Introduction: ‘Stability’ or ‘Stabilization’ – On Which Would Morphogenic Society Depend?

Abstract

This introduction takes up a theme that is present in all nine chapters: Namely, is some degree of enduring stability necessary amidst intensifying social change? Do agents and actors need this in order to plan their own lives and the courses of action they will take in the social order? Many Social Theorists do maintain that (some degree of) morphostatic ‘stability’ must necessarily accompany increasing morphogenesis (the change in society’s form, organization or state). In other words, a fully Morphogenic social formation is inconceivable. This thesis is examined here in empirical terms: what positions, beliefs and practices can be said to have ‘survived the fire’ of rapid social change characterizing the last quarter of a century? The list is found small compared with the elements that were lost and many contributors maintain that searching for enduring morphostatic elements, as sources of stability, is mis-guided. Instead, they argue that morphogenesis generates its own endogenous modes of ‘stabilization’ through the beneficial consequences of changes that are not based upon competition with winners and losers, as in the current market and state. Rather, the generation of common or relational goods proves sufficiently desirable to prompt their own ‘stabilization’ by beneficiaries, concerned to promote them; their advancement itself providing a basis for planning unrelated to morphostasis.