This book seeks to develop a new pair of fundamental concepts in sociological theory for the purpose of scientific research: metric and nonmetric. This intellectual endeavor arises in reaction to the dissatisfaction caused by the problem of structure and agency.
As their discipline underwent a process of professionalization over the course of the twentieth century, sociologists were left with the task of unifying their ranks so as to achieve one ecumenical identity for themselves. As practitioners of the same discipline, sociologists had to confront the different ways they describe social reality. They settled for a weak compromise, contending that social reality is part structure and part agency: human beings living in social groups are said to be in control of their actions, while simultaneously constrained by the wider circumstances around them.
The common position within sociology is that complete determinism (privileging structure over agency) and complete voluntarism (privileging agency over structure) are both unsatisfactory. A better solution is to advocate the just middle. But while better than either determinism or voluntarism alone, this solution is still very bad in itself, since it comprises a mix of both determinism and voluntarism even though one is specifically the direct opposite of the other, so that mixing them is bound to create confusion on a conceptual and theoretical level.
I therefore assert that there is a need for new concepts in sociology, and that metric and nonmetric are precisely the concepts sociologists are in need of. The metric/nonmetric distinction avoids the problem raised by the structure/agency distinction simply because metric and nonmetric do not contradict each other like structure and agency do.
Since they cause no contradiction leading to a dead knot, the concepts of metric and nonmetric can be used to reconstitute social reality by foregrounding its internal variety. That is, metric and nonmetric are meant to describe the properties of different forms arising in social reality. Sociological analysis can proceed henceforward by looking into the many relations that can develop between forms.
Yet the development of new concepts is no small affair. It shall take the larger part of the book to complete this process. I have to ask my reader to be patient, which is apparently something that has recently become rather unreasonable in our accelerated culture, if not downright unrealistic. The reader can rest assured though: I am confident that his or her investment in attention and time will pay off in the end. I am one of those who believe that the world we live is a complex one, and that for this reason, we need an equally complex theory to describe this world adequately. Again, perhaps not something very fashionable in this day and age. Against these odds, I shall begin by offering a quick overview of the central ideas ahead.
1.1 From Structure and Agency to Metric and Nonmetric
Sociology as a scientific discipline studies human beings living in groups, that is, in the company of other human beings. What does this fundamental condition entail for the individuals involved?
Two points are worth mentioning. First, as members of the same group, individuals are likely to resemble each other in their manners of acting, thinking and feeling (this is Emile Durkheim’s main lesson). Indeed, the fact that many different individuals share the same tastes, beliefs, lifestyles or practices is taken as evidence of “group-ness” or social cohesion. Individuals are not merely passing by each other or passively standing next to each other like inanimate objects placed on a shelf. They actively interact together and inevitably develop meaningful social bonds. Second, life with others entails a division of labor (as Karl Marx taught us). This implies that group members are given different roles with distinct rights and obligations. Differences between roles not only separate individuals but unite them as well. In sum, social groups are more than just simple sets of basic elements since they display internal organization.
For many, the concept of structure is meant to indicate the organizational aspects of social groups. Individuals living in a group are not only accepted as normal members of that group: in addition, they occupy different positions within it. These positions determine the way individuals interact together: one individual may dominate the others or be dominated by them; some individuals may be expected to cooperate or to compete together; and so on. In this schema, the concept of structure implies that a constraint is exercised on the individuals who are part of the group. Quite simply, they are pressured to follow certain rules. Rules are meant to be obeyed, not broken or disregarded. For the group to continue to exist—or else for the group to continue to be recognizable by its own members—it is crucial to maintain the group’s structure, its organizational shape and the rules that come with it.
While the concept of structure typically underlines organizational aspects—positions and rules, along with their constraining effect, but also the long-term stability thus acquired—the concept of agency usually marks the limit of structure. Human beings are all members of one group or another and yet they remain capable of free initiatives, if only in principle. Human beings are not always following rules. There are times—there must be times—when they act out of their own will or their own judgment, which means that they can intervene on the structure of the group they are part of and change it, even if partially only.
Together, the concepts of structure and agency make up for a simple but pervasive model of social reality. Introducing the metric/nonmetric distinction in sociological theory will disrupt this model and replace it with a different one.
To begin sketching out this alternative model, let me develop the following points right away (for a previous introduction, see Guy 2017, 2019a):
- 1.Rather than conceptualizing agency in opposition with structure, we can double it up, as it were, so as to allow for a relation between (one’s) agency and (someone else’s) agency. As a result of this, agency reappears as mundane (although not trivial) rather than heroic, or permanent rather than exceptional. It is not directed against social structures anymore, so that exercising agency no longer implies becoming an agent of change in history. Now anyone’s agency must be analyzed in combination or in parallel with the agency of many other individuals. Structures do not disappear out of the picture but reemerge as patterns of behavior, arising through the efforts conducted by these multiple individuals to coordinate themselves. In the rest of the text, I refer to these patterns as social forms.
- 2.While the metric/nonmetric distinction is my own, I rely heavily on Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory to fully develop it (1990, 1995, 2012, 2013a, b; Guy 2018a, b). The reader must be therefore alerted to a handful of Luhmann’s core ideas: communication , social system and self-observation . Luhmann defines communication as the very process through which multiple individuals manage to achieve coordination. This process is never-ending in that the conditions of coordination are never secured once and for all. Punctual or instantaneous communications have no duration: they take place only to dissolve right away—and yet this is enough for laying the ground for the next operation of communication. While all operations of communication come to an end, each one of them plants the seed for the following one. In that sense, communication amounts to as self-perpetuating mechanism (what Luhmann calls autopoiesis, following Maturana and Varela). Communication sometimes dies out when the individuals involved simply stop trying to coordinate themselves. On the other hand, as long as the process stretches in time, Luhmann speaks of it as an ongoing social system. Social systems are chains of communications. Individuals are not part of such systems, nor are they directly constrained by them. Social systems are ecologically sustained or “fed” by the way multiple individuals (multiple agents) react to one another continuously. Finally, we can add that social systems are capable of self-observation to the extent that the communication process can be thematized from within the same process. Basically, the definition of a social situation occurs, and is periodically updated or reedited, through that same situation. Individuals can redirect the way they react to each other by taking into account their previous reactions. As they go through multiple rounds of interaction, they can develop an insight over their behavior so far, and they can express that insight during following rounds so as to implement it in their subsequent behavior.
- 3.The metric/nonmetric distinction is meant to describe two different types of forms (patterns of behavior) that social systems come to create and sustain through the communication process, if momentarily only. The concept of form is borrowed from Luhmann’s theory like the other concepts mentioned earlier. Form is understood in contrast with medium . A medium is a mass of elements that are loosely coupled with each other. Wh...