From P2P Foundation

Email exchange between Adrian Chan and Michael Bauwens

Adrian Chan:

"I just reread your introduction on individuality, relationality, and collectivity. I don't get how you move from pomo to sociality, the collective and to the necessity of subject-object approach.

The collective to me is a very fuzzy idea, as it seems to aggregate individuals without a social theory of what binds them. My sociological self doesn't see a concept of the social in the collective (this is directed here not at you but at the concept)...

Sociality sets up a protocol... This seems sociological but I don't recognize the approach referred to here. is this normative? Is it discursive? Does the protocol appear thru discipline? Communication/commands and orders? Is it the protocol of gemeinschaft or gesellschaft, of work or leisure? Etc.

Then agents relate around an object. If relations are mediated by objects, where do we put symbolic interactionism, which describes intersubjective interaction as a communicative act (no object required). If you mean "objective," we'd have to ask how can we assume that interactants share an objective. There are numerous cases of interaction in which people exploit a situation, or each other. Not to mention examples of artistic expression, performance, etc which don't seem to include an object of action or relation.

If I can better understand where we can go with relations I think I can help better. I don't mean to be tossing up speedbumps; this is all in the interest of a better and more refined understanding!"

Michel Bauwens:

Thanks for your questions and remarks, though I'm not sure I can answer them.

I think a general point is that I do not have the same academic grounding, and am thus often not aware of the various schools and theories in existence.

I'm positing my own conclusions based on my own reading and reflection.

My point about the collective and society is that it is an irreducible part of reality, the thickness of it that we encounter, so that we are never totally free in our subjectivity and relations but shaped by that pre-existing totality. I have an inkling that this is well explained by critical realism, which I only recently encountered. I think that forms of institutional thought might also fit the bill. But not being a sociologist, I'll leave open the exact mechanisms through which this impacts on individuals and relations.

I also know there is a distinct school of object oriented sociology (http://www.p2pfoundation.net/index.php/Object-oriented_Sociality)

The concept of protocol is derived from the book of Galloway, where he states that power and control are now hidden in the protocol of networks, and I pretty much think that is true for the overall network that is society.

Your object to object-relations by referring to symbolic interactionism? That's perhaps an aspect that I forgot, but I include it in the individual/individuality aspect: human reflexivity.

My point is that no approach of reality that does not combine both the subjective and the objective, can be in the end satisfactory, a point well argued by the various integral/integrative approaches (Wilber, Bhaskar). We can of course use reduction and bracketing, such as in network theory, and it can be partially effective, but then has to be brought back to the interdisciplinary field where the missing aspects need to be re-introduced.

So to answer your objection to the object, you might be correct, but such approach is nevertheless illuminating, and has been used with success to explain the failings of some social networking projects. I tend to believe that human intentionality is also irreducible, and that it necessarily involves an object.'