actuality (Aldrich and Pfeffer, 1976; Krackhardt, 1990; Thornton et al., 1999;
Mintzberg and Waters, 2009). When stripped of this expediency, any real-world
instance of ‘control’ decomposes (in the same ways discussed earlier with respect
to the Anthropocene) into complex conditions of diverse mutually adapting inten -
tionalities and (in)tractabilities. As in that example, the possibilities of many
alternative accountings for causality among proliferating multitudes of nested
implicated factors leaves any particular tracing of ‘control’ in any given instance
significantly in the eye of the beholder (Power, 2000). And this is at least as true
in wider governance, as it is within organizations (Pfeffer, 1992; Parry et al., 1997).
In energy pathways, agricultural futures and climate change strategies (as
elsewhere), care must be taken that analysis of social dynamics does not – under
instrumental pressure of patronage to ‘see like a state’ (Scott, 1998) some particular
favoured ‘transition’ – simply entrench and perpetuate these misleading fallacies of
control. As the examples above suggest, such self-reinforcing channelling by
incumbency can all too easily lead to the opposite of the envisaged transformation.
Crucially, this applies as much when contemplating the exercise of nominally demo -
cratic, as of autocratic, power in ‘social control’. The difference lies not in the
notional source of legitimacy, but in the nature of ‘control’ itself. In other words,
even in the constituting of the concepts themselves, incumbency has a habit of
subverting the deepest understandings of what human ‘agency’ is all about.
For interests committed to achieving substantively radical transformation rather
than expediently aligned transition, then, political creativity and effort are perhaps
better invested instead in the diverse, unruly, agonistic interventions that are
suppressed by structures and discourses of control (and which they themselves
subvert). And since knowledge and action are not as separate and sequential as
prescribed in this same expedient fiction of control, truly transformative inter ventions
are better seen as combining both. Freed from such instrumental mythologies, then,
the formative energy of these ‘knowing doings’ lies not in their purported direct
controlling force, but in the combined effects with their wider reflexive social
reactions.
Drawn from underdocumented repertoires of subaltern movements, examples
of such potentially transformative ‘knowing doings’ might include ‘Trojan horses’
(Stirling, 2011). This is where an exercise in subaltern policy analysis or political
action which ostensibly takes one form, actually exerts its effects in entirely
different ways. Or – learning from past experience of insurgent struggle – there
are various forms of ‘political judo’ (Popkin, 1970), where it is the very strength
of incumbency that offers the principal opportunity for less powerful actors to
successfully contend against it. Also relevant is the potential for the ‘civilising effects
of hypocrisy’ (Elster, 1995). This is where incumbent power is conditioned
reluctantly to reorient itself in new directions by the incremental ratcheting of
tensions between discourse and practice.
Now is not the place to detail these kinds of distributed political moves. The
point is that just as ‘deflection by walls’ differs from ‘steering by compasses’, these
kinds of ‘knowing doings’ are not subject to the controlling force of a coordinated
Emancipating transformations 65
Mintzberg and Waters, 2009). When stripped of this expediency, any real-world
instance of ‘control’ decomposes (in the same ways discussed earlier with respect
to the Anthropocene) into complex conditions of diverse mutually adapting inten -
tionalities and (in)tractabilities. As in that example, the possibilities of many
alternative accountings for causality among proliferating multitudes of nested
implicated factors leaves any particular tracing of ‘control’ in any given instance
significantly in the eye of the beholder (Power, 2000). And this is at least as true
in wider governance, as it is within organizations (Pfeffer, 1992; Parry et al., 1997).
In energy pathways, agricultural futures and climate change strategies (as
elsewhere), care must be taken that analysis of social dynamics does not – under
instrumental pressure of patronage to ‘see like a state’ (Scott, 1998) some particular
favoured ‘transition’ – simply entrench and perpetuate these misleading fallacies of
control. As the examples above suggest, such self-reinforcing channelling by
incumbency can all too easily lead to the opposite of the envisaged transformation.
Crucially, this applies as much when contemplating the exercise of nominally demo -
cratic, as of autocratic, power in ‘social control’. The difference lies not in the
notional source of legitimacy, but in the nature of ‘control’ itself. In other words,
even in the constituting of the concepts themselves, incumbency has a habit of
subverting the deepest understandings of what human ‘agency’ is all about.
For interests committed to achieving substantively radical transformation rather
than expediently aligned transition, then, political creativity and effort are perhaps
better invested instead in the diverse, unruly, agonistic interventions that are
suppressed by structures and discourses of control (and which they themselves
subvert). And since knowledge and action are not as separate and sequential as
prescribed in this same expedient fiction of control, truly transformative inter ventions
are better seen as combining both. Freed from such instrumental mythologies, then,
the formative energy of these ‘knowing doings’ lies not in their purported direct
controlling force, but in the combined effects with their wider reflexive social
reactions.
Drawn from underdocumented repertoires of subaltern movements, examples
of such potentially transformative ‘knowing doings’ might include ‘Trojan horses’
(Stirling, 2011). This is where an exercise in subaltern policy analysis or political
action which ostensibly takes one form, actually exerts its effects in entirely
different ways. Or – learning from past experience of insurgent struggle – there
are various forms of ‘political judo’ (Popkin, 1970), where it is the very strength
of incumbency that offers the principal opportunity for less powerful actors to
successfully contend against it. Also relevant is the potential for the ‘civilising effects
of hypocrisy’ (Elster, 1995). This is where incumbent power is conditioned
reluctantly to reorient itself in new directions by the incremental ratcheting of
tensions between discourse and practice.
Now is not the place to detail these kinds of distributed political moves. The
point is that just as ‘deflection by walls’ differs from ‘steering by compasses’, these
kinds of ‘knowing doings’ are not subject to the controlling force of a coordinated
Emancipating transformations 65