Imageries of the social world in epistemic governance

Abstract

Spanish

French

To explain why neoinstitutionalist theories have been so successful in explaining global isomorphism and to discuss how they can be extended to describe otherwise inexplicable similarities in the world, the article approaches policy-making from an epistemic governance perspective. Utilizing a constructionist view on language, the article argues that popular and political rhetoric are inextricably bound to social scientific conceptions of reality through the use of root metaphors that are, in turn, woven into convincing imageries of social reality. In addition to the well-known culturally constructed imagery of social change as driven by functional requirements of modernization, two other imageries are identified: society as a hierarchy and the social world as comprising competing blocs. These three imageries are then discussed as key discursive ingredients for both social scientific and political actors seeking to understand and change the world. Finally, the implications of the article for future research are discussed.

Keywords

Epistemic governance imagery metaphor neoinstitutionalist theory policy-making world society

Introduction

Building on the seminal work of DiMaggio and Powell (1983) and Meyer and Rowan (1977), neoinstitutionalist theories have had noteworthy success in explaining structural similarities across the world, as well as similar policy moves made by nation-states for no apparent functional reason. This article engages with this body of theories by embedding them in a cultural account of governance. It proposes a framework to expand the scope of cultural accounts of the modern world polity to explain policy fashions sweeping across the world that even most neoinstitutionalist theories cannot account for.

Meyer et al. (1997) offer a comprehensive description of how the institutionalization of world models constitutes actorhood among nation-states and how such a perspective explains similarities in world society. The key to their landmark analysis is a critique of the prevalent realist view that societies change according to functional requirements. Neoinstitutionalists take distance from the apparent obviousness of functionalism to show how it is in fact a world cultural ‘script’ shaping actors and operating as ‘framing assumptions’ that end up ‘producing consequences that in no way can be seen as “functional” for the societies that implement them’ (Meyer et al., 1997: 149). In other words, functionalist requirements are a popular ‘imagery’, or unarticulated mental image, to describe society. According to this, any society goes through certain developmental stages that require states to enact the same policies. Since this imagery of society as a functionalist system is widely shared, policymakers in national states make the same reforms because they are convinced that ‘development’ requires them to. The result is isomorphism: ‘a world whose societies, organized as nation-states, are structurally similar in many unexpected dimensions and change in unexpectedly similar ways’ (Meyer et al., 1997: 145).

Numerous empirical analyses have followed this line of thinking to show how the idea of functional requirements is considered a self-evident justification even when policies have no obvious local relevance (e.g. Frank et al., 2000; Koenig, 2008; Meyer, 2004; Meyer and Bromley, 2013; Meyer et al., 2007). For example, contrary to dominant accounts, Castilla (2009) shows that national scientific activity in the 20th century does not correlate with national functional requirements, and that since mid-century memberships of international scientific associations can only be explained by institutional accounts. Similarly, explanations based purely on coercion do not explain why many policies, such as ‘massified’ education (Ramirez, 2003; Schofer and Meyer, 2005), are enacted that go against entrenched elite interests. We find this neoinstitutionalist perspective, and the many empirical accounts building on it, to be persuasive and useful in explaining otherwise puzzling similarities in policy moves made across the world. The neoinstitutionalist account rests on critical distance from the assumption that societies evolve on more or less universal functionalist requirements, and the related assumption of bounded, homogeneous, national states pursuing their interests. By challenging these assumptions, it finds considerable evidence for the importance of wider institutional environments that constitute actors as agents, particularly nation-states in a larger, stateless world polity.

Yet, this perspective is too readily operationalized as more or less straightforward diffusion of policy principles, or ‘hypocritical conformism’ by national leaders acting as ‘Babbitts’ in the pursuit of apparent functional efficiency (Meyer, 2004). In fact, from the actors’ own point of view a particular policy problem boils down to their conception of the situation and what can, should, or must be done. The fundamental point here is that policymakers and those seeking to affect social change need to convince others of this reading of the situation and the natural solution. They rely on others’ conception of the world and then work with that, a perspective we refer to as ‘epistemic governance’ (Alasuutari and Qadir, 2014). Such conceptions are, indeed, built on scripts shared in modern world culture, as neoinstitutionalists argue. But there is no reason to consider functionalism the only such script shaping world culture. Recent comparative research into parliamentary justifications for new legislation (e.g. Alasuutari, 2014, 2016; Qadir and Alasuutari, 2013; Rautalin and Alasuutari, 2009) shows that some policies in contemporary world society are not justified or opposed by reference to universal functional requirements. It is not that other arguments go against a functionalist imagery of society, but rather that they are not subjected to that form of justification or contest. Other rationales than functional requirements are socially constructed in order to justify or oppose a particular policy, and these are also shared by politicians and others worldwide. Furthermore, cultural ‘scripts’ are not narrative texts that actors on the world stage can read from and act out. As powerful as this metaphor is to counter common assumptions of realist agents, it overlooks the insight that people rely on mostly unarticulated mental images to make sense of the world and, moreover, work with a notion that others also think in similar images.

In this article we make a contribution to neoinstitutionalist theory by examining the range of imageries of the social world that are employed in contemporary policy-making, and by offering an explanation of why they are so prevalent. Briefly, we propose here that what makes functionalism so popular and widespread an explanation, thereby leading to isomorphism, is that it is deeply rooted in modern selves as an imagery of society as an organism driven by inherent laws of evolutionary progress. Arguments based on this imagery are particularly successful and, indeed, quite common in contemporary policy-making. Yet this imagery of progress stands on a logical par with other imageries that are also used to justify policy solutions, sometimes within the same discourse, and we will discuss two such imageries below. An explanation for the popularity of these imageries can be found when we look at the linguistic turn in sociology and at the idea of root metaphors on which all sociological thought is based (Brown, 1989a). When considering what an imagery consists of, these metaphors are especially useful since they cut across the assumed divide between scientific and popular language. However, as we shall argue, metaphors in and of themselves are not enough since they do not point inherently to any direction for social change, hence the need to think of imageries. We shall show that imageries of the social world rely on combinations of root metaphors, combined with a policy (or action) rationale. Actors seeking to affect society assume that others also think with such imageries and use that assumption to make a ‘natural’ argument. Of course, such a process need not be (and often is not) purposive. Furthermore, it is not restricted to those consciously seeking to affect where a society is heading; even if somebody is indifferent to social change, they still rely unconsciously on such imagery-work whenever daily life decisions require it.¹

The rest of this article is organized as follows. We first ground our discussion with the idea of ‘epistemic governance’, or governance that functions by working on people’s conceptions of social reality (Alasuutari and Qadir, 2014). We then discuss the linguistic turn in sociology, with a particular focus on root metaphors and how this idea may be extrapolated into understanding imageries of the social world. In the course of the argument, we refer to similar concepts that have been useful in opening up cultural accounts of society but that may not fully capture this aspect of epistemic governance. Next, we identify and discuss three popular imageries that work as scripts shaping world culture. Each imagery is elaborated along two axes: its social scientific origin and contemporary pervasiveness, and its presence and implications in popular/political discourse. By way of conclusion, we point to how this concept can be tested in empirical research.

Epistemic governance of the social world

The epistemic governance perspective taken here means that we consider politics and policy-making in the modern world as comprising acts that aim to affect other actors’ conceptions of the world and the situation at hand, thus making them behave in a desired fashion. This perspective is indebted to Foucault’s point that power and knowledge always form a couplet. That is, a particular social organization creates corresponding forms of knowledge. On the other hand, a dominant way of conceiving reality contributes to maintaining the status quo and to amassing more and more knowledge that naturalizes the situation. Later, Foucault developed these ideas of the linkage of power and knowledge in his discussion of ‘governmentality’ as governance that works upon people’s aspirations, desires and milieu (Foucault, 1991a, 1991b). Other theorists have made similar points, for instance about the ‘schemata of interpretation’ in framing theory (Benford and Snow, 2000; Chong and Druckman, 2007). Yet, such approaches often view frames as independent of the issues and of the actors involved. They tend to overlook how the actors’ very constitution by a wider institutional environment affects the issues (Alasuutari and Qadir, 2014).

This link between people’s conceptions and decision-making means that if an actor aims to influence social change through policy-making, she or he needs to take into account and make use of prevalent ideas and metaphors or other tropes (White, 1978) that inform them. Yet the point about this reliance of policy-making on discursive tropes and culture does not mean that political decision-making is necessarily irrational. Although it is obvious that all the ability of the human race to conceive of and make models of the external reality is based on language and the conceptual resources it provides us, we must bear in mind that the human race has been fairly successful in making sense of the universe. Of course, the social world is complex in that even ‘false’ representations may become real in their consequences, if enough people believe in them and act accordingly. But it is important to stress that when making sense of society and arguing for a definition of the situation and a reform needed, actors may propose and apply several complementary metaphors that guide people’s understanding.

In this regard, mental images do play a part in epistemic governance: the self-evidence of an imagery lures people to frame the situation in a particular way that conceals alternative framings. Imageries also appeal to people because they provide a simple and straightforward picture of the social world, otherwise often quite difficult to grasp. Imageries also provide the basis for an appealing identity. For instance, as Foucault points out, an image of society as a hierarchy invites us to conceive of power as a mere limit placed on our desire, which leaves a measure of freedom intact. Therefore ‘power as a pure limit set on freedom is, at least in our society, the general form of its acceptability’ (Foucault, 1980: 86).

However, much governmentality research after Foucault has tended to rush to point out actors, such as neoliberal economic institutions, that control the production of knowledge/power and thereby subject populations. By contrast, the epistemic governance approach does not suggest that there is a particular elite group or centre of power through which we are governed by subtle means that make us perceive the world in a suitable way. Rather, we stress that all actors try to act upon each other’s conceptions of the social world. They are all involved in epistemic work in different domains that focuses on three intertwined aspects: ontology (what is reality), actors and identifications (who we are), and values and norms (what is good or desirable) (Alasuutari and Qadir, 2014). Depending on the situation, those who are most successful in convincing others of what is desirable or what they need to, or have to, do are able to affect social change more than others. This epistemic work is entwined with imageries of the social world not only by affecting people’s views of the situation but also by then constituting actors and placing them in that world and by implying what is acceptable and desirable.

Metaphors to imageries: A cultural approach to policy-making in world society

World society theorists stress that ‘the functionalism of world culture is inscribed in commonsense descriptions and social-scientific theories of “the way things work” ’ (Meyer et al., 1997: 149). That, indeed, is correct. Put another way, following Foucault (1980), popular conceptions of the global order may be viewed ‘nominalistically’, not just as competing social scientific theories but as part of our modern culture. Social scientists, just like currency traders, create their own ‘epistemic communities’ (Haas, 1992) or ‘epistemic cultures’ (Knorr Cetina, 1999) that trade in objects of knowledge. What is crucial to the success and longevity of these communities is that they are sustained primarily by narratives (e.g. Brown, 1989a; Czarniawska, 2010). Although social scientists tend to develop theories of the social world as if in isolation from ‘real-world’ application, their narratives are deeply rooted in popular discourse. Far from being exclusive to the ‘scientific community’, their accounts unselfconsciously cross the boundary between science and society.

A remarkably sharp and widespread distinction is often assumed between these two spheres of reasoning: popular and social scientific (for which one reason is doubtless the conflating of social and natural scientific discourses). The linguistic turn in the social sciences, from the 1980s on, was crucial in highlighting that this boundary is ill-conceived. In the prominent literature exposing this blurring is the work of Richard Harvey Brown (1989a, 1993). He summarizes this turn thus: ‘the process of constructing sociological knowledge – from whatever theoretical perspective – has much in common with the processes by which ordinary people patch together reality and meaning in their everyday lives’ (Brown, 1983: 129).

Root metaphors: Words we see with

Brown’s basic idea is that a limited number of established, age-old, ‘root metaphors’ drive so-called ‘new’ discoveries in the human sciences. What Brown means by a root metaphor is ‘a fundamental image of the world from which models and illustrative metaphors may be derived’ (Brown, 1989a: 78). Far from being exclusive to scientists, he suggests that these fundamental metaphors are deeply rooted in popular discourse. Brown argues that social scientific theorization is founded on popular root metaphors of society as either an organism or a machine, and of social conduct seen as language, the drama, or a game. For Brown, these root metaphors are ways for people to naturalize the world around them, explain that world to themselves and others, and to work within that world to change it. Such interpretive model building relies naturally on language, and metaphor is the linguistic key to that:

In the broadest sense, metaphor is seeing something from the viewpoint of something else, which means … that all knowledge is metaphoric. … In the narrowest sense, metaphor can be understood as an illustrative device whereby a term from one level or frame of reference is used within a different level or frame. … Metaphor also is the key to model-building; indeed a model may be thought of as a metaphor whose implications have been spelled out. (Brown, 1989a: 77–78)

The idea of popular root metaphors propping up social scientific discourse is cogent. However, in his work Brown has focused exclusively on pointing out how social science is trapped in metaphors that delimit the potential of empowering civic discourse (Brown, 1983, 1989b, 1992). The same concentration on tropes of social science writing applies to other work inspired by the linguistic and narrative turn in human sciences (Clifford and Marcus, 1986; Kornprobst et al., 2008; Marcus and Fischer, 1986; Marks, 2011). This field of research is in itself fascinating but for the most part scholars have tended to either aspire to scientific writing freed from the distortion of the tropes of language or, after concluding that scientific writing is inevitably entangled with culture, sought for new, more artistic and openly political genres of science as literature (e.g. Denzin, 2001; Stewart, 1989). There is much less research that focuses on the use of metaphors in political argumentation (see however Beer and Landtsheer, 2004; Cienki and Yanow, 2013; Meyer, 1984; Sawhney, 1996; Yanow, 1992).

One reason for this is that a metaphor by itself carries little weight as justification for social or political action. It is not complex enough to convince others or to encompass the social world. Metaphors may provide a basis for our understanding of who we are (say, actors in a staged drama), but not of what the world consists in nor what should be done in such and such a conundrum. That is why multiple (often mixed) metaphors are deployed in any justification for social change. Rather than identifying separate metaphors, we suggest we need to identify how they are combined into a full map of the social world that suggests who the actors are and what can be done in the current situation. This map of reality is a backdrop to actions, and is not entirely articulated by the actors.

Imageries

To understand how political argumentation relies on modern cultural conceptions of the social world, we suggest that instead of root metaphors it is better to talk about imageries. Earlier, we referred to a common-sense notion of an imagery as an unarticulated mental image of what the world is and how it changes. We can now define an imagery more precisely as a configuration of metaphors articulated with a policy rationale. Actors work off the notion that others see the world in a similar way to them, and so base their argument for or against a particular issue on those terms. We find considerable evidence for the use of these imageries in the rhetoric of politicians arguing for or against a particular reform or new legislation in parliaments. Moreover, we suggest that these imageries are prevalent worldwide and are not culture-bound, similar to the symbols circulated globally by contemporary media that act as ‘unspoken backdrop to our thoughts, actions, and messages’ (Schudson, 1989: 155). That is, unlike situation-specific metaphors or narrative scripts, these imageries are common to modern world culture and constitute a symbolic set that both constitutes rational actors and is available for use by them, especially those seeking to affect social change. Furthermore, an imagery is not just a tool in political rhetoric; it is intimately related to social scientific theorizing as well as the very constitution of the actor, which is why concepts like ‘master frames’ (Benford and Snow, 2000) do not work here.²

Each of the three imageries we discuss below correlates with an established theoretical approach to world society (Meyer et al., 1997). These correspondences underline how essential narrative is to both popular and scientific discourse. To avoid misunderstanding on this, we emphasize that these imageries are inscribed in popular as well as social scientific theories of social reality. Our point is that these imageries are constituted as combinations of different root metaphors along with a sense of what type of action is possible or necessary. Of course, it might be possible to update Brown’s list of root metaphors to include contemporary metaphors that cannot be reduced to the ones he identified (say, society as a network). Besides, as Brown stresses, in specific instances the root metaphors of social science are often complemented by sub-metaphors and have points of connection with other metaphors. However, whatever metaphors are used and in whatever combination, they are rhetorically woven into persuasive narratives by way of these three imageries. We are not as interested here in whether a particular argument succeeds in persuading others, and what the patterns of more successful argumentation are. There has been considerable scholarship on that, such as the influential idea of a ‘cultural diamond’ (Griswold, 2013). Yet, irrespective of whether a case for social change succeeds in winning the day or not, it is still founded on these imageries of the social world, each implying a certain action and obscuring others from view.

Another closely related concept is the social imaginary: ‘the ways in which [people] imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images which underlie these expectations’ (Taylor, 2002: 106). Taylor also attends to how people ‘imagine’ their world rather than think about it in a detached manner, and notes that, ‘This understanding is both factual and “normative”; that is, we have a sense of how things usually go, but this is interwoven with an idea of how they ought to go, of what missteps would invalidate the practice.’ This suitably describes our own approach, yet Taylor does not break down what the social imaginary consists of, making it hard to operationalize in a research design. More importantly, he does not consider that people rely (more or less unselfconsciously) on these imaginaries in their rhetoric to convince others of what to do. He does not include any element of ‘work’ in his concept, which is central to our unpacking how epistemic governance functions and for which we develop the idea of imageries.

In the next sections, we discuss three imageries: (1) the social world changing by naturally modernizing according to functional requirements; (2) the world governed by hierarchically positioned power players; and (3) the world divided into competing blocs or civilizations. In each case we give examples of social scientific and political usage, although further research is required to fill in the sketch here: our limited focus is on describing the imageries with examples that illustrate the variations within them.

Progress and functional requirements

The prevalent imagery of society, also the primary subject of critique in sociological neoinstitutionalist literature, is characterized by methodological nationalism or ‘the all-prevalent assumption that the nation-state is the natural and necessary form of society in modernity; the nation-state is taken as the organizing principle of modernity’ (Chernilo, 2006: 6). Coupled with this perspective is the sense of national states ‘modernizing’ or progressing on a more or less fixed trajectory determined by the functional requirements of a ‘stage of development’. In a global framework, this translates into the popular conception of independently converging national trajectories. The imagery of functionalism draws on the root metaphor of society seen as an organism identified by Brown.

Social scientific origin and contemporary pervasiveness

Underlying this conception of societies following a law-governed trajectory is a Darwinian evolutionary idea, according to which the direction of social change is determined by the acts with which states and other actors adapt to changing external conditions. This view, which presumes an a-cultural view of societies (Taylor, 1999) ‘evolving’ through a universal developmental process, largely calls upon the authority of science. We call this conception a tacit concept to emphasize that it is a naturalized line of thought, deeply ingrained in what is succinctly called ‘modern’ culture (for more on ‘tacit’ concept of modernization, see Alasuutari, 2011). As a narrative, it is closely related to the common ‘micro-phenomenological’ perspective that views the world as divided into tightly bounded nation-states that each ‘evolve’ in line with the universally valid functional requirements.

Talcott Parsons is a classic figure in this respect. In his modernization theory Parsons proposed that the development of societies is led by particular ‘evolutionary universals’ (Parsons, 1964, 1966). Drawing from the classical sociological tradition, he argued that differentiation is a necessary requirement of socio-economic development: along with modernization, the division of labour becomes increasingly complex, and different aspects of social life are handled in separate institutions that specialize in them. Thus from this viewpoint, if different governments make similar reforms, for instance establish a new institution, that is because it has become a functional requirement related to those societies’ developmental stage.

Despite continuing criticism of modernization as explanation, it remains popular (see e.g. Inglehart and Welzel, 2005), although a growing number of variations emphasize multiple modernities (Eisenstadt, 2002; Nederveen Pieterse, 2004; Qadir, 2011; Taylor, 1999, 2004). Very often, social change is also explained by referring to national functional requirements in a particular stage of global capitalism (e.g. Berger, 1991; Nederveen Pieterse, 2004: 2; Wood, 1997).

Political usage and implications

This conception of social change feeds off and reinforces popular concepts that present reforms and newness as self-evidently better than the old or existing state of affairs (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Urban, 2001). Thus several concepts and figures of speech naturalize the idea of progress: we talk about developing and developed countries, deem existing practices ‘outdated’ and call countries ‘leaders’ or ‘laggards’ in their policies, thus placing them in a quasi-temporal order regarding their developmental stage. These forms of talk are commonly used in justifying new legislation. The idea of modernization provides a proposed policy with a strong incentive or presents it as a necessity: a nation ‘has to’ stay on the path that other nations have chosen to ensure its success and to be viewed as a modern country, and politicians use this to convince their audiences of reform (Alasuutari and Rasimus, 2009).

For instance, when supporting a bill for Australian tax reforms, a member of parliament commented on the existing system by saying that ‘it was an example of outlandish, irresponsible and quite destructive politics standing in the way of genuine national progression’ (Debate on ‘A New Tax System: Commonwealth-State Financial Arrangements Amendment’ Bill, 19 February 2004). Similarly, when introducing a bill, the Canadian Minister for Health argued: ‘Sadly, we have fallen behind most of the modern world with the current legislation’ (Debate on ‘Canada Consumer Product Safety Act’ Bill, 7 October 2010). The same ideas are also utilized in justifying large-scale ideas such as ‘ecological modernization’, which is both an analytical approach in the social sciences and a policy strategy that argues that the economy benefits from moves towards environment-friendly policies and technologies (Spaargaren and Mol, 1992; York and Rosa, 2003). Once a policy is criticized as needing ‘modernization’ or ‘meeting national needs’, that is usually enough to point to a need to better diagnose functional requirements and address them, without looking into alternatives that might build on a different imagery.

The way the imagery of progress is utilized in epistemic work illustrates well one particular aspect of epistemic work: constructing and appealing to actors’ identifications. Typically, politicians and political commentators appeal to the nation as a self-evident community within which compatriots are assumed to share interests. However, it is also common for politicians to appeal to a ‘shared national interest’ while advancing their own stakeholder group interests, thereby defining themselves as collective actors. The aim is to present partial group interests as the common, national interest, and hence to be a legitimate ‘player’ in governance, as for instance in clean energy technology and green growth. So-called developing countries buy into the same green discourse, for instance objecting to environmental restrictions on their exports due to their ‘stage of economic development’, indicating a sort of environmental Kuznets Curve that would bring in environmental sustainability naturally after they reach a particular GDP per capita target. The argument that a particular nation-state is lagging behind others, or needs to be a leader, is powerful in many, if not most, cases to justify a policy solution. What makes it especially potent is the picture of Progress guiding separate societies in the same direction.

Society as hierarchy

Another popular imagery of the social world is that of society organized as a chain of command. When applied to a single polity, it provides a framework to think of society in which the government or the power elites call the shots. In a global context, it translates into the world system as divided up into those with more and those with fewer power resources. Power holders are seen to be, in some sense, ‘above’ the subjects of power. This view connects with a spatial imagery of power: of society as divided into hierarchical levels, such as the global, national and local. It stems from a dormant metaphor of a society or an organization as a material structure, like a house, in which the higher up one resides, the more powerful one is and hence able to rule all those stationed below. The same image is presented in organizational charts, in which the chief or the government is drawn highest up, with arrows of the line of command leading from level to level all the way to the ‘grassroots’, indicating who can give orders to whom and who is responsible for what in a bureaucracy.

Social scientific origin and prevalence

Generally, as pointed out by Foucault, this conception can be identified in a Weberian theory of power as a zero-sum resource by which an agent can force another one to act against her or his will. It relates to another standard account of centre–periphery struggles in the world society as exemplified by world systems theory (Chase-Dunn, 1989; Wallerstein, 1974), which is a prime macro-sociological example building on this imagery, seeing capital, competition and force as the drivers of global social change. Building on systems theory, this ‘macro-realist’ approach sees the nation-state as a bounded entity defined by its political-economic role in the world, and views power and interests as the drivers of change in the world. In its emphasis on relational power, this approach relies on an imagery of the world society as driven by hierarchical power holders.

This is what Foucault was referring to in his argument that although the political has been disengaged from the juridical sphere and the monarchic institution for hundreds of years, the representation of power has remained caught within this system: ‘In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king’ (Foucault, 1980: 88–89). The same applies succinctly to many views of global governance. Although it is well known and acknowledged that, despite superpowers, there is no world leader or government (Wilkinson, 1999), the bulk of scholarship on global governance is still built on the assumption that there are powers or organizations working ‘high up’ at the ‘global’ level, making ‘lower’ levels like nation-states and even cities conform to hierarchical orders. When the idea of a hierarchy is scaled up from national societies to the messy global infrastructure, the global system is pictured as consisting of higher and lower ‘levels’ of power and scales of authority. Intergovernmental organizations are often pictured as enforcing compliance directly and indirectly, thus depicted as proxies for the missing world government, for instance ‘imperialism’ of the World Bank (Badru, 1998; Feder, 1976; George and Sabelli, 1994), ‘coercive sanctions’ by the World Trade Organization (Charnovitz, 2001), international ‘legitimization’ by the United Nations (Claude Jr, 1966) and forced ‘homogenization’ by the OECD (Grek, 2009; Meyer and Benavot, 2013; Rinne, 2008; Rutkowski, 2007). That is, these organizations are expected to solve global problems by ordering nation-states or they are accused of manoeuvring national policies, without quite spelling out how.

For instance, for many political scientists, the challenges and successes of global governance are a question about the possibilities and limitations of the United Nations system and other international organizations (see e.g. Diehl and Frederking, 2010) in affecting the member states’ behaviour through establishing norms and standards, with the help of which humankind could solve global problems. From this perspective, similarity between national states’ policies depends on how well and on which conditions they comply with international norms (Cortell and Davis, 1996, 2000; Pettenger, 2007). Consider the use of the term ‘global level’ in contemporary social science literature. All these scientific usages rely on a notion of society organized as a hierarchy, otherwise they would make no sense.

This scientific paradigm is also reflected in more recent studies of network governance, which replaces individuals or tightly knit groups of actors by more or less integrated networks (Castells, 2011; Hajer, 2009). Again, the notion of power as a hierarchal property is central to this approach, often with the view that this property consists of abilities to control network members and rules, as well as switches with other networks.

Political usage and implications

Although political actors may not use the term ‘hierarchy’, yet the imagery of the world as being organized like a chain of command is utterly common, even commonsensical. For instance, when opposing a bill, a member of the Ugandan parliament argued:

What is it that this committee is going to do at the national level? The services are going to be down at community level. So what will the committee at the national level do? If there is any necessity of higher committees, then the highest level should be the district, in my view. (Debate on ‘Community Service Bill’, 17 February 2000)

This typical quote illustrates how naturalized the spatial imagery of national society is. When the same is applied to world society, it results in simplifications about a spatial ordering of the world. For example, when the Occupy Wall Street protests ‘went global’, protestors around the world generally made statements such as ‘At the global level, we can’t carry on any more with public debt that wasn’t created by us’ (Pullella, 2011). The usefulness of this imagery in political argumentation is that it points at the person, organization or clique responsible for or able to change things and hence who can be appealed to or blamed in a current situation. When a social organization or system is viewed as a hierarchy, it implies that those ‘higher up’ are capable of and hence also responsible for the state of affairs and changes in it: that those in a leadership position are able to control subordinate actors (Brunsson, 1989: 131–132). Hence, by picturing themselves at the top of a hierarchy actors or organizations, such as the government, present themselves as important and powerful, which explains why actors may willingly take the responsibility. On the other hand, actors can also be blamed for the current conditions, regardless of their powers to control the situation. That is, many position-holders use this imagery to claim ‘legitimate’ authority, while others draw on the same imagery to blame them convincingly.

Competing blocs: Competition and community-building

A third class of assumptions relates to a view of the world divided into camps or blocs that pursue their own interests and hence fight or compete against each other. It maintains that the international system is driven by anarchy, egoism, groupism and power politics (Donnelly, 2008). Higher ends are subordinated to the underlying requirements of survival and national self-interest (Waltz, 1979). Considering Brown’s categorization of root metaphors in social science, this imagery derives from the metaphor of social conduct as a game (and we could here apply another root metaphor of social activity as a marketplace). When woven into a theoretical narrative, this imagery correlates with arguably the most prevalent approach to world society: that of bounded nation-states competing in a condition of global anarchy where the most ‘powerful’ do best.

Social scientific origin and prevalence

This imagery is largely founded on Thomas Hobbes’ analysis of Man’s state of nature as Bellum omnium contra omnes. Since there is no higher authority above nation-states, the international world is viewed as a potential war of all against all, in which all nations and groups seek and secure their own interests (Cerny, 2012). This imagery connects with the third approach to world society according to which ‘the nation-state is a natural, purposive, and rational actor in an essentially anarchic world’ (Meyer et al., 1997: 147). It relies on a narrative of the world as divided into competing blocs naturally at odds with each other. This is such a naturalized and self-evident conception of the world system that it is known as the ‘realist’ paradigm in political science and dominates the field.

Many sociological theories of globalization, like in international relations, also have this realist character, picturing the world society as inevitably constituted by nation-states in competition with each other, although international organizations and transnational corporations are increasingly included in the picture. Most often, such theories subscribe to a resource view of social power as primarily a distributive property held more by some actors and less by others.

Political usage and implications

Although this idea of the world divided into warring tribes is a bleak and sceptical view, it is nevertheless, or precisely because of it, a powerful rhetorical tool to promote a national strategy. It thus appears no less in popular political discourses than in social scientific ones. In accordance with this imagery, during the 20th century the so-called East–West or communist–capitalist division was a popular way to divide the world into friends and allies, and these two camps fought for their support and influence in different geographical areas. When that era ended with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, it became popular to conceive of these divisions in more cultural or religious than political terms (Huntington, 1996). Huntington’s thesis provided a ready-made framework for parties involved in the Danish cartoons affair, sparked by publication of 12 cartoons in a newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in September 2005 (Lindekilde et al., 2009). Muslims in Denmark and soon across Europe and the rest of the world reacted strongly against what was perceived as an insult to the Islamic prophet. Protests, often violent, were held by Muslims in countries all over the globe, while the publication of the cartoons was defended by some European politicians and parties.

Furthermore, the idea of a clash of civilizations soon became the dominant framing of the event in the mass media (Eide et al., 2008; Hussain, 2007; Powers, 2008), contributing to reorganizing international diplomacy in the immediate and also in the medium term (Lindekilde et al., 2009: 296; Lindholm and Olsson, 2005). In the process a Muslim global ummah was recreated almost anew as a pan-Islamic coordinated community that could act nationalistically (Saunders, 2008). The clash thesis was so persuasive and so ubiquitous precisely because it closely followed the narrative of competing tribes, which is deeply ingrained in popular and scientific discourses (Qadir, 2015).

As to the adoption of similar policies in different countries, the warring tribes imagery treats them as a consequence of various forms of influence or pressure of powerful states or power blocs exerted on the weaker ones. For instance, modernization and globalization have been equated with Americanization (Beck et al., 2003; Kelemen and Sibbitt, 2002; O’Dell, 1997; Ritzer, 2015). Other centres of power and influence have also been highlighted, such as in the argument about Asianization in Australia and the Far East (Ang and Stratton, 1996; Siriyuvasak and Hyunjoon, 2007), or about Islam exerting its influence worldwide through Islamic organizations (Atasoy, 2006; Rubin, 2010).

Similar discourse on competition occurs throughout policy-making debates as well. For example, a member of the UK House of Lords supported a bill by stating:

We also face ever increasing competition in many areas of our economy and industry, from China and India in particular, and the levels of educational achievement among some of our young people clearly leave a great deal to be desired. We will not be competitive internationally unless we can raise our game. (Debate on ‘Child Benefit Bill’, 3 March 2005)

The idea of competing blocs appeals to two aspects simultaneously. On the one hand it draws on suspicion towards others and their current or future moves that will worsen ‘our’ position, which justifies ‘preemptive’ or ‘proactive’ measures in, say, military strategy or economic policy. On the other hand, it appeals to and builds team spirit, reinforcing the idea of ‘us’, for instance as a nation with shared interests. Strongly critical and radical political discourse supports and renews the idea of competitiveness. By presenting the world in this way, actors obscure policy alternatives beyond game-theoretic realism. Such notions often lead, as a next logical step, to all manner of conspiracy theories. The idea of the world as composed of competing blocs is also commonly applied to other teams than nations. In those cases, too, if enough people believe in such an account of reality, it has real consequences as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Discussion and conclusion

In this article we have suggested that thinking in terms of imageries of the social world is a bridge between constructionist explanations of social scientific theorization (Brown, 1989a) and constructionist explanations of world society (Meyer et al., 1997). In modern culture, the former cannot be dissociated from the latter, and both social theories and policy-making feed off and inform each other. Imageries of the social world, building on combinations of root metaphors, are hence a key discursive ingredient for both social scientific and political actors seeking to understand and change the world. In the latter realm, the use of particular imageries depends on the strategic demands and political context of the policy in question. In this sense, they connect with ‘epistemic governance’, or policy-making that works by affecting people’s shared conceptions of reality as well as desirable action.

By drawing on Richard Harvey Brown’s analysis of the uses of metaphors in social science, we have sought to (a) deepen the constructionist aspect of world society theory – asking why the imagery of functional requirements appears to be so successful – as well as to (b) extend it by identifying other imageries than that of functionalism. In doing so, we found that functionalism is, indeed, a prevalent cultural theme, but that it is rooted in an imagery of social change steered by evolutionary universals, much like an evolving organism responding to the external environment. In addition, we identified two other imageries, that of society as hierarchy and that of competing blocs, that cannot be reduced to the first imagery. We have also contended that these three imageries are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are often conflated when politicians argue for, or oppose, a particular policy reform in deliberative settings endemic to modern world society. For instance, national policy discourses on educational reform in the wake of PISA results often point to a loss of national sovereignty to the OECD – the imagery of world society as hierarchy – and to the nation’s need to do well in competition with other states – an imagery of world society as divided into competing blocs (Rautalin, 2014; Rautalin and Alasuutari, 2009). Similarly, while ‘developing’ countries might argue for ecological modernization to industrialize sustainably (a functionalist imagery), the same discourse will often point out the need to navigate environmental restrictions by international trade bodies (society as hierarchy), as well as global inequities caused by ‘affluent’ countries (competing blocs).

An actor, therefore, becomes more agentic in strategically deploying the imagery she or he (often instinctively) feels better fits the situation. Of course this does not mean that actors are pre-given entities, entirely oblivious to the institutional environment guiding their actorhood. Yet, individual actorhood in policy-making is also not entirely explainable by a singular script of rationalized ideas of functional requirements. Individual actors draw upon these scripts strategically, depending on the local situation. Our brief examples show that both sociological theory and policy discourses utilize these imageries in various combinations.

We propose as a hypothesis that these are, indeed, the only three irreducible imageries of the social world; this hypothesis may be usefully tested or invalidated in further research. In particular, it should also be tested across linguistic divides, political cultures, time and arenas of policy discourse (parliament, mass media, think tanks, social movements and so on). Possible patterns and variations on each of these dimensions also need to be mapped. The manner in which we have elaborated these imageries lends itself to a clear qualitative research design. However, the methodology can be further refined and expanded to identify terms that can be associated implicitly or explicitly with each imagery.

As to how these imageries are mobilized by interested actors in policy-making discourse, we have stressed that a particular politician does not necessarily accept or believe that world society is, indeed, comprised of nations modernizing deterministically or as divided into competing blocs. It would be empirically difficult and philosophically challenging to claim to know what a policy-maker ‘really’ has in their mind. Yet, the fact that they do deploy the imagery in question is precisely what is important here. The imagery is seen as being acceptable enough to carry the argument or policy solution. This means that political sociologists need to pay far more attention to individual discourses of justifying or opposing specific policies or sets of policies. In effect, we argue for a thicker, ethnographic description of policy-making processes-in-context to pick out and examine what imageries are at work and how they translate into policy principles. A further avenue for empirical research is to test whether there are any patterns or correlations between the use of particular imageries and the success of an argument in a specific policy domain, in a specific time, and if so, what are the determining factors.

With the concept of imageries of the social world, we believe that a much fuller account of global social change is possible through the lens of national decision-making. The idea of imageries of the social world helps to concretize the idea that governance functions by working on people’s conceptions of social reality. Since we argued for a limited range of such imageries, rooted as they are in metaphors by which people make sense of the social world, this makes a case for a focused empirical research agenda into global social change. Furthermore, as the range of imageries in popular or political discourse feed into, and in turn feed off, social scientific conceptions of reality, there is an element of non-linear interdependence when describing global social change that is almost daunting. However, describing the complexity in these terms makes it more possible to develop an outline of our contemporary social world and produce empirical accounts that do justice to it.

Footnotes

Funding

Research for this article was made possible by financial support from the Academy of Finland (grant number 276076) whose assistance is appreciated.

Notes

Author biographies

Pertti Alasuutari is Academy Professor and Professor of Sociology at the University of Tampere, School of Social Sciences and Humanities. He is editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies, and his research interests include global and transnational phenomena, media, social theory and social research methodology. He has published widely in international journals, and his books include The Synchronization of National Policies (Routledge, 2016), Social Theory and Human Reality (SAGE, 2004), Rethinking the Media Audience (SAGE, 1999), An Invitation to Social Research (SAGE, 1998) and Researching Culture: Qualitative Method and Cultural Studies (SAGE, 1995).

Ali Qadir is a postdoctoral researcher at the Tampere research group for Cultural and Political Sociology at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere, Finland. He is currently studying epistemic governance in modern world society funded by a grant awarded by the Academy of Finland.

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