, but they are often shot through with forms of deliberation making use of explicit theories rang- ing in their degree of sophistication and explicit awareness from sayings to elaborate theories.
Yet, it is also important in this context to point out with Wittgenstein’s private language argu- ment that systematic reasoning (which inevitably is a form of rule following) needs to be grounded in practices. Moreover, it is clear that praxis/hab- its as highly institutionalized forms of activity cannot stand on their own and require more basic activity concepts to account for their genesis.
Georg Simmel begins a completely new strand of thinking with the physical sciences inspired notion of interaction ( Wechselwirkung ) ( 1908 ).
He introduces this term as a metatheoretical activity concept to think through a wide variety of dialectical, co-constituting social processes.
The basic imaginary behind the notion of interac- tion casts two people acting towards each other in mutual orientation. Examples discussed in detail by Simmel are exchange ( 1900 ), competition and other forms of confl ict, as well as subordination and super-ordination ( 1908 ). Interaction for Simmel has especially two intertwining charac-
24 Elias too was concerned about the habitus generating powers of status competition. Yet, in his work it works as only one kind of interweaving mechanisms among many others. The similarities in both accounts are as interesting as their respective differences. Suffi ce it to say here that Elias’ concept is wide enough to see that cooperation is as powerful a generator of habitus as competition. Bourdieu on the other hand adds a Cartesian precision and level of self-refl ective theorizing which is absent in Elias. This depth is particularly useful where Bourdieu provides to tools to study the self-normalizing tendencies of fi elds and the symbolic violence they exert on participants (1990).
teristics. It is “sociating”, that is to say that it pro- duces particular forms of social relations which mediate the fl ow of effects in either direction; it also more or less subtly transforms both interact- ing parties. Moreover, Simmel envisions how several kinds of interactions can dovetail and how objects fi t into interaction. Exchange is a good example for how Simmel reasons about these matters and how the notion of interaction can be usefully deployed to better understand social processes of co-constitution ( 1900 ).
Possession, a form of interaction with objects shapes both, the thing and its proprietor. In giving up a possession in exchange for something else the two objects in play obtain value. All compo- nents of this form of interaction can become objectifi ed in repeated exchange; both propri- etors are set in relation to each other; and so as are the goods. Now consider how bringing in money changes the entire character of the exchange and all that participates in it.
A very important dimension of the Simmelian theory of interaction is provided by his transcen- dental refl ections on the conditions for the possi- bility of interaction to take place in the fi rst place.
In keeping with Kantian language he calls the conditions aprioris ( 1908 ) and points to three necessary aspects of what I would prefer to call a social imaginary. The fi rst is typifi cation of self, other, and situation, the second is an awareness that the types employed fail to exhaust reality, and the third is a kind of general trust that there is a workable place for the interaction in some vaguely conceived larger social whole. 25 Simmel’s concept of interaction bore extraordi- nary fruit in the work of George Herbert Mead’s
25 These three aprioris are not reconcilable with caretaker- infant interaction (e.g. Stern 1984) because they presup- pose a fully developed self with linguistic abilities. As such they fail as aprioris in the sense intended by Simmel.
However, the Simmelian aprioris can be interpreted fruit- fully as dimensions of a social imaginary for fully sym- bolized social interactions. Yet, since early developmental interactional forms make much use of affect attunement and since they do not simply subside it is clear that Simmel’s notion of interaction is fundamentally incom- plete even for adult interaction.
theory of self-formation discussed above and through him (as well as directly) on the symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1962 ) of the second Chicago school.
The theory of dialogue as developed by Martin Buber ( 1923 ) and signifi cantly expanded by Mikhail Bakhtin ( 1929 ; 1938/1939) offers impor- tant depth to the notion of interaction. 26 First it emphasizes the import of the emotive and cogni- tive attitude with which the other is encountered.
As dialogic thinkers show, these attitudes have dramatic consequences for processes of self- development of both participants as well as for the course of the interaction. In particular Buber distinguishes between completely open and closed (objectifying) relationships which Bakhtin labels dialogic and monologic. 27 Second, the the- ory of dialogue opens an important normative perspective on social interaction. Beyond reiter- ating that most of what we call ethics lies in the manner of engaging with others it produces an attractive positive vision of what ethical interac- tion should look like.
Max Weber ( 1922 ) is the inventor of the very term social action and made it, in his famous defi - nition of sociology, the proper object of socio- logical research. Action becomes social for Weber when it is oriented in its intended meaning toward the actions of others. According to Weber understanding the subjective meaning imbued in the action is tantamount to understanding the action in its causes and effects, sociology
26Bakhtin systematically builds on Buber (Friedman 2001 ). At this point it is unclear to me, however, whether either Buber or Bakhtin had actually read Simmel’s appo- site texts and whether they saw themselves developing his notion of interaction further. In a certain sense Simmel’s work was prolifi c but was often received in a piecemeal fashion.
27 Feminism and postcolonial theory (Fabian 1983 ) have drawn signifi cantly on a dialogic imaginary. On the mono- logic/objectifying end of these attitutes there has been something of a common thematic focus and intensive cross-fertilization of ideas emerging from dialogism, a reinvigorated interest in Hegel’s notion of recognition (Honneth 1992 ) a postmarxian Lukacs ( 1923 ) inspired interest in processes of objectifi cation (Honneth 2005 ) and a Freud inspired line thinking of processes of fetishization (Kaplan 2006 ; Böhme 2006 ).
becomes a discipline engaged in a double resolu- tion hermeneutics: that of the actor and that of the wider context of actions. 28 To help with this task Weber develops an ideal typical framework to reconstruct the subjective meaning of actions that urges its user to differentiate between means- ends rational, value-rational, affective, and tradi- tional motives for action. One of the great strengths of this approach is its effort to think together different modalities of acting, different action logics if you will, fathoming the possibil- ity of ambiguities, ambivalences and even contra- dictions. Not only does Weber’s framework make more room again for pre-nineteenth century Europeanoid notions of rationality but he allows for the integration of habitus and emotions into a thoroughly pluralistic, if you will multi-voiced, or polyphonic analysis of action. It is almost sec- ondary in this regard that he has failed to grasp the ways in which precisely the affective and the traditional modalities of acting can be experi- ences as profoundly meaningful.
Unfortunately Weber’s own efforts at develop- ing a methodology to use his scheme have remained sketchy at best. Worse, perhaps, Weber created very unfortunate misunderstandings by recommending instrumental rationality as the primary measuring device against which actual performance should be measured as deviation. 29 Taking Weber as a starting point, few have done more than Alfred Schütz ( 1932 ; Schütz and Luckmann 1984 ) to elucidate both meaning in action and the challenges to understanding sub- jective meanings. Critical of Weber’s understand- ing of motives as preceding action, Schütz draws
28 This of course includes the possibility that that the inter- pretation given to an action by a sociologist may deviate signifi cantly from the meaning the actor may have con- nected with it. The point Weber is making is simply that no matter what the actor may have thought he or she was doing, their intended meaning matters to understand the particular course of action they have taken as other mean- ings would have putatively led to other actions.
29 In the lack of a more sophisticated understanding of meaning comes to the fore one of the lacunae of Weber’s otherwise so stunning erudition: the complete absence of linguistic knowledge of either the classical historical school of linguistics, of the synchronic linguistics of Saussure or of Peirce’s semiotics.