Peter Emmerson

1.4

Using the word ‘interdepend’.

As far as I’m aware using the verb ‘interdepend’ is new. It is difficult writing in terms of ‘processes’ because the conventions at your disposal are mostly geared to the analysis of ‘systems’ and therefore inappropriate for the examination of the dynamic patterns needed to describe and analyse social activities such as managing people. ‘System-speak’ presupposes a diagrammatic type of explanation, portraying people as inanimate points on a map, a classic example being the pyramidic model of responsibility and accountability synonymous with military organisation. Correspondingly, systems analysis is heavily reliant on the use of nouns such as Sergeant or Chief Executive, both expressive of function. The convention is to link these nouns with arrows or lines suggestive of cause and effect relationships (line management): the Sergeant gives orders to the Corporal; the Sales Manager sends information to the Sales Executive to account for the dip in orders. In this ‘top-down’ model, people are positioned by a series of ‘it-statements’ in relation to their job which defines their identity and purpose as if they were automata: they will have a job title and job description listing their duties. We also make more general ‘it-statements’ about things that are not objects when carrying out systemic analysis such as ‘the education system is dominated by a culture of compliance’ as if education and culture are things that can be weighed or measured. These ‘it-statements’ are noun-based descriptions that give a false impression of human relationships as lifeless and uniform, markedly unlike the reality I know, which is in fact vibrant and highly differentiated. In our attempt to use systemic concepts to find general or universal explanations we destroy that which we seek to understand.

The problem is that the complexities of most social variables do not allow simple cause and effect connections to be established beyond the banal experience of analysing an instruction: ‘Peter asked me to come here today’. Once we start to look at groups (figurations) of three or more people who make choices, such causal relationships may be impossible to stipulate. This is certainly the case when looking into the governing activities that are meant to educate people. The emphasis in this sentence stresses the verbs ‘governing’ and ‘educate’, suggestive of process, real people and complexity. Such ‘doing-statements’ contrast starkly with ‘it-statements’ by making it more difficult to idealize real human experiences with over-general summaries that promote a bland, simplistic set of perceptions that ignore fluidity and difference in favour of stability and commonality. We get a very different impression when using ‘doing-statements’ that warms and emotionalizes the whole analysis of government functioning, encouraging a focus on process, humanity and dynamics rather than systems, automata and statics. Such ‘process-language’ is geared to the figuration rather than the individual: no-one performs their activities in isolation, they operate interdependently with one another, their activities shaped by a network of variables such as geographical distance and social influence. Most of us start the day with our family and move to our work and then back again to our family. The bonds of interdependence that tie us together in these two figurations don’t perish as the space between us increases. If a family emergency occurs the level of familial social influence may be substantial enough to pull us away from working figurations. Our thinking and behaviour are structured in relation to others. Life is more about social processes rather than systems, and the language we use to describe and analyse it should ‘interdepend’ with the dynamics of those processes.