Secret Ways : Character Building

Part of Manuel DeLanda's work in Assemblage Theory is his hope to clarify and extend the way that we understand the ontological ideas associated with assemblage. He introduces a puzzling wrinkle into his discussion in this book -- the idea that a concept is "equipped with a variable parameter, the setting of which determines whether the ensemble is coded or decoded" (3). He thinks this is useful because it helps to resolve the impulse towards essentialism in social theory while preserving the validity of the idea of assemblage:

A different problem is that distinguishing between different kinds of wholes involves ontological commitments that go beyond individual entities. In particular, with the exception of conventionally defined types (like the types of pieces in a chess game), natural kinds are equivalent to essences. As we have already suggested, avoiding this danger involves using a single term, 'assemblage', but building into it parameters that can have different settings at different times: for some settings the social whole will be a stratum, for other settings an assemblage (in the original sense). (18)

So "assemblage" does not refer to a natural kind or a social essence, but rather characterizes a wide range of social things, from the sub-individual to the level of global trading relationships. The social entities found at all scales are "assemblages" -- ensembles of components, some of which are themselves ensembles of other components. But assemblages do not have an essential nature; rather there are important degrees of differentiation and variation across assemblages.

By contrast, we might think of the physical concepts of "metal" and "crystal" as functioning as something like a natural kind. A metal is an unchanging material configuration. Everything that we classify as a metal has a core set of physical-material properties that determine that it will be an electrical conductor, ductile, and solid over a wide range of terrestrial temperatures.

A particular conception of an assemblage (the idea of a city, for example) does not have this fixed essential character. DeLanda introduces the idea that the concept of a particular assemblage involves a parameter or knob that can be adjusted to yield different materializations of the given assemblage. An assemblage may take different forms depending on one or more important parameters.

What are those important degrees of variation that DeLanda seeks to represent with "knobs" and parameters? There are two that come in for extensive treatment: the idea of territorialization and the idea of coding. Territorialization is a measure of homogeneity, and coding is a measure of the degree to which a social outcome is generated by a grammar or algorithm. And DeLanda suggests that these ideas function as something like a set of dimensions along which particular assemblages may be plotted.

Here is how DeLanda attempts to frame this idea in terms of "a concept with knobs" (3).

The coding parameter is one of the knobs we must build into the concept, the other being territorialisation, a parameter measuring the degree to which the components of the assemblage have been subjected to a process of homogenisation, and the extent to which its defining boundaries have been delineated and made impermeable. (3)

Later DeLanda returns to this point:

A different problem is that distinguishing between different kinds of wholes involves ontological commitments that go beyond individual entities. In particular, with the exception of conventionally defined types (like the types of pieces in a chess game), natural kinds are equivalent to essences. As we have already suggested, avoiding this danger involves using a single term, 'assemblage', but building into it parameters that can have different settings at different times: for some settings the social whole will be a stratum, for other settings an assemblage (in the original sense). (18)

This is confusing. We normally think of a concept as identifying a range of phenomena; the phenomena are assumed to have characteristics that can be observed, hypothesized, and measured. So it seems peculiar to suppose that the forms of variation that may be found among the phenomena need to somehow be represented within the concept itself.

Consider an example -- a nucleated human settlement (hamlet, village, market town, city, global city). These urban agglomerations are assemblages in DeLanda's sense: they are composed out of the juxtaposition of human and artifactual practices that constitute and support the forms of activity that occur within the defined space. But DeLanda would say that settlements can have higher or lower levels of territorialization, and they can have higher or lower levels of coding; and the various combinations of these "parameters" leads to substantially different properties in the ensemble.

If we take this idea seriously, it implies that compositions (assemblages) sometimes undergo abrupt and important changes in their material properties at critical points for the value of a given variable or parameter.

DeLanda thinks that these ideas can be understood in terms of an analogy with the idea of a phase transition in physics:

Parameters are normally kept constant in a laboratory to study an object under repeatable circumstances, but they can also be allowed to vary, causing drastic changes in the phenomenon under study: while for many values of a parameter like temperature only a quantitative change will be produced, at critical points a body of water will spontaneously change qualitatively, abruptly transforming from a liquid to a solid, or from a liquid to a gas. By analogy, we can add parameters to concepts. Addition these control knobs to the concept of assemblage would allow us to eliminate their opposition to strata, with the result that strata and assemblages (in the original sense) would become phases, like the solid and fluid phases of matter. (19)

These ideas about "knobs", parameters, and codes might be sorted out along these lines. Deleuze introduces two high-level variables along which social arrangements differ -- the degree to which the social ensemble is "territorialized" and the degree to which it is "coded". Ensembles with high territorialization have some characteristics in common; likewise ensembles with low coding; and so forth. Both factors admit of variable states; so we could represent a territorialization measurement as a value between 0 and 1, and likewise a coding measurement.

When we combine this view with DeLanda's suggestion that social ensembles undergo "phase transitions," we get the idea that there are critical points for both variables at which the characteristics of the ensemble change in some important and abrupt way.


W, X, Y, and Z represent the four extreme possibilities of "low coding, low territorialization", "high coding, low territorialization", "high coding, high territorialization", and "low coding, high territorialization". And the suggestion from DeLanda's treatment is that assemblages in these four extreme locations will have importantly different characteristics -- much as solid, liquid, gas, and plasma states of water have different characteristics. (He asserts that assemblages in the "high-high" quadrant are "strata", while ensembles at lower values of the two parameters are "assemblages"; 39.)

Here is a phase diagram for water:


There are five material states represented here, along with the critical values of pressure and temperature at which H20 shifts through a phase transition (solid, liquid, compressible liquid, gaseous, and supercritical fluid). (There is a nice discussion of critical points and phase transitions in Wikipedia (link).)

What is most confusing in the theory offered in Assemblage Theory is that DeLanda appears to want to incorporate the ideas of coding (C) and territorialization (T) into the notation itself, as a "knob" or a variable parameter. But this seems like the wrong way of proceeding. Better would be to conceive of the social entity as an ensemble; and the ensemble is postulated to have different properties as C and T increase. This extends the analogy with phase spaces that DeLanda seems to want to develop. Now we might hypothesize that as a market town decreases in territorialization and coding it moves from the upper right quadrant towards the lower left quadrant of the diagram; and (DeLanda seems to believe) there will be a critical point at which the properties of the ensemble are significantly different. (Again, he seems to say that the phase transition is from "assemblage" to "strata" for high values of C and T.)

I think this explication works as a way of interpreting DeLanda's intentions in his complex assertions about the language of assemblage theory and the idea of a concept with knobs. Whether it is a view that finds empirical or historical confirmation is another matter. Is there any evidence that social ensembles undergo phase transitions as these two important variables increase? Or is the picture entirely metaphorical?

Manuel DeLanda has been a prominent exponent of the theory of assemblage for English-speaking readers for at least ten years. His 2006 book A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity has been discussed numerous times in this blog (link, link, link). DeLanda has now published a new treatment of the subject, Assemblage Theory. As I've pointed out in the earlier discussions, I find assemblage theory to be helpful for sociology and the philosophy of social science because it provides a very appropriate way of conceptualizing the heterogeneity of the social world. The book is well worth discussing.

To start, DeLanda insists that the French term "agencement" has greater semantic depth than its English translation, assemblage. "Assemblage" picks up one part of the meaning of agencement -- the product of putting together a set of heterogeneous parts -- but it loses altogether the implications of process and activity in the French term. He quotes a passage in which Deleuze and Parnet explain part of the meaning of assemblage (agencement) (1):

What is an assemblage? It is a multiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous terms and which establishes liaisons, relations between them, across ages, sexes and reigns -- different natures. This, the assemblage's only unity is that of a co-functioning: it is a symbiosis, a 'sympathy'. It is never filiations which are important, but alliances, alloys; these are not successions, lines of descent, but contagions, epidemics, the wind. (Dialogues II, 69)

This passage from Deleuze and Parnet highlights the core idea of an assemblage bringing together heterogeneous pieces into a new whole. It also signals the important distinction for Deleuze between interiority and exteriority. DeLanda explicates this distinction as indicating the nature of the relations among the elements. "Interior" relations among things are essential, logical, or semantic; whereas exterior relations are contingent and non-essential. Identifying a pair as husband and wife is to identify an interior relation; identifying a pair as a female architect and a male night club bouncer is an exterior relation. This is what Deleuze and Parnet refer to when they refer to alliances, alloys, contagions, epidemics: conjunctions of otherwise independent things or processes.

Let's look at some of the high-level concepts that play an important role in DeLanda's exposition.

Individuals

DeLanda makes the important ontological point that assemblages are individuals: historically unique persistent configurations. "Assemblages have a fully contingent historical identity, and each of them is therefore an individual entity: an individual person, an individual community, an individual organization, an individual city" (19).

All assemblages should be considered unique historical entities, singular in their individuality, not as particular members of a general category. But if this is so, then we should be able to specify the individuation process that gave birth to them. (6)

In other words, the whole [assemblage] is immanent, not transcendent. Communities or organizations are historically individuated entities, as much so as the persons that compose them.... It is not incoherent to speak of individual communities, individual organizations, individual cities, or individual countries. The term 'individual' has no preferential affinity for a particular scale (persons or organisms) but refers to any entity that  is historically unique. (13)

These passages make it clear that the idea of an individual is not restricted to one ontological level (biological human organism), but is rather available at all levels (individual, labor union, farmers' cooperative, city, corporation, army).

Parameters

Several important meta-level distinctions about relations among components of an assemblage arise in DeLanda's exposition. The distinction between relational interiority and exteriority is familiar from his earlier exposition in New Philosophy. Interior relations are conceptual or intrinsic -- uncle to nephew. Exterior relations are contingent -- street vendor to policeman. A second distinction that DeLanda discusses is coded/decoded. This distinction too is developed extensively in New Philosophy. Relations that are substantially fixed by a code -- a grammar, a specific set of rules of behavior, a genetic program -- are said to be coded; relations that are substantially indeterminate and left to the choices of the participants are decoded. A third distinction that DeLanda discusses in Assemblage Theory is that between stratum and assemblage. An assemblage is a concrete particular consisting of heterogeneous parts; a stratum is a more or less uniform group of things (organisms, institutions).

Here is a passage from New Philosophy on the concept of coded relations:

[Organizations] do involve rules, such as those governing turn-taking. The more formal and rigid the rules, the more these social encounters may be said to be coded. But in some circumstances these rules may be weakened giving rise to assemblages in which the participants have more room to express their convictions and their own personal styles. (16)

And in Assemblage Theory:

The coding parameter is one of the knobs we must build into the concept [of assemblage], the other being territorialisation, a parameter measuring the degree to which the components of the assemblage have been subjected to a process of homogenisation, and the extent to which its defining boundaries have been delineated and made impermeable. (3)

(In a later post I will discuss DeLanda's effort to subsume each of these distinctions under the idea of a parameter or "knob" inflecting a particular concept of assemblage (city, linguistic practice). Also of interest there will be DeLanda's effort to understand the ontology of assemblage and stratum in analogy with the idea in physics of a phase space (gas, liquid, solid).)

Emergence

DeLanda believes that assemblage theory depends on the idea of emergence for macro-level properties:

The very first step in this task is to devise a means to block micro-reductionism, a step usually achieved by the concept of emergent properties, the properties of a whole caused by the interactions between its parts. If a social whole has novel properties that emerge from interactions between people, its reduction to a mere aggregate of many rational decision-makers or many phenomenological experiences is effectively blocked. (9)

Notice that this is a weak conception of emergence; the emergent property is distinguished simply by the fact that it is not an aggregation of the properties of the individual components. This does not imply that the property is not derivable from a theory of the properties of the parts and the causal interactions among them. (Several earlier posts have raised questions about the validity of the idea of emergence; link.)

And in fact DeLanda shortly says some surprising things about emergence and the relations between higher-level and lower-level properties:

The property of density, and the capacity to store reputations and enforce norms, are non-reducible properties and capacities of the entire community, but neither involves thinking of it as a seamless totality in which the very personal identity of the members is created by their relations. (11)

Up to the level of national markets the main emergent property of these increasingly larger trading areas is synchronized price movements. Braudel uncovers evidence that average wholesale prices (determined mostly by demand and supply) move up and down in unison within urban regions, provinces, or entire countries. (15)

These are surprising claims as illustrations of emergence, because all of the properties mentioned here are in fact reducible to facts about the properties of individuals and their relations. Density is obviously so; we can derive density by measuring the number of individuals per unit of space. The capacity of a group to store reputations is also a direct consequence of individuals' ability to remember facts about other individuals and communicate their memories to others. The community's representation of "reputation" is nothing over and above this distributed set of beliefs and interactions. And the fact of synchronized price movements over an extended trading area likewise has perfectly visible microfoundations at the individual level: communications and transportation technologies permit traders to take advantage of momentary price differentials in different places, leading to a tendency for all accessible points within the region to reveal prices that are synchronized with each other (modulo the transportation costs that exist between points).

These observations lead me to suspect that the concept of emergence is not doing much real work here. The paraphrase that DeLanda offers as a summary conclusion is correct:

Thus, both 'the Market' and 'the State' can be eliminated from a realist ontology by a nested set of individual emergent wholes operating at different scales. (16)

But this observation does not imply or presuppose the idea of strong emergence.

It seems, then, that we could put aside the language of emergence and rest on the claim that assemblages at various levels have stable properties that can be investigated empirically and historically; there is no need for reduction to a more fundamental level. So assemblage theory is anti-reductionist and is eclectic with regard to the question of levels of the social world. We can formulate concepts of social entities at a wide range of levels and accommodate those concepts to the basic idea of assemblage, and there is no need for seeking out inter-level reductions. But likewise there is no need to insist on the obscure idea of strong emergence.

Assemblage theory and social realism

This treatment of social theory from the point of view of assemblage theory is distinctly friendly to the language of realism. DeLanda argues that assemblages are real, mind-independent, and ontologically stable. Assemblages are in the world and can be treated as independent individual things. Here is a representative statement:

The distinction between a concept and its cases also has an ontological aspect. The concept itself is a product of our minds and would not exist without them, but concrete assemblages must be considered to be fully independent of our minds. This statement must be qualified, because in the case of social assemblages like communities, organizations, and cities, the assemblages would cease to exist if our minds disappeared. So in this case we should say that social assemblages are independent of the content of our minds, that is, independent of the way in which communities, organizations, and cities are conceived. This is just another way of saying that assemblage theory operates within a realist ontology. (138)

The most important transcendent entity that we must confront and eliminate is the one postulated to explain the existence and endurance of autonomous entities: essences. (139)

Both points are crucial. DeLanda emphasizes that social entities (assemblages) are real items in the social world, with a temporally and causally persistent reality; and he denies that the ideas of "essence", "kind", or "inner nature" have a role in science. This is an anti-essentialist realism, and it is a highly appropriate basis for social ontology.

Appraisal

There is much more to discuss in DeLanda's current treatment of assemblage, and I expect to return to other issues in later posts. What I find particularly interesting about DeLanda's current book are the substantive observations DeLanda makes about various historical formations -- cities, governments, modes of production, capitalism. Assemblage theory is of real value for social scientists only if it provides a better vocabulary for describing social entities and causes. And DeLanda's illustrations make a persuasive case for this conclusion.

For example, in discussing Braudel on the difference between markets and capitalism he writes:

These are powerful words. But how can anyone dare to suggest that we must distinguish capitalism from the market economy? These two terms are, for both the left and the right, strictly synonymous. However, a close examination of the history of commercial, financial, and industrial organizations shows that there is indeed a crucial difference, and that ignoring it leads to a distortion of our historical explanations. (41)

This discussion has some significant parallels with the treatment of the modern economy offered by Dave Elder-Vass discussed earlier (link). And DeLanda's closing observation in chapter 1 is quite insightful:

Much of the academic left today has become prey to the double danger of politically targeting reified generalities (Power, Resistance, Capital, Labour) while at the same time abandoning realism. A new left may yet emerge from these ashes but only if it recovers its footing on a mind-independent reality and if it focuses its efforts at the right social scale, that is, if it leaves behind the dream of a Revolution that changes the entire system. This is where assemblage theory may one day make a real difference. (48)

More than the logical exposition of various esoteric concepts associated with assemblage, it is DeLanda's intelligent characterization of various concrete social and historical processes (for example, his extensive discussion of Braudel in chapter 1) that cements the intellectual importance of assemblage theory for historical and social scientific thinking.

Another important virtue of the treatment here is that DeLanda makes a strong case for a social ontology that is both anti-reductionist and anti-essentialist. Social things have properties that we don't need to attempt to reduce to properties of ensembles of components; but social things are not transcendent, essential wholes whose behavior is independent from the activities of the individuals and lower-level configurations of which they consist. Further, this view of social ontology has an important implication that DeLanda explicitly calls out: we need to recognize the fact of downward causation from social configurations (individual assemblages) to the actions of the individuals and lesser configurations of which they consist. A community embodying a set of norms about deference and respectful behavior in fact elicits these forms of behavior in the individuals who make up the community. This is so through the very ordinary fact that individuals monitor each others' behavior and sometimes retaliate when norms are breached. (This was the view of community social power developed several decades ago by Michael Taylor; Community, Anarchy and Liberty.)

We have long given up on the idea that history has direction or a fundamental motor driving change. There are no iron laws of history, and there is no fundamental driver of history, whether market, class struggle, democracy, or "modernization." And there is no single path forward into a more modern world. At the same time, we recognize that history is not random or chaotic, and that there are forces and circumstances that make some historical occurrences more likely than others. "Men make their own history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing" (Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire). So historical process is both contingent and constrained. (Here are several earlier posts on the contingency and causation in history; link, link, link, link, link.)

One of the most insightful historical sociologists in generations is Charles Tilly. He was also tremendously prolific. His volume Roads From Past To Future offers a good snapshot of some of his thinking about contention, social change, and political conflict from the 1970s through the 1990s. The essays are all interesting (including a summary appreciation by Arthur Stinchcombe). Particularly interesting are two chapters on the routinization of political struggle, "The Modernization of Political Conflict in France" and "Parliamentarization in Great Britain, 1758-1834". But especially worthy of comment is the opening essay in which Tilly tries to make sense of his own evolving ideas about social process and social change. And there are some ideas presented there that don't really have counterparts in other parts of the historical sociology literature. As is so commonly true, Tilly demonstrates his basic ability to bring novelty and innovation to social science topics. 

How do we get from past to future? If we are examining complex processes such as industrialization, state formation, or secularization, we follow roads defined by changing configurations of social interaction. Effective social analysis identifies those roads, describes them in detail, specifies what other itineraries they could have taken, then provides explanations for the itineraries they actually followed. (1)

Especially important here is a distinction that Tilly draws between "degree of scripting" and "degree of local knowledge" to analyze both individual actions and collective actions. He believes we can classify social action in terms of these two dimensions. Figure 1.1 indicates his view of the kinds of action that occur in the four extreme quadrants of this graph -- thin and intense ritual, and shallow and deep improvisation. And he offers the examples of science and jazz as exemplars of activities that embody different proportions of the two characteristics.



The idea of "scripting" refers to the fact that both individuals and groups often act on the basis of habit and received "paradigms" of behavior in response to certain stylized action opportunities. At one stage in his career Tilly referred to these as repertoires of contentious action. And it reflects the idea that individuals and groups learn to engage in contentious politics; they learn new forms of demonstration and opposition in different periods of history, and repeat those forms over multiple generations.

Local knowledge captures for Tilly the feature of social action that is highly responsive to the actors' intimate knowledge of the environment of contention, and their ability to improvise strategies of resistance in response to the specifics of the local environment. James Scott describes Malaysian peasants who toppled trees in the path of mechanized harvesters (Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance; link), and David Graeber describes the strategies adapted by the Spanish anarchist group Ya Basta! as a means of creating disruption at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec in 2001 (link). In each case actors found novel ways suited to current circumstances through which to further their goals.

Tilly's general point is that historical circumstances are propelled by both these sets of features of action, and that different actions, movements, and conflicts can be characterized in terms of different blends of improvisation and script.

Also important in this chapter is Tilly's advocacy for what he calls "relationalism" in opposition to individualism and systems theory.

Relational analysis holds great promise for the understanding of social processes. Relational analysis takes social relations, transactions, or ties as the starting points of description and explanation. It claims that recurrent patterns of interaction among occupants of social sites (rather than, say, mentally lodged models of social structures or processes) constitute the subject matter of social science. In relational analysis, social causation operates within the realm of interaction. (7)

This seems to be very similar to the point that Elias makes through his theory of "figurational sociology" (link). This is a theme that recurs frequently in Tilly's work, including especially in Dynamics of Contention.

Finally, I find his comments about the inadequacy of narrative as a foundation for social explanation to be worth considering carefully.

Negatively, we must recognize that conventional narratives of social life do indispensable work for interpersonal relations but represent the actual causal structure of social processes very badly; narrative is the friend of communication, the enemy of explanation. We must see that the common conception of social processes as the intended consequences of motivated choices by self-contained, self-motivated actors -- individuals, groups, or societies -- misconstrues the great bulk of human experience. We must learn that culture does not constitute an autonomous, self-driving realm but intertwines inseparably with social relations. (7)

These comments are particularly relevant in response to historians who attempt to explain complex social outcomes as no more than the intersecting series of purposive strategies by numerous actors; Tilly is emphasizing the crucial importance of unintended consequences and conjunctural causation that can only be captured by a more system-level account of the field of change.

And Tilly thinks the two points (relationality and narrative) go together:

Relational analysis meshes badly with narrative, since it necessarily attends to simultaneous, indirect, incremental, and unnoticed cause-effect connections. (9) 

So how does all of this help us think about important events and turning points in our own history? What about the 1965 march from Selma to Birmingham pictured above?

Several of Tilly's points are clearly relevant for historians seeking to contextualize and explain the Selma march. The march itself reflected a well-understood script within the Civil Rights movement, in its organization, chants, and implementation. At the same time the organizers and participants showed substantial local knowledge that was inflected in some of the improvisations involved in the march -- for example, the great distance to be covered. Both script and improvisation found a role on that day. That said, I don't think this analytical distinction is as fundamental as Tilly believes. It is one useful dimension of analysis, but not the key to understanding the event.

Second, a telling of the story that simply presented a narrative of decisions, actions, and interactions of various individuals would seriously misrepresent the march. In order to understand the demonstration and the movement it reflected we need to understand a great deal about the preceding fifty years of race, economics, and politics in the United States and beyond. And we need to understand some of the realities of the Jim Crow race system in place in Alabama at the time. The event does not stand by itself. So we need something like Doug McAdam's excellent Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, 2nd Edition if we are to understand the structural conditions within the context of which the movement and the march unfolded. Simple narrative is not sufficient here -- just as Tilly argues.

And third, this complex demonstration reflects relationality at every level -- leaders, organizations, neighborhoods, and individual participants all played their parts in a complicated interrelated set of engagements.

A different way of putting these points is to say that the Selma march is a single complex event, involving the actions and strategies of numerous actors. It is enormously important and worth focusing on. But it is not a miniature for the whole Civil Rights movement. An adequate treatment of the movement, and a satisfactory understanding of the movement's transformational role in American society, needs to move beyond the events and actions of the day to the larger structures and conditions within which actors large and small played their parts.

Does the framework of script and local knowledge help much in the task of explaining historical change? This scheme seems to fit the swath of historical change that is most interesting to Tilly, the field of contentious politics. It seems less well suited, though, to other more impersonal historical processes -- the rise of global trade, the surge of involuntary migration, or the general trend towards higher-productivity agriculture. In these areas the distinction seems to be somewhat beside the point. What seems more important in Tilly's reflections here are his emphasis on the contingency of a historical sequence, and his insistence on the idea that social actors in relationships with each other are the "doers" of historical change.

A premise shared by all actor-centered versions of sociology is that individuals and their actions are the rock-bottom level of the social world. Every other social fact derives from facts at this level. Norbert Elias raises a strong and credible challenge to this ontological assumption in his work, offering a view of social action that makes "figurations" of actors just as real as individual actors themselves. By figuration he means something like an interlocking set of individuals whose actions are a fluid series of reactions to and expectations about others. Figurations include both conflict and cooperation. And he is insistent that figurations cannot be reduced to the sum of a collection of independent actors and their choices. "Imagine the interlocking of the plans and actions, not of two, but of two thousand or two million interdependent players. The ongoing process which one encounters in this case does not take place independently of individual people whose plans and actions keep it going. Yet it has a structure and demands an explanation sui generis. It cannot be explained in terms of the �ideas� or the �actions� of individual people" (52). So good sociology needs to pay attention to figurations, not just individuals and their mental states.