Abstract
This chapter will argue that replacing the established focus on social institutions with a focus on constitutive orders of interaction has important implications for Ethics. Treating “social” facts as if they were “natural” facts has resulted in a focus on concepts in place of practices. Treating social facts as “instituted” has resulted in a conception of social order as contingent and of morality as relative to particular social institutional arrangements. However, social institutions are in almost all cases comprised of sets of rules for constructing and maintaining inequalities that are not moral in any general sense. A conception of constitutive order changes this. If the crucial social objects (including self) are understood as social and not natural objects, and their fragile character and dependence on constitutive orders for their existence (rather than on institutions) is accepted, then the whole question of morality and its relationship to society is changed. A relationship usually viewed as both relative and merely pragmatic (or functional) is recast in terms that transcend the particulars of institutionalized social arrangements, consummating a social contract position. There are implications not only for Ethics, but for a conception of democratic society in a context of modernity and diversity.
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Notes
- 1.
My research has focused on this boundary between institutional and constitutive interaction order (see especially Rawls 1987, 1990, 2009 for theoretical discussions). Whereas most scholars treat problematic interactions between groups as arising because of institutional and cultural differences that interfere, I find interaction between persons self-identified with different racial/cultural groups can go along just fine until some failure of reciprocity (which may or may not be category relevant) occurs. In collaborative research with Gary David on interaction between Black and Arab identified persons in convenience stores instances of interaction that began in the ordinary way with displays of mutual reciprocity and then quickly deteriorated into yelling categories at one another post a reciprocity failure were documented (Rawls and David 2006). Rawls (2000) explores similar issues with Black/White identified interaction. In this case the argument is that oppression over time affects the form of reciprocity relations in such significant ways that they may not be recognizable across groups. My earlier work focused on master/slave interaction as a limiting case. More recent research tracks the effects of different theoretical/ontological commitments on the ability of system design engineers to make sense together. Institutional differences in belief result in mismatched turnpairs, misunderstanding, anger and the imputing of motives.
- 2.
- 3.
Because Durkheim was challenging the philosophical approach to the question he used the words “la moralité” and “justice” to refer to transcendent morality in place of the word “ethics” which is associated with philosophy. See Durkheim’s “homo-duplex” article for an elaboration of this argument.
- 4.
Games might appear to escape this distinction. But, I think it is clear that we acknowledge two sorts of play – even within the same game. Professional sports for instance have clear hierarchies (coaches, umpires/referees, owners, managers, etc.) and rule books. But, we still refer to the spirit of the game and sportsmanship as issues embodying an egalitarian reciprocity that we treat as standing at the heart of what we think of as what the game is really about. We admire most those players who express this sense of fairplay in their play in spite of the heavy institutional overlay. In some fundamental sense their achievement is what we collectively aspire to in everyday interaction.
- 5.
Speakers will sometimes turn to persons nearby who may have overheard their conversation and apologize (for swearing, or loudness, etc.) But, these accounts display attentiveness to matters of institutionalized social convention – to matters of culture and shared belief – not to the reciprocal demands of constitutive interaction orders. Similarly, people may in their ordinary talk produce accounts for institutional matters. The appearance of such accounts in ordinary talk does not mean that they are accounts for constitutive action.
- 6.
See Durkheim’s Lectures on pragmatism (1913–1914) for a longer discussion of this problem than appears in the Division of Labor. See also Rawls (1997) for a discussion of those lectures.
- 7.
Marriages and presidents are institutional social facts, greetings and questions are facts of constitutive orders (except in ritual settings).
- 8.
See Rawls (1989) for an extended early discussion of this misunderstanding.
- 9.
Marx, like Durkheim, does not distinguish between institutional order and interaction order. But, in extensive passages a focus on interactional processes suggests that he recognized the importance of direct mutual face to face relations. In the analysis of money and labor, for instance, in the 1844 Manuscripts, one of the main arguments is that money becomes a third party, a buffer, in relationships between subjects preventing the direct mutuality and sense of honor that was possible in unmediated exchanges.
- 10.
The word “Trust” is important and Garfinkel’s atypical use has led to confusion. Trust in Garfinkel’s sense is not a state of mind or a feeling. It does not indicate an attitude toward a person. Rather, it is a state of mutual commitment to a practice. Participants stand toward one another in a state of mutual trust regardless of any uneasy feelings they may have about one another unless or until the mutual intelligibility of the practice fails. Because of the importance of the idea I have suggested that the word not be translated. The French translation of “trust” as “confiance” for instance does not convey the idea.
- 11.
Institutions were described by Mills (1940) as comprising “vocabularies of motive” or “accounts.” Persons acting within institutional settings are constrained to choose institutionally acceptable accounts or justifications for their actions. Both the practice of asking for accounts and the practice of giving accounts are different in ordinary interactional settings. Furthermore, the preference orders (discussed later in this chapter) work to make it unnecessary to either ask for or give an account in ordinary interaction. There is no such avoidance mechanism available to formal institutional orders. Thus, in ordinary talk, when a person is asked to provide a justification, the occasion for the justification is a failure to adequately anticipate the demand: that is, a failure of either mutual attention or interactional competence (Rawls 1977 unpublished). Because of this, treating justifications as moral reasoning is somewhat problematic.
- 12.
The interaction order in an institutional context does change. But, the institutional framework itself stays the same.
- 13.
In fact, studies show that when changes do occur they often result in the opposite of what the “reform” was intended to achieve. For example, mandatory gun control laws resulted in lower arrest rates, not because of a drop in gun use, but because police were unwilling to subject the largely middle class, white, married and employed offenders to long mandatory jail terms. When Massachusetts and Oregon first passed such laws, arrests for guns dropped to almost nothing while there was a correspondingly huge increase in arrests for other more minor offences. Research showed that police were exercising other options involving more minor charges. The same thing occurred with mandatory sentences for drink driving (DUI). They justified this in terms of their own moral conviction that a mandatory year in jail was not a just sentence for these men. Meanwhile politicians claimed that passing the law had gotten rid of guns and were re-elected.
- 14.
Garfinkel wrote out an argument regarding constitutive orders of interaction in his 1948 manuscript, now published as Seeing Sociologically, 2006. Goffman had read this manuscript and urged Garfinkel to publish, but he would not; a lifelong problem that will be familiar to those close to Garfinkel over the years. So it was left to Goffman to first introduce the argument that there is a separate order of interaction. My own early work dating from 1974 also made use of the term Interaction order. Goffman’s approach to making this argument through a focus on the presentation of self alone is however distinctive and original in spite of the similarities. Garfinkel and I both placed a greater emphasis on mutual intelligibility. It was only in 2002, when early documents from Garfinkel’s archive came into my possession and I was able to talk with Garfinkel about them that I realized the degree of collaboration which had actually occurred between the two beginning in the early 1950s and understood the extent to which Garfinkel’s earlier unpublished work, which Goffman had read and discussed with him, also outlined a general sociology based on studies of interaction.
- 15.
Durkheim’s argument focused on this problem of inequality. In traditional societies it was ritual forms and shared beliefs that maintained social solidarity. There is a limit to the inequities that will support such systems over time. In modern societies the social forms are more fragile and the requirements of equity much greater. But, the short-term tolerance of inequality by social institutions is also almost without limit.
- 16.
See Durkheim on Rousseau in Montesquieu and Rousseau (1960), the first of his two required theses for the doctorate at the Sorbonne.
- 17.
Garfinkel’s “Trust” argument was actually the earlier of the two arguments, dating from at least as early as 1948. But, like most of his work, it was published later.
- 18.
I owe this particular framing of the problem to Peter Manning whose early unpublished manuscript “society as a game of games” I hope someday to see in print.
- 19.
Evans (2009) has recently published an article in which he elaborates a synthesis of speech act theory, Wittgenstein and Garfinkel. In that paper he draws an evocative analogy between dance and talk. He cites a dancer who described the act of walking as “falling while walking”. Meaning that a person with their foot in the air is in some sense falling and then catching themselves again when they put their foot down. He pointed out that it could be useful to view communication as being something like this. Making a move that involves putting a foot out there – a move that does not achieve mutual intelligibility until it receives a mutually ratified interpretation. Mutual intelligibility is an achievement that requires work. It is not given in an institution called language that people can master, or concepts that they can learn.
- 20.
My own early papers explored this idea that the interaction order places limits on institutional inequality. My later work on race inequality is documentation of that argument and supports the claim that where inequality is severe, sensemaking becomes difficult to impossible.
- 21.
This is one reason why an institutional context that limits the interchangeability of positions introduces the possibility of greater inequality. It also makes sense of Durkheim’s argument that self-regulating practices are not compatible with institutional constraint because they only work under conditions of justice.
- 22.
For some reason my argument in this regard is often interpreted to mean that there is no morality in modern society. The problem turns on the mistaken equation of norms and values with morality. Attempts to rescue Durkheim from my interpretation that take this view tend to treat his argument with regard to traditional society as if it applied to modern society. Durkheim did not argue that morality erodes in modern society. He argued that some form of morality is always necessary. But, the required morality can no longer be supplied by shared norms and values in a modern differentiated society. Therefore it must have some other basis. Durkheim argued that the new basis of morality is self-regulating practices and they require not just morality, but something more universal that we call justice.
- 23.
This may explain why “talking proper” is sometimes made as a complaint about members of closely knit groups.
- 24.
That some minorities who are consistently discriminated against refuse to acknowledge such othering constructions of self is a phenomenon in its own right. It is courageous. But renders them functional non-persons to the general public. Waverly Duck and I explore this idea in an unpublished paper “Fractured Reflections in the Looking Glass.”
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Albert Ogien, Louis Quere, L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociale, the Marcel Mauss Institute, and the City of Paris International Scholars Program for supporting my work on this chapter through a Senior Scholar “Laureate” appointment 2009–2010. The interest of Louis Quere, Albert Ogien, Michel de Fornel and Bernard Conein in matters of constitutive order over some 40 years has been crucial to the development of studies of constitutive order in France. I thank Albert Ogien and Sandra Laugier for invitations to speak and for facilitating translations and publications. Lorenza Mondada was indispensible on my first trip to Paris in 2003. There have been many earlier versions of this argument over the years and I am indebted in particular to Randy Collins, Norbert Wiley, David Maines, Norman Denzin, and Peter Manning for early support and encouragement. Fran Waksler introduced me to Harold Garfinkel who has been a sustaining critic and touchstone over many years. In a serious way it all began with his insights and their intersection with Goffman. Jeff Coulter introduced me to the philosophical debate on the issues. Alisdair MacIntyre, John Findlay, Tom McCarthy, Erazhim Kohak, Kurt Wolff, and Bernard Elevitch taught me philosophy. From Tom I learned about Habermas. Doug Maynard read and commented on early versions when I was at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the 1980s and has been a friend and colleague for many years. Anthony Giddens during a visit to Boston in the early 1980s challenged me to demonstrate that in constitutive orders mutual intelligibility does indeed fail when interactional reciprocities (equalities) fail. I hope that I have taken up this challenge. As always my debt to Peter Manning is incalculable.
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Rawls, A.W. (2010). Social Order as Moral Order. In: Hitlin, S., Vaisey, S. (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of Morality. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6896-8_6
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