Formative Context

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Case study research is said to be most amenable to an examination of unique or transformational events. These events help develop an understanding of complex social phenomena by thoroughly investigating the rich detail of the case. However, at least one question remains: How is social life held together when the exceptional recedes and is replaced by normal activity? The normal, according to the social theory of Roberto Unger, is just as informative and interesting as the exceptional, because the normal contains within it the seeds of [Page 402]its own eventual transformation. The formative context of society and social relations is the lens through which transformation and permanence can be better understood as being conditional. For Unger, existing social theory does not recognize this conditional and contingent nature of society.

According to Unger, existing social theory can be categorized as either radical or positivist. Radical social theory posits that society is created, reshaped, and reformed by the human mind and that societal change will take place through revolutionary means. Since there is no underlying natural order that predetermines human relations or the structure of society, the individual has at least the opportunity to imagine him- or herself as being free from the social structures that currently exist. For the radical, the only way to switch to another arrangement is through revolution. However, the emancipatory social theory that has these underlying views has not seen this logic through to its conclusion. One can see radical theory, and its limitations, in practice by noting the absence of the definitive yet elusive final change as envisioned by Marxism.

At the other end of the spectrum is a positivist social science that has come to deal more and more with individual problem solving, and with narrowly defined searches for understanding that have abandoned the quest for a larger understanding of society. This social theory takes existing arrangements as given and unchanging, rather than as transitory and evolving. For example, the nearly complete global monopoly of liberal democracy in politics has been said to signal the end of history. In other words, nothing can be conceived that could replace democracy as a political system: It is a given, and unchanging, form of social life.

Unger notes that this combination of messages that give the individual the potential to shape society with messages that society is static results in a certain intellectual and societal dead end. Unger offers us a release from this deadlock by exposing the importance of formative context in determining how existing social or institutional arrangements were formed and are maintained. He argues that human motivation never fits perfectly within the institutional, economic, and social structures that exist in the world at a given point in time. As a result, there is a potential in the small adjustments of everyday routines embedded within a context that can give rise to a chance of changing a context. This enables us to see that the regular and routine activities of society are not general laws. Key to this explanation is the idea of formative context: Formative context places unique and transformational events at the center of understanding how society both maintains and transforms itself. Unger's social theory takes this view and develops it into a theory of social relations with three elements: context provides a certain conditionality to any social arrangement; people have the flexibility to break the existing context; and contexts impose different levels of limitation on our activity. For clarity, it should be noted that context and formative context are different concepts: The former describes the circumstances around any given social situation, while the latter is concerned with how social arrangements are conceived and perpetuated.

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