Andrea M. Maccarini

The Emergent Social Qualities of a ‘Morphogenic’ Society: Cultures, Structures, and Forms of Reflexivity

This chapter aims to discuss some possible substantive features of a ‘morphogenic society’, that is the qualities of social life that fall within the range of such a concept. Therefore, the present considerations revolve around the following questions: are there any qualitatively new structural (i.e. not purely contingent) features characterizing our society? What are the social qualities of the most striking emergent phenomena? And do they together amount to a wholly new societal formation? Further, how do these observable social entities emerge from the womb of social morphogenesis? Are they just a random-like bunch of ‘social innovations’, or are they mutually related and inherently connected with an ‘engine’ that produces a consistent societal formation? The chapter argues that the dynamic ‘core’ of the ‘morphogenic’ society lies precisely in the relationships between such a ‘motor’ and the qualitative features of the social order it engenders. The argument starts providing an overview of emergent social phenomena, and tracing them to the main generative mechanism assumed. I also claim that such a relationship is the most adequate way to account for those emergent entities.

The Normative Texture of Morphogenic Society: Tensions, Challenges, and Strategies

The fundamental research question examined in the present chapter concerns what norms and values are being destroyed, preserved, or generated anew in the emerging morphogenic society (MS). What normative processes are at work in the context of the structural and cultural landscape of the new world? In other words, how ‘unbound’ is morphogenesis going to be from normativity itself, from its prompts and restraints?

Turbulence and Relational Conjunctures: The Emergence of Morphogenic Environments

The aim of this chapter is to explore one particular way in which the current social dynamics may be developing into a ‘morphogenic society’. Its main concern is to outline some substantive features such an emerging societal formation could exhibit. The notion of social mechanism is central to this enterprise. The main thesis is that the conjuncture among various mechanisms is generating different niches or ‘environments’ within global society, which are possibly characterized by mutually opposed features. More precisely, the thesis is that the force of intensified morphogenesis is shaping organizations and big institutional complexes into social forms that could be described as ‘enclaves’ and ‘vortexes’, which emerge when social complexity tends to exceed the adaptive capacity of human individuals, groups or collectivities. A map of emergent social facts and entities is presented, clarifying the way in which their interrelations, under particular structural and cultural conditions, act as higher-order mechanisms giving rise to social forms that may be usefully characterized as enclaves or vortexes. The chapter goes on to illustrate some of the structural and cultural emergent properties of such environments, and the ways in which they may influence the quality of social life in the emerging morphogenic society. Among these, the negative consequences for cooperation and social integration are highlighted.

The Morphogenetic Approach and the Idea of a Morphogenetic Society: The Role of Regularities

This chapter addresses the systematic significance of the idea of a morphogenetic society (MS), the questions it raises and the implications it has for the explanatory morphogenetic approach. The general thesis is that further articulation of the morphogenetic conceptual framework appears to be connected with the representation of society it offers, the relation being one of reciprocity. More precisely, it is argued that the idea of MS could stimulate theoretical work at the borders of the morphogenetic approach, to consolidate, expand, and face challenges to it. Specifically, the conceptualization of emergence, particularly of what can be called ‘emergence of the new’, raises issues related to abrupt (i.e., catastrophic) versus gradual change and profound versus superficial change. This chapter then focusses upon the issue of regularity, arguing that the idea of a MS entails a further articulation of the morphogenetic approach that involves a reconsideration of the concept of (social) regularity. Finally, it is also maintained that the morphogenetic approach allows for an original representation of global society, based on a non-functionalistic, non-evolutionistic, non-teleological conceptual framework, and provides a fully processual conceptualization of social order.

The Morphogenic Society as Source and Challenge for Human Fulfillment

The chapter addresses the problem of what specific conditions the morphogenic society (MS) sets for the hopes and meanings of human flourishing. It is argued that the MS presents some major challenges, summarized as (i) the explosion of the possibilities for action and experience; (ii) social acceleration, and (iii) the saturation of social space. These result in a deep pressure on the human being and in a crisis of the ‘exonerating’ function of institutions. The corresponding, emergent needs are (a) self-empowerment; (ii) durable attachment and cooperation; (iii) a renewed sense of transcendence. This chapter shows that such a societal constellation disrupts the modern ‘compromise of happiness’, calling radically into question personal and collective identities. The hopes for authentic human fulfillment depend on precarious social and cultural dynamics, which can be understood through the guiding distinctions of flourishing/calling and flourishing/enhancement.

“The Times They Are A-Changing”: Modern and Non-Modern Dynamics in the Emergence of a Secular Italy

Many sociologists and historians have foreseen the secularization of Europe and have pointed to the close relation between this religious trend and ongoing modernization. Among them, Hugh McLeod stands out as a prominent author who has refined that thesis, talking of the ‘end of Christendom.’ By this term he means the end of a society that defines itself as Christian, in the aftermath of the religious crisis of the 1960s. This article uses the religious situation in Italy as a testing ground for that thesis, and argues that the most significant emergent facts for religious change are currently taking place outside the symbolic range of the conservative-progressive distinction. Building on recent empirical research as well as on the insight of such anti-evolutionistic views of the modernization process as Joas’ theory of the creativity of action and Archer’s approach to social morphogenesis, I sketch a new, provisional picture of religious change in Italy. I thus try to capture the mixing strategies and dynamics through which religious actors are making their way out of ‘Christendom’ and towards some new form of a ‘secular,’ yet not de-Christianized, country.