Abstract
Fragmental differentiation is defined as a particular mode of social differentiation. With this mode, structural change can be understood as a ‘reflexive’ reconfiguration of contemporary societies. The patterns and mechanisms differ from those of segmentary, stratificational and functional differentiation. We see ‘rule-breaking’ and ‘agilely intermingling’ ordering of disparate fragments – of the institutionalized systems in economics, politics, law, and the public sphere – taking the place of ordering by similar segments, unequal class positions, or equivalent functions. First, we identify and compare the features and patterns of three distinctive processes of change: the expansion of the creativity and innovation imperative, the increase in fine-grained dissolution of units, and the emphasis on heterogeneous constellations. Then, we elaborate the mechanisms of their production and the infrastructural as well as socio-technical conditions for them. The argumentation takes place in engagement with current theories of social change (Abbott, Reckwitz, Latour). A diversity of differentiation processes at the same time – competing for dominance – and an ecological mode of coordination – through loosely coupling and reflexive translation – are drawn as consequences for the analysis of society today.
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Notes
- 1.
Fragmentation does not simply mean breaking into pieces or disintegration, but denotes a special mode of social structure formation: the ‘fragmental’ texture is composed – analogous to the geological classification of sedimentary structures – of fragments of different granular size, shape and arrangement from pre-existing pure or mixed elements. They differ from the purified, clearly aligned system structures (‘crystalline’) by the coupling and pressing together of different fragments, and the emergence of ever new constellations through decay, remixing, and reconsolidation.
- 2.
These include Joachim Renn’s conceptualization of social “translation relations” (2006), Frank Hillebrandt’s praxeological reflections on the connection between habitus and systems theory (2006), and Armin Nassehi’s (2004) strictly operative reading of Luhmann’s theory of differentiation. Above all, however, they follow on from considerations such as those just recently made, each in a different way, by Stefan Hirschauer with the concept of “human differentiation” (2017) and Gesa Lindemann in the sense of “empirical differentiation research” (2018, 2019).
- 3.
- 4.
Reckwitz (2020) has additionally described this change comprehensively for all cultural areas of lifestyle and given it its own overarching interpretation with the term “singularization”.
- 5.
Instead of the concept of coordination, we could also have used the concept of integration, following a long tradition of sociological theory; for we refer to the question of how, under the condition of differentiation, practice, institutions and evaluations are brought into relationships. Since integration means inclusion in a larger whole, which can no longer be assumed in socio-theoretical terms today, coordination refers only to the placing and interrelation of different elements.
- 6.
By this we mean – according to the original meaning of “mechanicae” – the invented and artfully arranged constellation of processes that, once set in motion, leads to repeatedly identical, variably calculable and firmly expectable effects and performances. In contrast to analytical sociology and engineering science, we see it as mediated both by bodily dispositions and by material configurations and, above all, their couplings.
- 7.
We use the term “infrastructural conditions” here in order to refer, in the spirit of recent science and technology studies, to the factual and socio-technical ordering capacity of concrete socio-technical arrangements. In this context, the concept of infrastructures has undergone conceptual development in recent decades, starting from work from interactionist and pragmatist perspectives (Star and Griesemer 1989; Bowker and Star 1999), which we explicitly follow here (cf. Niewöhner 2014; Rowland and Passoth 2015): Infrastructures are the concrete site of distributed and not necessarily coordinated stabilization of sociotechnical order, the concrete site of concern for and challenge to practices of sociotechnical ordering, and the concrete site of “ontological experimentation” (Jensen and Morita 2015).
- 8.
- 9.
See also, for example, for a very reflective discussion of the effects for empirical sociology Marres (2017).
- 10.
Illustrative examples of the orientation towards fine-grained granularity and its dissolving effects on different fields of practice are provided by Kucklick (2014).
- 11.
Cf. for the “expansion of the innovation zone” to various fields and for individual cases Rammert et al. (2018, pp. 3–5).
- 12.
Empirical studies show that agile practices do not literally follow the declared principles in the management literature, but are used as new mechanisms for managing projects in uncertain environments (see Schulz-Schaeffer and Bottel 2018).
- 13.
For a justification of this concept of “technicization” encompassing the technologies of human bodies, material things, and symbolic signs, see Rammert (2001, pp. 282–284).
- 14.
For a description, encompassing many everyday fields, of agile “tactics” of use and consumption that act as a creative operative logic and an underlying form of activity, combining heterogeneous elements at opportune moments and creating trajectories across coded and differentiated fields, see de Certeau (de Certeau 1988, pp. 11, 16, 21).
- 15.
For a systematic elaboration and testing of pragmatist “experimentalism” as a sociological “empirical science,” see Bogusz (2023).
- 16.
- 17.
One can see some parallels to the approach and process of “human differentiation” (Hirschauer 2017).
- 18.
We do not follow Abbott’s radical view that there are ultimately no gains by the accumulation of knowledgein the social sciences. For an appreciation and critique, see Schützeichel (2017).
- 19.
Using the fragmentation of England’s middle classes as an example and a challenge for empirical social structure analysis (Savage and Burrows 2007; cf. Burrows and Savage 2014). For an overview of examples and consequences of the new measurement of the social, see Mau (2019). Cf. critically Heintz (2018).
- 20.
Cf. on a non-reductionist program from a sociology of technology perspective (Janda 2014).
- 21.
Machinery is understood in Marx’s sense as a historically concrete mixed structure of social and technical mechanisms and not (only) as a general metaphor as in some of the Francophone literature.
- 22.
In postmodern views of society, this would correspond to the proliferating “mille plateaux” (thousand platforms) (Deleuze and Guattari 1992) or the “multitudes” (Hardt and Negri 2004). From an observational perspective, one can speak of multiple presents of society (Nassehi 2011) or approach it with a multi-perspective view (Schimank 2015). In pragmatist approaches, it is conceived as a “social world in linked ecologies, each of which acts as a flexible surround for others” (Abbott 2016) that structures itself temporally and also materially via particular interaction settings, as “heterogeneous cooperations” that problematize and practically test differences in experience (Bogusz 2023, p. 428 f.), and as a “totality of factual interdependencies and exchange relations” that remains “implicit in practical reference to society ...” (Renn 2006, p. 493).
- 23.
On the importance of the distinction between explicitation and tacit knowledge with respect to units of integration, see Renn (2006), in respect to modes of differentiation and styles of knowing (Rammert 2006a), and on weak, dispersed and operational forms of social cohesion at the semantic, pragmatic and grammatical levels, see Rammert (2014, pp. 633–636).
- 24.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Tanja Bogusz, Reiner Greshoff, Robert Jungmann, Andreas Reckwitz, Gustav Roßler and Ingo Schulz-Schaeffer for critical comments and constructive suggestions.
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Passoth, JH., Rammert, W. (2023). Fragmental Differentiation as a Diagnosis of Society: What Is Behind the Increasing Orientation Towards Innovation, Granularity and Heterogeneity?. In: Schubert, C., Schulz-Schaeffer, I. (eds) Berlin Keys to the Sociology of Technology. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-41683-6_6
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