6 - Decentralization and Power: Novel Modes of Social Organization

Summary

In the course of this inquiry I argued that social mobilization from the margins induces dynamics that are different from those of mobilization from the center. Luminaries are not the only ones who lead in social revolutions. The inquiry started from a curiosity, an anomalous escalation of decentralized conflict during two recent total blackouts in Egypt and Syria. I employed the events as massive social experiments of collective action in order to explore the reasons behind the spontaneity and apparent lack of leadership in mass social movements. The picture which has emerged from the cases as well as from a series of controlled network experiments is that of a decentralized one – dense on the local and sparse on the global levels, fast moving contagious processes that stand in contrast, and often in opposition, to the oft studied centralized and hierarchical structures of sociopolitical power. As such, the findings also provide a thought-provoking glimpse into the dynamics of social processes we have not yet mined in terms of their utility for political organization.

power and visibility

Modern political power necessitated clear distinctions between political categories and administrative bodies. Each division asked for predictable adherence. Allegiance to the uniting axes of society in the form of ideologies, either nationalistic or spiritual, reinforced a system of stratified governable groups. The forefathers of the modern polity, including Montesquieu, stressed the importance of rationalization. Chance had to be discarded and doubts were to be a matter of the past. Contingency was a matter of contempt. It is no surprise that Weber's shrewd declaration on the origins of capitalism was tied to the Calvinist predestination. Modernism at its roots enjoys inseparable intimations with exactitude, hierarchy and predictability. Its triumph lay in the employment of genus, classification to the limit and constructing predictability. Predestination spoke to this desire for precision. However, in contrast to the perceived yearning for exactitude, what constituted the roots of modernity at its inception, was not the certain existence of predestination, but the unsettling reality of doubt. A doubt that had to be confirmed and put to rest, and the individual in doing so, not only needed oneself, but also required the affirmation of the others. At the center of this story of preordained certitude as the initiator of industrial capitalism lies a contradiction.