In a moment of brash confidence a couple of days ago, I bought – or re-bought, to be more accurate – Harrison White’s Identity and Control. I’d sold my original copy many years ago, having given up reading this famously difficult book after an initial series of futile attempts at comprehension. But, that was then and this is supposedly the new me now, and I thought: you’ve read some of his other stuff and made it out alive, why not give this one another shot?
Well, while waiting for my 2nd copy (for which I paid a not insubstantial amount), I decided to read a short article by him that was published earlier this year in the European Journal of Social Theory. However, I wasn’t exactly pleased to reach the end of the essay only to read these words: Harrison White, Giddings Professor of Sociology in Columbia University,
“is just finishing a massive rewrite and extension of his Identity and Control of 1992.”
I should have read a bit more carefully when doing my Amazon search. In my version of network theory, it’s called ‘not making the connection.’
On a side note, in his article for EJST White has a few complimentary things to say about Niklas Luhmann, and these hints of connection between his network theory and Luhmannian systems theory are quite interesting. I’d just finished reading the essay he wrote in 1998 with Anne Mische on ‘Between Conversation and Situation‘ and it struck me that there a set of somewhat similar observations developed in a much different idiom and framework by Luhmann on ‘The Evolutionary Differentiation between Society and Interaction,’ published in the Macro-Micro Link, edited by Jeffrey Alexander, et al. Perhaps I’ll jot out a few thoughts comparing these two essays later, although when in the coming weeks I’ll have any time to do anything more than write these kinds of breadcrumb posts is beyond me.
In any event, I didn’t really think about the network-systems theory connection until earlier this year, prompted in part by Daniel’s posts at Strenge Jacke!. White’s apparently giving the opening plenary at a conference in Lucerne, Switzerland marking the 10-year anniversary of the publication of Luhmann’s masterwork, ‘Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft,’ a book I’m eagerly awaiting (in English translation, that is) so that I can place it on my shelf along with other books, including I&C 1 and probably I&C 2, that will probably punish me silly.
A PS to my friend who reminded me that I could always return the first book – yes, I suppose I could. But I bought it second-hand and I hate returning things to private sellers for no good reason than to compensate for my own carelessness, and the point is that whenever someone does a ‘massive rewrite’ of something you’re always going to be curious about how the original and the new version differ.
Hi Andrew, thanks for the hint on the edition of Identity and Control. I might consider buying this book, since I haven’t bought I&C I yet – but was also thinking about doing this.