On social formation and territorial production

NOW published in  Social Science Information – http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0539018418763560

Abstract. This piece explores the issues of morphogenesis and metamorphosis in socio-spatial formations and social assemblages. The specific key provided here to apprehend the issue of ‘form’ is what we propose to call the ‘animistic moment’ in form-taking processes. We believe that a conceptualisation of animistic moments might help us to better understand, not simply the coming about, but the specific yet elusive power forms are endowed with. The general social-theoretical horizon for the essay is an approach to social collectives as forms of territorialisation and territorial stabilisation. An inquiry into the genesis and the transformation of forms through animistic moments, we suggest, might also be employed in the study of processes of social territorialisation at large.

Keywords: social theory; genesis of forms; formative processes; individuals and social aggregates; socio-spatial formations; animistic moments;

Outline

Introduction

1. The mystery of appearances

2. Metamorphosis and investments into form

3. Form-taking and the environment

4. The formation of individual collectives

5. Animistic moments and the revelations of form

6. Territorial production through animation

Conclusions