Emergence Of Social Systems Research Articles

“The obligation of a promise” as a problem of double contingency: David Hume's ground‐breaking investigation into basic forms of social coordination

AbstractDavid Hume's work on “the obligation of promises” is the precursor of many ideas in contemporary sociology. Hume's analysis provides insight into problems of basic social coordination, which in modern theories are characterized as a problem of double contingency. His work has also paved the way for theories of social mechanisms such as trust and of operational principles such as self‐reference. In his writings about the inner workings of promises, Hume even lays the foundation for ideas concerning structure building via communication and the emergence of social systems. In his time, this kind of thinking must have been bold—arguing, for example, against religious beliefs or social contracts as constituting binding motives. In our time, Hume's work is astonishing in how nuanced he already exposed social problems that have to be solved continuously, from moment‐to‐moment, in every social situation anew. Hume's thinking paves the way for later system thinking, especially regarding the ways we can think about the “beginning” of social systems.

The Vodou Ethic and the Spirit of Communism: The Practical Consciousness of the African People of Haiti by Paul C. Mocombe

The Vodou Ethic and Spirit of Communism: The Practical Consciousness of African People of Haiti. By Paul C. Mocombe. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2016. ISBN 978-0-7618-6702-9. 147 pp. $28.99.Review by Ama MazamaThis book, comprising five chapters, presents itself as a structural Marxist analysis of Vodou in Haitian society, with ultimate purpose of applying author's own phenomenological structural sociology (6) to Vodou. Thus, unsurprisingly, and typical of most works couched in European paradigms, The Vodou Ethic and Spirit of Communism is articulated around principal dichotomies. The first one opposes Haitians to African people worldwide, with strange claim that Haiti is only place in world where Africans have rejected European cultural values and held on to African culture. Indeed, according to author, the majority of black people in Africa and African diaspora, contemporarily, internalize and recursively reorganize a European way of life as black (other) agents of Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism seeking equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their former white colonizers (32). On contrary, he continues,the majority of Africans on island maintained their African structuring structure [sic], what I am calling here Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism social class language game, which they reified as nature of reality as such via language of Kreyol; ideology of Vodou; its ideological apparatuses, i.e., lakous, peristyles, ounfo, Iwa yo, herbal medicine, songs, dances, and zombification; and modes of production, i.e., komes, husbandry, and subsistence agriculture. (33)The second dichotomy, within Haiti, opposes bourgeoisie to masses. This results in emergence of social systems: one is structured by Catholic/Protestant ethic and its spirit of capitalism and is embraced by bourgeoisie; other revolves around Vodou ethic and its spirit of communism and is sustained by masses. Bois Caiman, we are told, was defining moment when masses decided to hold on to African worldview, including Vodou. The author argues particularly adamantly against any notion of syncretism, creolite, or hybridity in Vodou. The images of white saints with which Vodou iconography is replete were simply, according to Mocombe, a strategy used by ougan-yo and manbo-yo to familiarize and re-Africanize those Haitians who were leaving plantation and who knew very little about Vodou while being well versed in Christianity due to their proximity to Europeans and their subsequent embrace of European culture (91). Those images were to facilitate their transition back into African culture. The conflicts that have marred Haitian history, author affirms, are ultimately caused by clashes between European and African cultures, between Catholicism/ Protestantism and Vodou and agents and worldviews that sustain them.Here, Mocombe is introducing Cheikh Anta Diop's two cradle theory, which argues that an abundant African environment produced a culture of sharing and peacefulness on African continent, while an environment marked by scarcity produced European aggressiveness and individualism-and, ultimately, capitalism. Such a twist is a bit surprising, to say least, coming from a self-professed Marxist. …

Reply to critics

The author of Critical Theory of Legal Revolutions discusses three major fields of objection against his outline of an evolutionary theory of public and international law. In the first part he discusses problems of action theory. There are at issue, first, the role of negation and moral resentment for the constitution of a normatively relevant social praxis, then the emergence of social systems within and from the context of the life-world, and the relation of revolutionary and gradual learning processes. The second part discusses the relation of his theory to postcolonial and feminist studies. Finally, the debate centers in part III on the dialectic of Enlightenment. The problem of alienation and negativity is at stake, closely related to the negative aesthetic of law and the intertwinement of repression and emancipation within the legal form. In the end, it is an open question if we today still can rely on the negative aesthetic and hidden utopian form of law, or if we have already fallen back to constitutional kitsch and façade.

Explorations on the Notion of Legal Tolerance

This article builds on the notion of legal tolerance and analyzes the scope of its definition. It situates the notion in the complex set of relations occurring between the major systems of society. Generally, legal tolerance, as a concept, is understood in light of the possibilities of the legal system of influencing other major systems’ responses. On the other hand, tolerance is also the response of the legal system in respect to other major systems’ communications. Although there is a common understanding of tolerance as “under punishing bias” in criminology or as political tolerance in political science,1 the focus of this article is different. The central points here are, first, the analysis of legal tolerance as part of systemic communications and, second, the historicity of the transformations of the nation-state in its ability to cope with the growth of separate, distinct and partial systems of society. Tolerance seems relational and raises questions such as: “How much can the legal system tolerate?” And also, “Which societal topics belong to the social system's domain-matter?” These questions are relevant given that the concept of legal tolerance depends on the possibilities of a given system to steer, to direct or to influence other major systems’ behavior, or to resist, respond or to address other systems, which are in its environment. The concept of legal tolerance requires an analysis of a cluster of related definitions to assess the implications of the concept. These definitions are the following: (1) The concepts that result from the historical process of structuration and that explain the emergence of social systems. (2) The definition of reflexivity and its relation with the “second order cybernetics dilemma.” This is the place where heuristic and epistemological problems are found. Such problems result from both the problem of representation and from the ontological status of the real. This analysis will show why reflexivity is a key concept to explaining the transformations suffered by such systems. Then, legal tolerance is a newer development in respect to the idea of planning. As an alternative to hard planning, legal tolerance creates a fostering environment. Instead of a single system directing other systems, legal tolerance is relational and created collectively by the organizational national state using its (limited) power of legal creation. Legal tolerance also stems from the concerned subsystems of the society (economy, law, politics, science, along with others) by means of a variety of legislative products, public policies, alliances, and legal and other scientific communications that emerge as coordinating mechanisms among the alluded major subsystems.

Self-Organization and Emergence in Social Systems: Modeling the Coevolution of Social Environments and Cooperative Behavior

We demonstrate with computational simulation scenarios how social environments and individual behavior coevolve and how fundamentally different macro-effects emerge, when separate micromechanisms are combined. Our framework considers social interactions among agents on a spatial grid or in networks. In the Prisoner's Dilemma, neither imitation of more successful strategies nor the migration to more favorable locations can promote cooperation. However, when both microscopic mechanisms are combined, they cause the segregation of cooperators and defectors, and the self-organization of cooperative clusters on the macro-level. These are robust to randomness, while cooperation may break down in a “globalized society.” The implications for the evolution of norms and institutions are discussed.

The Mechanisms of Emergence

This article focuses on emergence in social systems. The author begins by proposing a new tool to explore the mechanisms of social emergence: multi agent–based computer simulation. He then draws on philosophy of mind to develop an account of social emergence that raises potential problems for the methodological individualism of both social mechanism and of multi agent simulation. He then draws on various complexity concepts to propose a set of criteria whereby one can determine whether a given social mechanism generates emergent properties, in the sense that their explanation cannot be reduced to a mechanistic account of individuals and their interactions. This combined account helps to resolve the competing claims of methodological individualists and social realists. The author’s conclusion is that the scope of mechanistic explanation may be limited due to the extreme complexity of many social systems.

The Dialectic of Bottom-up and Top-down Emergence in Social Systems

In this paper we will present a theoretical explanation of the relationship between so-called individual emergence and the emergence of social systems. We want to take as our point of departure the assumption that from the perspective of hierarchical systems theory self-organization on the level of social systems includes a bottom-up process as well as a top-down process. The bottom-up process refers to what in sociology is called agency, the top-down process refers to what is called structure. We will show that it is convenient to suggest that these processes be linked in a dialectical manner. In this respect we will discuss problems of determinism and indeterminism. This is the background against which we will try to clarify the notion of individual emergence. Our rather general considerations will be illustrated by how ideology, that is consciousness in a collective as well as an individual sense, is conceived of by a number of theories and how it should be conceived of when aspects of self-organization are included. We will conclude with a statement that makes clear why consciousness is a property of individuals that emerges only when individuals participate in society and why society emerges only when individuals are endowed with consciousness.

The Dialectic of Bottom-up and Top-down Emergence in Social Systems

In this paper we will present a theoretical explanation of the relationship between so-called individual emergence and the emergence of social systems. We want to take as our point of departure the assumption that from the perspective of hierarchical systems theory self-organization on the level of social systems includes a bottom-up process as well as a top-down process. The bottom-up process refers to what in sociology is called agency, the top-down process refers to what is called structure. We will show that it is convenient to suggest that these processes be linked in a dialectical manner. In this respect we will discuss problems of determinism and indeterminism. This is the background against which we will try to clarify the notion of individual emergence. Our rather general considerations will be illustrated by how ideology, that is consciousness in a collective as well as an individual sense, is conceived of by a number of theories and how it should be conceived of when aspects of self-organization are included. We will conclude with a statement that makes clear why consciousness is a property of individuals that emerges only when individuals participate in society and why society emerges only when individuals are endowed with consciousness.

The Dialectic of Bottom-up and Top-down Emergence in Social Systems

In this paper we will present a theoretical explanation of the relationship between so-called individual emergence and the emergence of social systems. We want to take as our point of departure the assumption that from the perspective of hierarchical systems theory self-organization on the level of social systems includes a bottom-up process as well as a top-down process. The bottom-up process refers to what in sociology is called agency, the top-down process refers to what is called structure. We will show that it is convenient to suggest that these processes be linked in a dialectical manner. In this respect we will discuss problems of determinism and indeterminism. This is the background against which we will try to clarify the notion of individual emergence. Our rather general considerations will be illustrated by how ideology, that is consciousness in a collective as well as an individual sense, is conceived of by a number of theories and how it should be conceived of when aspects of self-organization are included. We will conclude with a statement that makes clear why consciousness is a property of individuals that emerges only when individuals participate in society and why society emerges only when individuals are endowed with consciousness.