Formative context

Formative contexts are the institutional and imaginative arrangements that shape a society's conflicts and resolutions. They are the structures that limit both the practice and the imaginative possibilities in a socio-political order. Also referred to as order, framework, or structure of social life, the formative context of a society exerts a major influence on the course of social actions and behaviors but is itself hard to challenge, revise, or even identify in the midst of everyday conflicts and routines. The institutional arrangements structure conflict over government power and capital allocation, whereas the imaginative framework shapes the preconceptions about possible forms of human interaction. An example of a structure of a formative context is the mode of production in Marxism.^[1]^[2]

Background

The concept of formative context was developed by Harvard law professor and social theorist Roberto Unger. Whereas other social and political philosophers have taken the historical context as a given, and seen one existing set of institutional arrangements as necessarily giving birth to another set, Unger rejects this naturalization of the world and moves to explain how such contexts are made and reproduced. The most forceful articulation and development of the concept is in Unger's book False Necessity.

The thesis of formative context is central to Unger's theory of false necessity, which rejects the idea of a closed number of institutional arrangements of humans societies, e.g. feudalism and capitalism, and that these arrangements are the product of historical necessity, as theories of liberalism or Marxism claim. Rather, Unger argues that there are a myriad of institutional arrangements that can coalesce, and that they do so through a contingent process of struggle, reconciliation, and innovation among individuals and groups. For Unger, the concept of formative context serves to explain the basis of a certain set of institutional arrangements and their reliance upon each other. It offers an explanation of the cycles of reform and retrenchment of a socio-economic political system and how it remains undisturbed by rivalries and animosities. The theory of false necessity goes on to explain the connections of a formative context, their making and remaking, and how they maintain stability despite the contingent formation.

Criteria for formative context

Formative context of Western democracies

Influences in other fields

The thesis of formative contexts has been heavily drawn on and used within the Social Study of Information Systems.^{[citation needed]} In the field of Information Systems Claudio Ciborra and Giovan Lanzara define the term “formative context” as the “set of institutional arrangements and cognitive imageries that inform actors’ practical and reasoning routines in organisations”. They posit that the common inability to inquire into, challenge or shape formative context can inhibit individuals and organizations from acting competently and learning what they need to know in order to make the most of situations and technological transitions as the enchaining effect of Formative Context can lead to cognitive and social inertia.^{[citation needed]}

References

^ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira (2001). False Necessity. New York: Verso. pp. x, 58–59.
^ Trubek, David M. “Radical Theory and Programmatic Thought.” American Journal of Sociology 95, no. 2 (1989): 448.