Mark Whitaker on Trialectics

Video via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UDazzvjanY

A new method to avoid reductionisms in causality. Full title: Trialectics: A Better Social and Socio-Environmental Systems Theory Flexible Enough to Make Sense of Both Unique Historical Patterns and Variations, and Common Historical Themes without Topical or Causal Reductionism; Fixing Social Theory and Praxis for Mutual Causal Influences of All Factors, for Better Modeling and then for Better Decision-Making Interventions at All Levels.

Description

"In Part 1, I will talk about a way to remove reification of topics and of causality in the social sciences.

A Descartian ‘method of doubt’ for the social sciences: Residually Reduced Reductionisms (RRR), to get to secure topics - 12 points of the RRR checklist for all social scientists to get to secure social topics without reification.

RESULT: methods without factor or causal reductionism and methods without projected dichotomies yields an ontology of:

'3M’ ‘hybrid’ “infrastructures” over time and over geographic space in open-ended plural interactions, both planned and unplanned.

In Part 2, I will talk about the integration of the factors of the “Big Six” (Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Elias, and Tarde) in one systems model, with reductionist senses of causality stripped out of how each of their factors are treated in their models. Then, I will propose how trialectics works as a better systems theory, by starting with historically open-ended interactions of the micro & meso, in “leaderships and followerships and the ongoing deal in-between”, and then toward aggregate interactions of plural examples of these—collaborating, conflicting, or accommodating; since in accommodation people do an ongoing collaboration and conflict at the same time—over the specific deal, over time, and over geographic space--and the plurality of accommodations between them all aggregate to create the macro perspective of trialectics, which is open-ended over time and over geographic space.

This view of ongoing strategic and tactical accommodations between leaderships and followers for the deal in-between means both a conflict theory and a functionalist theory can be merged. This will be called a “positionalist” theory.

There is a discussion of these choices of unrepresentative trialectical processes in history over geographic space.

In Part 3, Socio-Environmental Systems Theories, now it is easier to understand how this unrepresentative historical trialectics integrates all factors of the “Big Sixteen” in socio-environmental theory (Malthus, Marx, Bakunin/anarchism, Ostrom, Scale, eco-Marxism, environmental World Systems Theory, ecological modernization/Beck, social construction of environment, eco-Weberian, social inequality, material inequality, eco-feminism, eco-Asianism, violence/military, hybrid topics) with reductionist senses of causality stripped out of how each of their factors are treated in their models.

In this section, I critique five major reductionisms in detail:

1 - Contra uniqueness of ‘axial age’ arguments (of Jaspers)

2 - Contra biological reductionism (of Malthus / neo-Malthusianism)

3 - Contra sociological reductionism (of Marx, Durkheim, etc.)

4 - Contra reductionism in modern time (of Marx, eco-Marx, Beck)

5- Contra reductionism in one region or one regional culture to blame (of eco-Asianism)

This concludes with discussion of how different trialectical analysis of environmental degradation and sustainability recommends different ‘fixes’ would make sustainability and greater democratization durable for the long term, based on these ideas. Abbreviation for better interventions for democracy and sustainability, revealed later: “Choices, you remember, solved the Ecological Tyranny and Trialectics, toward an Ecological Reformation”."