| Imagine an office building. It might later become an apartment house. Throughout such changes certain aspects of the building do not change: the walls still support the roof, the windows still let in light in certain ways, and the heating system goes on as before. These aspects, and others, make up what I called elsewhere the operative form of the building. (Kolb 1990) Operative form includes the physical systems that move air, resist gravity and wind, provide heat, and other tasks of this sort. The operative form is not the same as the functional unity of the building, which is more subject to change. The function of the building sets goals, while operative form concerns the organization of causal interactions as means to those goals. The operative form is how the means work, even if the goals change. Operative form has its own kind of loose unity. Even if we wanted to create a building that expressed an avant garde disdain for goals and resisted any wholeness of building or place, our building would still have an operative form that would be a kind of whole. There would be structural members, heating and air circulation systems, electricity service, and the like, and these would be most efficiently planned as integrated systems. The operative form may have very little influence on the experienced form of a place. It could be, for instance, that a building was supported by steel beams but given the look of being supported by stone pillars. The building might be a tightly integrated system but still not appear as a unified place. The unity of operative form is not the unity of the building as a place. The systemic operation of a building differs from its being as a place. These two different kinds of unity can change independently of one another. We can change the operative form by replacing the heating system, without changing the purpose of the building or the norms of the place. On the other hand, we can develop the building into new kind of place without altering the way its roof is supported. Architects often want to present aspects of a building's operative form. The modern movement wanted the building to present honestly its operations of resisting gravity, letting in light, circulating air, and so on. Kenneth Frampton argues that this task has always been important and can be a locus of resistance to the dishonesty of building practices today. My point is that presenting the operative form of a building puts that form into a new context where it is contrasted not just with other possible operative forms (other ways of heating or other ways the ducts could have been mounted), but with other possible aesthetic effects, other strategies of presentation -- what was a matter of causal links and efficiency takes on questions of meaningful norms and aesthetic contrasts. The interplay of those issues makes the architect's task more challenging. |
Using the example of the individual building as a model, make a similar distinction with regard to places. The scope is wider, but we can still make the distinction between operative causal effects and normative issues of meaning. I want to distinguish system and place. In what I am calling a system, events in one location have effects in another, and the causal links are not intentional or normative. If I make this window larger I may weaken the wall and cause the ceiling to collapse. If I attach this air conditioner I may overload the electric wiring. If the bank in Boston puts money into this housing development it will have to reduce its investment in that proposed shopping center. If you run that smelter, these cities a thousand miles downwind will have increased air pollution. Such links are causal, not grammatical. They happen whether or not I intend them to happen and no change in the social norms for the places involved can by themselves keep them from happening. Changes in norms would need to be accompanied by systemic changes in the economic or ecological arrangements. Systems are chains and networks of causal effects, often reinforced by feedback loops. Their effects may be in remote locations, especially when we are dealing with ecological or economic systems. The connections in feedback systems are not the same as those made by norms in places. They require no interpretation or judgment. Places involve norms or expectations that will sometimes require creative interpretation in novel circumstances. When multiple norms are operative within a place, they can conflict in ways that demand judgment and decision. The right of public access to information may conflict with the right of privacy; a court may have to rule on what degree of intrusiveness is to be allowed. Systems as such have no norms, only relatively stable arrangements. In systems competing forces come to a causal resolution. Systems can be said to conflict, for instance in a room where one system is trying to cool the room and another to admit sunlight that is heating the room. This is unlike a conflict of norms. The temperature of the room may oscillate or it may be stable, depending on the details of the systems involved, but this will happen without any interpretation about the priority of one norm to another. Just as the operative form of a building will take on meaning when architects locate it within aesthetic and normative considerations, so large-scale systematic effects can be given normative or grammatical places. For instance, environmental effects have become normatively important in ways that they were not before. Also, there can be places that ritualize systemic functions -- stock exchanges, banks, financier's clubs -- though there still remains a difference between the system interactions and the grammar of those places, as we see when such institutions continue on even though systemic patterns have altered. There are also normative social roles that are dedicated to the use and control of systemic effects. Yet another mixture occurs when a system effect changes the local horizon of meaning. For instance, when a corporation in search of profit brings in images and symbols from outside, say, by satellite TV reaching into remote areas, this puts local norms into new meaning contrasts. |
Systems and grammars are not the same. The efficiency of a system is not the ritual of a place. A functional role in a system is not of itself a "we." Our actions function within more elaborated systems and economies than we can be aware of, but these functions are not automatically social roles. A system is not a place.
We should not confuse the wide reach of systemic effects with the presumed creation of a universal place. There is no universal place but there are wide flows and systems. Our local inhabitations are under pressure from systems of interaction that link events and consequences in ways independent of the norms that define place. There are vastly accelerated flows of capital, of signifiers, of communications, of people and products and chemicals. There are global economic flows; there are wide biological effects in the environment. We are not in any of these flows as in a place, though our places are deeply affected by those flows.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001