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1 results

  • 12 - Continuous (Trans)formation

  • from Part III (A) - Differentiation and Continuous (Trans)Formation
  • Jack Donnelly, University of Denver
  • Book:
    Systems, Relations, and the Structures of International Societies
    Published online:
    19 October 2023
    Print publication:
    02 November 2023, pp 204-222

  • Summary

    In a world of pre-given substances (or static relations) change needs to be explained. In a processual world, though, change, not stasis, is the norm. Persistence therefore demands explanation. Living and social systems are far-from-thermodynamic-equilibrium systems that, by taking in and creatively utilizing matter or energy, temporarily stave off the inexorable physical progression of entropy (movement towards greater disorder; decay). Social continuities no less than social transformations are socially produced. (A state, for example, can be kept in the far-from-thermodynamic-equilibrium state of statehood only through extensive and complex processes of (re)production.) And both continuities and transformations arise from similar processes that operate continuously. The chapter illustrates what I call continuous (trans)formation with the case of the development of modern militaries and introduces both John Padgett and Walter Powell’s framing of transposition and re-functionality and William Sewell’s framing of eventful history.