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Northwestern University Law Review,
Summer 1987,
81 Nw. U.L. Rev.
894
Commonsense Reasoning, Social Change, and
the Law
By David E. Van Zandt
Social theories are not of
much use unless they advance in some respect our understanding of the social
world. In striving for such insights, social theories come in two types. Some
attempt to construct admittedly simplified models of social relations from a few
specified principles. In using a limited set of principles, such theories risk
producing models that are not descriptively comprehensive or even plausible.
In fact, they may only describe and explain a limited region of social behavior.
The payoff for taking this risk, however, is that such models are better able to
predict specific patterns and behaviors. Observation of actual social relations
can then be used to test those predictions. Through such prediction and
observation, these theories provide insights into the operation of actual social
relations.
The other type of social theory has a more grandiose aim. Its goal is to provide
a complete or comprehensive description and explanation of social relations -- a
story -- that is superior to any other explanation. Such theories are often
intended to be normative as well as positive; that is, in addition to explaining
the world, they suggest how the world should be reconstructed. They strive to
describe and explain every facet of social life in order to present a new and
attractive view of social relations that will educate the reader.
Obviously, the complexity of social life alone makes the complete achievement of
this ambition impossible. Theories of this second type, however, assert that
their outlines of the description and explanation are complete and that filling
out the theory is a noncontroversial, ministerial task. The measure of the
success of such theories is not their preciseness or predictive power, or the
specific insights they provide, but rather their overall plausibility or
persuasiveness as comprehensive pictures of the social world.
Roberto Unger's Politics is clearly a theory of this latter type.
A magisterial sweep through a vision of a new world that seeks to fulfill human
potential and desire, it attempts to blend a positive analysis of society with a
normative program for social change. Its purpose is to persuade and prompt.
Because any study of such ambitious scope must of necessity treat numerous
difficult issues with extremely broad strokes, it is easy to criticize any
number of Unger's propositions for their lack of development, their vagueness,
or their arguable inaccuracy. Moreover, Politics' internal logic
may not be as tight as we would wish.
Taken as a whole, however, Politics presents a possible and even
attractive story of a better social and political life. Such a theory should be
judged by its overall plausibility and persuasiveness, rather than by a standard
that requires precise modeling and the generation of falsifiable predictions.
The appropriate question, in my view, is whether Politics presents a
view of the world that comports with our present understanding of the way that
world operates, while at the same time providing us with new insights into
social relations. I will evaluate Politics using this standard.
I do this by prising out and examining one of the central concepts on which
Unger's story rests. That concept is the idea of "formative context." A
formative context, Unger's version of social structure, is vaguely and
functionally defined as the "set of basic institutional arrangements and shared
preconceptions" within which routine or everyday social disputes are waged and
settled. His positive claim about formative contexts is that they vary in
their resistance to change. The normative counterpart to this descriptive
proposition is that those formative contexts which are more open to change
should be preferred. Unger thinks that through this concept, Politics
presents a new and more promising version of the traditional social theoretic
concept of social structure, a version that in turn provides a blueprint for a
better society.
I find that Unger's analysis of formative contexts and the implications of that
analysis for understanding social change lack plausibility and provide little
insight into social life. While the concept of formative contexts can be
criticized from a number of angles, my criticism is that Unger's concept of
formative contexts rests on an inadequate or implausible microsociological
theory -- that is, a theory of the relations among individuals within a society.
My central thesis is that Unger's microsociological theory cannot support his
program because it causes him to underestimate the immutability of formative
contexts. In making this argument, I elaborate Unger's idea of formative
contexts first by tracing the problem it is designed to solve, and then by
illuminating the microsociological theory that animates it. Finally, I suggest
an alternative microsociological theory and use it to draw some conclusions both
for the overall prospects of Unger's program and for law.
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