Overview
- Presents social change as a process of social morphogenesis
- Advances generative mechanisms that produce rapid social change in late modernity
- Opens a discussion about the possibility of Morphogenic Society as a new social formation
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Social Morphogenesis and Societal Transformation?
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Front Matter
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Social Formations and Their Re-formation
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Front Matter
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Keywords
About this book
The rate of social change has speeded up in the last three decades, but how do we explain this? This volume ventures what the generative mechanism is that produces such rapid change and discusses how this differs from late Modernity. Contributors examine if an intensification of morphogenesis (positive feedback that results in a change in social form) and a corresponding reduction in morphostasis (negative feedback that restores or reproduces the form of the social order) best captures the process involved. This volume resists proclaiming a new social formation as so many books written by empiricists have done by extrapolating from empirical data. Until we can convincingly demonstrate that a new generative mechanism is at work, it is premature to argue what accounts for the global changes that are taking place and where they will lead. More concisely we seek to answer the question whether or not current social change can be regarded as social morphogenesis. Only then, in the nextvolumes will the same team of authors be able to remove the question mark.
Reviews
“Social Morphogenesis is the first volume in a series of books, edited by Margaret Archer, that seeks to develop an explanatory framework that can account for how the rate of social change has ‘speeded up’ in the last three decades. … I found each discussion incredibly valuable. The contributions made here have sharpened my understanding of morphogenesis as a meta-theory, which is providing the grounds for a sensible discussion on the future direction of society.” (Tom Brock, The Sociological Imagination, sociologicalimagination.org, March, 2015)
“Margaret Archer's contribution to critical realism has been an important part of the recent progress of the field, and her theory of morphogenesis is key to this progress. Her recent volume, Social Morphogenesis, represents a rigorous and serious step forward in the project of articulating this theory as both ameta-theory for the social sciences and a potential contribution to sociological theory.” (Understanding Society, understandingsociety.blogspot.de, May, 2014)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editor
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Social Morphogenesis
Editors: Margaret S. Archer
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6128-5
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Hardcover ISBN: 978-94-007-6127-8Published: 20 March 2013
Softcover ISBN: 978-94-007-9346-0Published: 07 March 2015
eBook ISBN: 978-94-007-6128-5Published: 20 February 2013
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VI, 231
Number of Illustrations: 14 b/w illustrations