Again my tortured attempts at interaction with PCP were thwarted. But I
noticed a note from someone else who also couldn't make access and so asked
another to forward in his message (one of the Re: Hierarchies). So I take
the liberty of asking you to get this through as I think it has some
relevance for the ongoing discussion. I have been working for years on the
growth and organization of social hierarchies in native Andean society --
from the origen of the State and its agricultural base, their very important
functioning in modern "traditional" Andean communities, to the sudden (in
just 1976) appearence of a new 4 level organisational hierarchy in Northern
Peru where only a weak 2-level structure (at the anthropological resolution
level) had existed since early colonial times. I did try to send off a paper
on the traditional modern systems before but it bounced back so I desisted.
My theoretical basis has been those articles in the early Pattee
compilation, but I now think the McCulloch heterarchy structure is an
essential component of hierarchy genesis, and perhaps coexistent in all
*adaptive* social hierarchies. This would allow the evolution of viable path
dependence since otherwise the evolution would be locked in to its earliest
manifestations which may not be adaptive.
Well, here's hoping the message at least gets through to you.
John
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>To: Principia Cybernetica Project <PRNCYB-L@BINGVMB.BITNET>
>From: jearls@macareo.pucp.edu.pe (John Earls)
>Subject: Re: Re. Hierarchies. Again!
>
>>> ~For me, hierarchy is defined from the root words from which the term is
>>> ~derived: "government by priests" -- which implies that there is a
>>> ~command/authority relationship between the levels, intra-systemically. =
The
>>> ~same could be true inter-systemically between micro, meso and metasyste=
mic
>>> ~levels.
>
>The Pope does control the College of Cardinals, who control the
>>> ~Bishops... and so on "down" the line. The General does control the
>>> ~Brigadiers, who control the Colonels, Captains, Lieutenants,
Sargeants... It
>>> ~is a characteristic of this kind of relationship that each level comman=
ds
>>> ~all the "lower" levels and is governed by the "higher" levels.
>>> ~
>>> ~I am interested in understanding the nature of the intra and inter leve=
l
>>> ~relationship. Even if there are levels in everything, the relationship
>>> ~between them is not necessarily hierarchical.
>>> ~
>
>Stafford Beer makes a careful distinction between the peck order "who bosse=
s
>who" type of hierarchy and the recursive hierarchies that operate in
>cybernetic systems. I think any discussion of hierarchies should take this
>into account. "Boss" type hierarchies maybe just parts of heterarchies (in
>the McCulloch 1943 use of the term where C eventually dominates A).
>Basically boss type hierarchies are just not very interesting and the
>systems which express themselves in their terms usually dont function that
>way anyhow.
>>>
>>> It is important to keep in mind that especially in hierarchy, that each
>>> level is "sanctified" in respect to those below it. The trappings of th=
is
>>> sanctity are perhaps the most essential elements of the hierarchy, even
>>> above and beyond the actual "content" or "messages" that travel through =
it.
>>
>>I am not a native English speaker, and for me sanctity means
>>holyness. I suspect this is not what you mean?
>>
>>> Is this sanctification an emergent property of hierarchies? Is it
>>> essential? If so, in what important ways do the trappings of
>>> "heterarchies" differ? that is, what tells an actor that an incoming
>>> "message" is from either (1) a "superior" or (2) a "colleague". How is =
an
>>> order distinguished from a cooperative effort?
>>>
>>> And how do these play together?
>
>I think anthropologist Roy Rappaport (U of Mich) is the 1st person to study
>and spell out the mechanics of sanctity in control hierarchies in his work
>on the Tsembaga Maring of Papua New Guinea. These people do not have any
>form of a "boss" hierarchy -- no chiefs, "big men", etc. no one can *order*
>other people to do anything. Yet their whole system functions as a 3 level
>control hierarchy which is embodied in the long ritual cycle. At each
>metasystemic level messages between subsystems are sanctified by being
>"certified" through ritual relation with the "unverifiable unquestionable
>truths", and in this way social coherence enhanced (lying and error
>minimised or otherwise controlled). Of course his scheme is much more
>complex than I can resume here (see his "Religion, Ecology, and ...", Ann
>Arbor, 1979, which is a collection of articles including his "Ritual,
>Sanctity and Cybernetics"). He argues that the emergence of state level
>organised religious systems is better understood as a process of
>desanctification and recourse to cohersion, which is of course just what th=
e
>boss-order hierarchy expresses -- the weakening of homeostatic control in
>hierarchies.
>>> Paul
>
>John Earls
>John Earls
>jearls@pucp.edu.pe
>Pontificia Universidad Cat=F3lica del Per=FA
>
>
John Earls
jearls@pucp.edu.pe
Pontificia Universidad Cat=F3lica del Per=FA