Coherence of Social Processes in Topics of Social Order and Disorder: To the Concept of Interstitial Emergence

The author notes that a significant part of the theories of social philosophy that describes approaches to the coherence of social processes, implicitly substantiates structures that were formed in accordance with the idea of social order. T. Hobbes, M. Weber, T. Parsons, P.A. Sorokin, and some representatives of the theory of social synergetics are given as representatives of the theories of “social order”. The author infers that a large number of theories and concepts in social philosophy are built around the definition of the conditions for the formation and stable existence of order and the description of its various forms. Much less attention is paid to various types of dysfunctionality, externality, and other unintended social consequences of order itself. In this regard, social disorder is taken beyond the limits of theoretical and methodological understanding. In order to expand the theoretical and methodological toolkits of social sciences, the author proposes to turn to the topic of social disorder. Although approaches that imply social disorder are not used as often as “ordering” approaches, the former should not be deprived of the attention of social philosophers, as they can enrich their understanding of the ways of forming social structures. As an approach that includes disorder in interpreting the coherence of social processes, the author gives a description of the theoretical and methodological framework and, in more detail, the phenomenon of interstitial emergence in Michael Mann's theory. His approach to the definition of the state and society, social processes, is considered. Mann's approach to power and its four types, which the theorist identifies as the main ones for analysis -military, political, economic and ideological, are also described in detail. Mann interprets interstitial emergence as the emergence of competing configurations within the existing institutionalized networks of power. This emergence has a complex nature, it occurs at the intersection of different networks of power, it is difficult to predict or plan. The correlation of theories with the topics of social order and disorder, carried out in this article, allows concluding that interstitial emergence means a partial destruction or transformation of the first and the transition to the second. At the same time, the elevation of social disorder to the status of a social phenomenon allows Mann to fix the variety of manifestations of real life and at the same time makes his approach quite flexible, able to embrace a wide range of social phenomena and link social processes in a coherent scheme. The author concludes that, although Mann's approach is limited in its predictive capabilities due to the emphasis on randomness and involuntariness in the study of social processes, it has a heuristic potential for identifying factors, structure, directions, and patterns of their dynamics, and it is also capable of giving a rather sophisticated interpretation of the occurrences of coherence and incoherence in social processes.

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