[p2p-research] Organising and Disorganising: a five fold relational grammar (discount offer from publisher)

[Michel Bauwens]

I'm still waiting for my own review copy, but what from what I've seen from
the draft chapters, this is a really important book regarding peer
governance and an outline of the different forms of human solidarities and
how they interact.

I.e. the author distinguishes: markets, hierarchies, egalitarianism and
'fatalism' and a fifth integrative form of relationship called "Autonomy"

The book is: *Organising and Disorganising: A Dynamic and Non-Linear Theory
of Institutional Emergence and its Implications. Dr Michael Thompson.
Triarchy Press, 2008* and is presented in detail here at

http://p2pfoundation.net/Organising_and_Disorganising

The publisher kindly offers us a 40% discount:

"*We can offer readers of your blog 40% discount off the list price by
putting the code P2P25 in the promotion code box at the checkout - so the
book would be £14.25 rather than £25*."

Go here if you're interested: http://triarchypress.co.uk/pages/book16.htm

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alison at Triarchy Press <alison at triarchypress.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 11:41 PM
Subject: RE: [SPAM] Re: Organising and Disorganising
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>


 Michel,

Do offer the second one to another reviewer - thank you.  It was posted
yesterday.

Ok - attached a synopsis from the book on the 'autonomous' position.

And here <http://triarchypress.co.uk/pages/book16.htm> is the link for
orders.  We can offer readers of your blog 40% discount off the list price
by putting the code P2P25 in the promotion code box at the checkout - so the
book would be £14.25 rather than £25.

Let me know when it is all up and running..
Thank you
Alison

-----Original Message-----
*From:* Michel Bauwens [mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com]
*Sent:* 13 November 2008 07:19
*To:* Alison at Triarchy Press
*Subject:* [SPAM] Re: Organising and Disorganising

oh, I didn't know you send one, sorry for that ...

the books usually arrive, and it may still yet arrive ...

Can I offer the second one, if I end up getting to, to our community in case
a second reviewer turns up for another source?

Michel

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 8:35 PM, Alison at Triarchy Press <
alison at triarchypress.com> wrote:

>  Dear Michel,
>
> I am so sorry the book hasn't arrived - we sent it out to you nearly 3
> weeks ago now.
> Will pop another one in the post today and fingers crossed this one gets to
> you.
>
> Will reply to rest of this email later today or early tomorrow.
> Alison
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> *From:* Michel Bauwens [mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com]
>  *Sent:* 12 November 2008 12:30
> *To:* Alison at Triarchy Press
> *Subject:* [SPAM] Re: [SPAM] Re: Organising and Disorganising
>
>  Thank you so much Allison.
>
> Since the week of that 'book of the week' choice is already over and other
> books are following in the pipeline already, I'm publishing this as a
> separate discussion on the 26th only.
>
> Here's the URL at
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/four-solidarities-plus-one-the-pluralistic-society/2008/11/26,
> and here below the copy of the text and commentary I have chosen, and you
> will see how I relate it to my own p2p theory concerns.
>
> I have one more request to complete and end othe processing of Michael's
> book: I would need one more excerpts where he specifically discusses the
> fifth form of solidarity, i.e. autonomy, and I will then publish a last
> intervention some days after the 26th.
>
> (I'm still a candidate for a full book, so that I can review it for the
> center for cyberculture studies)
>
> If you can send me an order link for those readers who may want to purchase
> the book, I will add it to that entry of the 26th,
>
> Michel
>
>
>  Some time ago<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/book-of-the-week-michael-thompsons-theory-of-governance/2008/11/03>,
> we introduced Michael Thompson's book as Book of the Week, but we did not
> get the excerpts in time to do a follow-up the same week.
>
> As a reminder, this books (*Organising and Disorganising<http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Organising_and_Disorganising>:
> A Dynamic and Non-Linear Theory of Institutional Emergence and its
> Implications*) posits five different solidarities or types of
> intersubjective relations, and it puzzled me how it could be squared with
> the typology that is at the basis of my own theorizing on peer to peer, i.e.
> Alan Page Fiske's relational grammar.
>
> But after receiving chapter 2 for excerpting, I now understand how the
> approaches complement each other. The four basic solidarities of Thompson
> can be matched with the fourfold typology of Fiske, and the fifth, which
> Michael Thompson calls autonomy (the way of the hermit), is an integration
> of the other four, that avoids their coercion and totalitarian tendencies.
>
> Indeed, the way of the market, the way of hierarchy, the way of
> egalitarianism and the way of fatalism are each based on different
> metaphysical assumptions, views of nature and man that cannot be proven but
> are strongly adhered to, and each category's adherents tries to mold the
> world to its own image.
>
> They are therefore inherently coercive. Obviously, if our own peer to peer
> approach where to be this first stage egalitarianism, it would be coercive
> as well, and I believe that it isn't. Since none of the four can ever be
> eliminated as a basic feeling of the universe, we cannot propose a system
> that wipes the other out; however, it is legitimate I believe to think that
> just as the 3 other solidarities were once dominant, the fourth, peer to
> peer or communal shareholding, can also becoming a core organizing principle
> of society. But it should be a non-coercive core, which honours the other 3
> modes.
>
> Here are the excerpts from Michael Thompson, i.e. an explanation of the
> four solidarities followed by what cultural theory can bring to their
> understanding.
>
> *Michael Thompson (Chapter 2):*
>
> "** For upholders of the individualist solidarity, nature is benign - able
> to recover from any exploitation (hence the iconic myth of nature,
> illustrated in Figure 2.1: a ball that, no matter how profoundly disturbed,
> always returns to stability) - and man is inherently self-seeking and
> atomistic (i.e. the way the methodological individualists assume man is).
> Trial and error, in self-organising ego-focused networks (markets), is the
> way to go, with Adam Smith's invisible hand ensuring that people only do
> well when others also benefit. Individualists, in consequence, trust others
> until they give them reason not to and then retaliate in kind (the winning
> "tit for tat" strategy in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game [Rapoport
> 1985]). They see it as only fair that (as in the joint stock company) those
> who put most in get most out. Managing institutions that work "with the
> grain of the market" (getting rid of environmentally harmful subsidies, for
> instance) are what are needed.*
>
> ** Nature, for those who bind themselves into the egalitarian solidarity,
> is almost the exact opposite (hence the ball on the upturned basin) - fragile,
> intricately interconnected and ephemeral - and man is essentially caring and
> sharing (until corrupted by coercive and inegalitarian institutions:
> markets and hierarchies). We must all tread lightly on the Earth, and it is
> not enough that people start off equal; they must end up equal as well -
> equality of result. Trust and levelling go hand in hand, and institutions
> that distribute unequally are distrusted. Voluntary simplicity is the only
> solution to our environmental problems, with the "precautionary principle"
> being strictly enforced on those who are tempted not to share the simple
> life.*
>
> ** The world, in the hierarchical solidarity, is controllable. Nature is
> stable until pushed beyond discoverable limits (hence the two humps), and
> man is malleable: deeply flawed but redeemable by firm, long-lasting and
> trustworthy institutions (i.e. the way the methodological collectivists
> assume man is, as in "Give me the boy and I will give you the man"). Fair
> distribution is by rank and station or, in the modern context, by need (with
> the level of need being determined by expert and dispassionate authority).
> Environmental management requires certified experts (to determine the
> precise locations of nature's limits) and statutory regulation (to ensure
> that all economic activity is then kept within those limits).*
>
> ** Fatalist actors (or perhaps we should say non-actors, since their voice
> is seldom heard in policy debates; if it was they wouldn't be fatalistic!) find
> neither rhyme nor reason in nature, and know that man is fickle and
> untrustworthy. Fairness, in consequence, is not to be found in this life,
> and there is no possibility of effecting change for the better. "Defect
> first" - the winning strategy in the one-off Prisoner's Dilemma - makes
> sense here, given the unreliability of communication and the permanent
> absence of prior acts of good faith. With no way of ever getting in sync
> with nature (push the ball this way or that and the feedback is everywhere
> the same), or of building trust with others, the fatalist's world (unlike
> those of the other three solidarities) is one in which learning is
> impossible. "Why bother?", therefore, is the rational management response.
> *
>
> *These solidarities, in varying strengths and patterns of pairwise
> alliance, are clearly discernible almost anywhere you care to look: in
> debates over water engineering in South Asia (Gyawali 2001); in the
> international fora where delegates struggle to do something about climate
> change (Thompson, Rayner and Ney 1998; Verweij 2001); in the different ways
> international regimes cope with trans-boundary risks such as water pollution
> (Verweij 2000) and municipalities go about the business of transport
> planning (Hendriks 1994); in the various ways households set about making
> ends meet (Dake and Thompson 1999); in the different diagnoses of the
> pensions crisis in countries with ageing populations (Ney 1997); and in the
> different panaceas that are variously championed and rejected by theorists
> of public administration (Hood 1998), to mention but a few.*
>
> *In all these examples we find that each solidarity, in creating a context
> that is shaped by its distinctive premises, generates a storyline that
> inevitably contradicts those that are generated by the other solidarities.
> Yet, since each distils certain elements of experience and wisdom that are
> missed by the others, and since each provides a clear expression of the
> way in which a significant portion of the populace feels we should live with
> one another and with nature, it is important that they all be taken into
> some sort of account in the policy process. That, in essence, is the case
> for clumsiness: the case that I have tried to be persuasive about in the
> previous chapter*."
>
> *2. A Cultural Theory of these patterns*
>
> *Michael Thompson (Chapter 2):*
>
> "*A quick recapitulation of the argument so far - a recapitulation,
> moreover, that brings in the fifth solidarity - is a sensible first step on
> the way to this proper theory, and it can be set out in the form of five
> crucial observations. All five are to do with what is involved in going
> from the classic markets-and-hierarchies distinction to the cultural theory
> scheme with its five "eddies": its five recurrent regularities within an
> endless transactional flux.*
>
> *"Economic incentives and (or, perhaps, versus) social sanctions" is one
> way of explaining the markets-and-hierarchies framing. Hierarchies enforce
> the law of contract, without which markets would not work, and they also do
> other vital things (such as repelling enemies); markets then get on with the
> wealth-creating process of innovating, bidding and bargaining. Each, we can
> see, needs the other, though of course there is always considerable
> disagreement about just where the line between these two transactional
> realms should be drawn - most famously, perhaps, in the titanic struggle, in
> the first half of the last century, between Keynes and Hayek. Keynes wanted
> a major role for hierarchy; Hayek saw that as "The Road To Serfdom" (Hayek
> 1944) and wanted the line pushed back as far as it would go. Either way, as
> Keynes pointed out, a line has to be drawn, thereby winning on points, as it
> were ("Game, set and match", in the estimation of his most recent biographer
> [Skidelski 2000 p285]).*
>
> *The same sort of uneasy symbiosis is evident in what is called "the new
> institutional economics" (which, since it goes back to Williamson's 1975
> book, is really quite long in the tooth: a bit like Oxford's New College,
> which was new in the fourteenth century). In this framing, spiralling
> transaction costs (as changing technology, for instance, renders quality
> control more difficult and expensive) lead to market failure and to the
> hierarchy having to step in to set prices; and, conversely, markets taking
> over when transaction costs fall (as, for instance, they recently have - to
> almost zero - on the Internet). Each of these ways of organising, moreover,
> is seen as promoting a distinctive rationality - procedural and substantive
> as they are sometimes called: hierarchies being primarily concerned with
> propriety ("Who has the right to do what and to whom?"); markets being much
> more outcome-focused ("The bottom line"). In this way, each rationality
> legitimises one of these ways of organising and, in so doing, renders it
> viable in an environment that contains the other.*
>
> *Cultural theory does not reject this classic distinction, but it does add
> the following crucial observations:*
>
> *1. You cannot have hierarchies without hierarchists, nor markets without
> individualists.*
>
> *That is, the organisational requirements of the whole - the pattern of
> relationships - must somehow be internalised by the parts. The
> pattern-making, in other words, goes both ways - from the whole to the parts
> and from the parts to the whole - and this goes on in such a way as to
> strengthen that pattern and differentiate it from the other patterns. In
> this way (and like the chicken and the egg) each becomes the cause of the
> other: we create the patterns and the patterns create us. Individuality, in
> consequence, is not within each of us but between us: the individual, in Jon
> Elster's memorable phrase, is inherently relational.*
>
> *2. If two rationalities are justifiable, as they obviously are here, then
> the upholders of those rationalities will have to have different convictions
> as to how the world is and people are: different social constructions of
> nature, physical and human. Otherwise they could not justify their different
> actions as being self-evidently sensible and moral, the world and people
> being the way each of them insists they are. And, for contradictory
> certainties such as these to persist, there must always be sufficient
> uncertainty as to how the world, and the people in it, really are.*
>
> *3. Since markets institute equality (of opportunity) and promote
> competition whilst hierarchies institute inequality (status differences) and
> restrain competition, there are two discriminators at work here.*
>
> *A full typology, therefore, should contain the other two permutations:
> equality without competition (egalitarianism) and inequality with
> competition (fatalism).*
>
> *4. Since it is possible to contemplate both hierarchies and markets
> without having to be convinced that either's version - of how the world is
> and people are - is true, and since the same holds for egalitarianism and
> fatalism, there may well be a fifth way of organising (it is called
> autonomy) that is stabilized by the deliberate avoidance of the sorts of
> coercive involvement that are entailed in the other four. However, hermits
> (as the upholders of autonomy have been dubbed) do not transcend the social
> sphere, because they stabilize their distinctive way of organising in
> contradistinction to the others. If the four "socially engaged" forms of
> solidarity were not there the autonomous life would not be liveable. The
> objection - "four permutations and five solidarities" - recedes once we
> realise that the cross-over point of our two discriminators corresponds to a
> rather strange "all-zero" permutation (this will become clearer in the next
> chapter when these discriminators are recast, more correctly, as a
> transaction matrix).*
>
> *5. Though each pattern is made up of individuals and their transactions,
> we should not assume that an individual is part of only one pattern.*
>
> *Indeed, as Lockhart (1997) has pointed out, people who strive to keep all
> their transactions on just one pattern are hard to live with - we call them
> fanatics!*
>
> *In general, if transactional spheres - workplace and home, for instance -
> are fairly separate then an individual may lead different parts of his or
> her life in different patterns. Just because we are physiologically
> indivisible it does not follow that we are socially indivisible; hence the
> need to think in terms of the dividual, and to take the form of social
> solidarity (the pattern together with its viability conditions) as the unit
> of analysis, not the individual.*
>
> *These, then, are the barest bones of cultural theory. In the chapters
> that follow I will try to put some dynamic flesh on these bones
> (particularly on the fifth bone - the form of solidarity as the unit of
> analysis) and I will try to do this in a way that will make sense to
> students of institutions: no easy task, given my anti-dualistic and
> unobvious starting point. But cultural theory does have one thing in its
> favour: its even-handedness. Where students of institutions have long been
> faced with a stark choice - methodological individualism or methodological
> collectivism - cultural theory offers a welcome, and perhaps surprising,
> escape route: "a plague on both your methodologies!*"
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 4:58 PM, Alison at Triarchy Press <
> alison at triarchypress.com> wrote:
>
>>  Dear Michel,
>>
>> Attached is part of Chapter 2 which explains the five modes.
>>
>> Many thanks
>> Alison
>>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>> *From:* Michel Bauwens [mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* 07 November 2008 09:32
>> *To:* Alison at Triarchy Press
>>  *Subject:* [SPAM] Re: Organising and Disorganising
>>
>>  Hi allison,
>>
>> I would still appreciate part of a chapter, but I can't judge from the
>> titles, so can't give any recommendation ...
>>
>> perhaps the one where he explains the five modes?
>>
>> Michel
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 11:26 PM, Alison at Triarchy Press <
>> alison at triarchypress.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  Thank you for the 2 chapters - we will have a read and get back to
>>> you... thanks
>>>
>>> Re the excerpts - would it be appropriate to have a chapter/part chapter
>>> on the blog?  And do you have a particular one that you think would be most
>>> appropriate?  I can then send in electronic form.
>>>
>>> Have a good lecture trip.
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>> Alison
>>>
>>>  -----Original Message-----
>>> *From:* Michel Bauwens [mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com]
>>> *Sent:* 06 November 2008 03:04
>>> *To:* Alison at Triarchy Press
>>> *Subject:* [SPAM] Re: [SPAM] Re: Organising and Disorganising
>>>
>>> no experts received Allison .. I think you and Michael are playing ping
>>> pong with this one <g>
>>>
>>> I'm already attaching 2 chapters of the manuscript to give you an idea
>>> ...
>>>
>>> This is a bad time for me to work on dossier's, as I'm preparing a
>>> lecture trip in a few days ...
>>>
>>> Michel
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
>> alternatives.
>>
>> Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
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>>
>> Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
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>> BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
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>>
>> KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>>
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>> http://www.shiftn.com/
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
> alternatives.
>
> Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
> http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p
>
> Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
> http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
> BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
> http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU
>
> KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>
>


-- 
The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU

KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/




-- 
The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU

KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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