The Basic Conception

We have seen that psychological conjectures have a certain standing in evolutionary economics because they shall describe individual’s activity as it really is, not as he ought to be in order to fit into an analytical framework. Symbolic interactionism, at its basis, is a social psychological approach. Its focus is not so much the isolated individual – which is often the case in psychological approaches – but describable elements that are shown when the individual is part of a group. One of the major figures in symbolic interactionism, Herbert Blumer, puts it as follows:

The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that things have for them [..]. The second premise is that the meaning of such things is derived from, or rises out of, the social interaction that one has with one's fellows. The third premise is that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters. (Blumer 1969: 2)

Studies in symbolic interactionism are generally focussed on interaction and sense-making in small groups. Case studies are the vehicle to express this kind of research.

However, the social words approach, although positioned in this realm, is concerned not only with small groups but offers a general framework for investigating interac-tion, even of larger aggregates. In this respect the social world approach is a bottom up framework that does nothing say about how humans are supposed to behave but how they do in reality. Groups reflecting certain social structures, but such structures depend on the individual in reverse. By changing the individuals’ dispositions, or the group’s mere population, the structure of the group changes, too. This is a first con-nection with our evolutionary framework.

One of the earliest contributions to the social world approach was the investiga-tion of medical professions with respect to their real workflow rather than to their setting as an organisation within public service. Bucher and Strauss (1961) observed that the professions in radiology and pathology shaped a very heterogeneous and dynamic realm, but are connected nevertheless. The main field was primarily con-cerned with diagnosis. But a growing realm, because the technology of radiation made it possible, was concerned with developing therapeutic devices. These tasks have been becoming so different that organisational splits have happened, e.g. dif-ferent training programs. Furthermore, a speciation of medical services grew out of these technological possibilities. This led to heterogeneous identification of medicals with their profession as well as to very different tasks in the field of pathology.

Some did mainly medical research on disease; others contributed rather more to University teaching; a third group was concerned with the implementation of the new technology; and another group was doing mainly diagnosis, the reason for which those instruments where developed in the first place. The whole realm of pa-thology was changing dramatically. For those whose “core” (1961: 328) was consti-tuted by research, the importance of doctor-patient relationship was declining; others were largely concerned with the scientific world of physics, were rather becoming engineers. It was clear for Bucher and Strauss that such heterogeneity cannot be seen as one single profession of pathology, but “as a loose amalgamation of segments which are in movement” (1961: 333). Those segments differ in ideology: “there are many identities, many values and many interests” (1961: 326).

Later on, Strauss presented a conceptualisation of such amalgamations of seg-ments and called them “Social Worlds” (1978; 1982; 1984). Social worlds are often part of institutionalised organisations, but they do not reflect those structurally. Fur-thermore, they are not limited to organisations. What defines a social world in the first place is “at least one primary activity” (1978: 122) – in the example above pa-thology as the profession concerning disease. Primary activity is not always a well-defined social phenomenon. It comes nearest to Everett Hughes notion of “going concern” (1971). This describes rather a phenomenon than is crosscut to institution-alised organisations. In the words of Clarke (1991: 131) social worlds are “groups with shared commitments to certain activities, sharing resources of many kinds to achieve their goals, and building shared ideologies about how to go about their busi-ness”.

Such worlds intersect to other worlds from which they borrow technological ex-pertise, or services etc. (radiology in the example above). Sub-processes like those of the pathologists may shape the segments of teaching, healing, technology, theory, or administration, and build subworlds (Strauss 1978: 123). As the social world ap-proach should be seen as a perspective rather than a theory about social entities, we could shift to another perspective, e.g. to the social world of technology. We would find a completely other setting with different subworlds, and different intersecting

worlds.⁴⁴ Members of social worlds are more or less dedicated to core activities, hence, their dedication to, and representation of, the world differs within the contin-uum between loose and tight. Furthermore, members may act individually, “but in arenas they commonly act as representatives of their social worlds” (Clarke 1991:

132). This is a powerful analytical step as it allows abstracting from the individual to the action of a group.

A social world faces ongoing processes of intersecting and segmenting, but also processes e.g. of access and leaving by new members (Strauss 1978: 124), or of le-gitimating itself by “[d]iscovering and claiming worth”; “[d]istancing”;

“[t]heorizing”; “[s]tandard setting, embodying, evaluating”; “[b]oundary setting, and boundary challenging in arenas” (Strauss 1982: 173). The social world is built on order like any type of institution. This kind of order, however, does not base on well-defined rules like in institutionalised organisations, but on negotiated agree-ment. Therefore, a social world can have a rather fugitive character and may show a tendency to change rather quickly. Once core activities are established, actors are bounded to those not only by routines and rules, even if there are rules of thumb, but they are morally committed to them.⁴⁵ This is an important insight. It would open up a different topic of research in the field of entrepreneurship. Members of an entre-preneurial social world are built not least on certain self-images. They share a mu-tual identity. But as the social world is in flux, so is its members’ identity. This is a development in its own right.

We can see some resemblances to the evolutionary realm treated in Part I. Social worlds themselves are emerging phenomena. They can exist a very long time, or can disappear after a short while. Within a social world, change on a daily basis hap-pens, concerning membership, position within the world, shift of the mutual endeav-our, etc. The notion of going concern does not reflect any typical action that would represent the social world. It is rather a bunch of different activities from different individuals with different motivations, etc. These are more or less dedicated to the mutual project. The challenge of evolutionary economics towards neoclassical theo-ries is very similar to interactionists’ critique on Parsons, concerning the static setup of the latter’s functional systems theory. Symbolic interactionism was facing the structural concepts of Parsons throughout the 20^th Century. Structure in Parsons conception is a-historical. It is closely connected to works of the anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, whose notion of structure relies on research of locally separated native groups. They themselves, just as Parsons, have not raised questions about the emergence of structures (Tenbruck 1990: 39).

44 In a social world of radiation technology, for example, would radiologists as medical-engineers shape a subworld that dedicate the technology rather than pathology.

45 “[..] commitments of individual actors to collective action” (Clarke 1991: 129).