"Each assemblage gains emergent properties produced from interactions between its components and relies on those interactions to continue existing. For instance, a tight- knit neighbourhood can build a collective memory about the reputation of all of its members and develop norms to promote prosocial behaviour. "
@grimalkina if that isn't grounded on some Delanda right there, I'd be shocked (haven't read linked paper, but did just read Delanda in my last seminar 😊).
@grimalkina@cyberlyra Latour and especially Leigh Star brilliantly illuminate how social categories stabilize, bash against each other & evolve. But for my $, J DiCaglio’s Scale Theory is even more where it’s at, especially in a software context where categories nest within categories & impinge on each other as contexts & ingredients for each other. Looking forward to reading the Cikara et al.! https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09505431.2023.2240849
@grimalkina complex adaptive systems, networks, and emergent structures keep turning up everywhere interesting. As soon as you have a large enough mass of mutually interacting anythings, and you learn to zoom in and out across scales a bit, dynamic structures emerge. And when those structures generate constraints on the behavior of the component whatevers, you get something really interesting, something that at least gestures strongly in the direction of the infamous "downward causation" 😱
@grimalkina in the case of your example, the prosocial norms are the constraints, in case that's not clear. They are generated by interaction of the component persons and then act as constraints upon their behavior.
I still remember Dave Woods explaining that newcomers to the psychology department are told to not talk to him, as they would get, I quote, "infected by him".
We are the Renegades, as he says. Well. Tough luck but this is proper science and we will keep doing it. I am not exactly an academic partially due to all of this but.... Yeaaah.
@grimalkina If I could recommend a paper that resonates here. Heft's work is great, and the links to other research approaches here very useful. (Heft's work has triggered a wee resurgence of behaviour settings work, there are some interesting extensions toward digital places in some of it.)
Heft, H. (2018). Places: Widening the scope of an ecological approach to perception–action with an emphasis on child development. Ecological Psychology, 30(1), 99–123. https://doi.org/10.1080/10407413.2018.1410045
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