BOOK REVIEW
by Allenna Leonard
Paul A. Stokes: The Viability of Societies:
Governance and Complexity Today
The idea that the concepts and insights of cybernetics might have something to contribute
to the discipline of sociology is not new, but, as Paul Stokes tells us, it has not been notably
successful so far.
In three Sections, Stokes attempts to rectify this with an examination of the current state
of the discipline and its metaphors, a recasting of the subject of sociology and a way
forward through a robust treatment of the concept of identity. He proposes a means,
Stafford Beers Viable System Model, to bring it into a contemporary view that has a
rigorous platform for future research and the design of social organizations.
The reason for the lack of connection between cybernetics and sociology lies in their
common, but not contemporaneous, histories. Classical sociology was a product of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and sought, for its metaphors, the most rigorous
ones then availablenamely the matter/energy concepts of Newtonian physics. Unfortunately,
while human relations can be described in terms of force and equilibrium, those
metaphors provide little room for nuance. Moreover, human relationships are extremely
difficult to quantify and can only partially be explained according to logic. This has led to a
crisis of fragmentation in sociology. According to Gregory Bateson, social scientists pitched
their tents on the wrong side of a chasm they didnt know existed. The sciences of
information, communication and controlnamely cyberneticsdid not arrive on the scene
until the mid-forties, by which time different schools of sociological thought had already
established their boundaries.
Stokes, having made this diagnosis, goes on to ask how a bridge might be constructed
over the chasm. He finds it in the concept of finalization. This work, done by the Sternberg
group, discusses the development of science as taking part in three stages. First, experiments
are done and discoveries made; second, a set fundamental theories are established
which account for the data; and third, they are applied in practical ways. But, there is a
catch: it is difficult to address practical problems by applying fundamental theory directly.
An intermediate conceptual layer is needed to transduce from the one to the other. This has
been missing in sociology and Stokes proposes the concept of social organization as the
needed intermediate concept.
The possibility of social organization rests on the concept of control. This is the
capability of recognizing a current state, a preferred state and the difference between them
and being able to do something about it. He draws upon the work of William Powers and
his Perceptual Control Theory as elaborated in Behaviour: the Control of Perception. At
the level of the individual organism, control is characterized by the ability to pursue
consistent goals (hierarchical reference standards) by flexible means. In groups, interdependence
further leads to pursuing control through collective action towards a relatively
small number of goals in the case of the animal kingdom and towards a far more complex
and variable set among human beings. Collective action requires control: both to perform
the action and to distribute the rewards. Among small groups, monitoring the actions of the
members and sanctioning those who could, but did not, contribute to the gains can be done
informally. As the group becomes larger, the more necessary it becomes to have rules, and
eventually, agents whose responsibility it is to enforce them, culminating in the development
of bureaucracy.
When we talk about people in their relations, he contends, we are talking about social
organizations: entities that range from the family to the nation-state and the many
assemblages in between. Social organizations are ubiquitous, but their commonality has
not been fully appreciated by many in the social science field. Partly this flows from the
fact that they are studied separately. Webers work on bureaucracy as the most mature
form of organization has dominated thinking and many other organizations, bureaucracies
or not, have been studied separately under topics of law, politics, economics, etc. Also,
popular dichotomies such as individual vs. society obscure the many intermediate
affiliations.
Social organizations serve as a locus of connections between individuals. They arise
and persist because they are effective instruments for obtaining resources: goods, services
and status to be sure; but also the requisite variety to deal with increasingly complex
circumstances. This notion of requisite variety accounts for the disruption of the growth of
centralized bureaucracies as mass production and mass society became more pluralistic.
What has been referred to by some as disorganization is more aptly considered to be
reorganization as more agile networks of small entities prove to be more capable of
adaptation.
Stokes moves from there to focus on the nature and organization of identity. Identity is a
key concept for both individuals and social organizations because it provides closure. It is a
way of distinguishing a boundary between inside and outside and a framework for selecting
some aspects and not selecting others. Ones culture is a big part of this framework,
establishing many ways around the world to perform similar functions. His treatment of
culture as a control system, the way things are done around here, illustrates its characteristics
of efficiency and effectiveness and its function of attenuating deviations by
punishing them with high levels of noise, ineffectiveness and, at the limit, sanctions. At the
limit of deviation-damping social organizations are those that have become dominant in
their fields and become institutions. Institutionalization becomes both a result of the
conferring of legitimacy and an agency for conferring it on others.
His next step is to introduce Beers Viable System in sociological terms as a model of
identity; with its five stages of enactment, pattern, cohesion and homeostasis, anticipation
and closure and self-reference, repeated at every scalar level or level of recursion. This
enables him to look at individuals and the multiple social organizations in which they are
embedded according to a consistent set of functions and activities.
The penultimate chapter recaps the history of the formation of nation-states and their
increasingly hierarchical and centralized monopoly powers and looks at the limitations of
this form in terms of requisite variety. In brief, the more complex societies become, the
more difficult it is for governance to be accomplished by vertical relationships. Higher
variety means that mass society with its one-size-fits all prescriptions is being replaced by
an identity society in which directions are negotiated. Technology, especially communications
technology, and widespread literacy and numeracy accelerate the distribution of
control, or governance, to both individuals and a larger number of the organizations
comprising civil society. But, decentralization and self-regulation are not the whole answer
either because, alone, they can lead to fragmentation. A balance between autonomy and
cohesion, as illustrated in the Viable System Model, is required.
A concluding chapter recaps the arguments of the text and suggests avenues for future
research on applying the Viable System Model and other concepts from cybernetics as
discussed in Beers Designing Freedom to the problem of governance in an identity
society.
Paul Stokes has put forth arguments that to me, coming from the cybernetics and
systems community, are compelling. They are extensively researched, with an exhaustive
bibliography, for all who wish to follow up on the many side roads that flash by in the
course of the book. And, I am looking forward to seeing the results of the research he
recommends. I might also argue that if these concepts had been understood and applied,
and if the false dichotomies between efficiency and transparency and between regulation
and creative entrepreneurship been dismissed, we might not be facing the economic turbulence
we are today. While it seems to be accepted that regulation failed to keep pace
with the complexity of the financial instruments and transactions, there is nowhere near
enough understanding that there is a discipline that studies this and could provide help and
answers.
This book is a step in this direction.
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"For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root."David Thoreau (1817-1862)
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