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p.3 social change is chiefly propelled by social selves, by acting collectivities. Individuals participate, some even lead others, but the vehicle of change is a social grouping.
p.5 Freedom to act is not without constraints. There is no action without counteraction... Constraints on action involve not only insufficient knowledge and awareness, slackening commitment, or failing power; they are, in part, self-imposed restraints because in each act the active self must balance potential cost against prospective gain and weigh the risks of misjudging one or both.
p.7 Unlike the release of the energy locked in physical molecules, the release of social energy requires not the smashing of the unit but its transformation.
p.12 a commitment to a value that is not activating, which has no consequence in action, is really no commitment at all... action is a good indicator of what the commitments actually are; an actor faces many demands and many claims but it is his action which reveals to others, and often to himself, where he stands and for what he stands.
p.14 The foundation of the active orientation of a societal unit is neither metaphysical nor psychological but structural; we can point to sub-units, processes, and access to resources devoted to maintaining the orientation.
p.27 a well-known statement by W. I. Thomas: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." [JLJ - if men define situations as real, then they and their consequences are attended to, discussed, and fretted over, worried, pondered, and acted upon.]
p.28 the following treatment of the Thomas dictum takes into account both the symbolic and the mechanical aspects of action: "We may therefore conclude that if people define situations as real, whether or not they are, their behavior will be altered" (i.e., not determined, but affected by the interpretation); and, "we do not suggest, however, that a person's definition of the situation is totally unrelated to the reality of the situation."
p.28 An actor may respond to "pure" symbols which have no natural base apart from their carrier... Or an actor may respond to a symbol that has some objective correlative beyond its mere carrier. In the first case, only the interpretation applies; in the second, both symbolic and mechanical processes affect the action.
p.29 in the social realm, the logics of objects and of symbols are coeffective.
p.29 Control is possible in principle because, on the one hand, the units of action, while they exist in the mechanical world, also respond to symbols.
p.30 The controlling overlayer consists of two major, analytically distinct segments. The first is composed of the symbolic-control processes such as the processing of information, synthesis, and decision-making... The second major segment is composed of the processes of implementation which serve as a bridge between the symbolic-control processes and those being controlled, using both symbolic components... and objects in the mechanical world... Both provide "hooks" which the controlling overlayer implants in the controlled underlayer and which are used to guide it.
p.45 Variables, it is widely recognized, may be properties either of units or of their relations.
p.67 Surely a language for theorizing about societal action must take into account the fact that very few societies disintegrate, and that most societies have the capacity to change themselves to some degree.
p.71 The drama of societal activation lies in the struggle between the forces which attempt to actualize the potential capacity to act and the pressures toward passivity
p.82 A theory that takes an active view of symbolic processes would indicate a conception of the capacity of the actors to guide in part the direction in which ideas develop and the ways in which sub-systems of symbols relate to each other.
p.98 A collectivity is a macroscopic unit that has a potential capacity to act by drawing on a set of macroscopic normative bonds which tie members of a stratification category... Collectivities need to be characterized morphologically - i.e., in terms of their loci in a societal structure
p.103 A central hypothesis of this study is that direct interaction among the members of two or more macro-cohesive units is relatively infrequent, and that which does occur tends to have few macroscopic consequences... A collectivity has an energy potential which, in itself, is unusable; unless transformed into kinetic energy
p.112 Control centers are units which direct the controlling overlayers and processes by (a) processing incoming knowledge, (b) making major decisions, especially among alternative policies and strategies, and (c) issuing signals to the body of the controlling overlayer and to the collectivities. All these activities entail the processing of symbols.
p.113 An elite is a societal control center; it specializes in the cybernetic functions of knowledge-processing and decision-making, and in issuing controlling signals for societal units.
p.121 A societal unit has transformability if it also is able to set - in response to external challenges, in anticipation of them, or as a result of internal developments - a new self-image which includes a new kind and level of homeostasis and ultra-stability, and is able to change its parts and their combinations as well as its boundaries to create a new unit. This is not a higher-order ultra-stability but an ability to design and move toward a new system even if the old one has not become unstable. It is an ability not only to generate adaptive changes or to restore new stability to an old unit, but also to bring about a new pattern... Adaptation to the environment may serve as the occasion for a transforming change... However, the full measure of transformability is not realized until a unit can transform its internal structure and its boundary-relations with other units in response to its internal needs, searching for a more effective way of meeting them under the given environmental conditions
p.143 Both information and evaluation tend to be produced bit by bit. This is obvious for information, which is usually produced in the form of discrete facts. It is less obvious for evaluation, which is by definition a process of assessing items by relating them to broader contexts of a cognitive, normative, or esthetic nature.
p.148 All knowledge is a simplification - a reduced, schematic abstraction from a richer, less ordered, more concrete reality. Knowledge is to the world what a map is to the road: It reports some details to the neglect of many others, and the signs must be understood before it is of any use at all.
p.180 Societal units that are effective from this viewpoint seem to be those whose organization of knowledge includes an institutionalized provision for revision of the community-of-assumptions.
p.186 consensus among intellectuals is not a prerequisite for the effective discharge of their critical function, which requires that the established communities-of-assumptions be challenged and that alternative ones be provided... The intellectuals' role is to pry open the walls in which society tends to box itself and suggest various directions which the freed prisoner may take... The active orientation is most effectively sustained if societal decision-making... is subject to fundamental criticism and to empirical reality-testing.
p.226 To be conscious of an object entails seeing it in a context, being aware of its place in a larger frame of reference. Consciousness may therefore be viewed not only as generalized awareness but also as a capacity to evoke a broader context. From this viewpoint, rules are aids to consciousness; they serve as reminders to evoke such contexts when predetermined benchmarks appear.
p.228 consciousness and knowledge are obviously closely related; one is concerned with the focusing of the other. [JLJ - perhaps knowledge is a deconstruction into cognitively manipulable pieces so that a scheme can be formed (in consciousness) in order to go on.]
p.235 While there are many different kinds of societal self-awareness, the study of societal guidance is especially concerned with political consciousness, an awareness of the power relations and political organization of society - of where the political levers are, what the distribution of power is, and the ways and means by which change is possible.
p.236 The inclusion of the extent of the awareness of control processes and of the capacity to restructure them encompasses a rather new "target" of societal consciousness.
p.240 Most societal units have some form of institutional, stratification, and power structures. To change these (which transformation involves by definition) almost inevitably entails a power struggle
p.251 Decision-making... is a synthesizing process of the controlling centers in which knowledge and commitment are fused and related to considerations of implementation... By decision we mean a conscious choice between two or more alternatives. Not all choices are conscious, but those that are not are not decisions.
p.251-252 If the element of consciousness is removed from the definition of the concept of decision and all choices are seen as decisions, a new term is needed for conscious choices which, we suggest, differ empirically from non-conscious ones.
p.254-255 Psychologically, an actor who is wholly instrumentally rational must, in theory, suppress in his decision-making all "irrelevant" considerations. These considerations intrude because the actor is subject to various pressures to choose alternatives not because they best suit his goal but because he is emotionally affected... Succumbing to such "irrelevant" intrusions is non-rational, by definition, so far as the instrumentalist position is concerned... To be rational, it is proposed, the actor must be [JLJ - detached]
p.261 rationality is not to be conceived as maximizing the service of one goal but as the greatest combined servicing of all the goals. [JLJ – kind of naïve if you ask me. You need an experienced scheme that works – perhaps involving critical success factors - the world is just too complex to set “goals” and then to “pursue” them. The world pivots when you attempt to move from your current position in society to pursue one or more goals, and you must avoid falling into the traps set by others. Clausewitz described a “friction” that prevents military commanders from accomplishing their goals – perhaps a product of some other schemer trying to reach his goals – requiring strategic thinking. So good luck pursuing your goal or goals in the post-modern age. Rationality in my mind involves developing then pursuing a scheme that works, including strategic thinking about necessary maneuver and taking a stance. You are not acting rationally unless you are pursuing a scheme that leverages your abilities in an environment that recognizes and rewards your potential.]
p.264 The requirements of rational decision-making have often been discussed: [JLJ – once more, in my opinion acting rationally involves a scheme, since infinite knowledge is not available and we must fill in gaps of missing knowledge somehow. Competition is an effective tool for developing effective schemes – one simply studies the schemes of the winners, and then one tries to duplicate them - that is all Napoleon did. “Rationality” fails miserably in a field of competition, where the direct route to a goal is blocked and one must maneuver and spend seemingly endless amounts of time and energy.]
p.270-271 The fullest and most recent presentation of the “muddling-through” approach is found in the work of Charles E. Lindblom. “Disjointed incrementalism” is a decision-making strategy which Lindblom and others view as commonly followed; moreover, it is the strategy they seem to prescribe. Using this strategy, decision-makers do not attempt a comprehensive survey and evaluation. They do not investigate all alternative policies... Decision-makers, the incrementalists stress, do not focus their attention on a clearly defined problem. There is no one decision, and problems are not “solved”; rather, there is a “never-ending series of attacks” on the issues at hand through successive or serial analyses and policy-making. The incremental approach is deliberately exploratory. Rather than attempting to foresee all the consequences of various alternate routes, one route is tried, and the unforeseen consequences are left to be discovered and treated by subsequent increments.
p.273 as another critic put it, according to this approach, “we do stagger through history like a drunk putting one disjointed incremental foot after another.”
p.282-283 What is needed for active decision-making is a strategy that is less exacting than the rationalistic one but not as constricting in its perspective as the incremental approach... The strategy of mixed-scanning, which we outline in the following pages, assumes that the criticisms of the rationalistic model are valid.
p.283 Actors whose decision-making is based on a mixed-scanning strategy differentiate contextualizing (or fundamental) decisions from bit (or item) decisions. Contextuating decisions are made through an exploration of the main alternatives seen by the actor in view of his conception of his goals, but – unlike what comprehensive rationality would indicate – details and specifications are omitted so that overviews are feasible. Bit-decisions are made “incrementally” but within the contexts set by fundamental decisions (and reviews). Thus, each of the two elements in the mixed-scanning strategy helps to neutralize the peculiar shortcoming of the other: Bit-incrementalism overcomes the unrealistic aspects of comprehensive rationalism (by limiting it to contextual decisions), and contextuating rationalism helps to right the conservative bias of incrementalism. Together, they make for a third approach which is more realistic and more transforming than each of its elements.
p.285 Chess players... we expect them to do better with this sequential combination of different kinds of scanning, going from vague but encompassing to detailed but exclusive examination, than players who only “increment” on the strategy with which they began or which have used successfully in the past. [JLJ – not quite this simple. In a complex position, “scanning” might not accomplish anything at all, because all it will reveal is “maybe” moves. “Scanning” the stocks in a stock market portfolio available for purchase, even their investment data such as past performance, offers little advantage for a normal investor because investment professionals have set the prices at auction based on information you likely do not have. How now does one act “rationally” when investing? For chess, what is required in my opinion is constructing a diagnostic test of the adaptive capacity to mobilize coercion. The strategy of “scanning” works both ways – a good player will build dynamic potential which lies hidden to current opponent “scans”, but nevertheless remains latent in the position and available for emergence in future interaction. You want to create the adaptive capacity to coerce - “scanning” is only part of the process required to create and test “maybe” moves. Playing “blitz” chess teaches you how to quickly come up with ideas for how to proceed – tournament chess teaches you how to synthesize good moves based on an exploration of the consequences of these “maybe” moves.]
p.288 The incrementalists do not deny the existence of fundamental decisions such as a declaration of war; they argue, however, that incremental decisions are much more common... fundamental decisions are often “prepared for” by bit decisions.
p.289 We suggest that (a) most incremental decisions specify or anticipate fundamental decisions, and (b) the cumulative value of the incremental decisions is greatly affected by the underlying fundamental decisions.
p.289-290 Incrementalists argue that incremental decisions tend to be small steps in the "right" direction, or, if and when it becomes evident that they are not, the course can be altered.
p.290 An active approach to societal decision-making requires two sets of mechanisms: (a) a high-order, fundamental policy-making process which sets basic directions and (b) an incremental process which prepares for fundamental decisions and revises them after they have been reached. [JLJ - I have previously advocated the two-step process of asking (in dialogue form): How might I proceed? followed by How much should I care about that?]
p.296 Some decisions have a genetic nature; that is, early ones create the conditions for later ones. The longer the series of decisions thus related, the longer the "lead time," the more important the anticipatory capacity of an actor for his active orientation.
p.303 the effectiveness of a decision will depend as much on its power-backing as on the validity of the knowledge and the decision-making strategy which were used.
p.303 The two processes [JLJ - decision-making and implementation], however, are closely interwoven, with decisions affecting implementations and initial implementations affecting later stages of decision-making which, in turn, affect later implementations... There is a continual give-and-take between decision-making and implementation.
p.303-304 in fact, decisions are processes and early decisions are often only vague directional signals, initial proddings, or trial runs for later specifications and revisions... Early decisions shape the power which affects later decisions, and the more the initial decisions took the relevant power into account, the more effective implementation is going to be.
p.304 It should be noted that unless we add power analysis to that of decision-making, we do not know how decisions are related to the control of action.
p.304 Control is not just a process of information-collection, calculation, and the expression of commitments, but also a process of the mobilization and use of assets.
p.387 the degree to which a particular controlling overlayer is able to implement the designs its cybernetic centers outline is significantly affected by the amount of energy it is able to mobilize.
p.388 Mobilization is the process by which energy that is latent from the viewpoint of the acting unit is made available for collective action. A more mobilized unit can get more done collectively either by increasing the number of goals it realizes or by increasing the intensity with which it pursues those goals it is already realizing.
p.388-389 We refer to the process by which a unit gains significantly in the control of assets it previously did not control as mobilization… mobilization may entail the loss of potential control for some actors and a gain of potential control for the mobilizing one… A mere increase in the assets of… sub-units… does not mean that mobilization has occurred, though it increases the mobilization potential. The change in the capacity to control and to use assets is what is significant.
p.389 Depending on the kinds of assets involved, mobilization is coercive... or normative [JLJ - Etzioni means persuasive]... When mobilization occurs, the controlling overlayer, as a rule, invests part of the assets it already controls in an effort to increase its power... mobilization is, by definition, both a process of change (in the control structure) and a changing process (of societal structures and, as we shall see, of boundaries).
p.391 It is relatively easy to measure utilitarian mobilization… Coercive mobilization… is also relatively easy to measure.
p.392 The concept of mobilization answers the analytic question: What is the source of the energy for societal action?
p.393 Whatever the form of mobilization, whether it be direct or indirect, the process entails a shift of control and/or a shift of the usage of assets, except when the newly-available assets come from external sources.
p.394 Mobilization is the process by which potentials are brought closer to actualization... the struggle that is most significant for the explanation of societal change, of history, is one which is internal to each collectivity (and society). This is the struggle to mobilize under the given conditions and for the purpose of changing them; it occurs between the mobilizers and the unmobilized in one and the same collectivity (or society). Were all the members of a collectivity (or a society) to mobilize all of their assets and themselves in support of a line of collective action, it would be as if all the latent energy locked in a pound of material were released and transformed into power; it would propel the collectivity into the highest levels of activeness and alter the societal map.
p.399 The main questions for the transformation toward an active society are whether or not societies can mobilize themselves and their member collectivities to high, crisis-like if not higher, levels in non-crisis situations, and whether or not they can generate power for internal, self-transformations instead of exerting their wills on other societies. Further, can this level and kind of mobilization be attained without generating so many counter-currents and so much alienation that the consensual base of society and values related to it will be undermined as the realization of the values expressed in the goals advanced is enhanced?
p.403 The take-off stage of an internal mobilization is often marked by increasing numbers of collective projects. A project is a concerted effort which entails the focusing of energy and a comparatively intensive and guided activity oriented toward specific tasks... a project may act as a societal catalyst... the constraints may be "real" but their power may be overestimated; a project may suffice to remove them.
p.405 In those sub-sets of processes from which a more encompassing, macroscopic, and permanent mobilization results, the process follows the pattern of a slow chain reaction. When a passive collectivity or society is activated through a mobilization process... the process is relatively slow and there is almost never the simultaneous activation of all or even the majority of the sub-units of any societal unit... collectivities on the move do not move frontally, with all of their members in roughly the same position like an attacking platoon; rather, the members differ in the extents of their activation with some sub-units more activated than others.
p.405-406 On those occasions in which the process of conversion is continued, the ratio of the sub-units activated to those left relatively or completely passive slowly increases... Another main point... is that the activation of some sub-units has a similar - though usually, at least, initially, a smaller - effect on a sub-set of the other sub-units; that is, activated sub-units have a catalytic role.
p.412 the action effects of the mobilization drive of one unit depend considerably on the degree to which this drive triggers counter-mobilizations in other units in the same situation, which seek to neutralize the new power of the mobilizing unit or to block its intended self-changes.
p.413 Increases in the action capacity of a unit are determined by the net amount of its mobilization - that is, by the results of its mobilization minus the results of the counter-mobilization(s) it triggered. A universal strategic problem of mobilizing units is finding modes of mobilization that will trigger as little counter-mobilization as possible or at least less "static" than the unit itself can gain in "dynamics."
p.416 A society whose members are more mobilized is more active, even if this entails... a rise in the amount of conflict.
p.417 as the various collectivities that constitute a society are unevenly mobilized at any point in time, changes in the levels of mobilization of the various member collectivities invariably alter the relative mobilization levels of the collectivities and, hence, their respective power and the society's structure... Thus, from the viewpoint of each collectivity, its mobilization efforts and the external constraints upon them (which include the society's structure) affect each other. Mobilization uses whatever options the structure allows for changing it, and changing the structure can expand these options... Such mutual reinforcing processes frequently exhaust themselves before a tipping point in favor of transformation is reached.
p.417-418 projects trigger a chain reaction which leads a societal unit to exercise the relatively more active options within the range available under the given structural constraints, which, in turn, loosens these constraints. This may lead to societal transformation.
p.535 Various changes in "background conditions" increase the possibility of transformation, but they must be accelerated and their potential actualized, and this is what requires mobilization.
p.536 To advance this transformation, not only weaker collectivities but also society itself must be mobilized. Why is this so? ...The answer is that for transformation to be politically feasible… it will have to rely to a great extent on “upgrading,” ...We do not expect that mobilization in itself, of either collectivities or of the society, can be sufficient to bring about transformation. Mobilization of the collectivities provides new energy for their action… once mobilization advances, gains in societal power must be converted into an increased share of political control of the state, and the reallocation of assets in favor of… collectivities must take place in order to lead to transformation – i.e., mobilization must lead to structural changes… mobilization tends to be cyclical, advancing in spurts but rarely stabilizing. Hence, before it has a lasting societal effect, part of the newly mobilized energy must be converted into changes in the political and societal structure. Such conversions, in turn, provide a base for later mobilization drives.
p.536-537 if mobilization drives are converted only into “token” political and societal alterations, they will not accumulate toward a gradual transformation. They will be either below “take off” or under the threshold of this or that “tipping” point. More often than not, mutual reinforcing effects… run out of steam before a transformation is achieved, and the efforts to bring it about are, at least temporarily, halted.
p.537 The need to “anchor” the gains of mobilization, to convert them into structural changes, has not always been understood by the mobilizers themselves.
p.550 For a societal unit to be fully active, it must be able to transform not only its internal structure but also its external boundaries… One major reason that the transformation of boundaries must occur is that many of the bases of unresponsiveness lie outside the boundaries of one societal unit, and if a societal unit’s internal structure is to be made more responsive, external factors, especially those regarding its relations to external elites, must be transformed.
p.550 Internal structures and external boundaries are interlocked; one cannot be changed (and certainly not transformed) without also changing the other.
p.620 Authenticity exists where responsiveness exists and is experienced as such. The world responds to the actor's efforts, and its dynamics are comprehensible.
p.647 mobilization... the process by which energy is made available for new societal action.
p.647 A project is a concentrated act. It entails a relatively specific goal or goals and a heightened level of activity and, hence, usually a measure of mobilization.
p.652 Projects are, thus, potentially like catalysts; they may set into motion chain reactions which go far beyond the initial action... even when chain reactions do "take-off," they frequently are exhausted before the society is transformed, especially when they meet countervailing forces on other levels. But rarely does the society remain the same after such an activation, because... the bases of mobilization are likely to have been affected, and a new foundation has been provided for future projects.
p.653 Projects and, more generally, action are ways of keeping the elements connected, because they test knowledge, reveal and adjust commitments, and explore the foundations of power... Confrontations lead either to a transformation or to a change in the base of mobilization. Neither alternative is definitive; a transformation is likely to necessitate further transformations... A change in the mobilization base affects the future plateaux from which projects will be launched. In either case, activation ultimately may be achieved only in societal projects aimed at increasing the responsiveness of society rather than seeking a "good" society. [JLJ - plateaux is the plural of plateau.]
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