Position paper 2 - FSS:SOCd0103 Sociological theory as ontology - Position papers - Diskuse
Sociological theory as ontology.
Introduction
I would like to present two texts that relate to the second set of texts from general sociology, namely the topic of sociological theory as an ontology. This position paper should contribute to the student discussion on this topic and develop possible perspectives on the issue.
Texts
Joyce and Mukerji deviates from the traditional vision of the state as a centralized institution and singular sites of power, focusing more on logistical methods, using infrastructure to promote and depersonalize relations of domination, and limiting the autonomy of elites. The state cannot be treated as a unitary actor, states are assemblages of active agencies often of opposing people and objects in many places. Logistical power is very important in what logistical ways the state is able to solve political problems.
States use various forms of material practice to influence the power environment (Mukerji 2011).
Authors on the examples of 17th century France and 19th century Britain. The state's logistical power is impersonal and material, it is difficult to formulate and thus criticize. The power of the state is experienced outside discourse and below the level of conscious awareness, and shared life practices created by logistics administration (2017, p.3). The key to the expansion of logistical power is the territory and sovereignty in this territory. State sovereignty is produced by logistical means, in the form of works of art, political rituals, courts and legal documents, palaces and parliaments (2017, p.3). Furthermore, there is a transition from territory to communication, the central idea is the system. Joyce leans to Foucalt's idea of the panopticon and his analysis of the question of the state. Mukerji emphasizes the difference between the strategic and logistical power of the state. Strategic power is the interpersonal power or effort of groups to control each other through threats of violence or control of the languages of personal legitimacy. In contrast, logistical power is the use of material resources to create the conditions for political opportunities (2017, p.6). Elites must exercise power through the state rather than independently. Among the uses of logistical power in 17th century France, the construction of the Midi Canal, a Parisian source of water, mentions forest reform. For the transition from territory to communication, they state the British imperial state of the 19th century, territorial dispersion was based on building a system of communication, the bearer was the post office, and the private behavior of the population was civilized by language and techniques of self-awareness and self-control in the art of communication. The post office was one of the agents that facilitated trade and industry. The communication infrastructure was gradually so powerful that it directly affects the lives of citizens, a large part of the life of the nation is dependent on state services, the post office functioned as a connection between the state, the land and the citizens. (2017, p.13). People may object to politics or want to change the government, but they always want roads and a functioning sewer and waste collection system. Rather than perceiving the state as a totalizing system of a single bureaucratic embodiment of social rationality from which there is no escape, the state is powerful because it is multi-purpose, material, and technical.
From the point of view of the first text, Barnard's second text deals with the difficulties in the communication flow of the great French bureaucratic machinery. The first dilemma that the reader encounters is a "bureaucratically divided personality", which means that the same person can belong to more than one category (2019, p. 754).
In 2005, there was a change in the field of psychiatric classification and a new category of "psychic handicap" was introduced. The whole text guides us through considerable problems in applying this new classification. In the beginning, there was an attempt at psychiatric reform, in which certain parts of patients were to be given the opportunity to separate from institutional care and start living in adapted conditions as a "life project". This created the need for a new classification that would better capture certain limitations of a person, but also the possibility of integration into society.
On the example of this group of people, we can observe in practice the communication infrastructure that affects the lives of citizens, which is directly dependent on state services. Existing classifications of the state create cognitive schemes and cultural resources that represent symbolic limitations for new classifications (2019, p. 757). There is a whole related literature on "classification struggles", examining the dispute not only about the moral and symbolic consequences of new classifications, but also their material classification. It is a question of which professional group will benefit from the authority, resources and prestige for managing "mad". The term "boundary object" is introduced here, these are categories that live in more than one social world and facilitate cooperation between them. In practice, however, psychological disability was a "bureaucratically divided personality," an attempt to combine classifications that were incompatible, not so absurd as impracticable.
Social theory as an ontology. I perceive ontology as a cooperation of theory and methodology. While epistemology addresses the question of how to know the world, ontology reflects on what we know. According to Hollis and Smith (2000), two dividing lines are distinguished in the field of ontology of the social sciences, the lines separating holism from individualism and the lines distinguishing between materialism and idealism. On this basis, there are four ontological positions: holistic-materialistic, holistic-idealistic, individualistic-materialistic, and individualistic-idealistic. This classification has only a didactic meaning, but it will serve us very well as a tool for determining the position of previous texts. In the first text, we followed the development of the logistical force that constitutes modern states. One of the logistics strategies is the transition from the territorial level to the communication level, on the example of the historical development of France and Britain.
In the second text, we return to contemporary France and a fully bureaucratic classification apparatus, which serves as a tool for the classification and full dependence of the citizen on the state. From the point of view of Hollis and Smith, we follow the holistic-materialistic position of ontology.
Modern states, the growth of bureaucracy, the dehumanization of state administration processes in the management of the daily agenda of the population, classification schemes bring a lot of contradictions, which they have to deal with not only
citizens, but agents and government officials themselves. In both texts, Foucault was quoted, who had long been concerned with the state, understanding power. Foucault refers to the heterogeneous set of discursive and non-discursive practices, including scientific statements, philosophical systems, institutions, laws, norms, and regulations, as the term dispositive (2017, p.4). The dispositif sets in motion a simple technology of power. The idea of such a whole allows Foucault to think of truth (with reference to some type of knowledge) as part of a regime based on power relations. Within the disposition, Foucault describes how specific arrangements (schools, workshops, armies) integrate the individual (children, workers, soldiers…) and how they consistently finalize their functions; at the end is a state that strives for the global integration of visibility, which is tantamount to global control, permanent oversight. The disposition is only a map and changes depending on the change of the described area: and in this can be seen the continuation of archeology - instead of discursive formations, Foucault now examines historical mutations in the relationship between power and knowledge.
A.C.Doyl's quote: "Every chain is as strong as its weakest link." This quote is widely used in the welfare state debate about how the state manages to help the most vulnerable members of society. In Barnard's text, we can follow the logistical and communication strategies of various agencies, professional groups that compete for authority, power, and prestige through "classification struggles" on the example of a very disadvantaged group of people who have no choice but to significantly influence their status.
References:
Joyce, Patrick, and Chandra Mukerji. 2017. “The State of Things: State History and Theory Reconfigured.” Theory and Society 46(1):1–19.
Barnard, Alex V. 2019. “Bureaucratically Split Personalities: (Re)Ordering the Mentally Disordered in the French State.” Theory and Society 48(5):753–84.
Hollis, Martin, and Steve Smith.2000. Teorie mezinárodních vztahů. Interpretace a porozumění. Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury.