Generative Mechanisms Transforming the Social Order

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

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2. Introduction: Other Conceptions of Generative Mechanisms and Ours

   • Margaret S. Archer

   Pages 1-24

3. Conceptualising Mechanisms

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 25-25

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   2. Causal Mechanisms: Lessons from the Life Sciences

      • Philip S. Gorski

      Pages 27-48

   3. Mechanisms and Models: Some Examples from International Relations

      • Colin Wight

      Pages 49-64

   4. Social Mechanisms and Their Feedbacks: Mechanical vs Relational Emergence of New Social Formations

      • Pierpaolo Donati

      Pages 65-92

4. Venturing Morphogenetic Mechanisms

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 93-93

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   2. “Mechanisms” at Work in Information Society

      • Wolfgang Hofkirchner

      Pages 95-112

   3. Body Captors and Network Profiles: A Neo-structural Note on Digitalized Social Control and Morphogenesis

      • Emmanuel Lazega

      Pages 113-133

   4. How Agency Is Transformed in the Course of Social Transformation: Don’t Forget the Double Morphogenesis

      • Margaret S. Archer

      Pages 135-157

   5. Turbulence and Relational Conjunctures: The Emergence of Morphogenic Environments

      • Andrea M. Maccarini

      Pages 159-181

5. Mechanisms and Morphostasis: Powers of Life or Death

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 183-183

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   2. Why Don’t Things Change? The Matter of Morphostasis

      • Douglas V. Porpora

      Pages 185-203

   3. The Modern Corporation: The Site of a Mechanism (of Global Social Change) that Is Out-of-Control?

      • Tony Lawson

      Pages 205-230

   4. Death Contested: Morphonecrosis and Conflicts of Interpretation

      • Ismael Al-Amoudi, John Latsis

      Pages 231-248

This volume examines how generative mechanisms emerge in the social order and their consequences. It does so in the light of finding answers to the general question posed in this book series: Will Late Modernity be replaced by a social formation that could be called Morphogenic Society? This volume clarifies what a ‘generative mechanism’ is, to achieve a better understanding of their social origins, and to delineate in what way such mechanisms exert effects within a current social formation, either stabilizing it or leading to changes potentially replacing it . The book explores questions about conjuncture, convergence and countervailing effects of morphogenetic mechanisms in order to assess their impact. Simultaneously, it looks at how products of positive feedback intertwine with the results of (morphostatic) negative feedback. This process also requires clarification, especially about the conditions under which morphostasis prevails over morphogenesis and vice versa. It raises the issue as to whether their co-existence can be other than short-lived. The volume addresses whether or not there also is a process of ‘morpho-necrosis’, i.e. the ultimate demise of certain morphostatic mechanisms, such that they cannot ‘recover’. The book concludes that not only are generative mechanisms required to explain associations between variables involved in the replacement of Late Modernity by Morphogenic Society, but they are also robust enough to account for cases and times when such variables show no significant correlations.

• A Process of Morpho-Necrosis
• Causal Mechanisms
• Conflicts of Interpretation
• Emergence of Morphogenic Environments
• Generative Mechanisms
• Institutional Entrepreneurship and Morphogenesis
• Mechanism of Social Change
• Mechanisms and International Relationships
• Mechanisms and Life Sciences
• Multilevel Networks in Social Processes
• Social Morphogenesis
• Social Morphogenesis and Morphostatis
• Understanding Social Origins

• Department of Sociology, University of Warwick Centre for Social Ontology, Coventry, United Kingdom

  Margaret S. Archer

Margaret Archer heads the project at EPFL 'From Modernity to Morphogenesis'. She was elected as the first woman President of the International Sociological Association at the 12th World Congress of Sociology. She is a founder member of both the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences and is a trustee of the Centre for Critical Realism. She studied at the University of London, graduating B.Sc. in 1964 and Ph.D. in 1967 with a thesis on The Educational Aspirations of English Working Class Parents. She was a lecturer at the University of Reading from 1966 to 1973. She is one of the most influential theorists in the critical realist tradition. At the 12th World Congress of Sociology, she was elected as the first woman President of the International Sociological Association, is a founder member of both the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences. She is a Trustee of the Centre for Critical Realism.

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