2 - Sociability and Interdependence

Summary

This chapter examines the relationship between sociability and interdependence. Sociability describes a fundamental feature of reality, namely the fact that individuals and groups are embedded in mutual relationships and institutions reflecting relative positions in the social domain. Interdependence encompasses both potential and actual ties involving material interests and immaterial dispositions. Sociability is a condition of relationality which develops dynamically through a complex interplay between dispositions, actions, and their consequences. This interplay tends towards either cooperation or conflict depending on whether different actors’ dispositions and actions converge towards a shared objective. The chapter explores the relationships between interdependence and congruence conditions in the social domain, building on the work of thinkers such as Shaftesbury, Paolo Mattia Doria, and Adam Smith to emphasise the relevance of the non-contractualist tradition in investigating interdependence in the social sphere. The insights of those earlier theorists help to devise a method of ‘circumscription’, which allows identifying partial similarity amid diversity and builds on that basis forms of social congruence. The relationship between partial similarity and plural mappings of interdependence leads to alternative patterns of affiliations for individuals and groups and provides a basis to discuss the likelihood of cooperation and conflict in a political economy.