tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post5120824462391699077..comments2024-03-23T04:01:39.348-04:00Comments on Understanding Society: Heterogeneity of the socialDan Littlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15953897221283103880noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post-12363877041163540072008-07-04T20:04:00.000-04:002008-07-04T20:04:00.000-04:00I think the idea of 'concatenation' is a useful wa...I think the idea of 'concatenation' is a useful way to approach the heterogeneity of the social, but I wonder at the same time whether it doesn't cover over some difficult questions. Namely, it at times seems to suggest a simple additive process: cause A + cause B + cause C = event D. In this way each of the causes always has the same effect, regardless of the other causes it's conjoined with.<BR/><BR/>Whereas in reality (and this usually comes through clearly in empirical studies), a cause can have vastly different effects depending on the surrounding context, and the other causes it's concatenated with. So if concatenation simply stands for an additive process, then it neglects the sort of feedback relations that might occur between causes, where come hinder and others help a particular cause.<BR/><BR/>This is one of the reasons I like assemblage theory so much at the moment is because it tries to take into account both the micro-level processes (causes A, B and C above, for example), but at the same time tries to grasp them as a co-functioning whole (cause ABC, we might say). The central sort of basis for this way of thinking actually goes back to the philosopher Spinoza who said (and whom Deleuze always cites), "We know not what a body can do", which Deleuze then takes to mean that studying a body (e.g. cause, social group, individual, etc.) in one situation will always neglect the alternative ways in which it can act in other situations. There's no a priori way to determine what a body can do; rather it always has to be discovered by putting it in new situations and observing it. (Again, there's an emphasis on heterogeneity, as any simple body is what it is only in relation to other specific bodies - which varies from context to context.)<BR/><BR/>So returning to concatenation, the idea would be that any analytically derived cause will only exert a portion of its abilities in any particular circumstance. Which means that there will always be a measure of unpredictability in any new situation that conjoins elements and causes which have never been conjoined in this way before.<BR/><BR/>So with Tilly and the mechanism theorists, the risk is that they may essentialize mechanisms - in the sense that a particular mechanism will always involve a particular effect, regardless of its context. I'm not sure that they do this (and my knowledge here is relatively limited), but it seems like it would be easy for lesser thinkers to take mechanism theory as simply suggesting that.<BR/><BR/>But anyways, I think it's great that you're interested in assemblage theory! One of the reasons I really like your blog is because so much of it seems to speak to that school of thought, so it's not too surprising to me that you'd get something out of it. I'm very interested to hear what sort of criticisms you might have of it too, since I don't have nearly as extensive a background in philosophy of Anglo-American social science as yourself.<BR/><BR/>Cheers!<BR/>-NickN.https://www.blogger.com/profile/11249740746337537033noreply@blogger.com