Table Of ContentSOCIOPOLITICAL ECOLOGY
Human Systems and Ecological Fields
Contemporary Systems Thinking
Series Editor: Robert 1. Hood
University of Hull
Hull, United Kingdom
DESIGNING SOCIAL SYSTEMS IN A
CHANGING WORLD
Bela H. Banathy
LIBERATING SYSTEMS THEORY
Robert L. Flood
OPERATIONAL RESEARCH AND SYSTEMS
The Systemic Nature of Operational Research
Paul Keys
POWER, IDEOLOGY, AND CONTROL
John C. Oliga
SELF-PRODUCING SYSTEMS
Implications and Applications of Autopoiesis
John Mingers
SOCIOPOLITICAL ECOLOGY
Human Systems and Ecological Fields
Frederick L. Bates
SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY FOR THE
MANAGEMENT SCIENCES
Michael C. Jackson
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring
delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon
actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher.
SOCIOPOLITICAL ECOLOGY
Human Systems and Ecological Fields
Frederick L. Bates
The University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia
Springer Science +B usiness Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bates, Frederick L.
Sociopolitical ecology : human systems and ecological fields /
Frederick L. Bates.
p. cm. — (Contemporary systems thinking)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4899-0253-5
1. Social structure. 2. Social systems. 3. System theory.
4. Social ecology. 5. Human ecology. I. Title. II. Series.
HM24.B3637 1997
306~dc21 97-29385
CIP
ISBN 978-1-4899-0253-5 ISBN 978-1-4899-0251-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-0251-1
© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1997
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997
10 987654321
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
To HAROLD L. GEISERT
whose insightful teaching and personal friendship
inspired me to start on the long road to the writing of this book
Foreword
In the late nineteenth century, researchers encountered limitations to reduc
tionism and physicS. A counterposition in biology took on a coherent form
by the mid-1920s. Scientists such as Walter B. Cannon (credited with homeo
stasis), Paul Weiss, and Ludwig von Bertalanffy (credited with open systems
theory) came to the fore. Von Bertalanffy, for example, demonstrated that
concepts of physics and closed systems were helpless in appreciating dy
namics of organisms. Existence of an organism cannot be understood in
terms of behavior of fundamental parts in an isolated system moving toward
disorder (as suggested by reductionism and the Second Law of Thermody
namics). A whole organism is characterized by increasing or at least main
taining order; its behavior is more than the sum of its parts. Biology therefore
required new concepts.
New concepts in biology focused on functional and relational criteria
rather than reductionist analysis of fundamental parts. Organisms exist in re
lation to an environment, and their functions and structure are maintained
by a continuous flow of energy and information between organism and en
vironment. An organism is a complex system comprising many interrelated
parts resulting in a whole with integrity. Key concepts here include self-orga
nization by way of progressive differentiation, equifinality as the indepen
dence of final state from initial conditions, and teleology as the dependence of
behavior of the organism on some future purpose "known in advance."
Open systems theory and other biological conceptions like homeostasis
portray concepts of physics as helpless in appreciating dynamics of social
systems as well as organisms. Rather, open systems theory observes social
systems as complex systems made up of parts most usefully studied as a
whole. Social systems are open to an environment. For organizations, action
is taken to hold its critical variables in the steady-state. The primary aim is to
ensure survival by transforming inputs and by adapting to changes when
they occur.
This influential view of systems in the world has been challenged by
Maturana and Varela in their theory of autopoiesis. Again, they argued, biol
ogy required new concepts. For example, autopoiesis is a theory of self-refer-
vii
viii Foreword
ential systems. This introduces a new notion of the capacity of living organ
isms to reproduce themselves and to maintain themselves as autonomous
things. Autopoiesis is well presented by John Mingers in his volume, Self
Producing Systems: Implications and Applications of Autopoesis, in this series
Contemporary Systems Thinking.
However, there remains a possibility, argues Frederick Bates in this vol
ume, that Maturana and Varela's work may continue to lead people to con
ceive social systems as living systems or organisms of sorts. This "danger" is
surely one that we have learned to avoid in recent years. I feel Bates's con
cern here resonating with R.D. Laing's worry that "we have had accounts of
men [sic] as animals, men as machines, men as biochemical complexes with
certain ways of their own, but there remains the greatest difficulty of achiev
ing a human understanding of man in human terms." (The Politics of Expe
rience and the Birds of Paradise).
In this intriguing book, Bates tackles this great difficulty with his own
theory of self-referential systems in human terms. For Bates, these systems
exist only as realities created by an observer through the use of "sets of cog
nitive rules." From this develops a constructivist theory of self-referential
thinking yielding a view that society as a social entity consists of a set of such
interrelated systems. These systems move toward closure, but closure sits in
stark contrast to closed systems thinking referred to earlier in this foreword.
Dangling these ideas before you, Bates offers an invitation to explore this and
other notions with him in an intellectually stimulating engagement with his
sociopolitical ecology. I recommend that you take up that engagement.
ROBERT 1. FLOOD
Preface
This book is an extension and, to a degree, a reformulation of the ideas pre
sented in The Structure of Social Systems and in the various journal articles
that led up to and followed its publication. It arose out of my desire to clarify
and promote the development of sociological structuralism as opposed to s0-
ciological individualism. It also grew out of a recognition that my previous
work had not provided a satisfactory view of macrostructure and that it had
failed to deal effectively with social change or morphogenisis. In addition, it
had not dealt explicitly with the epistemological foundation upon which
structural analysis rests.
The Structure of Social Systems, as well as the various articles I have writ
ten on social structure, assumed an empiricist view of "systems theory" as
their theoretical grounding and, as a consequence, accepted rather uncriti
cally the proposition that societies are, by definition, as well as by their ob
servable nature, systems. Gradually, as my experience as an observer in
research settings around the world broadened, I grew increasingly uncom
fortable with this proposition, especially in light of my growing interest in
social and economic development and the various well-known criticisms of
functionalism and its failure to deal effectively with conflict and social
change. It has always seemed apparent to me that the logic of systems theory
is, in fact, antithetical to the idea of conflict and that attempts to accommo
date systems theory to conflict theory have weakened rather than strength
ened the internal consistency of the various propositions upon which
systems theory rests. Even so, it has also been my conviction that, lacking a
satisfactory alternative as a theoretical foundation, we were compelled to
live with these inconsistencies while we were searching for a satisfactory res
olution of the problems they represent.
In order to write this book, which was originally to be directed toward
clarifying the meaning of the concept social structure and discussing the role
of structural analysis in the sociological enterprise, I needed a new way of
looking at social systems. I chose "self-referential systems theory" as this
new approach. I first learned of this approach from my friend and colleague,
Carlo Pelanda, with whom I was working on an international disaster study
ix
x Preface
at the Institute of International Sociology in Gorizia, Italy. Like me, one of
Carlo's central interests is in sociological theory as it relates to the structure
and functioning of social systems. In conversations over a period of several
years the subject of self-referential systems theory came up repeatedly, and
Carlo attempted to explain to me what it was all about. I must confess that
for quite some time I was unable to grasp the meaning and significance of
what he was saying and was at first resistant to the idea that such systems
are thought of as being closed and autonomous. My mistake was to think
of them as closed in the sense that Buckley or Rappaport and others think of
closed systems. My other difficulty was in understanding the significance of
the notion that self-referential social systems exist only as realities created by
an observer through the use of "sets of cognitive rules."
I remember sitting one night with Carlo on the bakony of my hotel in
Trieste overlooking the harbor in which several ships were maneuvering
toward the dock and asking him, "Is the crew of that ship out there a self
referential system?" Carlo, I am sure, was puzzled by my question, but
nevertheless, in his usual good humor, answered, "Perhaps." I later realized
he meant by this, "It depends on how you look at it." I was not then aware
of the fact that I, an empiricist, was asking for an empiricist's answer from a
rather radical relativistic contructivist. My question was directed toward the
issue of structural boundedness, which I interpreted to be the same thing as
closure, and I did not understand what is meant by closure in self-referential
systems from a constructivist point of view. It seemed apparent to me that
whoever was in command of the ship we were observing, and whoever was
at the wheel and at the engine controls, were all taking information from
their environment into account and responding to it by changes in course.
This meant to me that the ship's crew was an "open system." Later, I realized
that this is irrelevant in a constructivist's version of self-referential systems
theory. What is relevant is that perhaps, as Carlo said, it could be demon
strated that there is an "independent system of cognitive rules" that governs
the behavior of the ship's crew and that these rules have evolved as a set of
rules separately from other sets ofr ules covering other activities in society.
I really did not grasp what Carlo was talking about until I heard him
give a paper at a meeting of Italian and American disaster researchers at the
University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center. Although the paper was
about disasters, it was couched in terms of constructivism and self-referen
tial systems theory. It suddenly came to me what this theory is all about. I
could think of nothing else for the next two days and nights. I could not
sleep as I reviewed in my mind everything I had written or thought in the
past on the subject of social structure, and by the time I left the meeting, I
had in mind the outline and many of the details of this book. Upon returning
to Athens, I began to write and had completed a draft in about eight months.
Meanwhile I was searching the library for articles and books on self-referen-
