General Systems Theory

Beginning with Wholes

Barbara G. Hanson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781560323457
• eBook ISBN: 9781317763574
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Salute mentale in psicologia

Though general systems theory is currently the prevailing paradigm in family therapy and social work, there is no accessible text that treats its basic concepts. This book fills the gap by presenting the central ideas of general systems theory in clear and simple language, with a focus on the social sciences.

Chapter 1

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315800783-1

Aristotle came up with the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Alice discovered in Wonderland that meaning is relative to context. Anne of Green Gables shows us how emotion is the center of human experience. These three imaginings ground a "wholes" approach.

My purpose in writing this book is to give readers a feeling for the possibilities found in seeing the world in terms of wholes, or relational patterns. This means setting aside preconceived notions about how to begin inquiry that may restrict the range of phenomena brought into our scholarly viewing lenses. Though I will elaborate and give greater detail to this stance, its essence is as simple as allowing for the idea that there are things that emerge in groups of two or more parts that are not witnessed in those parts alone.

See that there is more to a child and parent together than when they are alone in separate rooms. Witness the process when a child falls and scrapes a knee, goes right on playing until the parent appears, and then begins crying. When a committee meets to decide on a course of action, such as which play to present for the summer festival, why is it that while all the individuals have excellent suggestions, the ultimate decision is in favor of something that no one likes? Has rent control, which was intended to increase the quality and availability of rental housing in Toronto, led to the reverse? Over time, a black market for securing housing in the form of "key money" co-emerged, along with grossly fluctuating markets for condominiums and escalating use of food banks. As capital shifted to expensive rental accommodation, people had to pay more for housing, and therefore had less to spend on food.

All of these examples point out that when we begin to see in terms of wholes rather than parts, patterns appear that a classic model of simple linear cause and effect cannot capture. They point out that such patterns, which we will learn later in this text can be described as "multifmal," can be found on any of the so-called levels that more conventional approaches cling to for analysis. There are patterned similarities between an intimate relationship that escalates into violence, a committee that decides to deny parole, and the escalation of the arms race leading ultimately to the Gulf War.

The idea of nonsummativity is not new. It can be traced back to Aristotle and the ancient Greek saying, "Never step in the same river twice for as it stays the same it is constantly changing." What is new is the potential of a wholes approach for transforming debate on current global problems through rethinking the epistemologies that ground conventional analysis. In this shift new visions appear for intervention. This arises by adding recent advances in wholes thinking about human groups to the basic tenets of a general systems theory approach developed largely in the physical sciences.

In addition to levels or sizes of groups of two or more parts, the content of the patterns analyzed is not restricted by a wholes approach. The Malpeque oysters of Prince Edward Island were once threatened by extinction due to widespread cancer but somehow overcame it. Computer viruses have been found and have become a common part of language in recent years. Gang swarming of shopping malls is getting increased attention. All of these events can be analyzed via the concept of "feedback." The ideas generated through a wholes or general systems theory approach can be used to consider any form of substantive issue where there are two or more interrelated parts. Because of this it is possible to think of the approach as "pan-disciplinary" in that it can be used across conventionally defined disciplines such as biology, computer science, engineering, sociology, economics, family therapy, medicine, or psychology.

In addition to transcending disciplinary boundaries, a wholes or systems approach cuts across conventionally defined theories. This is possible because a wholes approach is not set up like theories which begin with assumptions and derive their stances from these assumptions. In the conventional mode of making theories, because the applications and derivations hang directly from their assumptions, theories could not be compared or challenged across these assumptions. For example, the assumptions of human benevolence in Marx's writings, versus human greed and insatiability in Emile Durkheim's writings, make legitimate challenge of one by the other impossible in that one could not go beyond questioning the basic assumption about human nature each presents.

A wholes approach proposes to transcend this type of conventional debate by offering a way of seeing without the prescription of assumptions. Instead the point of departure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts is offered. Wholes of whatever content or membership become the focus of analysis, leaving the individual to read on assumptions of choice while still using the language provided by a systems approach. As such it presents a new means of talking about a host of events and issues that moves beyond the discrete and linear and toward the whole and emergent.

This sets the stage for new modes of research, intervention, and policy that are informed by consideration of the long-term effects of actions that have traditionally been seen only as linear cause and effect sequences. Seeing within a wholes approach provides a frame for thinking through, as a co-emergent process, actions like raising interest rates, free trade, Sunday shopping, health care user fees, or eliminating rental gardens in High Park. The importance of this mode of thinking is perhaps no more vividly illustrated than in thinking about the environment, where it can be argued that you cannot separate the destruction of the rain forests from the extreme poverty of the populations living in or near the forests, or the grossly skewed consumption patterns of certain industrialized nations.

So I begin here to define, explain, illustrate, and give the significance of a series of basic concepts that come out of a wholes or general systems theory approach. Ideas like "action and inaction are equally causal," and "you can't gauge the ultimate effects of action based on knowledge of input alone" surface as means of framing various current concerns like the feminization of poverty and U.S. militarism in the Persian Gulf.

Though my degree is in sociology and my substantive work has been on issues involved in health and gender, I shall be drawing on examples and illustrations from a wide variety of topics and disciplines. At each turn I shall move through three forms of issues: intimate relations, organizations, and social policy.

PATTERNS IN THEORY

To begin I shall situate a general systems theory approach in the range of types of available theories. This necessitates an inventory of classic approaches and recent advances. The thread I draw through this inventory is looking at how different approaches have brought to light various insights that are uniquely theirs. Since the focus of this book is systems theory, I provide a mere pencil sketch of these theories and leave it to readers to explore some of the excellent available texts that explicate these theories in extensive detail within the social historical contexts of the theorists' lives. At the same time I point out how each of these theories can be advanced by an epistemological shift to a wholes approach via digging out the basic epistemological roots that ultimately handicap conventional theories' applicability and may be invisible because they run so deep.

Social Theory

Conflict theory. Conflict theory has its roots in the work of Karl Marx. The underpinning ideas are assumptions of human benevolence and economic determinism. Taken together these assumptions weave a picture of social life as one where people are pitted against one another in the struggle to get resources. The separation between haves and have-nots, owners and workers, the bourgeoisie and proletariat in the quest for material goods sets these groups in perpetual opposition, or conflict. Marx picked up on Hegel's notion of dialectic, opposing forces, to describe this process and pointed out how this conflict can only be resolved if its basis, capital, was eliminated and ownerships became communal (Wallace & Wolf, 1991). In this manner it would be possible for human beings to act out of respect for others and the community rather than out of self-interest and competition.

The focus of conflict theory is on social structures, or what has been called the macro level. Central notions involve the idea of collective consciousness and means of raising consciousness through making the conclusions of historical comparative analysis known. The works of Marx are debated today in the original. Additionally there has been a vast proliferation of scholarship in the Marxist tradition. Current focus on political economy, structural analysis, and elements of feminist theories attest to the vast influence and permeation of this theory.

Consensus theory. Consensus theory has its roots in a variety of sources, notably Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, and Herbert Spencer. Core to this approach is the assumption that human beings are intrinsically greedy and insatiable (Wallace & Wolf, 1991). Social structures that arise do so in a natural progression toward the advance of society and in the necessary containment and direction of insatiable human desires. In this vein society is viewed like a machine or organism where each part contributes in different ways to the maintenance and improvement of the whole. Which person plays which part is sorted out based on natural competition with those most capable taking on the most difficult tasks and being rewarded differentially based on the difficulty of the task and the process of attaining the role. The structure of society is based on consensus that there is basic agreement about what is important. Where conflict does occur it is a minor deviation that does not challenge the wisdom of the whole, or it is a temporary setback in the overall path of progress. Where social problems like alcoholism, crime, or pollution occur, they are predictable slippages in a societal machine that is generally functioning well and in the interest of the common good.

Central notions are (1) nonsummativity—the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; (2) evolution—the advancement of society through competition; and (3) function—everything serves a function to the system, its existence being evidence of its necessity. The goal of analysis is to seek out universal principles of social functioning so as to fine-tune the social machine and develop the most smoothly running form with the lowest degree of slippage possible. A policy like increasing drunk driving penalties is designed to use fear of punishment to reduce this behavior.

Symbolic interactionism. Symbolic interactionism begins with the idea that human beings are creative or reflexive in their behavior and through this in the ways they mediate their experience. The ability to have symbols, meanings about aspects of life experience, which are shared by the group is the precursor to the existence of language. These symbol sets and their negotiation in varying contexts throughout life in changing circumstances become the focus of analysis. Such symbolic interaction begins the study of what has been called the "micro level," the everyday life of face-to-face interaction in human groups.

A central notion is self—the ability to reflect on one's behavior in concert with others and form an inner dialogue about appropriate and desired behavior that determines which actions are undertaken. The thrust of inquiry is to delve into subjective meanings developed in human groups often by becoming part of the group or observing at close quarters.

The macro/micro debate. Level. Taken together conflict, consensus, and symbolic interaction form the macro/micro debate, the gap between the immediate everyday and subjective and the abstract, societal, and objective. The existence of this gap has drawn a great deal of current attention and was the defining issue for the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in San Francisco in 1989. It is the basis of two schools of thought in terms of which level of analysis is more important, the macro or the micro, the societal or the interpersonal.

Implicit in the debate about level is an underlying notion of causality in the sense that argument over which is more important, the macro or the micro, seems to rest on determining which has greater causal influence. As I shall argue later in greater detail, this can be phrased as a more fundamental problem with conventional reliance on linear causality. Mechanistic models of cause and effect that necessitate separating out variables and apportioning cause are bound to set in motion a debate about which is more causal. Attempts to reconcile or link the macro and micro have fallen back on this underlying epistemology by trying to assign cause, and with it, blame. My feeling is that this has served to widen rather than narrow the gap, particularly since statistical analyses are more often the method of choice for macro-level strategies. This sets up a situation where the means of resolve is skewed from the start toward one position.

Methods. Implicit in this debate is which mode of inquiry is most appropriate, the objective or the subjective. Use of a notion of the macro level necessitates an accompanying notion of society as an abstract. We cannot see Canadian society or American social structures. Their existence must be inferred because they exist outside of our immediate experience. Looking for this abstraction outside of humans' experiences means being objective, trying to stay outside of the phenomena. Marx's approach to this was to acknowledge that there is historical specificity to current knowledge, and then to escape this subjectivity by going back in time or across cultures using historical comparative analysis. Consensus theorists such as Durkheim dealt with the issue by staying at arm's length from the data they collected, examining suicide rates for example (Wallace & Wolf, 1991). The goal here is to drill out subjective bias, which may keep research from reaching accurate interpretation.

Contrarily, micro-level analysis takes the stance that what is of interest is that which is subjective and has meaning for the groups being studied. Symbolic interactionists do see their subjects, often spending a great deal of time in interaction with them. W. F. Whyte spent time with street gangs in Chicago (1943/1981), Erving Goffman with mental patients (1961), Joan Emerson with patients undergoing gynecological examinations (1970), and Barbara Hanson with nursing home residents (1985). The goal in each instance was to capture what the subjective experience in each setting was for the persons involved. These subjective experiences are then crafted into sensitizing constructs that try to communicate what it is like to be in any of these settings and why people behave the way they do.

In issues of methods around the macro/micro debate the question of aggregation versus context arises. Though this issue has not gotten the same attention as objectivity versus subjectivity, I feel it may be as, if not more, crucial to sorting out the nature of paradoxes between the macro and micro. It is perhaps less obvious because it revolves around the practicalities of research and therefore its theoretical relevance may have been missed.

In essence this issue involves the determination of what is the unit of analysis and how that unit is sought in the course of research design. In the case of macro-level analysis the unit of interest is the societal or general social property. In order to derive the social structure or property, data are derived from individuals and then aggregated into an estimation of the whole. This would be the case where individuals are surveyed by telephone prior to an election in order to get a feel for the general pattern in the population of voters as a whole. The general is discerned based on the average and this becomes the property.

Contrarily, attention to context means defining units such that it is the particular, rather than the universal, that is of interest. Because meaning is subjective, answers and issues are particular to the meaning group where they originate. To extend the case above, we might discover that while the largest proportion of voters (48%) favor a right wing party, the majority of voters (52%) split among indifference or less prevalent alternative parties do not favor that party. Or, while the majority of voters in total support pro-life, the majority of women support pro-choice. Each example presents a different side to the issue of aggregation. First, because aggregation to the universal assumes that the most prevalent is the general, even if not the majority, it means that the most frequent will be taken as general will or consensus. This is of particular relevance if we consider that variance explained by aggregate models rarely exceeds 30 or 40% in the social sciences. This means that the general is deduced, based on assumption of the universal, even when models leave 60 or 70% unexplained.

Second, a majority of an entire population does not take into account the interests of particular groups. Thus, while a majority of members of parliament may vote in favor of a law restricting abortion, if they are primarily white, middle- and upper-class men, they may be voting from a perspective that is more detached from the subjective experience of the women who seek abortions.

In total the issue of retaining particular context versus searching for the general via aggregation highlights how we move from the theoretical to the practical and what it means in terms of interpreting results. Does the average represent the particular? Does perceived statistical predominance represent consensus, or a lowest common denominator, or the views...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Part One Concepts
• Part Two Characteristics
• Annotated References
• Annotated Bibliography
• Index