Identity and Control

Book: Harrison C. White (2008), Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge Princeton University Press

Description

From the Wikipedia:

"White’s most comprehensive work is Identity and Control. The first edition came out in 1992 and the second edition appeared in June 2008.

In this book, White discusses the social world, including “persons,” as emerging from patterns of relationships. He argues that it is a default human heuristic to organize the world in terms of attributes, but that this can often be a mistake. For instance, there are countless books on leadership that look for the attributes that make a good leader. However, no one is a leader without followers; the term describes a relationship one has with others. Without the relationships, there would be no leader. Likewise, an organization can be viewed as patterns of relationships. It would not “exist” if people did not honor and maintain specific relationships. White avoids giving attributes to things that emerge from patterns of relationships, something that goes against our natural instincts and requires some thought to process.

Identity and Control has seven chapters. The first six are about social formations that control us and how our own judgment organizes out experience in ways that limit our actions. The final chapter is about “getting action” and how change is possible. One of the ways is by “proxy,” empowering others.

Among social network researchers, White is a legend (One INSNA conference had a special “White Tie” event, dedicated to White [8] -- Emmanuel Lazega refers to him as “Copernicus and Galileo” because he invented both the vision and the tools). However, he is not that well known to most people, although his students and mentees have had a tremendous impact. Mark Granovetter, at Stanford, who provided the theoretical background for the Tipping Point, was a student of White’s." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_White)