THE subconscious practical orientation of individuals has been de-emphasised by theorists such as Margaret Archer (2007) – instead it is a reflexive era imperative as accentuated by the “macroscopic historical shifts from ‘contextual continuity’, dominant in traditional societies, through the intensification of ‘contextual discontinuity’, gradually spreading with modernity itself, to the advent of of ‘contextual incongruity’ in the last two decades of the 20th century” (Archer 2010: 136). In riposte, the problem is not merely an empirical fit, an imperative for an age, but a methodological one. The subconscious practical orientation is indispensable, as shall be argued, regardless of an era’s imperative, as mediation cannot be reduced to the internal conversation – the internal conversation being agency itself. Unless mediation between pyschobiography and objective conditions are viewed as collective and part of ongoing interactional episodes, then we are left with arguments of empirical fits and reflexive imperatives, rather than a methodological one that renders all sorts of phenomena, other than an aware reflexivity, as indispensable.

The situation as mediating

In the the domain of situated activity (Goffman’s ‘interaction order’), we begin to appreciate the indispensability of the habitual – this without discounting the voluntarism orienting of many interactions. It is in the interaction order or the hidden hand of long worked habits or what Schilling (1997) notes as the somatic sector of consciousness that we can appreciate the embodiment of contextual resources. Similarly, cognitive neuroscientists differentiate between deliberative and automatic cognition, the relevance of either contingent upon conditions or the lived situation (Cerulo 2009). The triggering of either is situationally sensitive and thus mediated in live interaction, as Layder notes; unpacking the interplay of structure-agency requires a mediation that is to be found in the “most ‘immediate’ (that is, closest to action) features of the environment. They represent already constructed arenas of social behaviour” (Layder 2004: 14). This pushes the debates (contrast Sayer: 2010 with Archer: 2010) regarding both reflexivity and the habitus onto different terrains and moves beyond an emphasis on a singularity of a deliberative emergent personal identity, with mediation between structure and agency as a result of our internal conversations.

The internal conversation as direct mediator of objective structure gives up an analysis with strong biases to self-action, or compromises arelational approach that conceptually returns the debates regarding contextual continuity to reflexivity itself, rather than live situations or more immediate realities. In other words, generalisations are made regarding the creative nature of reflexivity as an empirical analysis – analysis is viewed at the level of individuals mediating their environment and with little collective focus, as a result deliberative or automatic cognition can be viewed as epoch defined (e.g. a reflexive modernity) with historical shifts defining structures and not sensitive, contingent and negotiated live encounters, that often escape such generalised analysis.

Therefore conceptually mediation requires an unpacking and a reliance on the singularity of cognition as directly implicated in that process gives “a rationalist bias” that does not take adequately account for subconscious impulses and pre-cognitive foundations of the social brain (habitual acts can be based on prior socialised impulses but not always) – the stratified nature of selfhood allows for both consciousness and more than consciousness, though all facets are relationally dependent in the emergence of a reflexive consciousness (a relational emergence of the irreducible properties of the agentic capacity, without any reduction of that capacity, as a stratified selfhood, to an aware consciousness). Thus multifaceted influences of the socialised body and precongitive foundation of cognition (e.g. Coole 2005), with its impulses, are important to mediation and how structures supervene – mediation is not reducible to an aware reflexivity and thus cannot be captured merely with a notion of the internal conversation.

This post intends the works of Margaret Archer, though a similar observation can be made with Giddens, as Schilling observes “ … the idea of agents always being implicated in the instantiation of structural ‘rules’ and ‘resources’ is ultimately, perhaps, too voluntaristic for the stubborn emotional desires characteristic of human bodily being in the world” (Schilling 1997). Mediating gives to different forms of cognition, affectual energy etc.; each type sensitive to its live context and can be triggered in situ – the “pivotal role of situated activity as a conduit and relay between individuals and their wider social entanglements” (Layder 2004: 22). The individual, or the domain of psychobiography, is composed of different elements, with the inner life being more than a conscious awareness of different orders and our place in relation to them. Layder (2005: 24) terms it in the following terms: “I propose that the self should be construed as possessing an unconscious element and that Mead’s stress on its cognitive, reasoning and rational side should be counterbalanced with an emphasis on the importance of emotion. In this sense “individuality” is not simply a social construct but has to do with an inner mental life?a psychological, affectual energy that constantly interacts with the social entanglements of the individual. To complete this amended picture these elements of the self need to be connected to some notion of biographical time as it depicts the history of a person’s involvements with significant others in their lives. All these elements comprise what I shall call the “psychobiography” of the individual. This traces the career of self-identities as they emerge, develop, reconstitute and regenerate themselves as a result of a person’s unique configurations of experience and social contacts over the course of their lives”.

While theorists like Archer emphasise a stratified ontology of selfhood, with a personal identity as analytically distinct and a-symmetrically related to a social identity, there is a subsequent denial of a domain analysis as sociological category (as shall be noted later), resulting in an almost exclusive analysis of contextual reproduction/transformation and the emergence of a social identity (what Archer terms as the discursive order) in the light of an reflexive imperative – mediated via a personal identity as acquired “from an individual’s own life experiences”. Variegated phenomena as affectual energy, sedimented memory, neuro-wiring etc. are in Archer’s terms the emergent properties “occupying the middle ground between the molecules and meanings” (Archer 2003: 88). They are viewed as part of a first person perspective – crucial for the emergence of self-consciousness and viewed as a territory that is chalked off and irreducible to anything discursive. However, mediation remains focused on as an aware reflexivity and emergent properties, that are often off our radars and importantly define mediation in live encounters, are de-emphasised. For example, Archer de-emphasising subconscious routines states “the old routine guide lines are no longer applicable and new ones cannot be forged because (even) nascent morphogenesis is inhospitable to any form of routinization”. Different orders and their influences are balanced in terms of “the ‘projects’ which subjects define and seek to accomplish” and “reflexive internal conversation (PEP) is responsible for mediating the impact of SEPs and CEPs because it is the subjects’ objectives and internal deliberations about their external feasibility that determine how they confront the structural and cultural circumstances whose presence they cannot avoid” (Archer 2007: 65). Further affirming this egocentric perspective – “That is to say, we talk to ourselves about society in relation to ourselves and about ourselves in relation to society, under our own descriptions”.

To sum, the contingencies of an interaction order – how we encounter the discursive order – should be considered more than an aware navigation and running commentary on it, as Sayer notes “we should acknowledge both our capacity for reflection on our circumstances, and the embodied dispositions of our habitus, remembering that the latter depends on prior needs and susceptibilities … To be sure, contrary to what she terms as the ‘hydraulic model’ of social processes, individuals are not simply and passively moulded by constraints and affordances; rather, the effect or lack of effect of such contexts depends on the active mediation of individuals monitoring and deliberating on their situation. However, people’s internal conversations do not mediate all such influences. It’s an overstatement to say that ‘the efficacy of any social property is at the mercy of the subjects’ reflexive activity’ (Archer 2007: 12). We are not omniscient, omnipotent beings; some influences get beneath our radar, especially in early life, in our ‘formative years’, shaping our dispositions and responses without our even noticing them. Realists, of all theorists, have to acknowledge this” (Sayer 2010: 113).

Domain levels and size analysis

Finally, Archer argues that domain levels are a reversion to a size analysis:

That is, the real ‘aspects’ or ‘features’ of social reality are not by definition tied to the size of interacting elements (the size of the encounter, or for that matter, the sentiment accompanying the interaction).’” and “However, the key points in this connection are that emergent strata constitute (a) the crucial entities in need of linking by explaining how their causal powers originate and operate, but (b) that such strata do not neatly map onto empirical units of any particular magnitude. Indeed, whether they coincide with the ‘big’ or the ’small’ is contingent and thus there cannot be a ‘micro’-'macro’ problem which is defined exclusively by the relative size of social unity” (Archer 1995: 10).

The relational emergence of different empirical points of analysis is all correct but to speak of it in terms of size is to miss the point. As Archer notes the immediate domain of situated activity could encompass both large scale and micro level units, but either way in the face-to-face interactions we have the most immediate level of mediation of social settings and contextual resources. To be sure, the size analysis, micro/macro, shifts in accordance to the phenomenon in focus but once again this does not negate a domain level of live encounters being the most immediate to whatever is the focus of analysis. In other words, mediation is best understood as collective and thus accomplished – this gives a rich terrain of contingencies and thus differing facets of mediation, from neurological, socialised embodied impulses, subconscious cognition etc. Despite methodological differences with Francois Depelteau’s conception of the structure/agency problematic, his insight on replacing an egocentric perspective is worth noting (he juxtaposes what he terms ‘relationism’ and ‘co-determinism’, though both are very compatible, in terms of the problematic he spells out):

One important goal of relational sociology is to replace the egocentric perspective for a relational perspective, which helps us to see what is occurring by studying transactions. We will see that in the case of M. Archer’s “morphogenetic approach,” the main difference between co-determinism and relational sociology is that the latter takes a relational perspective from the beginning to the end, whereas the former switches from an egocentric one to a relational one during the demonstration. The same comment could be made about P. Berger and T. Luckmann’s social construction of reality and many other co-deterministic theories. (Dépelteau 2005: 63)

Regardless of how Dépelteau terms the ‘co-determinism’ and ‘relationalism’ debate, the egocentric bias of the “morphogenetic approach” follows from Archer’s analytical focus on mediation from a restricted reflexive imperative and without adequate consideration of myriad influences in the “domains of collective experience and social interaction” (Tilly, cited in Dépelteau 2005).

THIS is a continuation from a previous introductory post, the objective here is to briefly review Derek Layder’s critique of Elias and then, in a future post, his noting of Margaret Archer’s neglect of a domain level analysis of size i.e. level of analysis as sociological category. Layder makes the point that Elias, a proponent of process analysis, blurs differences between both objective structure (which has no relative independence apart from individuals) and meaningful intentional acts (individuals are part of chains of interdependence). There is no real objective/subjective dualism, at most the objective conditions, or figurations, arise out of the “processes and structures of interweaving, the figurations formed by the actions of interdependent people” e.g. the rules of a dance sequence may be independent of individuals performing a given dance act but not of acting individuals proper, as if it is some form of abstract mental phenomena. In other words, structures are reducibly performative acts of current individuals, in society, and have no independence apart from these same actors, to quote Elias “… yet on another on another level of awareness one may know perfectly well that societies are composed of individuals, and that individuals can only possess specifically human characteristics such as their abilities to speak, think and live, in and through relationships with other people -”in society”"

As objective conditions and acting individuals are not conceptualised as irreducible, Layder (1986) argues we are left with the following irrevocable conceptual errors – quotes are direct from Layder (1986):

1. “Thus Elias’s usage stands in stark contrast to the idea of interdependencies, for example, in an interactionist context, where the processual relationism is both cause and consequence of interactional emergents which are articulated through the meaning conferring, interpretive skills of intentional, self-reflexive social actors. This is the great strength of the phenomenological and interactionist schools; their concern with the nature and consequences of intentional social action. Whilst he often covers himself by making nominal reference to intentions, in actuality Elias is concerned with people only from the point of view of their being links in chains of interdependence. The only things that could be said to ‘act’ are the never shifting balances of power between people.”
2. The notion of the reproduction of social relations as a theoretical problem – “In this respect Elias’s position leads to a strange conception of social ontology which suggests that whilst change and process are ubiquitous and ever present in figurations of individuals, there are no relatively enduring external structures whose rates of change and mechanisms of change are relatively independent of these figurations … In short, Elias provides no reason to accept that all aspects of social reality change at the same rate, and for the same reasons as figurational changes”

Regarding the first point, the implication being “the ‘person’ as an individual with a unique psychobiography and self-identity is submerged in social process virtually without trace” After all, with no barriers or distinctions between the social world and the individual, lest we reify/reduce individuals to core psychological and cognitive states, the relative endurance of cognitive conditions (e.g. consider the examples psychosis, autism etc.), we will not be able to adequately consider the influence, among many influences, of the cognitive neurosciences and how they give for a unique individual mediation and intersection “with the dynamics of particular situations and the influence of wider social contexts to determine a person’s behaviour” (Layder 2005: 148). Further, interactionist approaches, though confirming and affirming causal powers to the acting individual, as “are articulated through the meaning conferring, interpretive skills of intentional, self-reflexive social actors”, are prone to acknowledging these powers as derivative of an already social identity. Thus the filter is reduced to an utterly socialised self – the dynamics of the situation rely on the common stock of conceptual interpretive schemes. Thus the importance of drawing the lines between the inner world and its external environment is twofold:

1. In the reflexive mediation and interpretation of this world, that can only be processed through an individual consciousness i.e. motivation & intentionality (Dewey’s reflex arc);
2. An a-social cognitive framework that is not a mere derivative of its sociality but irreducible and relatively independent of any intersubjectivity. I will argue in a future post that this pre-disposition, while not reflexive awareness proper, influences  a unique reflexive capacity or aboutness i.e. we can only have a mind with a prior social self but this mind is not exclusively formed (as Mead would argue) in reference to an objective ‘Me’. For example, Mead states “That is, it is only as the individual finds himself acting with reference to himself as he acts towards others, that he becomes a subject to himself rather than an object, and only as he is affected by his own social conduct in the manner in which he is affected by that of others, that he becomes an object to his own social conduct. The differences in our memory presentations of the “I” and the “me” are those of the memory images of the initiated social conduct and those of the sensory responses thereto.” However, between images of initiated social conduct and the sensory response thereto are filtering, irreducible and relationally emergent mechanisms – these affect how meaning is perceived. An encompassing explanatory power requires that we take this into account (why do people behave as they do in social situations cannot be reduced or made an epiphenomenon of sociality), as an influencing factor on the dynamics of the situation and the influence of wider social context. Again, this will be further investigated in a future post on domain level analysis.

Second, and this follows directly from above – the interplay between individual and objective condition (or figurations of interdependence). Can we conceptualise social products and their emergence, over time and subsequent reproduction (morphostasis), as reducible to those acting them in social life? We have facts about the act, performance and rules but nothing about why they appear as they do (agentic mediation) or why they exist in that form (objective structure, including possession of power and privilege – Elias conceptualises power in terms of relational power ratios but not as quantity of relatively enduring structures of power, that are static and relatively independent of the incumbent occupiers of roles e.g. teacher and student). As there is no distinction we lose the explanatory powers of “interpretive skills of intentional, self-reflexive social actors.” (e.g. in individualist approaches) or the idea of social structure as relatively autonomous, pre-existent of current performers and causally efficacious. If there is no interplay, as there is no distinction, it follows we cannot adequately explain both the mediation of structure and the figuring of structure upon this mediation. Hence we can make two points that are neglected (1) continued emergence in terms of reproduction and hence its temporal pre-existence; (2) Its future tense emergence in terms of transformation. Thus Layder makes the insightful point that Elias was caught up in a sophisticated form of empiricism i.e. the simultaneously of present figurations (the observable phenomena that is process) but without the historicity of emergence that requires the recognition of underlying mechanisms of a stratified conception of both objective sociality and its mediating agency.

In the next post, I wish to consider the situation as mediating, rather than the internal conversation as reflexivity, as stated by Archer. I believe a consideration of mediation through the situation will open analysis to a much more richer terrain and considers the nature of face-to-face encounters and both lower and higher levels of embodied sociality. A level analysis complements this approach and this is something I wish to move to next…

Further Reading:

• Understanding Social Theory by Derek Layder
• Social Reality as figuration: A critique of Elias’s conception of sociological analysis by Derek Layder
• Norbert Elias on civilization, power, and knowledge: selected writings by Norbert Elias, Stephen Mennell, Johan Goudsblom

Here is an insightful discussion on N.T. Wright’s critical realism (conversants come from a Reformed background, with a commitment to Cornelius Van Til’s pre-suppositionalism approach to Christian apologetics). I cannot give an opinion on Cornelius Van Til, as I have only recently come across his ideas, so these are running thoughts. This post is born out of an interest in theological contributions on epistemic debates regarding narrative and tradition. After all, these debates could be generalised beyond its immediate context and consider narrative, in its broadest sense. For example, to what extent is knowledge situated and can our psycho-biography, as an onto-genesis, make a pre-suppositionalism unavoidable and thus, from a Reformed perspective, unable to commit to God or good, as autonomous free will? If that is the case, then this pre-supposes that our fallen nature cannot account for itself, and the purposes it seeks for itself – we do not choose God but are converted and this conversion is a sovereign act.

In a sense this is theology gone sociological, it accounts for human agency and it understands its dis-capacity as a bondage to sin (an inherited nature posit has a transcendental element but still made effectual inter-subjectively) embodied within a social trajectory. If that is the case, then the social worlds we create are fallen and any attempt to transcend this matrix, through constructing our own meta-narratives, unleashes only further misery, as we seek apart from God what can never be achieved – human knowledge can never relate to the world as it really is.

Pre-suppositionalism fits with Calvin’s conception of sovereign grace and more seeks to provide sociological insights, within a theocentric system. The problem with Critical Realism? It still assumes an autonomous man, that can judge and commit. This approach, I believe, though not one of the hard ‘bible told me so’ pre-suppositional approaches, remains circular . First it assumes to know the world as it is, including the Will of God and His works and then negates its epistemic standpoint. How do we reach this conclusion, if we have no capacity to? Even Common grace, as bestowed, is sovereign and the knowledge it gives to, is at most restraining. In other words, it commits an epistemic fallacy, by negation – a self-defeating posit. Perhaps it is the work of effectual grace, the elect are privy to this, but again in what way is this made known? Experientially?

I am currently reading Professor Derek Layder’s social theory textbook – ‘Understanding Social Theory‘ and find his approach refreshing (strongly methodological, with a focus on debates and influences of different theorists). I am particularly interested in the later chapters that tackle the issue of linking macro/micro and structure/agency. His critique of Elias for neglecting the dynamics of the situation as an important link, (he argues Elias blurs this difference with his focus on chains of interdependence i.e. figuration as “a structure of mutually oriented and dependent people” ) is something very insightful. I’ll post about this topic next, as Margaret Archer’s concept of the internal conversation is very relevant (the internal conversation being reflexivity itself – thus analytically distinct from the alien unplanned process. If we are left with chains of mutual interdepence, we forget that these chains do not ultimately explain how the individual herself is a process or even trace socio-genesis, something Elias strongly affirms with his repudiation of the idea of a closed personality).

“Habermas himself does not provide a genuine account of the mediation of individual and society, because he solves the problem, at least in principle, in advance through the pre-established harmony between an already linguistic un-conscious and an intersubjective social world. The problem of mediation only arises when there is a sufficient difference to be mediated. Habermas, in short, purchases the mediation between psyche and society by de-radicalizing Freud’s notion of the unconscious. Habermas is correct in arguing that “language functions as a kind of transfomer” which draws the individual into the intersubjective social world. But it does not do so without a residuum of private in-itselfness – without which we would all be pre-coordinated clones – and it is this residuum that does not adequately appear in Habermas’ account.”

Source: Intersubjectivity and the Monadic Core of the Psyche: Habermas and Castoriadis on the Unconsious by Joel Whitebook