Social Dynamics

Abstract

So far we have ignored the dynamic or time-varying aspects of actions — their growth, fluctuations, and change. The only exception to this is our discussion of action complexes in Chapter 3. There we defined a proceeding as a temporally ordered sequence of activities and stressed the role of organizations of Lindenmayer type in the generation and analysis or proceedings. However, such organizations do not by themselves suffice to account for the dynamic aspects of actions. Norms, which are the constituents of organizations, must be combined with other elements if they are to affect conduct in the way decided and prescribed. For example, a norm, as we know, attaches a task to a condition and it is evident that the norm subject must be informed that the condition obtains, if the norm is to be applied and action modified in accordance with the norm. In this chapter we shall study the factors whose combinations produce growth, fluctuation and change as components of feedback systems. Thus the central concept of cybernetics, namely that of an information-feedback control loop, will dominate our exposition in this chapter. The emphasis will be on the dynamic aspects of interactions and, hence, on the dynamic aspects of actions in the context of social systems; ‘social dynamics’ seems an appropriate indication of this form of interest.