Social rule system theory: universal interaction grammars

Rule system theory has been used in conceptualizing interaction grammars as rule regimes. Such grammars are complexes of rules applying to social action and interaction of individuals, groups, and organizations. They consist of a finite and universal set of rule categories (10) that are identified in the paper and concern five key factors in social life: group agency conditions, social structure, interaction, material conditions, and time and space. A rule regime, while an abstraction, is carried, applied, adapted and transformed by concrete human agents, who interact, exchange, struggle, and exercise power in their social contexts, in large part based on the rule regimes which they maintain, adapt, or transfor

Merging two Hierarchies of Internal Contextual Grammars with Subregular Selection

In this paper, we continue the research on the power of contextual grammars with selection languages from subfamilies of the family of regular languages. In the past, two independent hierarchies have been obtained for external and internal contextual grammars, one based on selection languages defined by structural properties (finite, monoidal, nilpotent, combinational, definite, ordered, non-counting, power-separating, suffix-closed, commutative, circular, or union-free languages), the other one based on selection languages defined by resources (number of non-terminal symbols, production rules, or states needed for generating or accepting them). In a previous paper, the language families of these hierarchies for external contextual grammars were compared and the hierarchies merged. In the present paper, we compare the language families of these hierarchies for internal contextual grammars and merge these hierarchies.Comment: In Proceedings NCMA 2023, arXiv:2309.07333. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2309.02768, arXiv:2208.1472

Writing biology with mutant mice: the monstrous potential of post genomic life

Social scientific accounts identified in the biological grammars of early genomics a monstrous reductionism, ‘an example of brute life, the minimalist essence of things’ (Rabinow, 1996, p. 89). Concern about this reductionism focused particularly on its links to modernist notions of control; the possibility of calculating, predicting and intervening in the biological futures of individuals and populations. Yet, the trajectories of the post genomic sciences have not unfolded in this way, challenging scientists involved in the production and integration of complex biological data and the interpretative strategies of social scientists honed in critiquing this reductionism. The post genomic sciences are now proliferating points from which to understand relations in biology, between genes and environments, as well as between species and spaces, opening up future possibilities and different ways of thinking about life. This paper explores the emerging topologies and temporalities of one form of post genomic research, drawing upon ethnographic research on international efforts in functional genomics, which are using mutant mice to understand mammalian gene function. Using vocabularies on the monstrous from Derrida and Haraway, I suggest an alternative conceptualisation of monstrosity within biology, in which the ascendancy of mice in functional genomics acts as a constant supplement to the reductionist grammars of genomics. Rather than searching for the minimalist essence of things, this form of functional genomics has become an exercise in the production and organization of biological surplus and excess, which is experimental, corporeal and affective. The uncertain functioning of monsters in this contexts acts as a generative catalyst for scientists and social scientists, proliferating perspectives from which to listen to and engage with the mutating landscapes, forms of life, and languages of a post genomic biology

The process of civilization (and its discontents): violence, narrative and history

Historical violence studies are being increasingly influenced by theoretical approaches which focus on the development of ‘cultures of violence’. However, this growing interest in the interconnections between violence and culture faces a number of significant challenges posed by the influence of disciplines other than history as well as by internal difficulties in (and disagreements over) identifying the precise role of discourse in shaping (and changing) cultures of violence. In dealing with these issues, historians are becoming increasingly interested in Norbert Elias’s theory of the ‘civilising process’. This perspective has proven to be very fruitful; nonetheless, there are problematic issues raised by Elias’s approach. In particular, the relationship between 'culture' (and thus 'discourse') and the social forces which, according to Elias, have driven a historical decline in violent behaviour – interdependence, class differentiation and the state monopolisation of legitimate physical force – remains unsettled. In this essay, I contribute to the theoretical discussion of discourses of violence from a historical perspective marked by a critical engagement with the notion of a ‘civilising process’ and incorporating conceptual tools from the fields of discourse analysis, social geography and anthropology. My conclusions, though focused on the past, are nevertheless relevant to current issues in violence and the ways that it is understood

Virality, informatics, and critique; or, can there be such a thing as radical computation?

'This essay, which is deeply indebted to the approach set out by Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello in The New Spirit of Capitalism and taken up by Nancy Fraser in her commanding “Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History,” aims to interrogate certain notions of radical political practice and the theoretical models that might be derived from them in the context of post-Fordist, neoliberal economics and the ubiquitous informatic culture that is tightly bound up with it.' (Taken from the article pp.153-4.