A New Philosophy of Society – Chapter 1: Assemblages Against Totalities (part one)

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Chapter 1 is without a doubt my favorite chapter of the entire book. This seems like an odd statement for me to make since so much of my rhetoric often includes a critical stance on ontology in the strict sense. It’s true I have always found it problematic to construct abstract generalizations about reality without intimate recourse to the empirical minutia that constitutes that which we seek to speculate upon. What could theoretical models (maps) really tell us about empirical realities (territory) that cannot be understood given enough attention to the actual circumstances themselves? As it turns out, quite a bit.

In this chapter DeLanda makes it clear that in order to truly understand the complexity of social reality we must have some sense of “how things hang together” (to steal a well know phrase from Gregory Bateson). DeLanda tells us that what he hopes to accomplish in the first chapter and with the whole book is to sketch out the broad contours of a plausible social ontology in order to “elucidate the proper ontological status of the entities that are invoked by sociologists and other social scientists” (p.8). That is, DeLanda wants to inject some clarity into social scientific discussions about what actually constitutes our complex social reality.

DeLanda convincingly, although briefly, makes the case in the first part of the book that social scientists bring with them deeply embedded ontological commitments (or metaphysical lenses), and beliefs about the world that need to be critically investigated in order to get beyond certain biases and privileged areas of focus. On this point, I completely agree. In fact it was my initial reading (four years ago) of the assemblage theory outlined in this chapter that inspired me to begin to take ontology more seriously. Researchers need to make their assumptions about causality, relation, scale and time explicit if they are to become aware of how those assumptions frame and focus their attention and guide their interpretations. Only after rigorously examining their ontological assumptions about the world can researchers hope to begin checking the logic these beliefs entail against the available empirical evidence from particular social situations.

I think Levi Bryant does a fabulous job of summarizing the main points of the chapter (here), so I won’t repeat his efforts, but there are a few issues that I would like to address which were brought up by Jeremy (here) and Circling Squares (here) – and in some additional comments by Bryant (here) on DeLanda’s positions compared to that espoused by Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO).

First is the issue of interiority and exteriority. DeLanda argues that much work in the social sciences has been unfortunately limited by the “organismic metaphor” characterized by an unjustifiable belief in the importance of “relations of interiority”. As Bryant summarizes:

Within the organismic metaphor, society is compared to the human body, such that 1) all parts are dependent on one another, and 2) all parts (institutions) work together like organs in an organism to promote the harmony of society as a whole. Here it is notable that this conception of relations between parts is not restricted to organismic conceptions of society, but also to structuralist conceptions of society. The key thesis shared by these orientations is that parts have no existence or being apart from the whole to which they belong. [source]

Certainly there are several examples of classical social thinkers who have fallen prey to such an overestimation of the supposed seamless unity of social systems and relations. DeLanda names the philosopher Herbert Spencer and sociologist Talcott Parsons as key examples. Within the anthro world I come from I would certainly include Radcliffe-Brown among those influential social scientists who at times seemed to ‘explain away’ the complexity of social contexts in favor of a kind of functionalist determinism. Although, having preoccupied myself with the work of all three of those gentlemen in the past, I must also suggest argue that each of those thinkers held much more nuanced perspectives than one might suspect. Talcott Parsons in particular defended a detailed model of functionalism that attempted to shed light on multiple scales of reality, and generally acknowledged personal as well as societal level causality. Radcliffe-Brown, as well, often supported many of his more general statements with evidence taken from extensive fieldwork in the Andaman Islands, Australia, and elsewhere.

Regardless, DeLanda’s point should be taken: it is important to understand how parts and wholes relate and are actually produced and maintained. And, for his part, DeLanda argues that whole and parts come together through “relations of exteriority”. As Bryant describes:

The central feature of relations of exteriority is that the components of an assemblage may be detached from it and plugged into a different assemblage in which its interactions are different (10). DeLanda argues that the properties of the parts of an assemblage can never explain the whole or assemblage they constitute. Those wholes or assemblages are dependent on the component parts (there’s nothing mystical about emergence), but have a structure of their own that is irreducible to these parts. [source]

It is here that things get a little messy for me. While I certainly agree with DeLanda that many components of assemblages can be detached from the larger whole, and are indeed irreducible to the whole in which they are parts, I would also argue that there are wholes that have parts that cannot be detached without both whole and part ceasing to be. For example: organisms. Without falling back into metaphoric confusion, we can say that there are many such real organic wholes that depend on their parts for continued existence (what is a raven without a raven brain?), and visa versa (can a human heart continue beating without being connected to circulatory system, or a circulatory system without a nervous system, or all those parts without a body?).

The point is, for me, that there are numerous kinds of assemblages. There are organic bodies, metallic machines, non-profit organizations and families, to provide just a few examples. And if we respect this diversity of assemblages and build it into our models and ontologies, then we must also take a much more nuanced stance on relationality – because particular assemblies have specific properties and particular relations.

For example, while wolves have “external” relations between individuals (males and females, males and males, young and older), these relations also affectively combine into the “internal” relations of the larger pack. Relations in this case can be alternatively understood (and simultaneously tracked) as either “eternal” or “internal” depending on the level of analysis one wants to privilege. Even more complex are the “external” relations between wolves and wolf-packs and the prey on which they depend and draw nutrients from through “internal” metabolic processes. Here, relations that seem “external” between wolf and, say, rabbit quickly become “internal” as the wolf absorbs the flesh (material-energetic properties) of the rabbit into its own inner being – allowing that wolf to then thrust its energies into “external” relations with its pack members, and potentially setting off a new round of relations between mates, which then results in egg fertilizations that catalyze “internal” relations of gestation and reproduction. 

What this example showcases is how many actual real-world assemblages are a mixed affair – hybrids with relations of exteriority and interiority mixing and mingling simultaneously, and sustaining and maintaining variously interpenetrated and interdependent relationships. In the case of animals, the relationality between entities can quickly cascade into a whole series of variable internal/external effects and affects generating complex sets of interacting and supporting assemblages.

However, this ‘mix and mingle’ of relations and properties is not restricted to organic entities. For example, assemblages such as corporations depend upon “external” relations of cash flow and profit for continued operations, while also transforming much of their cash into “internal” relational capacities such as office supplies or human resources. The point here is that relations of all sorts (with consumers, managers, expertise, knowledge, market forces, etc) interpenetrate the operations of the corporation, and influence its capacity for success and continuance.

Both examples, I believe, suggest that there are many assemblages that cannot simply be considered as “relations of exteriority”. Depending on the specific properties involved, and the intensity and rhythms of their relations, actually existing assemblages are far more promiscuous (to steal a term from Levi) than what DeLanda seems to suggest. All assemblages, on all scales have variable capacities for relation, fusion, absorption, symbiosis, autonomy or dominance, depending on the particular properties and circumstances involved.

It is precisely this type of complexity that is also the basis for my agreement with both Jeremy and Levi Bryant who each seem to suggest just how important it is to track and understand the “real connections” between entities and among assemblages.

Here is how Jeremy puts it:

“Whenever we start talking about how wholes affect their parts I start to feel as if the explanations become magical in a way, as opposed to causal. For example, when De Landa says that social assemblages constrain and enable their components or that they can be thought of as creating a "space of possibilities" I ask, how do they do it? By what mechanism? De Landa himself says that he's interested in causal explanations, but I can't seem to find the causal mechanism for the kind of relationship between part and whole that he's discussing.” [source]

I certainly support Jeremy’s questioning of the validity of talking about wholes and parts abstracted from the actual circumstances of real assemblages. Despite the importance of being able to create a model of reality (ontology) with which to examine the logic of our assumptions, it is even more important to track in detail the empirical realities upon which our models are based.

In DeLanda’s case, if he wants to argue that assemblage theory is useful for analyzing a wide variety of entities and social realities then ultimately he is going to have to demonstrate the particular way in which specific entities and social relations are assembled, or are either “enabled” or “constrained”. Fortunately in DeLanda’s case his previous work in A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History went a long way to demonstrating how an assemblage theory might explain actual historical and social developments. I believe that that book and A New Philosophy of Society might be better read in tandem or consecutively in order to get the full breadth and depth of DeLanda’s thinking on several of the issues raised in this book.

…to be continued…