Social Bonds and the Relational Nature of Embeddedness
Abstract: The author of this chapter seeks to theoretically consolidate the con- cept of social bonds and determine its heuristic utility. It is a necessary proce- dure to understand the sources of regularity of human behavior and the duration of social aggregates. The analysis begins with placing the term “social bond” in the discourse of social sciences. It is continued on four plans: (1) social integration and control, (2) interactive order, (3) social embeddedness, and (4) “relationalist embedding” of social bonds. The analysis prompts the author to recognize the need to develop a transactional understanding of social relations and to deter- mine how some social relationships are established and endorsed as social bonds – relatively stable relationships binding the actor with his or her surroundings. Social bonding is a phenomenon that requires strictly relational specification. It is about the characteristics of its emergence, duration and change, and the processing by actors in the acts of defining the situation, identifying and discerning opportunities, “condensation”
of some types of connections and their recognition as non- contingent relationships.
Keywords: relational sociology, social bond, social embeddedness, social order, social relations, sociological theory
Preliminary Remarks
A number of studies on social bonds somehow bypass their direct theoretical addressing. This is somewhat understandable as the clarification of this ana- lytical category is made by references to more significant categories or unit ideas: social order, social solidarity, social control or social embeddedness, respectively their absence/ collapse or their other particular perplexities. In the face of this entanglement of theoretical references, one can resort to textbook definitions, which may explain the meaning(s) of the term “social bond,” but do not contain in- depth references to social dynamics: the processes of generating, lasting, maintaining and transforming social bonds. The ease and unparalleled straightforwardness of the narrative around the disappearance of conventional social bonds shows this process as a cataclysm, a threat to human existence, and at the same time is a trivial explanation for acts of deviation from norms, the fall
of morality and the deficiency of the sense of community. I do not underestimate such conceptualizations, because they indirectly prove, in my opinion, the need to go beyond the dictionary/ textbook definitions of social bond and analysis by reference to relevant theoretical contexts. Proceeding in this way, I want to deter- mine the place and significance of this concept in understanding the sources of regularity of human actions and the duration of social aggregates. This is a con- dition for determining the heuristic usefulness of this analytical category.
I start with a relatively rough presentation of the locations of the term “social bond” in the discourse of sociology. Undoubtedly arbitrarily, I am pointing out those that I consider relevant, although I am also trying to indicate what they bring to the issues related to social bonding. The multitude of references, not only in the sense of their number, but also (so to speak) their presuppositional differentiation, is intentional, because it reveals the need for their analytical ordering, isolating distinctive approaches and threads, which I am inclined to consider are worth continuing. I conduct further analysis on several plans. The first of them, related to social integration and social control, is somewhat the most theoretically conventional, although it also confirms the need for multi- level comprehension of permanent individual anchorages in social reality. The second plan involves interactive order, defining the relationship between indi- vidual behaviors and social structures and processes, indicating why individuals consider certain relationships to be safe and trustworthy. The third plan is social embeddedness, the analysis of which allows to understand the regularities and orderings of human actions, the ways in which actors are able to maintain their own reputation and exploit their own social capital by maintaining relationships with others, within social structures and networks. Plan four is an attempt at strictly “relationalist embedding” of the issue of social bonds. I ask, among others, in what sense society, conceived as a collection or conglomerate of trans- actional contexts, becomes present in the perceptions, feelings, and actions of actors and what personal and subjective elements become a component of social relations and intersubjective communities of meaning.
Social Bonds: Theoretical “Addressings”
“Social bonds” appear quite often but in somewhat different and irreducible fields of discourse. In the most obvious sense, they refer to what binds indi- viduals together and makes them human beings, capable of acting in the world of symbols. This way of thinking about social bonds accentuates their extra- -biological character, or more precisely: the potential for modification, dialectics of transformation and adaptation in relation to what metaphorically is called
“blood heritage.” In a more contemporary editorial, it is the domain of consid- erations on the connections between the order determined by genes and scripts offered by memes (see e.g. Brinkmann 2018, DiMaggio 1997; Firat, McPherson 2010; Franks, Turner 2013; Franks 2019a, 2019b; Freese, Li, Wade 2003, Holland 2012, Lizardo et al. 2016; Prainsack, Schicktanz, Werner- Felmayer 2014; Turner, Machalek, Maryanski 2014; Wexler 2006) or an equally intellectually fascinating attempt to map various structural and network ties because their “arrangements”
determine the course of human interactions (see e.g. Burt 1982, 1992; Fuhse 2015; Gergen 1994, 2009; White 2008).
One can get the impression that the term of social bond is ubiquitous in the discourse of social sciences: from the domain of everyday interactions, through communal life, to relations between countries and states, establishing networks of relationships, trajectories of human action and their evaluation in terms of utility, necessity or duty. Social bonds link human beings in society in a spe- cial way, enabling both the survival of societies and social aggregates, and their change. In turn, the lack or weakening of social bonds means the dilution of the condition of society, the collapse of the community or other social structures and networks, and the individuals themselves experiencing discomfort due to alien- ation or anomy (see especially Marx [1844] 2007, [1857] 1972; Tönnies [1887]
2001, Durkheim [1893] 1964, [1897] 1989; Merton 1968: chs 6– 7).
Werner Stark (1976, 1978) argues that the forces of nature do not guarantee social order or peace, and the concept of social bond should be considered pri- marily in terms of social integration, which is based on the socialization of the individual in a social environment, strengthened by social control. Even the uni- verse of elementary social exchanges also includes mechanisms ensuring the repetition of social processes, their regulation in the form of an “external force”
guaranteeing justice or just equivalence. Norbert Elias ([1939] 2000, [1970]
2012, [1983] 2007), analyzing the dynamics of figurations, relates them to the actor’s relationships, mutual ties between people, fluctuating balance of power, ensuring the patterning of autonomous relations. These figurations exist thanks to the activity of their participants, although they also depend on the shared social habitus and personality make- up, ensuring individuality. An important feature of the civilizing process is the continuous transformation of emotional and affective ties, their symbolization constituting social bonding.
Paul Dumouchel and Reiko Gotoh (2015: 1) state that social bonds are usu- ally recognized as “as resting on special relationships between agents, on moral attachments, or on received boundaries that delimit the extent of the nation or group.” And consequently: they can be considered as a remedy, applied in the form of political action, which aims to propagate the idea of the right to
life, freedom and well- being, and sometimes even as universal rules of justice, excluding individual and group particularisms, the use of which forces actors to choose between what is universal and what is particular. Considering the impor- tance of affectivity in molding social bond within the framework of French social theory, Tiina Arppe (2014) states the occurrence of tension between the utili- tarian and the affective, and at the same time reveals numerous non- sociological references to the problem of regulating the affective, both economic (Adam Smith) as well as normative, respectively transcendental, whose components are the material for building social bonds. The underlying theoretical logic is quite obvious: what is affective is attributed to the sphere of biology (Auguste Comte, Émile Durkheim), and then it is recognized as a component of collective unconsciousness, even violence (Georges Bataille, René Girard). One can also search for sources of social order, or solidarity actualized in the form of relatively durable social bonds, by indicating a universal norm of reciprocity (Maurice Mauss, Georg Simmel, Alvin W. Gouldner, Marshall Sahlins), specifying patterns of giving and receiving and motives to give, revealing the mechanisms of constructing gratitude (Komter 2005) or also describing the theoretical logic of solidarity in power and dependence terms (Hechter 1988). As Leon H. Mayhew (1997: 134) aptly contends, even rational interpretation of influential people’s impact on individuals necessarily refers to what is a set of “taken- for- granted social bonds rooted in systems of solidarity and common interest.” Moreover, the very idea of a social contract, which assumes that the “underlying grounds of society are the mutual obligations that rational people take upon themselves in return for the benefits of orderly self protection, social peace, and the achieve- ment of collective purposes” (Mayhew 1997: 21), appears to be a myth of reason that can be contrasted with the myth of irrationality: “Even now, deep, uncon- scious psychic forces are the source of social bonds” (Mayhew 1997: 22).
In a more radical version, social bonds are nowadays recognized not so much as the quality achieved in the coordinated effort of individuals and collectives, but as an object of consumption, instruments for gratification of the individ- ualized and consumerist self, ordering the liquidity of social reality, without reference to the components that characterize “solid modernity,” as Zygmunt Bauman comments (2000, 2007). According to Ulrich Beck ([1986] 1988), human relations in contemporary society are subject to a high degree of risk, which is accompanied by the occurrence of increasingly numerous areas of uncertainty. Individualization even compels to coping with a fragmented social world, decreeing one’s own responsibility for actions not through relationships with “conventional” society, but within particular strips of activity. It is the ero- sion of previous social bonds and their construction in the sectors of relations
delineated by the fragmentation of social reality, and at the same time the respon- sibility of the individual for coordinating his or her own life trajectory. By stating that modernity is over (game over), Luciano Floridi (2014, 2015) proves that the previous metaphors of force, causation or control are inevitably destabilized or degraded, that the distinction between reality and virtuality, human, machine and nature are blurred. Emphasizing the relationality of the self, congruent with the contextual nature of human freedom, he refers it to the erosion of trust and the expansion of surveillance, and especially the irresponsibility – character- istic of deeds in the social world in which the substantial is transposed to the overwhelming pandemonium of interaction. In this universe individuals must demonstrate their ability to participate in the digital literate society, the compe- tence to reduce information abundance, increasingly relying on informational infrastructures.
In fact, this ubiquity of the term of social bonds in sociological discourse does not have to be a sign of its theoretical elaboration (as well as the special rele- vance of this analytical category), it can rather mark the dispersion of the ana- lytical potential of this concept. Mirosława Marody and Anna Giza- Poleszczuk (2018: 79– 81) rightly ascertain the trivialization of many conceptualizations of the term of social bonds, recognizing that it appears either as a set of all rela- tionship between people: or as the term opposed to the concept of individual- ization, or as an “equivalent of the concept of identifying an individual with a social group” and “the basis for the formation of social identity.” Both of these conceptualizations conceive the social bond as an attribute of individuals rather than collectivity.
The marked fields of reference constitute a fairly diverse spectrum, inclining to a deeper insight, the purpose of which is to extract heuristically fruitful ways of theoretical conceptualization of social bonds. In other words, it is not about a simple systematics of positions, comprehensive recapitulation of similarities in the name of some synthesis, but the extraction of several heuristics that somehow sharpen the view on social bonds, will lead to the resolution of new questions and perhaps formulating a new theoretical scenario for analyzing social bonds. My analytical activity is rather close to the doings of a visitor to various exhibitions connected only by a fascia or a common “totem,” rather than by an art historian who unwillingly wants to put objects of interest in drawers of epochs, styles or fields. I want to find out if, and to what extent, in various expressions, respec- tively “installations” around the topic “social bond,” I can find clues which make possible dealing with the problem of “how social bonds are possible.” The choice of recalled positions is largely arbitrary, although not accidental, as it is the result of the selection of “material” for analytical reconstruction. My “treatment” is not
critical in the sense that I seek to score opponents of this particular theoretical sparring. To put it in terms closer to natural science: on the basis of particular conceptualizations I create “preparations” of social bonds, and looking at them I present, willingly or not, their specific theoretical “ecosystems.”
Social Bonds: Integration and Social Control
Reflecting on the fundamental problems of sociology, Robert A. Nisbet and Robert G. Perrin (1977: 37– 38) recognize that they relate to the nature of social bond, that is, “the mechanisms and processes through which human beings become members of the social order and by which they remain members.” It is important to define the problem field and indicate several key domains: social interaction, social aggregates, social roles, social statuses, social norms and social entropy. These domains are the basic elements, their connections form “social molecules,” i.e. also forces that bind people and identify them as specific social actors in specific types of relationships. No less important are the presuppositions inherent in Nisbet and Perrin’s position. This is not the image of detached indi- viduals captured as cogs in the socio- cultural machinery, but of human beings acting in a socially structured environment, capable of transforming what is determined by instincts and drives into molecules of social events. Society is real insofar as it manifests itself in the experience of the individual, who in turn is determined by performances on the social scene. Relationships between indi- viduals contain physiological and psychological ingredients, they also comprise of components specific to social interactions, aggregates, roles, and statuses and what is normatively patterned, molded by the dynamics of superiority and sub- ordination. This does not mean the superiority of any of these domains over others. The social order of reality is determined by the concepts that the actors themselves use in relation to their own and other people’s activity and the nature of their linkages with the social world. Social bonds are the main manifestations of social order, and at the same time areas confirming the distinctiveness of indi- vidual behaviors.
Each of these areas has analytical autonomy with respect to the others. The conduct of each individual can be characterized by indicating the appropriate mode for a particular event, e.g. exchange in a peer group, with a specific lead- ership style, assigned roles related to a specific status and a set of normative ex- pectations, which, expressed in behavior, may turn out to be alienated, anomic or deviant. In other words, the action characteristics contain sets of descriptions taken from the fields in each of these areas and are multilevel in this sense.
Moreover, they occur over time, which makes it possible to recognize whether
and to what extent they constitute, as webs of linkages, manifestations of social order, both in terms of the coherence of one’s behavior and its compliance with predefined standards, and determining whether and to what extent modal concretizations of properties taken from these domains affect the permanence and change of order of each of them (Nisbet, Perrin 1977: especially ch. 2).
This way of thinking – which goes beyond Manichean images of social order as conformity with norms and values versus conflict and blurring of the interests of actors or restrictions related to the theoretical reduction to any of the areas or levels of analysis – can be found, for example, in theories of deviation. The analysis of James J. Chriss (2007) regarding the functions of social bonds provides many heuristic premises for understanding the multidimensionality of this phenom- enon. The starting point is the theory of social control by Travis Hirschi (1969) and a bit later its modification – the theory of self- control (Gottfredson, Hirschi 1990; Hirschi, Gottfredson 2000, 2001; Hirshi 2004, Gottfredson 2017; see also Akers 2012: ch. 5; Bouffard, Rice 2011; Krohn, Massey 1980; Pratt, Cullen 2000;
Vaughan, Bouffard, Piquero 2017; Ward, Boman IV, Jones 2015). Such a refer- ence, at first glance, may be surprising: deviation/ crime theories are, at most, middle- range theories, and their conceptual dispersion is unlikely to promise an immediate synthesis into the general theory of deviation/ crime. The logic of con- trol theory is simple and emanates the findings of Talcott Parsons (1951, 1964;
Parsons, Shils, Olds 1951) and John Bowlby ([1969] 1982; see also Carter et al.
2005): in conditions of successful socialization, individuals become strongly linked with conventional society.
As Hirschi (1969: 230) writes, there is no such thing like a natural tendency to crime; in other words, both social control and deviation are the results of socialization. This statement does not imply any “socialization determinism:”
“According to control or bond theories, a person is free to commit delinquent acts because his ties to the conventional order have somehow been broken”
(Hirschi 1969: 3). Nor does it imply the asociality of individuals that criminals in their motivations are asocial in nature. The key to understanding the behavior of individuals lies in self- control, behavior in a specific way regardless of external circumstances, including situations of weak external control. Individuals do not so much calculate the cost of specific behavior in a certain type of relationship with others, but rather differ in the degree to which they can resist temptation.
“In sum, people who lack self- control will tend to be impulsive, insensitive, phys- ical (as opposed to mental), risk- taking, shortsighted, and nonverbal, and they will tend therefore to engage in criminal and analogous acts,” as Gottfredson and Hirschi explain (1990: 90).
According to Chriss (2007: 691– 692), the parallels between Parsonian AGIL and Hirschi’s control theory are evident and allow to distinguish four types of social bond. The first is based on attachment – through emotional closeness with family, school and groups of friends and acquaintances – fulfilling the function of integration (I). It is worth emphasizing the relational nature of attachment, which is molded and persists through affect- saturated group relationships, in accordance with Durkheim’s ([1893] 1964) interpretation of social integration.
The second type of social bond, commitment, refers to cognitive mechanisms, rational calculation in the perspective of future purposes, taking into account the costs of acting contrary to what is considered valuable in the conventional frame of reference, both in the sense of the lines of conduct as well as motivation to take it (G). The third type, involvement, deals with those behaviors of the indi- vidual that are associated with participation in conventionally defined activities (A). The fourth type, belief, ensures the evaluation of conventional orientations of action, and thus their consolidation in the form of transituational definitions of situations, i.e. patterns of action (L) (cf. Hirschi 1969; Parsons 1951, 1964).
In a word, any deviation from what is culturally and socially standard testifies to the weakening of the individual’s bond with conventional society. As Chriss comments (2007: 692), “Hirschi suggests that the more attached persons are to other members of society, the more they believe in the values of conventional society, and the more they invest in and are involved in conventional lines of activity, the less likely they are to deviate.”
Parsons’ theory was subject to significant modifications, the final effect of which is the “human condition paradigm,” retaining its basic presuppositional anchorage in the “action frame of reference.” Defining human action in terms of goal orientation means at the same time paying attention to adaptation processes, reference to the symbolic level, and maintaining the transituational motivation to act by the actor. The AGIL scheme remains valid and put into the framework of general systems theory and cybernetic hierarchy of control allows for more precise “addressing” of relationships referring to the functions of elements of social bond and their referring to socialization, social control and self- control (see especially Parsons 1978). If socialization is the process of shaping the need - disposition mechanisms that ensure generalized readiness to act as expected in the role, it means that interactive competence in terms of both informal social control (family, church, peers), and enforcing the orientation on values through formal social control system. The actor has to deal with tensions, social control prevents deviations from conventional lines of action – in this sense social control teaches what the actor should not do, socialization teaches how to act. And if an actor finds relational support, he or she will rather refrain from acts of deviation,
which results from his or her affective attachment and serves integration both in a specific situation and in relation to social bond (Chriss 2007: 695– 697).
The second element that becomes – next to affect – analytically necessary is belief. Individuals are not conformist only when they are subject to direct social control. Socialization ensures the formation of conscience (Cooley 1902, Durkheim [1893] 1964) or images of a significant other (Mead 1934), i.e. indirect social control, possible thanks to identification with a certain con- ventional person, and thus the possibility of taking into account the typical consequences of one’s own activity both in the dimension of informal and formal control (Hirschi, Gottfredson 1990). According to Chriss (2007: 698), the use of cybernetic theoretical logic, present in the late works of Parsons (1974, 1978), allows to emphasize the integrative aspect of social bond by referring it to the societal community. The generalized medium proper to this subsystem, which is influence, serves to enforce norms by appealing to con- science, and the power proper to the polity subsystem binds individuals and is exercised by agents of formal social control. In turn, interchanges between the subsystems of the fiduciary system: education, family, moral commu- nity, and religion are carried out through value commitment medium, con- stituting fields or domains of (respectively) cognitive, affective, civil and spiritual socialization. Stability of social bonds, permeance in the sense of being connected with conventional others depends on the strength/ dura- bility of beliefs about good and equity. As Chriss concludes (2007: 699– 700),
“Following the logic of the cybernetic hierarchy, then, belief is ‘highest’ in information relative to the other elements of the social bond. Next highest in information is attachment, which is the integrative element of the social bond, and which families especially attempt to ensure through the socialization of their young. Commitment is the goal- attainment element of the social bond, and it is lower in information and somewhat higher in energy in relation to belief and attachments.”
The move toward self- control, conceived as “the differential tendency of people to avoid criminal acts whatever the circumstances in which they find themselves” (Gottfredson, Hirschi 1990: 87), is a significant modification of social control theory, theoretical logic of which refers to the “condition” of social bonds. In fact, the self- control theory complements the classical control theory as it is a marriage of two ideas: “classical theory is a theory of social or external con- trol, a theory based on the idea that the costs of crime depend on the individual’s current location in or bond to society. What classical theory lacks is an explicit idea of self- control, the idea that people also differ in the extent to which they are vulnerable to the temptations of the moment” (Gottfredson, Hirschi 1990: 87).
The complement in question means the need to take into account not only social but also individual (psychological) conditions of behavior. High self- control reduces the likelihood of deviation from conventional lines of action, it is a psychological disposition, the ability to calculate the consequences of a particular course of action (Gottfredson, Hirschi 1990: 95). According to Chriss (2007: 700– 707), since the self- control theory emphasizes the importance of primitive groups and the socialization function of the family, further relevant parallels can be found in the Parsons’ scheme by tracing the relationship between the personality system and the institution of the family. Since families are “fac- tories producing human personalities” and the personality subsystem performs the function of achieving goals in the general system of action, society is for per- sonality a “motivational integration system.” The self- conception, i.e. perception of oneself in a specific role and in a certain specific situation, directs the person to act in accordance with patterns, as well as allows tension management. And the stronger the beliefs become and the stronger the attachment, the higher the levels of self- control. In a word, belief and attachment are more important than commitment and involvement.
Interactional Bases of Social Bonds
In my opinion, a the theory of Thomas J. Scheff (1990, 1997, 2006, 2014) implements a definite turn toward questions about the “mechanisms”
governing the maintenance and establishment and transformation of social bonds, laid out in the plan of relationships between individual behavior and social structures and processes. The next versions of the theory contain further findings showing human individuals in the web of social relations, which can be viewed as microsystems of orientations toward the world. Also important is a certain way of thinking or “attacking” the problem of action and the problem of order, which assumes the multilayeredness and complexity of human activity, its presentation on the social scene as relations with others and under conditions of ontological security. Scheff (1990: ch. 2; 1997: pts 2, 3, 5; 2006) asks about the sources of social solidarity, but not in the sense of the impact of external constraints, the concretization of mechanical solidarity or organic solidarity as understood by Émile Durkheim, neither does it capture it in accordance with the canons of methodological individualism. What becomes important – what is in- between and is “filtered” by the self but not reduced to psychological or/ and biological attributes – is inevitably social as a directed maintenance of “safe” and
“healthy” bonds that both maintain the individual in his or her relations with the environment, but they are also the cement of the whole society. Reproduction
of social bonds occurs through relationships, from interaction to interaction, and it is the achievement of individuals, shaped from birth as separate agents, similar to their significant others, but also distinct. Differentiation and a sense of distinctness are indispensable and maintaining a bond means achieving a state of dynamic balance between closeness and distance. Hence, maintaining a bond is a process that clarifies – on the social scene – the needs of individuals and the needs determined by the group, role or status.
Accordingly, any mechanical or organic analogies are misguided: the relationships of the individual with the environment are undoubtedly prede- fined, but in the sense of certain schemes or scripts constituting the interaction scenarios, not as the “compatibility” proper to well- functioning mechanisms or homeostasis. It is the ability to find oneself in the surroundings, to cope, to give the impression that one is on the course of affairs and that one acts with respect for the opinions of others and the expectations of conventional society. In this case, the use of the word “conventional” means that the activity of individuals, described in terms of maintaining social bonds, takes place with the participa- tion of processes that are universal, but at the same time “achievable” regardless of whether this society is historically realized as an emanation of Tönnies’ com- munity or association, Durkheim’s mechanical solidarity or organic solidarity, or in the conditions of a risk society, radical or liquid modernity or a network society. If the sense of any conformity achieved by members of a diverse society is cooperation in maintaining social bonds, it is necessary to either know or be familiar with social realities, which allows to recognize the adequacy of one’s ac- tion in a given situation, as well as to determine what is adequate, respectively discordant. This component of the actor’s cognitive competence is associated with the emotional marking of the relationship with his or her environment.
The permanence or inviolability of the social bond is realized in each merging of the mental and emotional components, their attunement in the horizon of the situation, which includes “work” on the currently evoked meanings and refers to the transituational purposes and characters of the participants. This process does not mean replication, but “testing” the bonds, interactively supporting and building them, respectively their violation and repair.
Referring to Erving Goffman (1959), Scheff (1990: 6– 7, 2014) distinguishes between two activity systems: communication and deference– emotion. Their analytical distinction is the key to understanding the nature of social order, con- sidering the actions of individuals as legitimate in the relationship. Participants in some ways ratify their actions, both understand what is happening, recognizing the appropriateness of verbal and non- verbal communication, and they also reveal deference for others, their actions and the components of socio- cultural
milieu. The functioning of these processes is the “content” of everyday rituals, or available “forms” that are used in managing impressions. Ratification through mental- emotional attunement does not exclude conflict, which can become an instrument of change and mutual adaptation. It is an empathic evidence of inter- subjectivity, reading of the mind within the functioning of the looking- glass self, creating the desired image of the self and others. Emotions, whether captured in Cooley’s logic of pride and shame, or Goffmanian face behavior – embarrass- ment or its anticipation and avoidance – are the carrier of processes ensuring prestige and recognition on the scene of interaction, and at the same time confirming the duration of social bonds, usually without unnecessary delibera- tion. And their presence defines the repertoire of socially and culturally expected relationships. While most of the bonds turn out to be relatively durable, motives proper to them: power, sex or money are revealed as transituational motivation systems, although they latently and symbolically serve to maintain and enforce the positions of interaction participants (Scheff 1990, 1997, 2006, 2011).
Every human behavior is also a renewal or an undertaking of a script defined by the social bond, even by emitting signals defining what and why it is hap- pening, what is associated with the activity of the interaction participants, what components of the symbolic universe are “on the case list.” The arbitral character of symbols carries their ambiguity and openness to interpretation, understanding and misunderstanding. Reading the minds of others is done in the imagination and is not the contribution of isolated individuals, but occurs in interaction sat- urated, as it were, with meanings. Their interactional “decree” of which is the achievement of participants in the sense of managing tension and impressions. It confirms solidarity or readiness to undertake legitimate courses of action, with their appropriate set of motivations, evaluations and expectations. In a word, it is a continuous balance between I and we, because “payments” are pride/ defer- ence/ recognition of being in solidarity with the group (society) or shame/ guilt/
failure in showing compliance of their actions with the expectations of the group or society.
To the extent that attunement ensures mutual identification and under- standing, it testifies to the “healthy” condition of social bond, even if the interac- tion is not peaceful and abounds in numerous emotional “discharges.” Contrary to Durkheim’s interpretation, individuals do not reach a consensus only due to the similarity of their minds and/ or knowledge of the roles and positions of others, but thanks to the interpretation and imagination of what is happening, to identify themselves and others, as part of a complex of motivations deter- mined by the social bond, and a specific, non- blanket emotion accompanying signals of reference to social bond. And analogously: the threats translating into
weakening or annihilation of social bonds are an evidence of a certain dishar- mony, whether lack of understanding and mutual rejection when they become too loose or isolated (alienation), or too tight when one’s acceptance or recogni- tion is possible when what is one’s self (engulfment) is rejected.
Shame is not only a “manifest” feeling of discomfort and emotional pain, but also a diverse and publicly displayed affect, unavoidable in any social environ- ment, signaled in behavior, speech and thinking. Expressing emotions is a rec- ognition of guilt and the need to correct behavior, and in the event of inability to restore balance between I and me, indicates a severance of bond and/ or a threat to it. Interaction is a platform for signaling the state of bond in terms of pride and shame. Shame is “contagious” or transituational: it is normal when it signals its reference to a bond, and when it does not confirm its embedding, it indicates weakness or atrophy of bond. And if these findings are related to the level of the social system, it can be stated that any prolonged repression of emotions sig- naling the condition of bonds can lead to the denial of the idea of social bonds, and thus the recognition of any emotions associated with it as inappropriate.
Therefore, shame is an inseparable element of social life, and the attempt to elim- inate it transforms it into a repressed feeling, a mental disorder or a common manifestation of malaise, a peculiar state of the body. This peculiar deconstruc- tion of the bond construct even stigmatizes shame, pushes it out of the frame of everyday experiences, or rather puts it in the frame of negative experiences as an indicator of a lack of manners (or good manners), interactive competence, in any case.
Social Bonds and Social Embeddedness
The question about the nexus of behavior with social relations, or rather their impact on human activity, including through social bonds – relatively persistent, noncontingent and transituational patterns of action – may also be considered in the categories of social embeddedness. The original intention of Mark Granovetter (1985) is to emphasize the role of the relational context of human action. It is an analytical movement that takes place between Scylla of undersocialization, the interpretation of which refers to Thomas Hobbes and utilitarianism, and Charybda of oversocialization, attributed to Talcott Parsons (Wrong 1963). And it is not important here, from my point of view, whether the interpretative usus accurately reflects the real interpretation of the concretization of both opposing conceptualizations of human action. Nor is it important when it is said that re- lations with time form sequences of typical actions, consistent with the values and norms of conventional society, or when it is stated that culture shapes the
actions of individuals, but is also shaped by them and in this way becomes part of their strategies of action. Respective variations of both of these interpretations, in which I agree with Granoveter, seem to reduce social life to a conglomerate of atomized individuals, either in a flattened, one- dimensional space governed by the principle of utility, or to micro– macro approaches, duality/ dichotomy of agency and structure or multilevel anchorages of individuals in what is usually referred to as levels of social reality in which the individual is located and with which he or she struggles, respectively he or she must take into account in the course of his or her activity. As Granovetter (1985: 487) states, “actors do not behave or decide as atoms outside a social context, nor do they adhere slavishly to a script written for them by the particular intersection of social categories that they happen to occupy. Their attempts at purposive action are instead embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations.”
A reference to the context does not mean some sort of plain contingency. In essence, such a move would be synonymous with a return to atomism positions, without subtleties and nuances of their variations, and without reference to the history of social relations and personal interaction trajectories. If one considers that an individual strategizes his or her own actions within structurally prede- fined situations, it means that he or she engages in relations that allow his or her to maintain the desired image in his or her own and other eyes. Therefore, he or she considers certain types of relations to be reliable through interaction experiences. He or she reduces risk by recognizing that embeddedness position guarantees regularity and ordering, maintains his or her reputation and allows the use of this capital both in relation to future activities and by recalling his or her own behavior in the past. Of course, personal relations not only lead to the generation and maintenance of trust, they can also generate incentives or opportunities for abuse and manipulation, and sometimes use of force and fraud. In this sense, they can be “functional” for certain individuals or groups of individuals, rewarding their deviation, respectively opportunism and gen- erating incentives for individual and/ or group atomized behaviors. It is even more important to draw attention to the importance of specific personal ties and structures (networks) of social relations: whether and to what extent they generate trust and discourage abuse (Granovetter 1985: 487– 493). Rationality, respectively instrumentality of human action, is not only the pursuit of goals that are limited to economic conceptualization, but also of those that are contributions and payments in terms of social capital: approval, socialization, status, and power. Macrostructures, organizations, relational orderings deter- mine the fields of human action, but they interact with their forces through a set
of situational constraints, a context that provides the real basis for selecting the components of human action (Granovetter 1985: 504– 506, 1992).
The sociological approach to the phenomenon of embeddedness founds the basis, I think, for process analysis, as actors create and maintain more durable and context- mediated relations with the environment, so to speak, noncontin- gent and transituationally generalized social bonds. The premises for such rea- soning, referring to Jens Beckert (2003: 769), are even stuck in the statement that “Embeddedness refers to the social, cultural, political, and cognitive struc- turation of decisions in economic contexts. It points to the indissoluble connec- tion of the actor with his or her social surrounding.” In fact, the question about embeddedness goes beyond the characteristics of social (in the sense of “non- economic”) conditions of economic activity, or (in other words) the question about the context of action requires a clear theoretical interpretation revealing the role of structures in the interaction and the skilled (“socializabled”) actors, or a theory of intentionality and strategic agency. The economic behaviors of individuals, associated with dealing with uncertainty, show the endemic nature of complexity and novelty: “Uncertainty renders the identification and selection of optimizing strategies, as demanded by the rational actor model, impossible because the situation does not possess the characteristics presupposed by an ac- tion theory that is based on the identification of the causal relationship between the application of means (strategies) and outcomes” (Beckert 2003: 770). This statement, although it refers directly to economic activities, is a constructive continuation of Granovetter’s idea also in the sense that it inclines to construct a theory that explains the ways of “taming” the social context of action, consti- tuting and reconstituting social embeddedness.
Recognizing that economic activity is intentionally rational, which, according to Max Weber ([1920] 1978, ch. 2), focuses on utility – or an economic oppor- tunity to increase utility, as Richard Swedberg (1999) believes – means, in a utilitarian conception, the need to identify and implementing optimization strat- egies. And since, in the case of “purely” economic action, and in reference to the broader category of social action, uncertainty about the expected results is built into the situation, this does not mean that actors cease to be rational or interac- tively reasonable, but that they interpret the situation and intersubjectively con- struct activity as part of an intentional rationality, respectively background and commonsense expectations, regardless of whether it will be a profit from market activity or a win in a boxing fight, or treatments that are intended to encourage the other person to establish intimate relationships. Either way, the actors “opti- mize” their interactive investments, act reasonably, even caused by affect, and in this sense, they strategize – “maximize” by interpreting situations in categories
that are intentionally rational or reasonable. They recall routines or habits, these or other components of the social stock of knowledge, whether increasing supply during the period of prosperity, whether striving to inflict punches on the liver of a man fighting in the reverse boxing position, or implementing guidebook “tac- tics” to obtain someone’s favor. None of these “routines” guarantees success, and its application is the result of the actor’s recognition that it is adequate in a given situation. Moreover, routines are not enough in crisis situations, which does not lead to rejection, but to reworking and reassessing the requirements of the sit- uation. Either way, the actor’s perceptive activity, in the sense of interpreting the situation, is crucial: both when he or she recognizes its requirements and implements “conventional” ways of coping with it, as well as when he develops, by distancing himself from habitual courses of action, new views and recipes of proceedings.
Referring to the findings of George Herbert Mead (1934) and Hans Joas ([1992] 1996), in particular the perspective of symbolically mediated interac- tion, Beckert (2003: 777 et seq.) shows the creative dimension of action and the intersubjectivity of the definition of the situation. Anticipated reactions of others occur in a specific environment, actors interpret the situation, “decree”
the meaning of objects, expectations of themselves and others, taking roles not only replicate socialized schemes, but also learn to implement these schemes in subsequent interactive stages. Experiences of success respectively failure become, as Beckert (2003: 776) puts it, “forms ‘constitutive expectancies’ which pattern a cognitive and practical background for decisions.” Actors not so much
“abandon” acting in terms of optimization, but by establishing the meaning of the situation, its comprehension in terms of a specific pattern, thus establishing tra- jectories of possibilities, a situational palette of adaptive responses. The situation in which individuals participate is an area of joint action, a shared understanding of what the situation is and what is happening within it. The orientations and perceptions of actors are shaped “by expectations brought on by their social sur- rounding” (Beckert 2003: 777).
In other words, shared contexts of action, even relatively persistent and clearly
“profiled,” are areas in which collide contingent actions of actors shaping the definitions of situations. Intersubjectivity is an interaction must, a condition for the reconstitution of social bonds, as well as the basis for their transformation, on the basis of a shared understanding and feeling the parameters of the situation.
Not only clearly defined intentions, but also habits, routines or implemented practices, together with images of alternative, sometimes innovative courses of action, are covered by the situation. Within it the influence of institutions, loca- tion in the social structure or the repertoire of allowable taking roles and the
related set patterns are interpreted on the part of actors, more or less fluent in the art of socialization competence (or skills of disposing of social capital), and are translated into whether routines are implemented and maintained respec- tively transformed on the basis of constitutive expectations. Conformance or compliance, a kind of community of judgments and impressions, is shaped in an area that – regardless of the subjectivity of individuals and compulsory social milieu – includes a partially intersubjectively shared interpretation.
Another important attempt to define the phenomenon of social embedded- ness (Brailly et al. 2016), starting point of which is the recognition of the key role of the relational context of action within social structures and networks, is made by analyzing multilevel processes that generate economic milieu. And although the logic of analysis is anchored in economic sociology, its findings entirely, I think, apply to issues that go beyond the domain of economic activi- ties. Roughly speaking, the role of these relational structures is analyzed at two levels: (1) inter- organization networks, actors of which are embedded in a net- work of relationships relevant to a particular domain of activity (like compa- nies in trade relations) and alliances and partnerships, more broadly: specific relationships between them; and (2) informal relationships, the functioning of which involves the use of social resources and social capital, i.e. interaction under the banner of friendship, advice, information exchange or collaboration.
The processes taking place in each of these areas are partly interdependent, but at the same time there is an emergence of phenomena specific to each of them, also in the sense of coevolution. Thus, the formation and continuity of ties between organizations and between individuals means a time- varying difference in contexts.
If one uses the contractualist approach, one can indicate how in economic relations (on the market), from interaction to interaction, the need for trust to sign a contract appears. The contractualist solution, consistent in the spirit of theoretical parsimony, however, overlooks the fact that embeddedness implies the coexistence of two types of relations: social and economic. In turn, multi- plex models, including both these types of relations, focus only on one type of actor in the context of the action: either individual (social relations) or organi- zational (economic relations). The organizational level is recognized as “an orga- nizational contextualization of inter- individual action” (Brailly et al. 2016: 320) In other words, in this approach, an organization or – consistently adapting embeddedness analysis to social relations in a broader sense – social structures and networks, practices, norms and values, including social bonds, constitute a kind of obdurate reality, ordered, compact and homogeneous social objects surrounded by actors. However, the organization itself (like any other social
object) can be considered in terms of a system (even a network of activities [cf.
e.g. Czarniawska 2004]) shaped by a heterogeneous set of individuals. In a word, the actors create the context of their own activities. Any relationship between them can have and usually has an over- individual, autonomous and constituting field of emergence of separate phenomena, including inter- organizational ones, whose occurrence generates the frames of interpersonal relations, although it cannot be reduced to them.
This solution, in turn, which shows the multitude of “anchorages” of the actor in relations with other actors and social objects, as well as embedding or nesting of contexts in other contexts, must indicate ways of specifying packages or sets of general relationships in subsequent interactions, their reproduction, and transformation through non- contingent trajectories of the actors. As argued by Frédéric Vandenberghe (1999), the reality of the relational is based on the recognition that the relations between “elements” are a derivative of the factors/
influences constituting “figuration.” The sets of these relations are characterized by a specific morphology and give direction to social positions’ structuring, whether in the form of bonds tying the primary group, or bonds determining actions on the market, or games with a specific payout matrix. Regardless of whether these relations are conceived in terms of consensual respectively con- flictual, they can be understood by reference to the total situation – a field in which actors strive to realize their “assets,” specifying the potential “orbits” of action. A field is a space, as Pierre Bourdieu ([1979] 1984, [1980 [1990]) would describe, externalization or objectification of the habitus, struggle for power, prestige, capital, and the interpretation of the components of one’s social sur- rounding, although indispensable, means recognition for a specific position fig- uration, whether in a marital quarrel or bargaining in a commercial transaction, or the validity of promotion in the academic world – in the form of specific institutions, organizations, groups, types of individuals, within various fields that define and channel the course of legitimate activities.
A decisive move toward understanding social life as a complex web of ac- tion fields follows the theory of strategic action fields. “A strategic action field is a meso- level social order where actors (who can be individual or collective) interact with knowledge of one another under a set of common understandings about the purposes of the field, the relationships in the field (including who has power and why), and the field’s rules,” as explain Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam (2011: 3). In other words, actors, individual or collective, using social
“accessories” construct arenas within wider fields (political, social, economic, etc.), acting as their members – defined in terms of predefined or objective criteria – whose position defines a certain subjective “standing.” Neither the
boundaries nor the arrangement of positions, nor the actual course of action are predetermined, but shaped in the process of defining the situation. The ac- tors construct the arena of action on situational foundations: what they consider relevant and make visible, and this gives sense to their actions. They operate on the basis of shared understanding, and their position in the field is reflected in attempts to determine how they perceive and interpret the situation. Thus, they use certain repertoires of behaviors that can be mobilized under specific rules. Incumbents, whose interests and perceptions can be realized in the field through its “game rules,” perpetuate the shared meanings through their actions, thereby maintaining their own privileged position, while toward challengers who recognize the nature of the field and adopt a dominant view of the situa- tion of incumbents, expecting compliance with a specific order is formulated.
Challengers do not act as puppets in the hands of incumbents, nor as aggres- sive contestants of the current reference system. In terms of access to valuable field resources they are weaker actors who quest for niches within the field and are waiting for an opportunity that will increase their chance of improving their position in the field by questioning its nature and logic.
This set of relationships is sometimes strengthened by internal or external governance units, appointed to supervise conformity to field rules and facilita- tion ensuring its smooth operation. The fields may be more or less hierarchical, their participants may form coalitions, although in essence “they are best thought of as a dominant coalition confronting less organized opposition” (Fligstein, McAdam 2011: 6). In addition, they are conceived “as embedded in complex web of other fields” (Fligstein, McAdam 2011: 8), which can be seen from the angle of overlapping three distinction: distant and proximate, vertical and hori- zontal, state and nonstate. In a word, there is a certain order in this plenum, but understood as a dynamic concatenation of a multiplicity of social orders, con- cretized in interaction stages in the form of a definition of a situation, co- shaped by relationships with other orders, but at the same time affecting them.
The place of values and norms, cultural patterns, Durkheimian constraints, structural opportunities respectively beneficial payments ensuring maximiza- tion or satisfying, understood as these components of one or other “conven- tional” theoretical logic, thanks to which emergence, maintenance, change or disappearance of social bonds, are substituted by rules specific to each of the SAFs. This does not mean that traditional or conventional categories lose their raison d’être; on the contrary, rule- based theoretical logic allows to identify processes that “mobilize” or activate social bonds as the actual components of actors’ perception, the affective components of the attunement of interaction participants, in a word, those “pieces” of the social surrounding that “attracted”
by actors’ attention make up definition of the situation in the strategic action field. However, which of them will be extracted from the situational background depends on the actors and their social skills.
Creating and maintaining stable worlds, ensuring the cooperation of other actors in conditions of continuous coopetition is the basic function of strategic action. This means control over other actors in the specific context of the action.
The extent or strength of this control depends on the ability to manage what is/ becomes strategically relevant in the situation. Action vectors are collective, they require the participation of other actors, and the more skilled the actors are in the sense of both knowledge of the frames defining the strips of human actions, and the art of imposing them with their alters, the greater their cultural competence, the ability to promote desired and rule- determined motives, ex- pectations, goals, assessments and identities, and the higher the degree of action strategization. And the more “irresistible” are/ become incumbents’ definitions of situation, the more likely it is to create and recreate the status quo, “institu- tionalizing” social worlds and their relatively smooth functioning in the taken for granted formula. In situations of uncertainty and lack of institutionaliza- tion, skilled actors use their proficiency by organizing themselves and others as pioneers of institutionalization.
Greater skillfulness is a relational property established and reconstituted in subsequent interaction installments. It is the ability to shape cooperation, stabi- lize the actions of participants in the field by applying rules and resources, coordi- nating transitions between different areas of meaning, activating and deactivating participation in the field, and thus – continuing practice and improvement in exercising power and reproducing privilege and institutional sets. It does not mean eo ipso the reproduction of cynical beings, but their formation in the cat- egories of the socialization avant- garde, culturally competent actors, and moral beings oriented on supra- individual goals. Cognitive, empathic and commu- nicative aspects are somehow integrated, because social skill “requires that ac- tors have the ability to transcend their own individual and group’s self- interest and consider the interests of multiple groups, in order to mobilize support from those groups for a certain shared worldview” (Fligstein, McAdam 2011: 7). And although the emergence of fields is “fueled” by three factors: “population expan- sion, technological advance, and the pace and extent of social organization,”
the main question is whether actors socially constructing a certain area will be able to shape a certain stable order, effectively routinizing relations in the field, exploiting resources for emergent field- forming mobilization, fashioning of the settlement, as well as state facilitation and creating internal governance units,
which in many ways ensure maintaining order through the implementation of routines (Fligstein, McAdam 2012: 86– 96; see also Fligstein 2013, 2016).
By systematizing the “parameters” of social bond, Erik W. Aslaksen (2018: 89–
90) draws attention to interaction strength – a combination of factors expressing
“the total effect of the interaction” that either lead to a change in the identity of the individual, the basis of his or her beliefs, or incline his or her to take spe- cific action. In the context of social bond, interaction is the process of transmit- ting information between participants. The previously mentioned social skills are components of cognitive advantage recognized as “[…] a characteristic of the relationship between a message and the identity of the recipient of the message” (Aslaksen 2018: 92), which is realized in a shared view of the situa- tion: what it concerns and with which people it is done. It is an alignment estab- lished in the course of interaction, with the participation of persuasion, but also with the acceptance of the idea of a particular, culturally embedded community.
Social bond, though defined through connections with interaction and align- ment, “is the relationship between any two members of a society defined by the sum of cognitive advantage over all the subjects present in the identities of the two members, and it is the Social Bond, extended to all pairs of individuals in a set, that binds them together to form a society” (Aslaksen 2018: 93). Even if society is the creation of a set of individuals interacting through social bonds, they exist only in the context of society, they are self- referential alignments, both sides of which are aware that shape together, or in the form of education respec- tively indoctrination. Imitating, they confirm the existence of social bonds; by adapting, they train their own intelligence, both in terms of individual qualities as well as social assets. They generate trust, which in the supra- individual plan is
“a hallmark of healthy society,” as well as commitment – a tendency to actively participate in public life, and thus reflect their own identities, present themselves in interaction (Aslaksen 2018: 93– 95).
Relations and Social Bonds
Aslaksen’s argumentation, emphasizing the process of information transmis- sion between participants, may lead to a strictly relationalist attempt to grasp social bonds. I mean the characteristics of the relation in terms of transactions, and more specifically: the recognition that the actions of the actors, including their perceptions, expectations, taking roles etc., are embedded in a trans- actional context. This means shifting the burden of analysis to processes that occur in interaction, and thus – how their participants appear to themselves and others, emerge as “stable bundles” of specific impressions and attributes. This
relation is not so much between actors as entities, but rather: the way the ac- tors appear as substances (even in the form of specific identities, roles, statuses or positions) is determined by transactional processes, and they are the proper object of analysis. The agency, functionally speaking, is the concretization of the components of social situations by establishing relations with them (Emirbayer 1997; Emirbayer, Mische 1998). And since, in this approach, society is a “sup- plier” of transactional contexts, as it were, a pre- configurations of the trajectories of possible morally- and affectually- marked actions and definitions of situations, then any transactional “mobilization” of them is ex necessitate multilevel and can be expressed in terms of rights, citizenship or identity, institutionally addressed, in a word, embedded in a web of emerging relations between the actor and his or her surrounding. The personal (in the sense of the relationship between ac- tors in interaction) is inevitably social, typical, and appropriate, respectively routine in one transactional context, or totally inappropriate and blameworthy responses, or innovative in another (see also Crossley 2011, 2018; Somers 1994, 1995; Jessop 2005). Actors, with their own grace or lack thereof, expressed in terms of social skills and habitus competences, “recall” milieu ingredients avail- able to them. Kiss in hand can be kiss galantly in hand, a tribute to the priest, a component of the diplomatic protocol, a manifestation of tenderness or evidence of adoration, although in more “progressive” circumstances it can be interpreted as a manifestation of male chauvinism, harassment, hygiene threat or ironic hyp- ocritical gesture.
Even this “banal” example of a relatively simple activity shows that on the basis of general definitions of situations, participation patterns and ties, symbols used for categorization, the complexity is first reduced by selective including their components in the subjectivity of actors, and at the same time establishing the meaning of codependence between them and within fields. Referring to François Dépelteau (2008, 2015, 2018): the logic of the field imposes or offers a specific type of expectations, expressed in strategic, normative and affective categories, but their updating is done in the practices of actors. Their skills, memory and future orientation, arranged on the plane of the present, are an essential source of stability for certain types of relations. Or more precisely: the impression of continuity of experience and the meaning of some types of relations that bind actors in the form of relatively durable codependence is important, not only in the dimension of personal references, but in a bundle covering the components of the field and its relations with other fields.
Reflecting on the social embeddedness of social bonds, Kaisa Ketokivi (2010: 116) aptly indicates that the analysis should be conducted in seven basic dimensions: “1) social setting, 2) general versus particular cases of the bond,
3) biographical and relational events, 4) subjectivity and asymmetry of the bond, 5) dynamics between bonding and individuality, 6) state of the bond, and 7) embeddedness of the bonds in the wider configurations of relationships.”
It is important what processes lead to the recognition that these or other per- sonal relationships become social bonds not so much in the sense of belonging to a particular category but, above all, such definition by the actors themselves.
Social settings are intermediary social structures for the transmission of cul- tural expectations that translate into personal styles of action. In other words, they define the kind of social embeddedness, strength and nature of bonding, as well as references to a wider relationship configuration. What is generally defined in them becomes particular, that is, specific for specific actors and their binding relationships, as well as their biographical anchorages, distinctive in reference to social bonds and their “particularization.” Each of these particular configurations is unique in the sense of subjectivity of experiences of the actors themselves. Social bonds “are personal in their origin when tied to the subjective meanings of relationships and particular negotiations. They are social in their origin when linked to the different social embeddings of the selves,” explains Ketokivi (2010: 123). The dynamics of individuality, described as contrast or dif- ference, deals with a sense of uniqueness, agency and relative autonomy, so to speak, a margin or band of action that allows one to express one’s self. This list is complemented by an imperative to analyze empirical circumstances that imply interdependence between actors in specific relational settings, as well as to deter- mine how “configurational logic” leads to subsequent “implementation” of social embeddedness in other situations (settings, fields) that appear in the horizon of operational social bonds (Ketokivi 2010: 123– 128).
In fact, if society is seen as a form of association the building blocks of which are relations, it means that they constitute a complex and stratified order of reality, the components of which remain tied. Relationality exists not only within each of these layers (or levels) of reality, but also between them. Being a person is as constitutive as being a body: “If one were to suspend the relations with the other, one would suspend the relation with the self,” states Pierpaolo Donati (2011: 123).
Social is as much as having symbolic references, structurally connected and emerging through mutual interaction. The reference to social networks or other components that can be considered as patterns of human conduct does not elim- inate the subjectivity or individual anchoring of one’s self, but is the starting point for subsequent transformations: “systems appear as ‘condensates of networks,’ in other words, as particular ways of reading social networks” (Donati 2011: 126;
see also Donati 2015, 2018).
The tendency to act in a certain way, according to specific patterns, within the existing social bonds, their duration, reproduction, and sometimes transforma- tion, is determined by subjects who recognize them as the frame defining the sit- uation and the bonding nature of its proper relation. As Ian Burkitt (2016: 330) would put it, human beings themselves, acting in a society that is recognized as the sum of personal and impersonal multiple relations, are in relations, “that transform the real through their productive joint activities as well as in relations of communication.” A human agency, including a tendency to “stabilize” rela- tions in terms of social bonds, is formed in the course of interaction in the sense of determining what is happening, with what/ who is associated, how it should be, what is possible, along with selection from the palette of roles, statuses and identities. It is personal, but also polyphonic, dialogical and social.
If one consistently writes it on the transaction plan, creating images of com- pliance with the desired perceptions of the situation and oneself, the basic function of social skills is to manage impressions, and in particular – the sus- tainability and social impact of some of them. The nature of “stimuli” or the substantial nature of social objects are important in the sense of their identifica- tion in a set of opportunities to process, communicate, demonstrate to oneself and others a certain skillfulness in mobilizing specific scenarios of action. The situation is not in itself favorable, formal, familiar, ambiguous or otherwise. Its dimension is determined publicly, together with others (real, virtually or in the mind of the actor), in interaction, but with reference to a specific relational “ad- dress,” field or figuration. This does not mean a reduction to any of the levels or dimensions, but a complex of meanings, ordered within this sector, which is constituted as a real interactive order. To paraphrase Goffman (1959), the ac- tors engage in performances in various surroundings or on various platforms (Goffman 1983), what is important is the coincidence they achieve in recalling specific sets of relations, characterizing events in terms of patterns, legitimacy, authenticity and with upholding team spirit. Or to refer to John Dewey (Dewey, Bentley 1949: chapters 4– 5), the particular components of the situation/ field (a cluster of connected things and events), their configuration or arrangement are not specified in advance, gaining their meaning in the course of the transaction by referring to many aspects and phases of operation. In this sense, both “enti- ties” and “relations” are the object of perception and manipulation (specifica- tion), and although they may appear as balanced interaction systems, particular versions of the interaction order are anchored in situations (fields) of action.
Transactions are a kind of collision or confrontation of meaning, leading to the transformation of the entanglements of entities and relations, the constitution of events and their flow.
