In letter & in spirit: social morphogenesis and the interpretation of codified social rules

Al-Amoudi, Ismael ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4548-3125 2015. In letter & in spirit: social morphogenesis and the interpretation of codified social rules. Archer, Margaret Scotford, ed. Morphogenesis and Normativity: Normogenetic Processes, Springer, Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

The present chapter addresses the general phenomenon of the proliferation of codified rules by examining the difficulties that the proliferation of novel social forms (social morphogenesis unbound) creates for the interpretation of codified rules. My argument starts from the ontological observation that the codification of rules is always fundamentally incomplete as codifications never fully specify the range of actions subject to them or the contexts in which they ought to apply (section 1). A number of realist concepts are introduced in this section to account for how agents manage nonetheless to reach some form of consensus when interpreting codified rules. The second section mobilises these concepts to examine the import of social integration for rule interpretation in morphogenetic settings. The third and last section examines the import of systemic integration for rule coherence, first in a situation of predominant morphostasis and then in a situation of overwhelming morphogenesis. An example of contemporary relevance - tax optimisation - illustrates the argument.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Business (Including Economics) Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Publisher:	Springer
Last Modified:	19 Apr 2023 08:27
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/75712

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