Social Morphogenesis Margaret S. Archer Editor Morphogenesis and the Crisis of Normativity Morphogenesis and the Crisis of Normativity [email protected] Social Morphogenesis Series Editor: MARGARET S. ARCHER Centre for Social Ontology, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Aims and scope: To focus upon ‘social morphogenesis’ as a general process of change is very different from examining its particular results over the last quarter of a century. This series ventures what the generative mechanisms are that produce such intense change and discusses how this differs from late modernity. Contributors examine if an intensification of morphogenesis (positive feedback that results in a change in social form) and a corresponding reduction in morphostasis (negative feedback that restores or reproduces the form of the social order) best captures the process involved. The series consists of 5 volumes derived from the Centre for Social Ontology’s annual workshops “From Modernity to Morphogenesis” at the University of Lausanne, headed by Margaret Archer. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11959 [email protected] Margaret S. Archer Editor Morphogenesis and the Crisis of Normativity 123 [email protected] Editor Margaret S. Archer Centre for Social Ontology University of Warwick Coventry, UK This volume IV follows the book “Social Morphogenesis”, edited by Margaret S. Archer, which was the first book in the series published in 2013 http://www.springer.com/social+ sciences/book/978-94-007-6127-8, the volume “Late Modernity”, edited by Margaret S. Archer, published in 2014 and the volume “Generative Mechanisms Transforming the Social Order”, edited by Margaret S. Archer, published in 2015. ISSN 2198-1604 ISSN 2198-1612 (electronic) Social Morphogenesis ISBN 978-3-319-28438-5 ISBN 978-3-319-28439-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-28439-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016939118 © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland [email protected] Independent Social Research Foundation With thanks to the ISRF for its ongoing funding of the Centre for Social Ontology under whose auspices this annual volume of the Book Series on Social Morphogen- esis is published v [email protected] [email protected] Contents 1 Introduction: Does Social Morphogenesis Threaten the Rule of Law? ............................................................ 1 Margaret S. Archer Part I The Great Normative Transformations 2 The Great Normative Changes of the Twentieth Century ............. 31 Douglas Porpora 3 Reflexive Secularity: Thoughts on the Reflexive Imperative in a Secular Age ............................................... 49 Philip S. Gorski 4 Emergence, Development and Death: Norms in International Society .................................................... 69 Colin Wight 5 The Normative Texture of Morphogenic Society: Tensions, Challenges, and Strategies ................................................. 87 Andrea M. Maccarini Part II Morphogenesis and the Decline of Normative Consensus 6 In Letter and in Spirit: Social Morphogenesis and the Interpretation of Codified Social Rules ......................... 113 Ismael Al-Amoudi 7 Anormative Social Regulation: The Attempt to Cope with Social Morphogenesis ................................................ 141 Margaret S. Archer vii [email protected] viii Contents 8 Joint ‘Anormative’ Regulation from Status Inconsistency: A Multilevel Spinning Top Model of Specialized Institutionalization ......................................................... 169 Emmanuel Lazega 9 The Fragile Movements of Late Modernity.............................. 191 Mark Carrigan Part III Morphogenesis and What Makes for Changes in Normativity 10 The Relational Understanding of the Origin and Morphogenetic Change of Social Morality ......................... 219 Pierpaolo Donati 11 Collective Practices and Norms ........................................... 249 Tony Lawson 12 Ethics from Systems: Origin, Development and Current State of Normativity ........................................................ 279 Wolfgang Hofkirchner [email protected] Chapter 1 Introduction: Does Social Morphogenesis ThreatentheRuleofLaw? Margaret S. Archer The Problem Do shared values promote social stability and social integration, or is it the other way round? Is it rather that social stability fosters normative consensus about the legitimacy of the rule of law, the appropriateness of prevailing rules and attachment to existing conventions? This question has a long history in the philosophy of law and the sociology of development, whose respective thinkers often took different positions during the Twentieth century. What they did agree upon was that the lack of social change was conducive to both an unchallenged rule of law and to shared values embedded in established custom and common beliefs. In short, morphostasis was the precondition of a harmonious relationship between legal validity and normative consensus in society – whichever way round it was held to work. When novel practices become rife – at work, in the family, through geographical mobility, a multinational global economy and the digitalization of the life-world in general – is it possible to establish a new corpus of laws, norms and rules, given that intense morphogenesis denies the durability of any new stable context? This spells a crisis for normative regulation, for social integration and for social stability alike, which is the theme of this volume. These three factors, ‘social normativity’, ‘social integration’ and ‘social regu- lation’ (NIR)1 are ineluctably interdependent. What legal philosophers and social 1This is a specific instance of the more general maxim SAC, where adequate explanations need to make reference to Structure, Culture and Agency. Here N D C, I D AandRD S. M.S. Archer () Centre for Social Ontology, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 1 M.S. Archer (eds.), Morphogenesis and the Crisis of Normativity, Social Morphogenesis, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-28439-2_1 [email protected] 2 M.S. Archer theorists can differ about (though this is not always the case) is which of the three has causal primacy, if any.2 In the beginning, what was always the case in both disciplines was joint endorsement of the imperative: ‘NIR must cohere’. As social change increased and intensified throughout the twentieth century, fundamentally NIR came apart in the two sets of hands. A critique of this ‘fragmentation’ is what basically unites the contributions to the present volume. They can be read partly as diagnoses of the loss of NIR as morphostasis gave way to morphogenesis, and partly as prognoses about the possibility of its restoration in morphogenic society. Legal Validity and Social Solidarity: Their Common Anchorage in Normativity Law is not true or false but ‘valid’ or ‘invalid’ and social solidarity is not true or false but rather existent or non-existent. In both cases, the task for theorists was similar: to establish upon what legal ‘validity’ and social ‘solidarity’ turned, that is, what accounted for their bindingness? The answers were not dissimilar until the period with which we deal, roughly 1980 onwards. In shorthand, the joint response was ‘shared normativity’, or what I once called ‘The Myth of Cultural Integration’ (Archer 1985), fostered by the early anthropologists, i.e. a common cultural conspectus amongst those sharing much the same life, resources and knowledge as one another. In this respect, Parsons and Kelsen can be considered as twin giants who placed the same holistic importance on shared normativity as the apriorifor social solidarity as for legal validity. On the one hand, Parsons’ elaborate theory, built by climbing on Durkheim’s shoulders, retained as its corner stone the necessity of shared normativity in any functioning social unit. However, this ceased to be problematic within his ‘normative functionalism’ – unlike the ‘pathologies of the division of labour’ that had so exercised Durkheim and prompted him to emphasise the urgency of remedial measures in the form of practical social policy interventions.