#morphogenetic-approach — Public Fediverse posts

📚Reading the Archers: an intensive summer 2026 reading group

From June through to September I’ll be rereading what Frédéric Vandenberghe once called ‘the Archers’ from start to finish. I’ll be hosting a weekly zoom meeting for anyone who wants to join me, likely with 2-3 chapters per week. I’ll post a schedule in advance so people can drop-in for particular sections. There’s no expectation to attend them all – come for particular books or particular sections. I’ll also be blogging about each week’s reading to support participation.

If you’re interested in taking part please get in touch.

#archer #margaretArcher #MorphogeneticApproach

Following our recent symposium we are inviting short blog posts (750-1500 words) reflecting on the intellectual legacy of Margaret Archer. These will be published on the Critical Realism Network blog. Here are some examples of themes these posts could address:

1. Archer’s Place in Sociological Theory:  the ways in which Archer’s ideas have been received, challenged, and transformed within the discipline. 
2. Archer’s Work within the Larger Dialogues of Critical Realism: the ways in which Archer’s ideas have contributed to and challenged the critical realist tradition. 
3. The Global Reception of Archer’s Work: the ways in which Archer’s ideas have been received, interpreted and adapted in different places. We want to explore both Archer’s role in the internationalization of British sociology, as well as the reception of her work in different countries of the Global North and Global South.
4. Archer’s Work Beyond Critical Realism: the ways in which Archer’s work has been influenced by and has influenced traditions, debates and issues beyond critical realism, such as pragmatism, moral philosophy and the philosophy of science.

We welcome submissions from scholars at all stages of their careers, including graduate students and early-career researchers. We also encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and contributions from scholars working in related fields, such as philosophy, anthropology, and political science.

If you’re interested in submitting a post, please contact Mark Carrigan with your idea initially.

https://markcarrigan.net/2024/08/08/%f0%9f%93%8dcall-for-blog-posts-the-legacy-of-margaret-archer/

#criticalRealism #margaretArcher #MorphogeneticApproach #socialMorphogenesis #socialRealism

This is a useful concept from Andrew Dryhurst in a recent paper in JCR. I’ve been prone to arguing for the same framing by talking about the need to historicise AI, in terms of a broader history of digitalisation then platformisation. I think Dryhurst’s framing here helps me account for how a particular framing of AI emerges both from failing to historicise it, as well as contributes to making it more difficult to do so in the future:

Traditionally, a large amount of philosophical functionalism has pervaded the AI space (Bryson Citation2019; Searle Citation1984), which has served to underpin an instrumentalist understanding of AI technology in much of the social science literature on the topic. Instrumentalism here refers to AI being understood as a tool and solely in terms of what it does. This is of course necessary at a certain level, given the wide-reaching scope of AI-use cases, the diversity of models and training sets, and the opacity that frequently surrounds AI’s societal deployment (O’Neil Citation2017). Nevertheless, instrumental notions of AI are inescapably presentist in their analytical scope, and it is important to consider that different AI are themselves embedded in an enormous variety of material relations and processes. AI are constructed and deployed by agents who are imbued with their own structural and institutional contexts, interests, ideals, and situational logics. A particular company’s AI systems are necessarily intertwined with the dynamics of (inter)national regulations, supply chains, and (national) accumulation regimes, as well as corporate agents’ reflexive and culturally conditioned actions in and through time. That is, AI are open complex systems embedded in other open complex systems.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14767430.2023.2279950#abstract

I think you can make this point without the CR vocabulary but it is a very important point which is very powerfully made here:

there is a research gap to be filled through tracing AI’s conceptual and material development in relation to the morphogenetically derived systemic imperatives traversing the political economy of the Internet and its history. For example, the ubiquitous deployment of AI models across all aspects of society presupposes questions about attribution concerning the datasets that are fed into different models; the transparency of data collection and processing; and the complex regulatory challenges that widescale AI deployment creates

And this is exactly what I’m interested in addressing, particularly the notion of models as cultural technologies, even if I arrived there through a slightly different route:

Similarly, the recursive and emergent consequences of people’s interactions with powerful AI models across industry and society make the models akin to cultural substrates from which particular worldviews may be inscribed and cultivated. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the model may well be the message (Bratton and Agüera y Arcas Citation2022). All of these connote significant economic and social outcomes, and also exemplify a situation where the rise of powerful AI companies, possessive of their own intellectual property, datasets, and modelling practices, ought clearly to be situated within the accumulation imperatives and systemically persistent dynamics shaping the Internet’s development in capitalism because they are intertwined with and shaped by AI’s regulation and deployment as well.

https://markcarrigan.net/2024/08/01/against-an-instrumentalist-understanding-of-ai-critical-realism-and-conceptualising-artificial-intelligence/

#artificialIntelligence #digital #morphogenesis #MorphogeneticApproach #ontology #philosophyOfTechnology #platformisation #platfromCapitalism

August 3rd, 10am-5pm at the University of Warwick

Margaret Archer’s work has had a profound impact on social theory, challenging and reshaping our understanding of agency, structure, culture and their interplay in producing social change. Her contributions to the discipline have been wide-ranging, from critical interventions in conceptual debates to discussions about the nature of our times. Archer’s engagements with other thinkers, both within and outside the critical realist tradition, have shaped contemporary sociological debates.

Karim Knio – The Immanent Causality Morphogenetic Approach (TBC)

Juan David Parra – Archer’s Morphogenesis and the Political Economy of Education Systems

Krzysztof Wielecki – The presence of Margaret Scotford Archer in Polish sociology

Lakshman Wimalasena – Reflexivity in Practice: Advancing the Working Experience through a Reflexive [Co-Design] Intervention

Richard Remelie – Measuring reflexivity

Ka Lok Yip – Archerian Realism and Phenomenology: Friends or Foes?

Anzhela Popyk – Structure and Agency: Transnational and School Transitions of Ukrainian Forced Migrant Adolescents in Poland

Catherine Hastings – Developing critical realist empirical research using Archer’s explanatory framework

https://markcarrigan.net/2024/07/18/%f0%9f%93%8djoin-us-on-august-3rd-to-celebrate-the-intellectual-legacy-of-margaret-archer/

#criticalRealism #margaretArcher #MorphogeneticApproach #socialRealism

It should be accessible to most universities via the Cambridge University Press website.

https://markcarrigan.net/2024/04/02/%f0%9f%93%8dout-now-margaret-archers-morphogenesis-answers-its-critics/

#criticalRealism #margaretArcher #MorphogeneticApproach

Tickets available here: https://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/key-bsa-events/one-day-symposium-on-the-legacy-of-margaret-archer/ abstract submission details below:

We are delighted to announce a one-day symposium dedicated to exploring and celebrating the legacy of Margaret Archer, one of the most influential sociological thinkers of our time. The aim of the symposium is to engage with and critically assess Archer’s contributions to social theory, her influences and engagements outside critical realism, the global reception of her work, and her place within the larger tradition of critical realism.

Margaret Archer’s work has had a profound impact on social theory, challenging and reshaping our understanding of agency, structure, culture and their interplay in producing social change. Her contributions to the discipline have been wide-ranging, from critical interventions in conceptual debates to discussions about the nature of our times. Archer’s engagements with other thinkers, both within and outside the critical realist tradition, have shaped contemporary sociological debates.

We invite papers that critically engage with Archer’s work on the following themes:

1. Archer’s Place in Sociological Theory: 

We encourage papers that explore the ways in which Archer’s ideas have been received, challenged, and transformed within the discipline. 

1. Archer’s Work within the Larger Dialogues of Critical Realism:  

We invite papers that critically assess the ways in which Archer’s ideas have contributed to and challenged the critical realist tradition. 

1. The Global Reception of Archer’s Work: 

We encourage papers that explore the ways in which Archer’s ideas have been received, interpreted and adapted in different places. We want to explore both Archer’s role in the internationalization of British sociology, as well as the reception of her work in different countries of the Global North and Global South.

1. Archer’s Work Beyond Critical Realism: 

We welcome papers that explore the ways in which Archer’s work has been influenced by and has influenced traditions, debates and issues beyond critical realism, such as pragmatism, moral philosophy and the philosophy of science.

We welcome submissions from scholars at all stages of their careers, including graduate students and early-career researchers. We also encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and contributions from scholars working in related fields, such as philosophy, anthropology, and political science.

The conference will take place on August 3rd, 2024, at The University of Warwick. The deadline for submission of 300 word abstracts is April 30th, and notifications of acceptance will be sent out by May 15th.

Please note we will seek to accommodate online talks but there will be a limited number of places available for this. Specify in your application if you want to participate remotely. If we don’t receive this notification we will assume you intend to present in person.

We look forward to welcoming you to this exciting conference and to engaging in lively discussions about the legacy of Margaret Archer’s work.

To contact the organisers (Sebastian Raza and Mark Carrigan) or to submit your abstracts please use this form. Please note this is not a registration form for the event. It will be a ticketed event advertised through the British Sociological Association website from May onwards.

https://markcarrigan.net/2024/02/26/call-for-papers-one-day-symposium-on-the-legacy-of-margaret-archer-august-3rd-university-of-warwick/

#criticalRealism #margaretArcher #MorphogeneticApproach