A social action is both producing and managing an overflow of meaning. Any social phenomenon may be considered as providing for possible overflow, drawing its constraints from the need, as made thereby evident, to deal with the overflow. That is true with respect to friendship, love, marriage, and family, as well as with respect to political, economic, pedagogical, religious, military, scientific, or artistic action. Dissemination media are just a special case, yet a most prominent one because they set the stage for the problem of communication having to deal with overflows produced by the dissemination of communication. Their overflows, and the culture forms capturing them, or so our hypothesis in this essay runs, frame how the overall society is dealing with meaning.
We here propose to look at a model, which describes social action in any society, yet has a special leaning toward the next society, because it focuses on the very form of social action, taking metacommunication for granted and relegating purpose and restlessness to still important, yet subdominant themes. Social action, as in Max Weber's notion of it, combines first-order behavior with second-order observation into a kind of action, which is orientated toward a situation structured by observers observing observers, thus drawing its constraints from attempts to retain its autonomy. It is not less complicated.
Our model provides for both action and observation, noting that observation is action as well, since it has no effect whatsoever if it does not get noticed. If there is any law to social action it consists in the challenge to get observations not just in order to get noticed, which is important enough, but also in order to get definitions of the situation one is then able to work with – which is why target and content ambiguity are a necessary part of these definitions. The minimal condition of any model of social action, thus, is to provide for both constants and variables, the constants defining what social action consists in, the variables defining the space to be explored by it.
The overall idea of the model is that social action consists in drawing and exploiting distinctions. These distinctions are the constants of the model, thus leading to a theory of social action which unfolds the thesis that social action draws a specific set of distinctions. The marked and unmarked states of these distinctions, of which the unmarked states get in turn marked by second-order observation, provide for the variables of the model, whose values determine what any specific social action is about. Our model, then, is a network and communication model which means that any one variable depends on all other variables and that distinctions, as we will see, are also re-entered into the form such that not only variables, but also constants may get subverted.
This is our model:
http://homepage.mac.com/baecker/handouts/SocialAction.pdf
It seems to be simple enough, consisting, as it is, of just five distinctions and six variables, yet it already provides for some basic understanding of the complexity of social action. Note that the sixth variable is the outside of the form left unmarked, which, included as the excluded third, provides the form with the necessary indeterminacy it explores and exploits.
The model maintains that social action first of all consists in any kind of *action* occurring which is framed by a kind of *talk* which presents it with definitions of its identity, thus giving it a control of itself. The particular kind of risky, adventurous, and prestigious action depicted by Erving Goffman in his essay on "Where the Action Is" indeed actually is the most general case of any action in that less daring action just adds on constraints, which it is prepared to accept, the more daring one dropping these constraints in order to be able to explore them by playing with them.
With one eye on evolutionary anthropology we venture the hypothesis that the distinction of action as framed by the selection of talk in human behavior is managed with respect to an enhancement of chances to *mate*, that is to control possible mates and the access to them. Of course, we do not mean that all action is up for sexual intercourse, longing for intimacy, or on the money for love. But we assume that there is more to Charles Darwin's idea of the sexual selection of behavior and action than has been well received in social sciences up to now.
All social action, we try to say, is watching the distinction between action and talk with respect to chances to achieve or maintain a certain position in a pecking order of access to mates. We assume this restriction to play its role on the first re-entry-level of our form, the level of the re-entry of the distinction between action and talk into the form, such that we here deal with a reflection device which subverts the constant distinction between action and talk into a more playful version of itself. That is anyhow what a re-entry, following George Spencer-Brown's calculus, is about. That more playful version of itself, a cross turned into a marker, re-symmetrizes the asymmetrical distinction for some kinds of observation, if only to attract different determinations from the other values of the form, and then of course bounces back into the asymmetry the constant consists in.
Competing for an access to mates, that is, directs the attention of the observer to a kind of action that is either trying to change a position in the pecking order or to insist on it, and orientates the talk accordingly, tuning it in into various possibilities to boast about, or modestly hint at, one's position. Do not think that we here only deal with the heritage of primate behavior or with tribal society. If you look at it, action in ancient, modern, and next society is as impregnated with the obsession to possess a mate as it can be. Again, note that we do not say that all action is up for sexual intercourse. There is indeed all kinds of action far off the mark, so to speak, as people invest themselves into political, economic, artistic, pedagogical or other kinds of action. Yet, in defining social action, the criterion of how to relate talk to action consists in looking at the social position an actor is trying to achieve or maintain with respects to mates, including, of course, the competition among people of the same sex for the position they already have or like to attain.
The interest in mating is only indirectly dominant in social action. All societies address it as a kind of first-order overflow demanding control, yet do so guardedly. Mating for sexual behavior indeed is a well-chosen address fot the observation of action, since it combines behavioral, organic, mental, and social aspects of action, thus addressing humans in their complexity, and it the selection of behavior with self-selection, thus controlling social control with respect to humans being prepared to accept, and to enforce, it. Oscillating between orgiastic and ascetic modes of moderation, society chooses its way to go about human sexuality, as is shown, among others, by Max Weber's sociology of religion, managing, as it were, both society's distance from, and its approach to, the immediate control of mates and, thereby, of *ego* seeking its way in society.
Yet, already the second distinction and third variable of the model show how first-order action with respect to second-order observation gets bound into a determination which adds other aspect to the organization and regulation of behavior than sexuality. The distinction between *talk* and *group* specifies the context of all talk occurring which is the context of some basic cohesion framing any one individual with respect to an overall order addressing all others.
That is why we maintain that a possible re-entry of the distinction between talk and group into the form of social action might by called by the name of *gaming*, playing on the double meaning of this word, alluding both to games whose rules one may obey or not, and to the hunt one is up to searching for a prey, or is trying to circumvent, not wanting to fall prey to somebody. Gaming, thus, shall mean, that all talk, with respect to group, is up to either catch somebody else into some old or new group cohesion, or to let oneself be caught into some group avoiding some alternative group. Gaming means checking for both talk and group, yet always having to settle into a particular selection and combination of them, which is not up for a free choice by the actor but bound by known or acceptable ways to talk and all other individuals in the group to accept the new demand.
Group numbers any social action as one among others which are of a comparable, a complementary, or a parallel kind. It thereby lends it an identity which transcends and informs the talk, which captures the overflow of action. Group means to lend the talk a site, and thereby to offer action a place, providing for positive and negative sanctions in dealing with it, sanctions which flow naturally from attempts to secure, and purify, and embellish, the place. Group provides action with discipline and connectivity.
Incorporation, as Mary Douglas would have it, comes with individuation, and *group* with *grid*. So our next distinction is the distinction between group and grid, and our next variable the variable of the grid. The grid tells you which relational pattern informs the choices of the individual doing the choosing. Any one value, which inside the group determines what to talk about, who is doing the talking, who is doing the listening, who is to be interrupted by whom, and which turn-taking anybody is prepared to accept or to counter, including all kinds of tactful treatment of possible mistakes or of merciless chase of misdemeanor, do not depend on what is talked about, but on the grid position of the individual doing the talking.
Note that the grid position is not fixed but a variable as well which means that one can try to vary it by working on the way one looks for, and constitutes, group. It is the distinction which is important and, indeed, constant, which means that the variables are up for variation. The observation and reflection of grid and group we call the operation of *tying* because social action is only bound to accept a specific grid position if the group coming with it, the identities which are on offer, and the connectivity it promises, present it with means to tie itself, and to tie others, into a position which is acceptable with respect to group and leaves some space to move about with respect to grid. Tying here means action and talk are selected with respect to the selection of both group and grid. Looking at his or her group identity, the actor selects both action and talk with respect to the grid position he or she would like to opt in or out.
Our last but one variable is the *society*. By society we mean an overall variable which defines ways to proceed with social action via the provision of keys or cues of how and when to keep on with, or to change, its course. Sociology is used to such an operational definition of society, having deconstructed, as it is, all more substantial definitions of it. As noted in the previous chapter, Gabriel Tarde speaks of association, Emile Durkheim of complementarity, Georg Simmel of interaction, Max Weber of socialization, Talcott Parsons of action, Niklas Luhmann of system, and Harrison C. White of networks, just to be sure that society at any instant is considered to be the outcome of, and input back into, ways of social action to orientate itself to varying situations. There are no values, no norms, no roles, no rules, no institutions, no frames, which do not go tested by the communication of social action at any one moment, and may change accordingly. This is one reason, why social sciences' most elusive notions of all, the notion of culture, has rightly been chosen to track ways of testing, changing, and possibly confirming values and norms, rules and institutions, roles and frames.
More explicitly, society is the variable which defines that and what *switches* are possible from one group to another and how a switch might be communicated, or keyed, both inside the old group, a social action is switching out of, and the new group, it is switching into. Such keys, forks, or switches, as we already noted, are among the most elaborate structures a society is bound to provide, and sociological theory is bound to describe.
There are two reasons for this elaborateness. One is that society means orientation for action, talk, grid, and group, and space for mating, gaming, tying, and switching, and thus has to provide for consent as well as for dissent, and for conflict as well as for its moderation and settlement. And the other reason is that society, inside the form of social action, is framed by the *unmarked state* of that form. That unmarked state, depending on the social action distinguishing itself, may mean all kinds of things, for instance spirits, devils, and gods, or nature, physics, and universe, or the unconscious, desires, and instincts. As soon as it means something, it gets marked, pushing the unmarked state one variable further to the right, which is a process of semiosis that can only be stopped by a general kind of fetishism, that is by bans to proceed which attract all further attention to the both fascinating and frightening fetish itself (Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud).
We call *knowing* any way to reflect on the distinction between society and the unmarked state and to re-enter it into the form of social action. Knowing means to acknowledge the unmarked state without necessarily foregoing attempts to mark it this or that way. It means to deal knowingly with ignorance, which has of late been greatly advanced by the development of notions of a kind of anticipation which is as creative as resilient. As the next society is investing in a structure form of itself which relies on knowledge instead of on the media, strata, or tribes of earlier society, we will have to go more intently into different ways to deal knowingly with ignorance. Second-order cybernetics and systems theory have always been about this, but for social sciences this has been more of a reason to avoid them than to explore their possibilities.