From Atomistic to Interwoven: Utilizing a Typology of i/Individualisms to Envision a Process Approach to Governance

From Atomistic to Interwoven

Utilizing a Typology of i/Individualisms to Envision a Process Approach to Governance

Jeannine M. LoveRoosevelt University

ABSTRACT

Public administration strives to ascertain how we can best live together. In answering this question, we make ontological as-sumptions about who we are and what ways of living together are even possible. These ontological assumptions are reflected in the ways our theories depict what it means to be an individual and how individuals can, and do, relate to one another. This article explores the different understandings of the term “indi-vidual,” developing an ideal type model with four distinct ideal types: atomistic, institutional, fragmented, and integrated. Each of these ideal types is explained and grounded in the literature. Then, integrated individualism, based in process philosophy and early American pragmatism, is explored as a starting point for better understanding how we might live together in an intercon-nected world.

As our world seems to become increasingly interconnected through global-ization, conflicting ontologies and notions about how to live together like-wise become increasingly problematic (Amoah, 2010; Bourne, 2008; Stout, 2010b). Globalization is making our world smaller, drawing attention to the interconnections that continually weave the world. At the same time, however, globalization can often act as a force expanding markets and “colonizing” through imposed hyperindividualism (Stout, 2010b). The dominant political and economic forms in the West are reflective of atomistic individualism and competition. These are being challenged by the contrasting notion that the “interwoven, relational character of our world and our lives is glaringly obvious to thoughtful people today” (Mesle, 2008, p. 7). Such recognition of interconnection, in contrast to atomistic individualism, has the potential to lead to governance practices that promote authentic participation (Barth, 1996; Cooper, Bryer, & Meek, 2006), tapping into “inclusive ‘collective intelligence’ ” (Thorne & Kouzmin, 2004, p. 424).

Administrative Theory & Praxis / September 2012, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 362–384. © 2012 Public Administration Theory Network. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com

ISSN 1084-1806 (print)/1949-0461 (online) DOI: 10.2753/ATP1084-1806340303362

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FROM ATOMISTIC TO INTERWOVEN

However, political and economic theories of competition and marketplace have been leeching into global notions of economics and governance; the result is an interlinked global economy based in the neoliberal market (Thorne & Kouzmin, 2004) rather than an interwoven world rooted in interrelation and cocreation. The move toward a capitalist interlinked economy in the global sphere supports neoliberal approaches in public administration fostered by, and reinforcing, a form of hyperindividualism that pushes for a hollow-ing out of the state. But what does it mean to be “interwoven” in authentic interconnection versus “interlinked” through market forces? How is public administration to recognize the difference and determine methods of practice consistent with one or the other?

The responses that emerge in recognition of interconnection reflect im-portant differences at the ontological level.1 What this means can be given cursory introduction by reflecting upon some prominent political ideolo-gies. Classical conservatism provides an understanding of interconnection in which we are understood to be connected to one another through our social contracts and political institutions (White, 1990). Rather than being ontologically interconnected, classical conservatism allows only for a system of interrelated autonomous beings, organization men (Whyte, 1956) always and forever existing within the shadow of the organization (Denhardt, 1981). In contrast, according to classical liberalism individuals are autonomous, self-reliant, and personally responsible for their own fates (White, 1990). People interact through voluntary market transactions; but interconnection in the market is not ontological interconnection. Reacting to these classical positions, some postmodern theorists depict more fluid identities, shifting and unstable, determined through the intersections of culture and identity, obtained and constantly reinvented through consumption in the hyperreality of the marketplace (Baudrillard, 1994). Here, not even the market provides social interconnection, and ontological interconnection is entirely nonexistent. Thus, ontological connection seems to lie outside these three dominant perspectives. In response to these ideologies and their lack of ontological interconnection, this article employs process theory and classical pragmatism to understand interconnection at the ontological level. Along the way I develop a typology of i/Individualisms to assist in the endeavor.

A TYPOLOGY FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The very different approaches to ascertaining who we are and how we relate to one another are reflected in our political ideologies and in our administra-tive praxis. Ascertaining how we can and should live together is necessarily

The author thanks the symposium editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

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influenced by who we think we are and in what way we are, or are not, con-nected to one another (Love, 2010, 2011). I argue that our currently dominant political and social theories are ill-equipped to function within a world woven together through intersecting circles of connection, a world in which who we are, what we do, and what we will become are inescapably bound together and perpetually in motion, ever-changing (Suchocki, 1985); this is a world of cocreation rather than consumption, competition, and hierarchy.

To better understand such implications, it is important to begin by care-fully analyzing the different ways in which one is assumed to be an individual in our political and administrative discourse. In an effort to facilitate the discussion, this article develops an ideal type model (Weber, 1949/2010) of contrasting individualisms reflecting different assumptions underlying the term individual. Although seemingly straightforward, the malleability of the term individual represents a form of “dynamic nominalism” (Hacking, 2002, p. 2).2 By this I mean that the shifting definitions of the term individual shape how we see ourselves living together in society and the possibilities that ex-ist for our social and governing institutions. The term individual is generally seen as having a core social definition, and the multiple definitions remain unrecognized. As a result, the same value-laden language of individualism is used to articulate points of view that reflect very different conceptions of the kinds of public institutions that are desirable or even possible. To show the different assumptions hidden beneath the surface, it is necessary to first map out the terrain. That is what this article serves to do, and part of the explora-tion yields a typology of i/Individualisms.

The typology developed in this discussion can then be used as a theoretical lens, providing a tool for uncovering ontological assumptions that can help us interrogate our political ideologies and administrative practices through a more nuanced understanding of how practices reflect assumptions about individuals and community. Further, by understanding and developing what I call integrated individualism within the typology, we can begin to develop a space within which to answer the call to return to the pragmatism of Dewey and Follett (Evans, 2000; Garrison, 2000; Harmon, 2006; Hildebrand, 2005; Love, 2008, 2010; Shields, 2003, 2004, 2005) in order to cultivate authentic participation (Barth, 1996; Campbell, 2005; Cooper, Bryer, & Meek, 2006). Changing our view of the individual could thus have profound implications for governance practice.

Complicating Terminology: individuals and Individuals

As just suggested, the term individual simplifies experience, masking different assumptions about what it means to be a human person and the potential for relationship. In other words, individual is a homonym but is often not recog-nized as such. This leads to the phenomenon of “talking past” one another

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when the term is used.3 To minimize this problem, and to lay bare critical assumptions that can alter what is meant by the term individual, I strategically alter the terminology. In the discussion that follows I separate the single term individual into different ideal types through the use of descriptive qualifiers (atomistic, institutional, fragmented, integrated) and the use of strategic capitalization (big-I, little-i). The descriptive qualifiers and i/I distinction reflect assumptions about the subjective identity of the individual and the relationship between the individual and the group (e.g., family, community, organization, state), respectively.

The qualifiers will be explained as I develop each ideal type; however, the use of i/I requires some preliminary explanation. The “big-little” distinction has been used in a variety of contexts, such as t/Truth in pragmatism (James, 1907), the o/Other in psychoanalysis (Lacan, 2004), and p/Politics and the p/People in representational democracy (Catlaw, 2007). In each of these uses, the capitalization (big-T, big-O, big-P, big-I) represents a myth, or fabrication—something that “never existed in the first place” ( i ek, 1997, sec. 2, para. 1). When the human person is recognized as embedded within a group or social framework, this is indicated through the use of the lower-case individual.4 When the human person is isolated from the group, and seen as a solitary particular stripped of social context, this is indicated through the upper-case Individual.5 For the individual, social structure precedes and defines the indi-vidual; and conversely, the Individual precedes society and can exist both prior to and outside society. In public administration, this tension underlies many of the field’s most long-lived debates: legitimacy, the politics-administration dichotomy, and administrative discretion (Love, 2010).

Understanding the Paradox of the i/Individual

The shifting between individual and Individual leads to what I have called the paradox of the i/Individual (Love, 2008, 2010). This paradox is created when we both view human persons as socially isolated beings and simultaneously define them according to their memberships within groups. As was hinted at in the cursory overview of the political perspectives above, this is most ap-parent in the pendulum swing between the classical conservative perspective and classical liberalism (White, 1990). These positions lie along a continuum throughout which individualism is assumed (Stout, 2011), but the relationship between the human person and the group shifts.

Etymologically, the notion of the individual reflected in classical conser-vatism emerged prior to that of classical liberalism (Williams, 1983). Clas-sical conservatism “puts emphasis on the group, or collective, rather than the individual,” and it is conformity that is emphasized—conformity to both the expected roles and the norms of the group (White, 1990, p. 183). This emphasis on the role within a hierarchical social order is seen in the organi-



zation men of bureaucracy (Whyte, 1956), the Straussian neoconservatives who would foist their prioritized group norms on a country or even across the global stage (Brown, 2006; Kristol & Kagan, 2004), and to some extent even in the communitarian calls for responsibility and social values (Etzioni, 1998; Selznick, 2002).6 Within each of these perspectives, the individual is indivisible, reflecting the original etymological root of the term (Williams, 1983, p. 2), and what the individual is not divisible from is the dominant social institution that defines him or her, such as organization, church, or nation.

Such individuals are part of something greater than themselves, and their role within this greater order defines them because here “individuality must always be defined and qualified by means of relation to some form of institu-tion” (Kaufmann, 1998, p. 3). Kaufmann (1998) used the term “institutional individual” to reflect this relationship. While “hierarchical” might seem a more appropriate counterbalance to “atomistic,” I choose below to follow Kaufmann’s lead, referring to these individuals as institutional individuals. The qualifier “institutional” reflects the relationship between the individual and the social framework in which he is embedded and through which he is defined, re-gardless of whether that institution is a family, church, organization, community, state, or something else entirely. Within public administration, the discretion of an institutional individual, as administrator, must necessarily be limited. The institutional individual is expected to fulfill the duties of his or her role only as prescribed by the state or administrative agency and is given legitimacy by being beholden to the nation in the form of the will of the People.

In contrast, in classical liberalism, the Individual is understood as an entity that exists prior to, and potentially outside of, society. This is the Individual of Locke and Hobbes who may enter into social contracts, often in hierar-chical arrangements, but the Individual’s existence is not dependent upon society. This means that even when such Individuals come together to form groups, organizations, or societies, the ties that bind them are dissolvable. In the neoliberalism of globalization discussed in the introductory paragraphs, this is exactly what is envisioned. Governments are being hollowed out, state borders are becoming more invisible—at least for economic transactions7—and Individuals are supposedly set loose to compete within a globalized marketplace. These presocial beings, who can enter into contracts and who are the customers of New Public Management, are referred to here as atomistic Individuals. Because these Individuals are seen as emerging outside of soci-ety, existing as potentially solitary beings, they are referred to utilizing big-I. Even when they enter into social contracts or engage with one another in the marketplace, these interactions never affect the core of identity, something that is inherent to each human being. This core is reflective of one’s inherent nature, not developed through nurture.

Thus, classical liberalism seeks to allow Individuals the greatest freedom from external societal infringement on (negative) liberty, allowing them to

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act autonomously. But classical conservatism evolves in response to classical liberalism to seek to recreate the social structures that can rein in the potentially destructive impulses of Individuals, binding them as individuals within an overarching hierarchical structure and through coordinated and constrained action. Taken together, these reflect the dominant ideas about the relationship between the political subject and the community in Western political ideology. Beginning with these initial observations, it is not difficult to see the paradox of the i/Individual emerging and its potential to fuel political rhetoric and ide-ology (Love, 2008). Given the discussion thus far, we can begin to visualize this contrast through the use of a simple illustration (see Figure 1).

Hence, the paradox is created by the very different types of individuals at either end of the conservatism-liberalism pendulum swing (Stout, 2011). It is reflective of the tension between the mythologized solitary Individual and the reality that we live within groups and society as socially embedded individuals. These two conceptions of individual are in dynamic opposition, but in many ways they represent similar underlying ontological assumptions, and these similarities differentiate them from the other two forms of individual considered below.

A PARADOX OF BEING: ENVISIONING STATIC UNITARY I/INDIVIDUALS

To best understand the paradox underlying the dominant political ideologies in the West, and reflected in American public administration, one needs to recognize not only what distinguishes atomistic Individualism from institu-tional individualism in terms of political ideology, but also what connects them ontologically. Although they seem quite different, they are similar in that they both assume a static, unchanging, vision of human nature (Stout, 2012; White, 1990). Both ends of the paradox are fundamentally built upon an

Figure 1. Paradox of the i/Individual



assumption that individuals are discrete, unitary entities regardless of whether the Individual or the group is prioritized.

What it means to be discrete and unitary is not a readily transparent con-cept, so it is helpful to take a moment to explore what this means. Both the atomistic Individual of liberalism and the institutional individual of classical conservatism envision a “being [that] is contained within itself whether it is considered as an abstract single whole or a plurality of singular units” (Stout, 2012, p. 389). Farmer describes these i/Individuals as reflective of the unitary Cartesian subject who is a “self-contained, self-mastering individual,” for whom “stability and reliability exude” (2005, p. 43). While Farmer (2005) and Stout (2012) are correct to describe this subject as “self-contained,” it is essential to note that “self-mastering” is not interchangeable with “self-reliant.” A self-mastering subject may be considered self-reliant when seen as isolated, as with the atomistic Individual, but may also be seen as self-mastering but not self-reliant in performing his or her role within an institutional framework, as with the institutional individual. Thus, Stout’s (2012) additional description of this unitary quality as being “static” adds some much-needed ontological clarification.

Following Farmer (2005), I refer to this understanding of the human person as unitary (Love, 2010, 2011). This human person, whether atomistic or institutional, is formed from Cartesian dualism, in which souls, or minds, are seen as static in that they are enduring, even though their physical mate-rial, body, may change over time (Mesle, 2008). The mind and the body are distinct, and yet the human subject persists as a unified whole through time: I am “me” at Time A, and I continue to be “me” at Time B—the two versions of myself are joined through a linear and teleological narrative. In other words, the unitary subject endures through time (Hales & Johnson, 2003) with a single and coherent narrative.8 This enduring happens at both the mental and the physical level: Our minds endure through time as a subjective identity, while our bodies persist through time as a collection of physical properties. While the properties of both may change over time, the underlying substance, the me-ness, does not (Mesle, 2008, p. 46).

Ideal Types of the Paradox: Unitary-Embedded and Unitary-Isolated

The enduring nature of the individual is interpreted in contrasting ways de-pendent upon the sociological nature of human persons. Understanding the static nature of the subject that is assumed in the paradox of the i/Individual, it is possible to revisit the paradox to fully articulate the ideal types within it. When the sociological characteristics (discussed above in terms of political ideology) are coupled with the static nature of a unitary identity, the ideal types of the paradox emerge. For the institutional individual, the single life narrative of unitary identity is given shape (and purpose) through the rela-

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tionship with the group. The institutional individual is part of a system or an organic whole, retaining a bounded and teleological identity but fulfilling a specific, generalized, role within the group. It is the group identification and the designated role within the group that gives definition to that singular, enduring identity.

Here the social context is critical in defining the identity of the individual. When humans are understood as necessarily enmeshed in social institutions, they are described here as embedded within their social surroundings, con-nected to other individuals, even if only through social and political institutions and not at an ontological level. Thus, the institutional individual is a unitary human subject who is embedded within a social or institutional framework (see Figure 2, upper left).

Although institutional individualism may seem extreme in that it allows for very limited agency, it is the critical relationship that exists between in-dividual and group that earns the institutional individual his little-i. Humans can never live a life in isolation, and their understanding of themselves and the world must always be informed by the social groupings in which they exist; to isolate the human from society is to envision an Individual devoid of humanity, thus creating the mythologized form, Individual.

In contrast to the institutional individual, the atomistic Individual repre-sents a unitary subject identity that is understood as a presocial being; this Individual’s identity is not dependent upon the individual-group relationship, or social context. As a result, the atomistic Individual can be understood as both unitary and isolated (see Figure 2, upper right). It is the atomistic Indi-vidual that is most prominent in Western political ideology today. This is the conception of the individual that is most strongly linked to the concept of

Figure 2. Typology of i/Individualisms



negative liberty—the presocial being that populates Hobbes’s state of nature in a world of “all against all” and who provides the basis for most forms of contract theory. Social scientists often assume the atomistic Individual: Homo economicus in economics, the rational actor of rational choice theory, and the expert of the social sciences. The static nature of atomistic Individuals allows them to clearly articulate their interests, which are consistent and noncontra-dictory due to their unitary nature. This sets the stage for market competition (Davis, 2003) and political representation (Stout, 2012).

Assuming an individual has a unitary, or static, nature that is either isolated or embedded also has very real implications for practice. Administrators, as embedded individuals, are aligned with their roles within their agencies, and all other elements of humanity and experience are stripped from them. The institutional individual is “the efficient jobholder [who] must be a deper-sonalized actor. He is supposed to abide by the superimposed prescriptions which define his role” (Ramos, 1981, p. 86). Some have worried that there has been what might be described as an institutional or organizational creep across society, resulting in a looming “shadow of the organization” (Denhardt, 1981) as we become defined only by our social roles in all facets of our lives. Citizens do not escape this usurping process as they become categories of “clients” to be processed by bureaucrats—defined by limited characteristics and processed according to specified rules (Farmer, 2005; Hummel, 2008; Love, 2008). Neither the administrator nor the citizen is recognized as complex individual with shifting loci of identity; each is classified and recognized as a unitary being with a core identity that can be processed by the administrative machine. Thus, despite being embedded within a social situation, institutional individuals may be psychologically alienated, even if they are not socially isolated (Ramos, 1981).

Atomistic Individualism can be seen, in some ways, as a response to this processing under the shadow of the organization. Envisioning Individuals as presocial beings frees the static, unitary Individuals from the confining and dehumanizing effects of institutional individualism. Although originally tied to the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment (Williams, 1983), it is helpful to consider the more recent iteration in public administration in the form of neoliberal ideology and New Public Management approaches to administra-tion. Here, instead of being defined by their social roles, both citizens and administrators are to be Individualist entrepreneurs and customers. Institutional individuals are replaced by atomistic Individual consumers with consistent and coherent desires (in other words, unitary identities), and “governance talk increasingly becomes market-speak, businesspersons replace lawyers as the governing class in liberal democracies, and business norms replace juridical principles” (Brown, 2006, p. 694).

The emphasis on administrators and citizens as entrepreneur-customers is epitomized on the administrative side by what Osborne and Gaebler (1992)

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have termed steering, a vision of the manager at the helm of the administrative ship as the epitome of the heroic atomistic Individual (Fox, 1996). The manager is freed from the confinements of other bureaucratic duties and able to gain a removed and objective stance from which to make innovative policy decisions. Rather than becoming ensnared in that unruly red tape, the manager becomes an entrepreneur-customer, identifying and purchasing private market means to provide public goods and services. The citizen, likewise, “rises” to the status of entrepreneur-customer—fully autonomous and “measured by [his or her] capacity for ‘self-care’” through the consumption of both public and private goods (Brown, 2006, p. 694). Thus, the neoliberal paradigm retains both the unitary and the isolated characteristics present in the rhetoric of the atomistic Individual found in classical liberalism. This rhetoric is particularly effective in justifying uneven accumulation of capital (Turner, 1988) and in capitalizing on the inherent anxiety that is produced when Individual autonomy is threatened (Miller, 2004). This leads to the form of global interconnection fostered by the marketplace rather than authentic community as discussed above. And yet, this über-market ideal creates problems for the unitary nature of the human subject that underlies the paradox of the i/Individual. With hyperconsumption, the unitary nature of the i/Individual begins to deconstruct.

DECENTERING THE SUBJECT: ONTOLOGIES OF BEING AND BECOMING

To recap, in America both political ideology and administrative praxis struggle to balance respect for autonomy with responsibility to the group (Harmon, 1995), resulting in the paradox described above. If we remain adherents to the static, unitary subject, then it is difficult to move beyond this paradox, as the unitary nature of the human person requires us to be either fully pre-social or socially determined. However, while the individuals above remain dominant within American political ideology and administrative theory, challenges have been raised, and these challenges take aim at the assumed unitary nature of identity. To understand an alternative to the static, unitary subject, a more explicit turn to Whitehead’s process theory can be helpful in explaining the alternative that we see in postmodern and pragmatist strains of administration theory.

In process philosophical terms, the static unitary subject, underlying both sides of the paradox, is reflective of an ontology of Being. Whitehead (1979) refers to this ontological assumption as “static permanence” (p. 208), or a “metaphysics of ‘substance’ ” (p. 209). This notion of static, unitary existence as a state of Being emanates from the philosophical root of Parmenides (Whitehead, 1979), for whom “reality is (static) a unity (whole). Thus, there is and can only be one Truth” (Stout, 2012, p. 389). This creates a subject-object relationship between human persons and their environment (including



other persons) that is experienced as a knower-known relationship, leading to an empirical epistemology (Whitehead, 1933/1967). This static view of the world as populated by unitary i/Individuals is one that Whitehead (1933/1967) refers to as “high abstraction,” as it takes the essential element of emotion out of experience (p. 176) and denies the ever-changing reality of the world that is reflected in an ontology of active becoming instead of static Being (Whitehead, 1979).9

From an ontological perspective of Being (Whitehead, 1979), the indi-vidual simply is, and exists as a singularly defined entity that persists through time. However, if the ontology of becoming is introduced to the notion, the individual is no longer a static entity persisting through time, and instead is constantly becoming, holding multiple identities simultaneously, and these identities are persistently in flux. Farmer describes this flux as yielding a “decentered” self, for whom identity “is constituted in sites like race, class, gender, culture, and power” (2005, p. 43). In some ways this is a way of highlighting the intersectionality of identity found in feminist theory (Hill Collins, 1990). Such intersectionality, however, does not necessarily preclude a unitary subject; intersectionality will mean different things depending on whether the subject is seen as unitary or decentered. For instance, the unitary subject may have properties of race, class, gender, or culture. However, these are characteristics that the subject wears like clothing; they cover the subject but are not the essence of the subject. For the decentered self, these cease to be mere properties and become identities, and yet there is no central unified subject to which this agglomeration of identities is consistently attached.

This decentering reflects the intersectionality of lived experience—that hu-man persons have many different loci of identity, and that these are continually shifting both in identification and meaning. For instance, not only does what it means to be a woman change depending on context (which can be isolated and internal or embedded and social), but the very notion of woman-ness is a fluid thing. From a perspective of decenteredness, when we treat administra-tors and citizens as merely members of groups, we necessarily neglect the fluidity of self. Likewise, when we envision administrators and citizens as entrepreneur-customers coming together in a market commons, we neglect the importance social context has on these various forms of identity.

Still, the distinction between unitary and decentered subjects is one that can be difficult to articulate. Reiterating Whitehead’s (1979) terminology in another way is perhaps useful. Whitehead also illustrates the distinction between Being and becoming by using the notions of “substance” and “flux” (1979, p. 209). Flux is classically illustrated by Heraclitus’s argument that one can never step into the same river twice (Hernes, 2008). Likewise, each of us is never the same person twice; we are not the same administrators twice; our organizations will never confront the same situations twice; citi-zens will never experience the exact same problems twice or represent the

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same “cases” twice. Change is constant and complexity is unavoidable. This is why our efforts to simplify formulas for rational decision-making fail in practice (Lindblom, 1959/2004), why organizations do not (and cannot) fol-low static patterns of communication and practice (Hernes, 2008; Hummel, 2008; Weick, 1979), and why we can never encapsulate an administrator or a citizen using generalizations and role definitions (Farmer, 2005; Hummel, 2008; Love, 2008).

Ways of Decentering: Integrating or Fragmenting?

Like the unitary subject, decentered subjects can be conceptualized in ways that reflect being socially embedded or in ways that reflect a sense of social isolation. As with the paradox of the i/Individual that emerges from an onto-logical position of Being, there is a tension that exists between two possible notions of individual that reflect an ontology of becoming. The process of becoming may be understood as reflecting an embeddedness, or interconnec-tion, with the surrounding world. Alternatively, the process of becoming can be understood to occur in psychosocial isolation. In other words, decentered subjects may still be understood as individuals or Individuals, depending on the assumptions about the i/Individual-group relationship. Combining the two binaries articulated thus far yields a matrix with two axes: the subject-identity axis—unitary or decentered; and the i/Individual–group relationship axis—isolated or embedded (see Figure 2).

When the decentered individual is embedded, we find an individual firmly grounded in the process theory of Whitehead (1933/1967, 1979) and Follett (1918/1998), and the pragmatist theory of Dewey (1930/1999). It is this decentered-embedded subject that most reflects a process-oriented ontology and ultimately helps to “dissolve” (Harmon, 1995) the paradox of the i/Indi-vidual described above. This is the integrated individual represented in the lower-left quadrant of the full typology matrix (Figure 2).10

“Integrated individual” is a term used by both Follett (1918/1998) and Dewey (1930/1999), and in this typology it refers particularly to Follett’s (1918/1998) conceptualization of the group as continually emerging from an ongoing process of “integrated individuals acting as a whole” (p. 57). This is not, as might seem at first blush, a vision of homogeneity or determinism. Instead, integration in the Follettian sense can only work if there is allowance for tension and conflict from different perspectives—heterogeneity, not ho-mogeneity, is required (p. 40). And, unlike institutional individuals, integrated individuals are decentered; they reflect an ontology of becoming, constantly (re)defining themselves through their relationships with the world around them and not merely by their roles within that world. However, because integrated individuals are socially embedded, it does not make sense to consider them outside the group. And, because of their decentered nature, these integrated



individuals intersect and interpenetrate one another in varying and dynamic ways, cocreating relationships that are spontaneous, unique, and in flux. Such an understanding of individual(ism) creates an ideology that envisions indi-viduals as interconnected through dynamic social bonds, where knowledge is cocreated spontaneously and transmitted in unexpected ways.

In contrast, if human persons and their experiences are not interwoven through relationship, then, when one looks for the essence of the decentered self, instead of finding social relationships, one sees the subject disappear into fragments of identity. If not interwoven into a surrounding social, and metaphysical, context, these isolated, shifting, loci become nonsensical. Without relationship, the fragmented Individual “has only an ‘anonymous’ existence, no positive identity of any substantive character. . . . S/he is rather the disintegrating patchwork of a persona. . . . S/he submits to a multitude of incompatible juxtaposed logics, all in perpetual movement without pos-sibility of permanent resolution or reconciliation” (Rosenau, 1992, p. 55). This “disintegrating patchwork” is the Individual found in the broad group-ing of theoretical perspectives that Rosenau (1992) refers to as “skeptical postmodernisms.”

Rosenau explains that for skeptical postmodernists, “The subject is nones-sential to their own analysis that concentrates on language, free-floating signs, symbols, readings, and interpretations,” and thus skeptical postmodernism most often seeks “to dissolve and eliminate [the subject] from [its] analysis” (1992, p. 43). Within this “dark side of postmodernism” (Boje, 2006), frag-mented Individuals are lost within a social context of self-referential signifiers that can leave fragmented desiring machines in isolation, unable to engage with each other or society and thus unable to improve the conditions they are critiquing. As a result, the “social subject itself seems to dissolve in this dis-semination of language games” (Lyotard, 1984, p. 40). In reducing language to unmoored self-referential signifiers, postmodernism challenges the ability to craft a common set of signifiers through which to create community (An-derson, 2006). If the subject is thus dissolved, and interpersonal relationships are but mere language games with no hope for mutual understanding, then the skeptical version of postmodernism creates a decentered and isolated Individual. This is the fragmented Individual (Figure 2, bottom right).11

The result is an Individual unable to enter into a process of cocreation and therefore unable to build community—fabricated or otherwise. If left here, the fragmented Individual is unequipped to stand up against the neoliberal chimera of the free market. Instead, the Individual is surrounded and defined by market forces and pulled along by their ebb-and-flow, having only consump-tion through which to be defined: consumption of community, consumption of politics, consumption of identity, all of which are chimerical instances of spectacle rather than empirically grounded phenomena. In both skeptical postmodernism and neoliberalism, therefore, the Individual is isolated through

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the extreme commodification of Identities, as the marketplace infiltrates all aspects of life including fleeting and shifting identity politics. Thus, as in skeptical postmodernisms, the subject in neoliberalism (or “late capitalism”) takes on imaginary and shifting identities, driven above all by desire (Dean, 2006; Hummel, 2008; McSwite, 1997) and “knowledge and meaning [are reduced] to a rubble of signifiers” (Harvey, 1990, p. 350).

If the unitary atomistic Individual is an abstraction (Whitehead, 1979), the fragmented Individual is perhaps even more so. While such decentering has the power to expose the myth, or ideograph, of the Individual (Miller, 2004), the atomistic Individual is not simply replaced by a fragmented In-dividual. Instead, the paradox of the i/Individual outlined above, created by the tension between atomistic Individualism and institutional individualism, is further complicated by the fragmenting of unitary atomistic Individuals into decentered fragmentary Identities: Identities that are constantly in flux. Thus, with the move to a decentered and isolated Individual, the influence of the atomistic Individual of liberalism does not melt away, instead it becomes the fragmented, yet still isolated, Individual of postmodernism and extreme neoliberalism.

BALANCING BEING AND BECOMING: INTEGRATING INDIVIDUALS FOR PRAXIS

The dissolution of the paradox comes full circle, as it seemingly must, with one last reconsideration of ontological assumptions. Above, I discuss the contrast between the ontology of Being and the ontology of becoming, suggesting that Whitehead (1979) leads us toward an ontology of becoming. However, recognizing becoming does not necessitate refusing all notions of being (this time with a lower-case b). It is possible to balance being with becoming, and this is the ultimate aim of process philosophy. Such balance is also a better way of understanding the decentered-embedded nature of the integrated individual. Whitehead strikes this balance by turning away from Parmenides (Being) and Heraclitus (becoming) and, instead, turning to Lucretius (balance) (1933/1967, p. 177). Such a balance depicts flux “in unbounded space” where “things [form] from the coming together of” streams of experience made up of momentary instances of being (Hernes, 2008, p. 26). Unlike Being, how-ever, being in this balance is fleeting, becoming and then dissipating almost instantaneously in an ongoing process of creating. Pragmatism reflects this idea of instantaneous and fleeting moments of experience in James’s notion of “drops of experience” (Eastman, 2008; Hernes, 2008).

Instances of experience can thus be illustrated with the metaphor of drops forming a stream of experience, and the interconnecting of these streams can be understood as the world constantly becoming through a process of inter-weaving (Mesle, 2008; Stout & Staton, 2011; Suchocki, 1985; Whitehead,



1933/1967). As Whitehead argues, this “weaving” creates the “balance” of being and becoming articulated above (1933/1967, p. 209). James’s metaphor of “drops of experience” is useful; however, the metaphor of weaving perhaps better highlights the essential nature of difference. Just as pattern and texture in woven cloth come from the differences in the strands woven together, dif-ferences in the woven world are likewise essential. Like being and becoming, decenteredness and embeddedness must be balanced through a respect for individuals-in-their-embeddedness that still acknowledges the “individual-in-herself-in-her-difference” (Farmer, 2005, p. 181). This interweaving of selves, in a subject-subject way, is precisely what happens with the integrated individual. It is a view in which the world is much more in flux, yet instances of being come together in an emergent way, creating both ourselves and the world we live in through an ongoing process of cocreation.

In this way, the integrated individual is both decentered and embedded, yet active, finding and asserting voice in and through the process of interweaving; the individual is both weaver and woven, engaging in the process of circular response (Follett, 1924/1995). This aligns with Harmon’s “active-social” subject, whom he describes as both an intentionalist and interdependent individual (1981, p. 40). In this way, as the process theorist Cobb explains, “Each person is a unique locus of intrinsic value and a unique contributor to society” (1981, p. 19). Through interconnection we do not lose our uniqueness; our individual unique perspectives are what make interconnection not only possible but meaningful (Levine, 2011). In each moment we are engaging in the process of cocreating ourselves and our world (McDaniel, 1980; Mesle, 1983; Sherburne, 1966; Stout, 2010a; Whitehead, 1933/1967, 1979). Thus, “preservation and enhancement of these separate flows of personal experiences should be the purpose of all the political and economic structure of society” (Cobb, 1981, p. 19), as this is essential to the ongoing (inter)weaving of the world.

As is becoming apparent from this discussion, the ongoing process of cocreating by interwoven, integrated individuals can be best articulated in the language of process philosophy: Moments of being (actual occasions) are fleeting, providing the raw material for the next iteration of entities. Along the way some qualities (datum) are transmitted (prehended) from one occasion to the next, while others are not. The result is a continual and fluid process of becoming (concrescence), with being continually becoming out of what was and shaping what will be—a reflection of potentiality. When understood in these terms, it becomes evident that the individual is not only integrating her own past and environment into her present, but is also influencing suc-cessor moments and the “successor moments of the other organisms” (Allan, 1993, p. 269). The integrated individual’s present actions and existence are always, in each instant, connected through ongoing interconnection to every potential influence, and this connection means that “influence can come from anticipation of future consequences as well as from the inheritance of past

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accomplishment” (p. 269). If this is so, then we should all care about how we will affect our own and our community’s future well-being, including that of the global community.

PROCESS ADMINISTRATION: MOVING TOWARD INTEGRATED iNDIVIDUALS IN PRACTICE

Because process theory gives us a very different perspective of what it means to be an individual anything, from the smallest bit of matter to a living or-ganism, it provides a new lens through which to understand and critique assumptions that are being made about human individuals. As the typology of i/Individualisms demonstrates, process philosophy provides a fluid and decentered conception of being, a continual process of change—where what is/was influences the potentiality of what will be. In doing so, process philosophy provides a more robust illustration of the distinctions between what it means to be unitary versus decentered. Likewise, process philosophy highlights the differences between isolation and embeddedness, and provides a way to prioritize social embeddedness that avoids psychological alienation by stressing interrelationship. Administrative practice informed by process would be formulated to reflect integrated individuals in an interconnected world, while being mindful of assumptions reflective of atomistic, institutional, or fragmented i/Individuals.

And, as globalization continues to make interconnectedness impossible to ignore, it is increasingly critical to actively question which i/Individuals our practices and policies reflect. As noted at the beginning of this article, interconnection in the global sphere could mean respect for connection and difference articulated by integrated individualism, or it could simply perpetuate atomistic and fragmented Individualisms through an interlinked global marketplace, while clinging to institutional individualism as means to find stability and superficial connection (Niedzviecki, 2006). The paradox of the i/Individual cannot hold up under global conditions in which borders are holographic (Witt & deHaven-Smith, 2008), and hyperconsumerism and spectacle create fragmented Individuals in search of a center that does not exist. And yet, in the pressure-cooker of the global neoliberal free market, Individuals are becoming increasingly fragmented.

It is critical, therefore, “that we stop thinking of ourselves and the world around us in terms of isolated atoms and ‘self-made men’ ” (Mesle, 2008, p. 11). Instead let us re-envision ourselves as continuously interweaving, our constant becoming reflecting the ripples of experience that we are receiving from our environment, and our actions rippling out into the vast expanse of cre-ation (Suchocki, 1985). Embracing such a viewpoint can then have a profound impact on practice. Recognizing this interconnection—whether visualized as interweaving or intersecting ripples—is critical for shaping a public life that



is capable of understanding and responding to the complex problems we face, such as ecological, social, and economic crises. Refusing to acknowledge our interconnection within our public philosophies cannot will this interconnec-tion away; it will only lead to a “web of negative relationships,” eating away at an already dissolving public life (Sturm, 1988, p. 23).

The integrated individualism of process philosophy and pragmatism elicits an understanding of public life as “consist[ing] of people as yet unknown or yet to be determined. . . . And to every public event there corresponds a new and different public that is nonetheless a realization of coming into existence of one entity: the public” (Levine, 2011, pp. 56–57). This potentiality is not an aggregated sum or negotiated contract of Individuals, nor is it a grouping of socially defined role inhabiters creating a common good. It is a “mode” in which connection occurs (p. 57), in which the public sphere is constantly emerging from all of life, not simply “the space in which private ends are visible to others” (p. 56). This is a different version of a “good society,” in which we do not strive to identify and enact immortalized values but engage in an ongoing process of value creation through process (Allan, 1993, p. 271). It is a vision of a good society as one that “‘loves’ its citizens and so nurtures their” sense of interrelatedness, fostering recognition that we are always emerging out of all that has been and will continually, actively, influence all that will become (p. 277).

Such a shift will require envisioning our society and ourselves. Beginning from an ontological position of interconnection yields a recognition of the interconnectedness of social and political issues requiring that we recognize our interpersonal interconnectedness (Cobb, 1981, pp. 19–20). This is no small challenge. It is a fundamentally different way of understanding our relation-ships to one another and the world around us than is currently prominent in Western administration, but it is a critical shift nonetheless. “Our ability to make sense of the world is at stake” (Mesle, 2008, p. 11). It is my hope that others will find the typology of i/Individualisms and the concept of the inte-grated individual to be useful tools for this endeavor.

NOTES

1. Here I use the term “ontology” to refer to the philosophical inquiry into the nature of being; it is the exploration of what exists in the world and the relation-ships that hold between these things.

2. As Hacking explains, “Making up people changes the space of possibilities for personhood” (2002, p. 107).

3. This is similar to what regularly occurs in political rhetoric employing the term “liberty” when interlocutors do not specify whether they are speaking of negative or positive liberty.

4. In an attempt to prevent unnecessary confusion, when I am referring to the

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general concept “individual,” I employ italics: individual. Otherwise, following the tradition in process philosophy, I use the term “human person.”

5. The potential for the shorthand “big-I” here to denote a solipsistic, possibly narcissistic, subject seems to me to be quite appropriate.

6. The author thanks Margaret Stout for conversations that have influenced this insight.

7. Thorne and Kouzmin (2004) argue that borders are becoming simultane-ously both more and less visible as visibility and invisibility are used in politically and economically strategic ways. This suggests that the paradox is sometimes exploited for nefarious ends (Brown, 2006).

8. Endurantism is “the view that objects have three spatial dimensions and move through time” (Hales & Johnson, 2003, p. 524).

9. Following the methodology set at the outset, I am purposefully repeating the big-little distinction between Being and becoming.

10. A bit of explanation is required for this image: In moving from unitary to decentered i/Individuals, it is necessary to note that visual representation [a static illustration in a stationary drawing] becomes a challenge. Therefore, it is important to explain that the clusters within this quadrant represent the multiple loci of identity for decentered individuals, rather than groupings of multiple individuals. Although they appear to each have a single center or core, this representation is not meant to convey a static center of identity for each but is merely a way of showing that the multiple identities are each associated with a single human person. The difference between the depiction of the fragmented Individual (decentered-isolated, Figure 2, lower right) and the integrated individual (decentered-embedded, Figure 2, lower left) is that, in the latter, individuals con-nect at these different loci of identity, reflecting the impact of relationships with one another on identity formation. Again, one must use imagination to think of this network of individuals-in-relation as constantly fluctuating and connecting in three [or more] dimensions rather than two.

11. As with the integrated individual, depicting an isolated and decentered sub-ject is difficult in a static two-dimensional figure. The clusters within this quadrant each represent a single subject with multiple loci of Identity, and not groups of multiple persons. This image also captures only one snapshot in time.

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Jeannine M. Love ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of public administration at Roosevelt University. Her research analyzes the manifesta-tions and implications of individualism and relationship in governance and social policy. This research explores possibilities for public and organizational and democratic participation, paying particular attention to issues of social and economic justice.

From Atomistic to Interwoven: Utilizing a Typology of i/Individualisms to Envision a Process Approach to Governance

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