Glenda B. Claborne
Soc 500b
April 20, 1999
Bergesen, A. (1980). "From Utilitarianism to Globology: The Shift from the Individual to the World as a Whole as the Primordial Unit of Analysis." In A. Bergesen (ed.) Studies of the Modern World-System (pp. 1-12). New York: Academic Press.
To relate Bergesen's discussion of paradigm shifts in theorizing social order, from parts to whole or whole to parts, to other theories, I will consider Mead's theory of mind. self and society, Pinker's theory of a language instinct and Mugny's theory of innovation. Mead goes from whole to parts then back to whole. Pinker starts from an idealized whole to parts then back to whole. Mugny simultaneously considers the whole and the parts together. There are not many examples of the kind Bergesen illustrated which goes from parts to whole, whole to parts, alternately, as the framework of analysis broadens from interpersonal relations to ecostructural relations. Perhaps one can find such progression in physics and which also goes both ways - towards more macro structures in the cosmos and towards more micro structures in particle physics. This bidirectional progression of ever larger and ever smaller units of analysis is also seen in biology where the whole human body is set within its larger natural environment and where its constituent parts is increasingly studied down to the very last gene. But back to the social and human sciences.
Mead
Mead accounted for the emergence of individual properties such as mind, consciousness and self and the emergence of a collectivity, society, by assuming, a priori, a social process that is already underway and which determines the dynamics of social interaction. Individual needs, wants and desires do not have primary causal effects but are characterized by Mead as initially unconscious, only to become conscious within the social process. That is, individual needs, wants and desires become meaningful only in interaction with the needs, wants and desires of others within the social process. Only after individual needs, desires and wants are defined in interaction can the individual internalize these privately and subjectively to abstract the general properties of the particulars that he/she dealt with in the social process. This generalized conception of the other then becomes the basis for how the individual sees himself and others in society. The whole process can be traced from the outside (whole) to the inside (parts) and back to the outside (whole) and this presumably is what the social process is all about.
Pinker
For the linguists and cognitive scientists, the treatment of whole to parts and parts to whole is more of a methodological/analytical strategy than an issue of agency vs. structure. The results of these micro treatments of whole to parts, however, have wide-ranging applicability to areas of study dealing with larger entities (e.g. sociology) and where they become the parts in the analyses of wholes. Pinker, Chomsky, Bickerton and Saussure all in some way deliberately took a part which they know is part of a complex system and idealized this part as their starting whole in order to theorize about the structural and processual elements of that whole. Pinker idealized a mental module, the language instinct, then from this whole went in to examine its structural elements in the form of innate grammatical and lexical structures within this module. Saussure, in a sense, excised, the more distinct langue from the more messy parole within the larger framework of language as commonly known. From langue as his idealized whole, he then proceeded to dissect it into its constituent parts. These micro whole to parts analyses, however, are related eventually to the larger framework in which they are embedded such that Bickerton suggests a model whereby the language module is interrelated with other modules of the mind and Saussure insisted on relating the structural elements of langue with the uses of language in parole.
Mugny
Mugny (1982) is one among several European social psychologists who have been studying minority/majority relations, particularly the role of minorities in initiating social innovations. The early stages of this line of research focused on the perceptual judgments of individuals using color slides in experimental laboratories. It was repeatedly found that individuals would rather conform to an erroneous majority judgment than risk being regarded as odd by giving a judgment, which they privately believe is correct. However, it was also found that if one individual consistently gives a minority perceptual judgment, the rest of the experimental subjects soon espouse that minority judgment. This is an example of a paradigm that starts from individual needs in order to explain collective judgments. Mugny criticized this paradigm as too far removed from the social contexts in which individuals are embedded and whose positions in these social contexts determine their predispositions. Mugny does not, however, propose going from individual psychology to social contexts as the causal agent but rather propose that the two are intimately linked so a psychosocial paradigm must be followed. In a sense, it is like saying that individual needs and social categories are causal agents, simultaneously. One level of analysis is not privileged over the other.
Personal Comments
In delineating the boundaries of a discipline and deriving clear, specific explanations for general phenomena, the treatment of wholes and parts by the linguists and cognitive scientists maybe the best approach. In broadening the scope of a discipline (e.g. sociology) whose boundaries seem to be challenged and broken down through changes in time and space, the ever widening of frameworks such as what Bergesen discussed maybe the best path to follow. In terms of the agency/structure debate, it would be best to consider, simultaneously, that there are fixed micro structures in the parts (e.g. language instinct) as well as in the whole (e.g. tradition, rules, or any structure independent of the will of the parts). Furthermore, one can imagine between these fixed structures a dynamic process consisting of all the infinite combinations of discrete elements of the whole. One can also trace natural points of disjuncture between processes that directly impact the individual parts and those processes that take on lives of their own and which individuals have no power to change or control.