Order at the Edge of Chaos: Meanings from Netdom Switchings

Across Functional Systems*

JORGE FONTDEVILA
California State University Fullerton

M. PILAR OPAZO AND HARRISON C. WHITE

Columbia University

The great German theorist Niklas Luhmann argued long ago that meaning
is the central construct of sociology. We agree, but our scheme of stochastic
processes—evolved over many years as identity and control—argues for switchings
of intercalated bits of social network and interpretive domain (i.e., netdom switch-
ings) as the core of meaning processes. We thus challenge Luhmann’s central claim
that modern society’s subsystems are based on communicative self-closure. We assert
that there is refuting evidence from sociolinguistics, from how languages are put
together and how languages’ indexical and reflexive devices (e.g., metapragmatics,
heteroglossia, genres) are used in social action. Communication is about managing
indexicalities, which entail great ambiguity and openness as they are anchored in
myriad netdom switchings across social times and spreads. In contrast, Luhmann’s
concept of communication revolves around binary codes governed recursively and
algorithmically within systems in efforts to reduce complexity from the environment.
We conclude that systems closure does not solve the problem of uncertainty in
social life. In fact, lack of uncertainty is itself a problem. Order is necessary, but
order at the edge of chaos.

INTRODUCTION
In this article, we venture some bold, drastic claims that may open fresh construals of
our reality. In particular, we argue that the social and the cultural emerge interwoven
in stochastic processes that constitute meanings. The great German theorist Niklas
Luhmann (1995) argued trenchantly long ago that meaning is the central construct
of sociology. We agree, but our scheme for stochastic processes—evolved over many
years as “identity and control” (White 2008)—argues for switchings of intercalated
bits of social network and cultural domain as the core of these meaning processes.
Hereafter, we call these switchings of netdoms. 1
We reject Luhmann’s central empirical argument that modern society is built
through walled-off, separate, functional subsystems (e.g., economy, science, law, even
art). Luhmann supplies little in the way of explicit infrastructure and mechanisms,

∗ Address correspondence to: Jorge Fontdevila, Department of Sociology, California State Univer-
sity Fullerton, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton, CA 92834, USA. Tel.: 657-278-2755; E-mail:
jfontdevila@fullerton.edu. Authors are listed alphabetically. We are grateful to Larissa Buchholz, Corinne
Kirchner, Jan Fuhse, Ron Breiger, Dario Rodriguez, and four anonymous reviewers for their incisive
critique and valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.
1 Netdoms bridge the separate abstractions of social network and cultural domain. Networks and
domains merge in a type of tie delivering stories and a characteristic sense of temporality (Fontdevila and
White 2010; Godart and White 2010; White 1995a, 2008).

Sociological Theory 29:3 September 2011


C 2011 American Sociological Association. 1430 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
MEANING FROM SWITCHINGS 179

and we argue that there is refuting evidence from linguistics, from how languages
are put together. By establishing a marked difference between action (e.g., netdom
switching) and communication to justify the semiotic self-closure of a subsystem,
Luhmann, we believe, fell back into nonindexical understandings of meaning. Mean-
ing becomes, for him, binary, rule-driven, and self-referential (e.g., legality/illegality
for law; legitimacy/illegitimacy for politics; truth/falsity for science). We argue in-
stead that meaning is ultimately pragmatic and therefore problem-solving driven.
Meaning is generated through identities struggling for control.
More specifically, whereas Luhmann distinguishes social action (i.e., interaction,
organizations, institutions) from communication, we instead argue that semiotic com-
munication is always indexically pragmatic, and not just self-referential. We agree
with Luhmann’s centrality of meaning in social life, but we disagree with his quasi-
structuralist logic of opposition and difference within system self-closure. As we
explain below, switching netdoms across sociocultural formations brings multiple
voicings (heteroglossias) and contextualizing cues (meta-pragmatics) that radically
change the rules of the communicative game of any specific subsystem, which thus
are not impermeable to indexicalities 2 from elsewhere.
These are big issues, and both the linguistic and the social formations literatures
are vast, so space limitations prevent us from offering detailed tracings of all con-
structs. We hope that the reader understands the need to open up new perspectives
for exploration as justifying a tight focus on what we regard as key processes. In the
first section, we explain the main arguments of Luhmann’s theory of social differ-
entiation and then proceed to examine its contrasts with our theoretical proposal.
The second section develops our scheme of netdom switchings around ambiguity
control, and the third section turns to the linguistic side, laying out our main fo-
cus, indexical meta-pragmatics. We insist that the two sides—netdom switching and
indexical meta-pragmatics—must be seen as co-constituted, around reflexivity. The
fourth section further explores reflexivity, invoking other aspects of grammar. The
fifth section focuses on meta-communication and rhetorics. It also explores two gen-
res that seem to derail Luhmann’s systems theory: journalism and fashion. Then,
as denouement, the sixth section applies our scheme to dynamics of domination,
which we go on to tie in with voicings on broader scales. The final section presents
concluding reflections.

ALTERNATIVE FRAMINGS: LUHMANN’S SYSTEMS THEORY

White and co-authors have elsewhere (White, Fuhse, et al. 2007) sketched how Luh-
mann’s theory around meaning through functional subsystems could be interwo-
ven with identity and control theory (White 2008). In this article, we show how
sociolinguistics can further operationalize identity and control. We cross these two
efforts to argue that indeed sociolinguistics offers mechanisms (e.g., indexicality,
meta-pragmatics, heteroglossia) to refine Luhmann’s approach. Before exploring these
linguistic mechanisms, we first introduce Luhmann’s theory of system differentiation,
and then challenge Luhmann’s ontological distinction between communication and
action.

2 As we will explain below, indexicality refers to the interpretation of meaning as a function of its
context. In other words, the meanings of communication derives from its context of use and not just from
communication itself (Garfinkel 1967; Peirce 1978).
180 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

Luhmann’s systems theory is based on a historical claim: the evolution of so-

ciety consists of processes of increased complexity in which four main types of
differentiation can be recognized: segmentation, center/periphery, stratification, and
functional. 3
Segmentation differentiates society according to equal subsystems. In primitive or
tribal societies this form of differentiation is present either by descent or settlement
(Luhmann 1977). Center/periphery differentiation admits one type of spatial in-
equality that leads to the formation of a center as a superior stratum. Stratification,
by contrast, differentiates society into unequal subsystems. In the historical period
when it emerges, society can no longer be described as having a common kinship
origin, but is instead organized according to rank orders. In stratified societies, sys-
tems define their identity by establishing their difference from the rest of the strata.
For instance, noblemen can only belong to a given social stratum because they are
excluded from all the rest. Inequality in communication potential becomes the norm
in a stratified society because the ordering of ranks rests on unequal distributions of
wealth and power, both considered media of communication in Luhmann’s theory
(Luhmann 1977, 2007)
Finally, functional differentiation is the last form of sociocultural evolution iden-
tified by Luhmann, and the focus of our analysis. He derives his theory around a
change in historical epoch:

The chief differentiation of society has been totally restructured in the mod-
ern age . . . specialized achievements no longer have to fit in with the primary
orders of segmentary part systems, such as households or tribes, but the remain-
ing or newly emerging forms of segmentary differentiation have now to justify
themselves in relation to the particular achievement conditions of a functionally
specified part system of society . . . Functional differentiation specifies and ab-
stracts the perspectives of society’s part systems and allocates to them unequal
horizons of possibilities by means of unequal functions. We characterized this
process as structurally determined overproduction of possibilities . . . capable of
absorbing them with selective procedures. (1985:110, 157)

Modern society, Luhmann proposes, achieves coordination by the operation of

diverse subsystems, each fulfilling a specific function. The asymmetry equal-
ity/inequality is here manifested in a paradoxical way, namely, differentiated sub-
systems that support coordination of modern society are simultaneously equal and
unequal: they fulfill different functions, yet provide uniform accessibility of their
functions to all individuals. “Functional differentiation—as the form of differenti-
ation of society—emphasizes the inequality of function of systems. But in this in-
equality they are equal” (Luhmann 2007:590, authors’ translation). Thus, in contrast
to stratified societies that could be ruled by leading groups (elites), the functionally
differentiated society does not give primacy to any of the subsystems that compose
it. Although each may try to impose its own operation and functional code over oth-
ers, none is capable of total domination. This highlights a distinctive characteristic
of modern society—it lacks a unique center of coordination. In Luhmann’s words:

3 This theory is thoroughly developed in Luhmann’s book Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (1997), which
has not yet been translated into English.
MEANING FROM SWITCHINGS 181

The world society has reached a higher level of complexity with higher structural
contingencies, more unexpected and unpredictable changes (some people call this
“chaos”) and, above all, more interlinked dependencies and interdependencies.
This means that causal constructions (calculations, plannings) are no longer
possible from a central and therefore “objective” point of view. They differ,
depending upon observing systems, that attribute effects to causes and causes to
effects, and this destroys the ontological and the logical assumptions of central
guidance. We have to live with a polycentric, policontextural society. (Luhmann
1997:75)

According to Luhmann, the functionally differentiated society is an improbable event.

It emerges when the reflexive reproduction of subsystems achieves an operative clo-
sure that allows them to refer only to themselves in their communicative processes.
This operative closure is attained once a binary code becomes stabilized, thus encour-
aging the emergence of an autonomous, self-reproducing subsystem, an autopoietic
system. 4
Luhmann’s preferred examples of subsystems of modern society are the economy,
politics, law, science, art, and intimate relationships. The emergence of each subsys-
tem occurs on the basis of a symbolically generalized medium of communication—
money, power, law, truth, art, and love—which functions to increase the probability
of acceptance of communication. Moreover, Luhmann argues that the operation of
each subsystem is associated with a particular binary code that orients communica-
tions, e.g., pay/no pay in the economic system, legitimacy/illegitimacy in the political
system, and so on, as mentioned above. 5
How do the differentiated subsystems support the coordination of modern society?
Let us consider the subsystem of the economy as an example: the economy fulfills
a specific function in modern society (securing want for material satisfaction). This
subsystem attained operative closure once money began to be generally conceived as
a symbolic medium of communication in economic transactions. Furthermore, acces-
sibility to the economic system is determined only on the basis of having money or
not—anyone with it can access the economy, irrespective of their social class, gender,
race, etc. In this sense, unlike in stratified societies, in modern society the binary
code of pay/no pay is decoupled from structural and demographic asymmetries.
This does not mean that stratification or segmentation are eliminated. It just means
that these are no longer the primary schemes of differentiation of society. To be
precise, Luhmann explains that the transition to a differentiated society took place
in the eighteenth century with the reformulation of the normative ideal of equality.
In contrast to previous forms of differentiation, “a functionally differentiated society,

4 Autopoiesis describes systems that in their operation make up the network of components that produce
them. What is distinctive about autopoietic systems is that their organization is such that their only
product is themselves, with no separation between producer and product (Maturana and Varela 2002:48–
49). The concept of autopoiesis was originally developed by Maturana and Varela (1992) for the study
of biological systems. Luhmann introduced it into his theory to examine the operation of social systems,
i.e., interactions, organizations, and society.
5 Luhmann acknowledges that “we cannot close the list of possible types of differentiation on ontological
or logical grounds, but we cannot conceive other of another type either” (Luhmann 1997:76). Furthermore,
Luhmann suggests that existent subsystems are amenable to transformations, fusions, or disintegration,
and that new subsystems of autonomy are likely to arise. Thus in contrast to Parsons’s AGIL model,
Luhmann does not limit the number of subsystems to just four. In fact, for Luhmann, society’s systems
are not primarily analytical but empirical entities. Any social sphere can become a subsystem, and thus
the number of subsystems in society is a historical or empirical question (Schmidt 2007).
182 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

thus, will become, or has to pretend to be, a society of equals as it is the aggregate
set of environments of its functional subsystems” (Luhmann 1977:36, emphasis in the
original).
The autonomy and self-reproducing character of differentiated subsystems can also
be seen in other domains such as scientific research, law, or art. In modern society,
the truth/falsity of a scientific proposition can only be assessed by considering its
adequacy with respect to other scientific propositions. Similarly, if an individual
wants to know how to fulfill some legal requirement, she has to turn to the legal
system. And only the art system can determine what is considered a piece of art
and what is not. There is no common scheme of differentiation in modern society;
rather, each subsystem defines its own identity and discrimination criterion by the
elaboration of a specific semantic that becomes crystallized through the reflexive
operation of subsystems (Luhmann 2007).
In sum, each subsystem functions according to its own logic and communication
rules and none of the subsystems can directly interfere in each others’ operation.
For instance, the economic system can participate in the political system by funding
an election campaign, but it cannot decide who will be elected or how power will
be organized. Similarly, money can help in the generation of scientific truths but
cannot validate them.
However, this does not imply that in a functionally differentiated society each sys-
tem functions independently of all the rest. Quite the opposite, Luhmann claims
that subsystems are constantly “observing” each other. Subsystems can main-
tain their identity and tolerate fluctuations of the environment precisely because
other subsystems fulfill their respective functions (Luhmann 1977). Moreover, Luh-
mann states that communication among subsystems is essential for the coordina-
tion of society. Subsystems communicate through processes of structural coupling
in which they trigger changes in each other and, as a consequence, transform one
another. 6
A subsystem, however, does not encounter another subsystem as a passive or
inert entity; it does so according to the system’s own structure or previous states.
As suggested above, the economy cannot directly transform the political system; yet
these two systems can (and must) develop mechanisms for making their structural
coupling possible. In Luhmann’s words “each form of differentiation requires the
creation of synchronized forms of structural coupling; that is, forms of intensifying
the contacts and, consequently, the mutual irritations among partial subsystems—at
the same time as excluding or marginalizing other possibilities” (Luhmann 2007:551,
authors’ translation).
To name another example, the coupling between the system of law and the econ-
omy is primarily attained through property rights and contracts. These “boundary-
devices” enact changes in each of these systems as specific institutions, professions,
technologies, etc. need to be developed. This suggests that if subsystems are not able
to maintain their communication with their environment (other subsystems), their
very existence will be at stake. It also suggests that the way in which a subsystem
fulfills its function influences the operation and possibilities of other subsystems
(Luhmann 1997, 2007, 2009). In fact, Luhmann argues that the absence of commu-
nication between any of the subsystems can have significant side-effects. An example

6 Structural coupling describes the history of mutual recurrent interactions leading to structural changes
and congruence between two (or more) systems (Maturana and Varela 1992:75).
MEANING FROM SWITCHINGS 183

of the lack of coordination among subsystems is ecological damage (Luhmann 2007;

Rodriguez and Opazo 2007:340).
It is worth noting that, for Luhmann, communication among subsystems is not
assumed to be a straightforward or unproblematic process but instead a troubled
and unpredictable one that requires the subsystems’ continual accommodation with
their environment. As Luhmann puts it, “We cannot expect natural harmony but, at
best, stabilized and recognized tensions” (Luhmann 1977:38).
We agree with Luhmann that ongoing functional differentiation due to increasing
complexity may be one of the hallmarks of contemporary society—at least as an un-
folding project anchored in assumptions of democratic and meritocratic citizenship.
However, we challenge his strong autopoietic view of subsystems as fundamentally
impermeable to each other (Mingers 2002; Schmidt 2005; Viskovatoff 1999; Wolfe
1992). Contra Luhmann, we argue that structural couplings of subsystems through
criss-crossing netdoms do not just “irritate” one another, but can fundamentally
challenge and change their self-referential idioms. In this vein we propose to relax
Luhmann’s autopoietic assumption of meaning self-closure. 7 We assert that systems
boundary maintenance is a much more ambiguous exercise of meaning making, in-
cluding not only rule-driven, self-referential logics—perhaps loosely associated with
identity and control’s disciplines and control regimes (White 2008:241) 8 —but also
countless reflexive netdom switchings by identities that emerge, shape, and contextu-
alize such logics in their struggle for control.

Action and Communication

Luhmann introduces language and its reflexivity while discussing functional differ-
entiation. In his words, “all this is not a necessary process, but a possible process
which creates its own preconditions through system formation . . . Stabilization arises
from the linguistic fixation of transmissible meaning” (Luhmann 1985:109, empha-
sis in the original). And indeed meaning is central among abstract constructs for
Luhmann—meaning is the selection mechanism that systems use in order to reduce
complexity—but his theory does not weave it around social actors:

The meaningful context that ties action to the system of society is a distinct
one from the meaningfully guided, but organically based, context of real and
possible human actions. (Luhmann 1985:105)

In fact, a basic premise of Luhmann’s theory is that social systems do not consist
of social actors. Although actors are a condition of possibility for the existence of

7 In fact, the strict autopoietic assumption for biological systems theorized by Maturana and Varela
(1980) has also been challenged by Viskovatoff (1999:490). Biological cells typically experience DNA
information transfers amongst each other, which, far from simple structural couplings or perturbations à
la Luhmann, change their fundamental metabolic pathways and mechanisms. Phenomena as ubiquitous
as virus infections and horizontal gene transfer across species, but also bacterial conjugation and even
eukaryotic genetic recombination during reproduction, are examples that challenge system closure at the
biological level as well.
8 Disciplines result from recurring interactions that coordinate identities’ work (Corona and Godart
2009; White 2008; e.g., meetings or temporary organizations). Control regimes provide frameworks for the
mobilization and coordination of identities across wider domains of action (Corona and Godart 2009;
White 2008; e.g., emerging codes of corporate responsibility, sustainability). The term control regime
has a critical association with Luhmann’s subsystems by delimiting specific conduits of action. However,
our term is broader than subsystems and “can be extrapolated over communication, action and style
constructs applied over ranges of historical paths and culture” (White et al. 2007:552).
184 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

social systems, they are not components of the communicative operation produced
by social systems. Human beings or persons, instead, are conceived as part of the
social systems’ environment. 9 Communications, not actors, provide for Luhmann the
warp and weave of his social “part systems” (i.e., specialized realms or functional
subsystems). Thus, “the concepts of ego and alter (alter ego) do not stand for roles,
persons or systems, but for special horizons that collect and bind together meaningful
references” (1995:80–81).
In this connection, Luhmann argues that communication is the constitutive ele-
ment of society, and key to its basic operations. As a self-referential system, soci-
ety reproduces itself based on its own products, that is, communications that are
produced on the basis of other communications. 10 Accordingly, his theory of the
differentiation of society refers to communication and not action. Order in society is
then achieved on the grounds that communication, though improbable, is nonetheless
possible and, in fact, becomes the normal situation (Luhmann 1990:91).
Luhmann defines communication as the synthesis of three selections: information,
utterance, and understanding. Information is a selection from a known or unknown
repertoire of possibilities, utterance is a selection of a way to express the piece of
information that has been chosen, and understanding is a selection derived from
the distinction between the information and its utterance. This third selection is
made by the addressee, who must choose an interpretation among other possible
interpretations. Communication “is never an event with two points of selection—
neither as a giving and receiving (as in the metaphor of transmission), nor as the
difference between information and utterance. Communication emerges only if this
last difference is observed, expected, understood, and used as the basis for connecting
with further behaviors” (Luhmann 1995:141).
Thus, a key distinction between communication and action, Luhmann argues, is
that communication involves the understanding of a receptor that agrees or disagrees
with what has been communicated. Although communication can be attributed as
action, for instance, by an external observer, communication is composed of more
selective elements than just the act of communicating.
However, Luhmann does not seem to specify the mechanisms that generate and
bind patterns of communications within self-referential subsystems. To be sure, “one
communication may stimulate another but surely it does not produce or generate it”
(Mingers 2002:290). We contend that a theory of communicative understanding must
incorporate action in the production of meaningful communications via linguistic
and reflexive indexicality. Only social actors in their search to secure footing across
netdoms can contextualize systems’ self-referential meanings, and thus understand-
ing. Actors, then, cannot be conceived as merely part of the system’s environment
as they are very much part of the systems’ processes of meaning generation. We
recognize that there are institutional and systemic logics and idioms—for example,
rhetorics—that channel, enable, and constrain action. However, we also understand
that such rule-driven logics, formal or informal, can be fundamentally changed by

9 From Luhmann’s account, psychic systems (i.e., human beings) are structurally coupled with social
systems—what he describes as “interpenetration” (Luhmann 1995).
10 This is Luhmann’s “bold attempt to theorise an autopoietic unity in the non-physical domain. It
defines the basic components of such a system—in this case communications—and holds consistently
to this without confusing domains by, for example, including people within the system. The nature
of production is shifted to a production of events rather than of material components. Finally, the
circular and self-defining nature of the production network is brought out well, as is the combination of
organizational closure and interactive openness” (Mingers 2002:289).
MEANING FROM SWITCHINGS 185

reflexive stories and indexicalities woven by identities as they switch netdoms in their
struggle for control.
Luhmann seems to touch on the action-based substrate of social systems in that
he contends that communication and action may be distinguished but cannot be
separated. Communication and action always appear together in the social systems’
operation. In Luhmann’s own words, “sociality is not a special case of action; instead,
action is constituted in social systems by means of communication and attribution
as a reduction of complexity, as an indispensable self-simplification of the system”
(Luhmann 1995:137). He further clarifies that:

communication and action cannot be separated (though perhaps they can be

distinguished) and that they form a relationship that can be understood as
the reduction of its own complexity. The elementary process constituting the
social domain as a special reality is a process of communication. In order to
steer itself, however, this process must be reduced to action, decomposed into
actions. Accordingly, social systems are not built up of actions . . . instead social
systems are broken down into actions, and by this reduction acquire the basis
for connections that serve to continue the course of communication. (Luhmann
1995:138–39)

And yet these two levels—communications and actions—are ontologically separate in

Luhmann’s theory. They become components that never merge in a “dualistic” con-
ceptual framework (Fuchs and Hofkirchner 2009) that is often inconsistent (Schmidt
2005). 11 In contrast, we argue that communications attain meaning through problem-
solving actions, as identities struggle to control footing.

AMBIGUITY AND CONTROL VIA NETDOM SWITCHINGS

Identities—from individuals to organizations—struggle for reflexive control. Control
is reflexive because it is not necessarily about “domination over other identities.
Before anything else, control is about finding footings among other identities. Such
footing is a position that entails a stance, which brings orientation in relation to
other identities” (White 2008:1). In this sense, footing is a “search for perduration,
but what that entails varies—from sheer survival to imposition of one’s will; attempts
at control thus are not limited to coercion or domination efforts” (Godart and White
2010:570).
Any identity comes out of continuous contrasts between blockage and getting
action. In their lives, identities are shaped by other identities’ local and global
patterns as well as stochastic processes that open opportunities for fresh action.
Generating an identity, thus, requires decoupling contradictory demands through
switchings across entangled social networks and interpretive domains, which we term
netdoms (White 2008:1–6).

11 Schmidt (2005) distinguishes two Luhmanns: a more autopoietic, abstract one, and a more institu-
tional, empirical one. He argues that throughout Luhmann’s opus the concept of system appears to have
two senses that must be distinguished: first, systems as communicational entities that produce differences
in an autopoietic or self-referential manner, and second, systems as institutional orderings that fulfill a
specific function in society, and that emerge and dissolve according to particular circumstances. In the
second sense, systems can no longer be conceived as only communicational entities because they are
composed by more elements than just communication (e.g., values, activities, rules, unities). According to
Schmidt, these two different senses of the concept of system are mutually exclusive and lead to theoretical
contradiction.
186 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

We argue that identities attain viable footing precisely because they are part of
multiple netdoms at once. Switches in talk, of code and register, for example, between
distinct domains are at the same time switches in which particular social ties and
respective stories of different sorts are being activated and deactivated. Padgett and
Ansell’s (1993) study of the rise of the Medici in medieval Florence represents a
good example of this. According to the authors, Cosimo de Medici seized power
through spanning his connections with distinct sociocultural domains (e.g., economic,
marriage, and patronage networks). By activating and deactivating his diverse ties
to other families, Cosimo de Medici was able to crystallize a “robust identity” and
attain power and control.
In their struggle to secure social footing identities thus reconfigure netdoms by
establishing or breaking ties with other identities. In the process they spark meanings
that “coalesce into stories” (Godart and White 2010:572). Stories relate meanings and
events into reflexive and transposable patterns. They are the key in the generation
of identities since social ties within participation frameworks are typically expressed
and interpreted through stories. Stories deliver a characteristic sense of continuity
and lived temporality to relationship ties, which otherwise would switch on and off
in everyday disjointed snapshots.
Uncertainty needs to be managed by identities in their struggle for control and, in
this sense, it is crucial for their emergence and development. So uncertainty grounds
both social and linguistic dynamics that give rise to stories—meaning comes with
induction and management of ambiguity through netdom switchings. Management
need not mean ambiguity minimization, but ambiguity maintenance and exploitation.
As Leifer (1991a, 1991b) has shown for expert chess playing, an actor’s ability to
make sense of the game is not necessarily determined by his or her capacity to “see
many moves ahead” and thus to decrease uncertainity, but to be able to sustain
uncertainty in the relationship. Hence, from Leifer’s account, “skill becomes what
the actor needs to do to get in the same footing as an observer” (Leifer 1991b:10).
In line with Leifer’s characterization, we assert that reaching through and across
netdoms to get robust action entails “keeping the state of interaction hard to as-
sess through making very many possible evolutions continue to seem possible . . .
which prevents anyone from seeing clearly an outcome that would end the social
tie” (White 2008:288). Identities seeking reflexive footings across netdoms create sto-
ries embracing ambiguity and transposable polysemies that keep their ties flexible
in anticipation of change. Ambiguity should not be removed methodologically as
measurement error but should instead become fully integrated into an analytical
model.
Our central claim is that life cannot be lived straightforwardly, so that ambiguity
is key. Stories can be organized in story-lines that provide identities with more or less
coherent ex post accounts of lived turbulences and discontinuities. A story-line is like
“a résumé, a post-rationalization of a necessarily chaotic social trajectory” (Godart
and White 2010:577). To name some examples, Vaughan’s (1986) investigation of
failed intimate relationships describes how processes of retrospective sense-making
(what we call story-lines) are critical for individuals in making the decision to desert
a relationship as well as in the subsequent reconstruction of their identity. This
holds at large scales too. A recent book (Forbes 2007) makes such a claim about
how American history entwined with the institution of slavery via the bewildering
switchings of the Missouri Compromise, 1819–1821. In daily interactions, too, the
ability to manage and sustain pervasive ambiguity is crucial. M. A. K. Halliday
(1985) vividly evokes this aspect of discourse in connection to the clause complex
MEANING FROM SWITCHINGS 187

(i.e., simple clauses linked reflexively by prepositions and other discursive devices to
produce storytelling coherence):

The clause complex is of particular interest in spoken language, because it

represents the dynamic potential of the system—the ability to “choreograph”
very long and intricate patterns of semantic movement while maintaining a
continuous flow of discourse that is coherent without being constructional.
(Halliday 1985:224)

LANGUAGE WITH NETDOM SWITCHINGS: INDEXICALITY

AND REFLEXIVITY
Language is discursively animated by both social networks and cultural domains. Our
view is consistent with Halliday’s vision that speech registers and linguistic meanings
originate from switchings among sets of alternative options inextricably linked to
social activities and settings (Dejoia and Stenton 1980; Eggins 2004; Halliday 1973,
1976, 1978, 1985; Swales 1990). Language thus originates reflexively, in transitions
between domains that are bound up necessarily with transitions among networks. The
myriad switchings that contribute to this characteristic reflexivity offer opportunity
as well as constraint. These are as indexical as they are localized in social space and
power; they index aspects of context or narrative events.
A significant turning point in understanding reflexivity, framing, and context in
language came about when Peirce (1931a) foregrounded the indexical dimension of
the linguistic sign. Linguistic indexes, in contrast to referential symbols, are signs
or aspects of signs that do not represent but point pragmatically to the world—
through spatiotemporal contiguity—in order to create or reproduce the social con-
texts in which they are uttered. Thus, counter to Saussure’s (1966) signifier/signified
dichotomy, for Peirce semiotic mediation is basically trichotomous: a sign-vehicle
(representamen), an object for which the sign stands, and a cognitive relation (in-
terpretant) created by the sign-vehicle in its standing relationship to the object. A
sign can relate to an object by similarity or analogy (icon), arbitrary rule (symbol),
or spatiotemporal contiguity (index). The latter capacity—indexicality—is crucial to
understanding the communicative functions of language (Fontdevila 2010).
Indexes can be classified according to the degree to which their pragmatic use
presupposes (reflects) or performs (creates) the extra-linguistic context that is being
singled out (Silverstein 1976). Thus when several co-workers explain to each other a
job-related task using slang or informal language and then suddenly revert back to
technical language because they realize their boss is within earshot, their switching
registers, reflects, or presupposes institutionalized work-place relationships via the
indexing of the appropriate technical register. However, note that if some co-workers
were to continue using an informal register before their boss, new creative realign-
ments and authority challenges could arise in need of further negotiation among
all hierarchies involved (Fontdevila and White 2010). 12 Moreover, many languages,
like Javanese, include complex deference and status indexes that can create status

12 An extreme example of presupposing indexicality that signals context without changing referential
content can be found in some Australian aboriginal languages where a complete switch in vocabulary
takes place when speakers are within earshot of their mother-in-law or equivalent affines. Such ‘‘mother-
in-law’’ language, which simply points to the presence of an ‘‘affine’’ audience in the surroundings, is
semantically identical to the standard lexicon but serves as a kind of ‘‘affinal taboo’’ index within the
speech situation (Dixon 1972).
188 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

differences on the spot by stylistic switches of distinctive lexical and grammatical

choices (Brown and Gilman 1960, for the pragmatic use of tu/vous pronouns of
address; Geertz 1960; Irvine 1985; Uhlenbeck 1970).
From spatial or temporal shifters (e.g., this, that, now), personal pronouns (e.g.,
I, you, they), and verb tenses—on over to switchings of professional registers, or of
humor styles or voice tones, etc.—indexes anchor the linguistic code in real contexts
of use. Indexes are more or less codified linguistic elements or strategies that lay out
the contextual parameters in which extra-linguistic interactions take place, signaling
or constituting the very nature of the social relationships involved. So indexes render
language fully operational in communicative practice.
Furthermore, language is unique in its reflexive capacity. It is used to talk about
itself and describe its own structure and uses, to report either directly or indirectly
earlier utterances of other speakers, to indicate shifting speakers’ roles, and to reflex-
ively label the mutable existence of conventionalized entities by the use of so-called
proper names. In all such instances, through its pervasive reflexivity, language itself
provides guidance for speakers in interaction to meaningfully interpret and frame
their own linguistic utterances. Language, in particular its reflexive and indexical
devices, is key in how networks and domains merge together in type of tie, which
delivers a set of stories and a characteristic sense of lived temporality.
Language, far from being an abstract and self-contained medium, is thus typically
embedded in an intricate social matrix where the production of any single utterance
is already a juxtaposition of multiple “voices” or different points of view drawn
from, and invoking, multiple networks and decouplings. This heterogeneous voicing
or heteroglossia is expressed through a speaker’s utterance by the interpenetration of
several social “consciousnesses,” none of which objectify the other but rather co-exist
in a kind of rich heteroglossic dialogue (Bakhtin 1981, 1984).
Most of the reflexive capacities of language are essentially meta-pragmatic, that is,
most meta-linguistic activities are not about semantic understanding (e.g., glossing)
but primarily about the pragmatic use of language in interaction (Silverstein 1976,
1993). Some explicit examples where the meta-pragmatic function of language be-
comes indexically articulated by speakers are: “don’t you dare use that tone with
me!!,” “Oh, don’t call me Sir, you can call me by my first name,” “I was careful
to use polite language to avoid any extra tensions.” Note that when language is
used to talk about language it is typically used to negotiate or redefine the relative
interactional footings of all speakers involved in a participation framework. With
variable levels of conscious awareness we always use language meta-pragmatically,
that is reflexively, to cultivate our social ties.
In sum, speakers do not passively decode their ongoing utterances against a back-
drop of culturally reified contexts but instead reflexively use their own verbal inter-
actions as meta-pragmatic indexes to organize and create their shifting interpretive
contexts.

GRAMMAR AND STYLES

Grammar is the product and process of routinization in framings for the wordings
of meanings. Meaning, rather than residing in semantics, emerges reflexively between
grammars and participants’ interactional hard work at framing speech situations.
And grammar may come to seem, like indexicality, a monument to the ubiquity of
netdom switching for meaning. Meaning in language is primarily an interactional
accomplishment (Cicourel 1985; Duranti 2003; Garfinkel 1967; Mertz 2007).
MEANING FROM SWITCHINGS 189

Pronouns and other linguistic “shifters” of course play into reflexive indexicality,
introduced earlier. But they also are prototypes for grammatical words—small closed
classes that are ubiquitous across contexts, whether used in clause complexes, genres,
registers, etc. Transposability is the core here, and thus this class accommodates well
to the unending flux of netdom switching events—through which in milliseconds
varying partner ensembles snatch at meaning.
A separate though related facet of grammar is provision of multiple meanings in
the same realization, the same wording, as horizontal counterpoint to the pragmatic
reach of indexicality. Verb wordings, for example, can supply not only tense in
time, but also tenor in topic and mode of interpersonal address. This is a welcome
crutch for grasping meaning through netdom switchings across the uncontrollable
flux of events. Given heterogeneous voicing in language, any grammatical choice is
ultimately a stylistic act. And any stylistic act, in turn, is influenced or regulated
by the repertoire of patterns that has assumed grammatical shape and function in
the language over different periods of time. In particular, two prototypical styles
of reporting, direct and indirect quotation, can be manipulated in order to achieve
a variety of social ends. Moreover, the syntax of a language—of subject and verb
order, for example—is also a fundamental stylistic act, changing its meaning via
myriad stylistic switches across netdoms of various social spreads and times.
We contend that change in language occurs always at the boundaries between
grammar and stylistics. These boundaries are fluid and ambiguous “because of the
very mode of existence of language, in which, simultaneously, some forms are un-
dergoing grammaticalization while others are undergoing degrammaticalization” in
the selective choice of particular styles and genres appropriate to the social situation
(Volosinov 1973:126).
Importantly, meaning changes come as intertwined spreads in social time and
space between order and disorder, at the edge of chaos. Meaning horizons need not
be limited within netdoms. Meaning establishes itself in consort with horizon, and
these changes of horizon can be as much a matter of rhythm as of interdigitation.
On our account, meaning is about syncopated complexity, complexity that occurs
only through reproducing itself as integral sensibility; so we denote it as style, as
much a precursor as a follower of identity.

META-COMMUNICATION, RHETORICS, GENRES

At least three broad perspectives explore the nature of semiotic communication or
signification in social life. One perspective claims that signification occurs when signs
“correspond” to their denotational objects (the semantic or referential theory of
meaning). Signification also occurs from another perspective when signs “relate” to
each other via contrasts and differences within a closed system (the syntactic or self-
referential theory of meaning). Finally, a third perspective argues that signification
occurs when signs “produce” interactional effects or changes on sign users (the prag-
matic or indexical theory of meaning). According to Silverstein (1976) it is the latter
indexical mode of signification that has the capacity to anchor the other two—the
referential and self-referential modes—in real and practical contexts of use. Indexi-
cal signs render semiotic processes—linguistic and nonlinguistic—fully operational in
social communication, providing the necessary redundancies and informational cues
to interpret and decode messages.
Moreover, communication is always meta-communication—of framings anchored
in different netdoms, at various (meta)-levels that sustain ongoing ambiguity to
190 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

produce fresh action, and grasped, albeit incompletely, via abductive inference of
speakers’ hard phenomenological work in the contexts in which they are produced. 13
According to Bateson (1985:188), “any message, which either explicitly or implicitly
defines a frame, ipso facto gives the receiver instructions or aids in his attempt to un-
derstand the messages included within the frame.” Thus linguistic and paralinguistic
messages frame communication, that is, they are context-markers that give cues or
instructions to the addressee to discern at what (meta)-level of abstraction the mes-
sage should be decoded to be understood (Goffman 1974, 1981). And this is done
via contextualizing indexes or cues, such as voice tone, shifters, discourse markers,
pronouns of address, code or register switching in talk, etc. (Gumperz 1982; Lucy
1993). Some examples of messages that frame context in meta-communicative ways
are: indexing “this is play” (as opposed to aggressive combat) through gestures or
light physical contact of adequate intensity (Bateson 1985); or changing the meaning
of a remark into its ironic opposite through tone emphasis or simply winking (non-
verbal communication); or indexing through indirect speech the meta-communicative
message that we respect the hearer’s autonomy to act otherwise, such as in “Could
you pass me the salt? Please, that would be awesome!” This is a hyperbolic remark
that meta-communicates the opposite of an imperative.
Note that all these examples include performative frames, cues, mannerisms, or
subtle “keys” that mark shiftings in communicative performances, such as voice mod-
ulation, posture, gesture, side remarks, and also the dynamic interaction that takes
place between performers and audiences, among other things. Moreover, through
creative and poetic play of figurative and metaphorical speech, quotation, proverbs,
riddles, jokes, rhymes, insults, greetings, gossip, innuendo, and various oratorical and
rhetorical genres, as well as many other formal features of ordinary conversation,
speakers through their utterances can reframe contexts and signal meta-messages
that may be quite tangential to the utterance’s actual referential and self-referential
content (Bauman and Briggs 1990).
In all these cases the interpretation of the meaning of the message (and there-
fore of the social tie and type of relationship producing it) is conveyed through
contextualizing indexicalities that are inferred—albeit always incompletely—via hard
phenomenological work of abductive reasoning. In fact, viable communication in
social life is based on the practical ability to manage these meta-communicative
indexicalities that frame context. Such indexicalities are highly ambiguous and open-
ended because they are rooted in multiple netdom switchings that span various social
scopes and times.
To be sure, Luhmann’s presentations seem to offer repeated openings for the
instability of indexical meaning across netdom switchings in differentiated society. For
Luhmann, the function of meaning is to organize the contention between actuality
and potentiality, which inevitably entails either instability or uncertainty. Given that
in our world there is no access to stable certainty, “meaning has to be based on the
instability of elements” (Luhmann 1990:83–84). Further, in regards to meaning in a
differentiated society he argues:

13 Abductive inference refers to forms of cognitive inference by which deductive rules and formal
principles become reflexively linked to local features of interactive settings that are known inductively
from everyday life experience (Peirce 1931b). In this sense, effective communication does not proceed only
by following automatic rules of grammar and conversational turn-taking but by inductive knowledge of
the practical meanings of a situation. In everyday life, these multiple contrasting levels of abstraction
(deductive and inductive) become integrated and negotiated by abductive inference in the performance of
speech.
MEANING FROM SWITCHINGS 191

The contingency of experience and action in society rises with this explosive
increase [with functional differentiation] in possibilities of experience and action.
All tangible meaning enters the shadow of other possibilities; it is relativized
and made problematic. (Luhmann 1985:148)

And, like us, he also elaborates on the reflexivity of social process:

By reflexivity we should understand that a process is applied to itself, or, al-

ternatively, to a process of a similar kind, and only then finally comes into
operation. Reflexive mechanisms are a very general form of meaning process-
ing . . . the expectation of expectations . . . talking about words . . . bartering of
exchange possibilities in the form of money, and following from this, financing
of money requirements; production of the means of production . . . teaching
of teaching in the form of pedagogy; trust in others’ trust . . . such reflexive
arrangements facilitate . . . the consideration of more possibilities and the expla-
nation of more complex circumstances. (Luhmann 1985:164)

Therefore, reflexivity is described as comprising processes of growth by internal

reproduction and multiplication of possibilities. Yet Luhmann’s concept of reflexivity
throughout his work has a recursive quality that appears more aligned with self-
referential or structuralist understandings of meaning than with indexicality and
abductive inference. For Luhmann, communications revolve around basic binary
codes that seem to be governed quasi-algorithmically within system self-closure in
the efforts to reduce complexity from the environment. This is basically a rule-driven
syntactic model of communication (Viskovatoff 1999; Wolfe 1992). 14
But we contend that communications do not simply generate other communica-
tions out of self-referential algorithms and abstract binary codes within a single
subsystem. For instance, discourses regarding immigrants in modern nation-states
make apparent the permeability and relative autonomy of subsystems. In them, legal
debates, economic considerations, political pressures, and social concerns are simul-
taneously at play.
Moreover, identities in their struggle to secure footing navigate and switch among
different institutional rhetorics, often producing complex “hybrid” rhetorics in the
process (Fontdevila and White 2010:339). Rhetorics guide identities across netdom
switches by appealing to broader meanings that simplify the messiness of social life.
Rhetorics thus demarcate broad interpretive contexts and become “an important
building block of an institutional system” (White 2008:177). And yet we argue that
in loosely connected netdoms of modern society with critical numbers of structural
holes 15 identities may incorporate diverse rhetorics via exposure to heterogeneous

14 According to Wolfe (1992), Luhmann still works with two original assumptions from information
theory: (i) that everything can be divided into binary codes, and (ii) that communication takes place
when a bit of information is coded into one category or another. However, both assumptions have been
challenged by new developments in the field of artificial intelligence. These developments have discredited
the algorithmic model of communication, and have modeled communicative understanding on the human
brain’s parallel data processing (PDP) or connectionism. In this latter model, “communication does not
take place through binary distinctions but is in fact possible only when organisms, including machines,
‘learn’ from past experience . . . [PDP models] are not self-reproducing systems, at least not as Luhmann
understands the term. They work imperfectly, by trial-and-error and ‘fuzzy’ logic” (Wolfe 1992:1733).
15 Structural holes consist of a relationship of nonredundancy between contacts in a network. As a result
of the hole between them, the two contacts provide network benefits—information and control—that are
in some degree additive rather than overlapping (Burt 1995).
192 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

voicings and multiple addressivities. These complex heteroglossic and hybrid rhetorics
linked to nonredundant ties may juggle different points of view, enabling identities
to reflexively frame ambiguity in the face of netdom decouplings and rapid change.
In fact, identities with robust but supple footings seem to be connected to a wide
range of diversified ties and netdoms, “much like a multi-legged table on a dais”
(Bothner et al. 2010; White, Fuhse et al. 2007:546). Often these identities are at the
intersection of a number of traversing core netdoms but also supported by the pe-
ripheries of many others. Moreover, they may observe distant cores as well. We argue
that identities with robust footings spread among diversified and nonredundant ties
and netdom levels have better prospects for becoming relative outsiders and second-
order observers of the various rhetorics that circulate among them. As second-order
observers of other netdoms and their rhetorics, these more durable identities become
aware of “how” other institutional rhetorics are reflexively constructed, what their
commonsensical building blocks are, and whether these other rhetorics can be incor-
porated or manipulated. 16 Robust identities connected to diversified netdoms have
a reflexive edge in seeing other core and peripheral institutional rhetorics for what
they are, a social construction, because “[t]hat which appears obvious and necessary
to the network appears improbable, variable, and contingent to its outside observers”
(Fuchs 2001:39).
In this connection, identities with robust and durable footings may not only de-
construct other identities’ institutional rhetorics but become reflexively aware of their
own constructions when they switch back to their cores. In fact, complex back-and-
forth switchings between different observational levels, cores and peripheries, insiders
and outsiders, “trigger . . . adventures in reflexivity” (Fuchs 2001:25). The existence
of complex hybrid rhetorics—or a “repertoire” of rhetorics—gives identities as they
switch across institutional subsystems the capacity to frame ambiguity and avoid “in-
dexically” closing systemic meaning to a reduced set of contexts. This proves crucial
to boundary maintenance of rapidly differentiating subsystems due to complexity,
since it keeps boundaries permeable and porous to new meanings, avoiding systemic
collapse.
In the case of the legal subsystem, for instance, a repertoire of rhetorics stem-
ming from nonlegal netdoms can be crucial to the subsystem’s normative capacity
to incorporate and meta-interpret new lived experiences into the law (legal/illegal),
avoiding legitimation crises among significant segments of the population (Capps
and Olsen 2002). For example, in debates over gay marriage legalization, we find
that traditional marriage as an institution sustained by a rhetoric of a bond be-
tween a man and a woman can only be reflexively reframed into a rhetoric of
committed relations between two consenting adults (regardless of gender) by legal
decision-making actors that incorporate heteroglossias and indexicalities from other
netdoms and systems. Given the incommensurable nature of these two rhetorics
(and many others in complex and differentiated societies, including reproductive
rights), no formal algorithmic and self-referential procedure of the legal subsystem
itself—based on legal precedent, for example—can be expected to find a compro-
mise, other than by fresh meanings of contemporary intimacy arrangements brought
into the system by its constitutive actors, with their own set of rights, interests, and
concerns.

16 According to Fuchs, “outside observers do not observe first-level whats, but second-level hows. They
see what cannot be seen from the inside, decomposing the foundational certainties and invisibilities without
which the observed network could not do what it does” (2001:39).
MEANING FROM SWITCHINGS 193

Genres in relation to professional and other discourse communities, we contend,

are also built through netdom switches across subsystems. Let us examine journalism
and fashion as examples of reflexive practices of meaning generation. Journalism,
for instance, can be conceived as the antithesis of Luhmann’s functional subsystems
in that its emergence and autonomy as a system does not depend on specific binary
codings. Meaning production in journalism is achieved through netdom switchings,
not as systemic self-coherence and continuity, as Luhmann would suggest. In this
sense, we see journalism as the epitome of our argument. However, claims can still
be made for journalism to be a self-producing profession, and thus, reminiscent of
a functional system.
Let us explore by invoking contrasts. A special system of markets—outside an
economy of production flows and barter exchange—may emerge around cultural
practices, for example, of journalism and also of fashion, to yield some other sort of
profession. Journalism and fashion are historically emergent genres, both rooted in
gossip, analogous to the emergence of production economy through a sequence of
“putting out” systems (White 2002). A gossip is a part-time journalist who also gains
stature by “outing” the behavior of third parties. But we contend that journalism has
gone on to bring the far near, whereas the gossip pushes the near far away. And the
opposite switch holds for fashion (Godart 2009) and its precursor in sewing-circle
gossip.
Both “professions”—journalism and fashion—have come to look toward the near
future rather than the past, and each transfixes citizens in cycles of recurrence and
change. Each of the two has come to embed citizens into a market public exactly as
it decouples them from own personal networks. Journalism is as much about network
configuration, the situation observed, as about “events.” Further, both journalism
and fashion focus on how social coteries ape each other. Thus agency short-circuits
transitivity in ties: triads involving observer replace in each, networks of dyads as
constitutive.
As reflexive genres of meaning generation, both journalism and fashion evoke the
public as distinctive master realm, thereby eroding special realms like Luhmann’s.
Switching netdoms within the public constitutes meaning. Yet all are subordinate
to the super-realm of everyday reality, portrayed vividly by Goffman (1959, 1974).
Full mappings of genres remain rare (Swales 1990). Moreover, we suggest that the
examination of poetry as genre could further illuminate our analysis of journalism
and fashion.
Following this line of reasoning, we argue for a paradox: Luhmann’s part sub-
systems, almost involute from functional differentiation, can only be realized and
reproduced through netdom switches not oriented or confined to these part systems
themselves. In Luhmann’s theory social networks are left out in favor of patterns of
communication, and instead, the evolution of each subsystem (law, economy, poli-
tics, education, science, etc.) has been involute, with self-referentiality presupposed.
As Wolfe (1992) points out, “Luhmann tell us how systems must communicate,
ought to communicate, and should communicate, but never how systems actually
communicate” (1992:1739).
We argue that this eviscerates tangible and testable meaning-making mechanisms
from Luhmann’s theory. We should leave functional systems aside until we can
derive rather than presuppose them, and look for mechanisms able to manage and
sustain the pervasive ambiguity and indexicality in daily interactions expected in both
Luhmann’s and our theories. In short, our vision in its concreteness is different from
Luhmann’s, yet meanings, and so ambiguities, are central to both. The difference is
194 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

that we open up the varied heuristics that concrete persons use to navigate social life.
Yet both visions draw on distinctions between first- and second-order observation.

DYNAMICS OF DOMINATION
Managing mounting ambiguity and contradiction across rapidly polymerizing net-
doms calls for skillful innuendo and indirect language, true, yet it also can evoke
direct language and domination. In the face of shifting netdom demands and
rapid decouplings, some identities exploit language’s reflexive and indexical fea-
tures to contextualize and manage growing ambiguity and contradiction, as in
the case previously mentioned of Cosimo de Medici. At times, strong interac-
tional footings or other competitive edges may emerge through successful, al-
beit temporary, juggling of disjointed framings (Goffman 1974) across netdom
switchings.
Grammar is routinization (Hopper and Traugott 1993). This may be by domi-
nation rather than innocent habituation, over choices of switchings among unequal
social networks and interpretive domains. But domination can also, as Bourdieu
(1977, 2001) has shown, work through apparently natural habituation so that certain
hierarchical relations become ingrained into a context-specific “doxa” (e.g., mascu-
line domination). In both these respects, we call on insights from sociolinguistics
of pidgins and creoles as models for localized grammaticalization processes intrinsi-
cally embedded in relations of domination (Fasold 1990; Holm 1988). We can adapt
these insights to any pragmatic situations where actors, fluent in different sublan-
guages and indexical subsystems, are forced to interact in a common lingua franca.
These include not only trade posts and plantations of yore (Galison 1999), but also
multi-ethnic job places in any modern organization traversed by global networks of
transactions and peoples.
We argue that far from egalitarian and universal patternings, switches among
netdoms are seized and shaped differently according to social positionings in strug-
gles over semiotic and material control. Hence, the shaping of identities is always
influenced by dynamics of domination. Our emphasis on domination differs from
Luhmann’s macroevolutionary description of modern society in which no particular
ordering can be identified. With this, we claim, Luhmann assumes too much homo-
geneity among subsystems. In contrast, our approach, rooted on sociolinguistic in-
teractions across time and social space turns the attention to the actual mechanisms
of power and domination that operate in social relationships and that ultimately
make up Luhmann’s subsystems of society. To become fully operational the reflexive
notions of multiple voicing or “genre” heteroglossia à la Bakhtin need to be sited in
tangible and reflexive network “switchings.”
Only after enough power and complexity develop can a variety of speech
forms sustain indexicality through switchings. Note that we are moving here be-
yond the debates in linguistics that try to explain the difference between the
referential and the indexical function of language (semantics from pragmatics)
since we take it one step further and differentiate the indexical from the rela-
tional via differentiated switchings (pragmatics from social scope and network):
“networks and domains in their interpenetration as network-domains allow one
to locate social chains and waves of interpretive consequence, to which dyadic
analysis—or purely cultural and cognitive interpretation, or purely social net-
work connectivity—is blind” (White 1995b:8, 1995c; also Mische and White
1998).
MEANING FROM SWITCHINGS 195

CONCLUSION
Viable identities produce reflexive accounts and stories about their netdom ties and
cliques 17 that remain indexically open through changing contingencies and participa-
tion frameworks. In fact, we contend, contra Luhmann, that navigating uncertainty
in social life is not so much about stabilizing expectations of interacting dyads
to resolve their double contingency 18 as it is about skillful and open juggling of
expectation sets across the multiple contingency of shifting netdom configurations
(Fontdevila and White 2010; White et al. 2007; White et al. 2007). In other words,
we argue that system closure is not a solution to the problem of uncertainty. In fact,
lack of uncertainty is itself a problem.
Action—here understood as netdom switchings—does not just irritate or trigger
changes (using Luhmann’s terminology) within a set of communicative forms dictated
by a subsystem. Quite differently, action is capable of changing the meta-rules of
the operation of a system through meta-pragmatics, poetic functions, heteroglossias,
and rhetorics. We propose that systems have porous boundaries, and that action
is fundamental for indexically and reflexively managing such boundaries. Systems
are constructed via meta-pragmatic action and meaning is generated through net-
dom switchings across those systems. Switchings across systems, therefore, provide
constitutive elements of the very meta-rules that define a system.
We also argue that it is unclear how Luhmann deals with problems of contingency
and meaning across subsystems. By placing great emphasis on the social systems’
autopoiesis and self-production, Luhmann paid a price: he left aside the real-life
communication—and thus the meta-communication—that occurs within and across
networks of human beings, which is necessarily open and indexical. In Luhmann’s
theory of self-reproducing systems, language is taken for granted and its relevance
in explaining social action is obscured under the abstract and disembodied notion
of “systems communication.”
We claim that keeping ambiguity ongoing is important to establish viable footing
across rapidly differentiating subsystems (opening or closing contingency at various
meta-levels of expectations). In this line, juggling multiple contingency to accomplish
fresh action via netdom switchings creates strong footing across multiple differen-
tiated systems and ultimately some sort of reflexive meta-order (e.g., second-order
observation of rapidly changing network shapes and expectations, taking into account
expectations of ties that are several nodes removed from co-present relationships, and
located in different subsystems).
Indeed, “managing ambiguity” in decoupling differentiations is inherently and
reflexively contradictory, with “truncated logics” that have no meta-consistency in
any of their multiple ramifications—and that is precisely what enables new switchings
and footings. And thereby viable social formation can emerge. Order is necessary,
but order that is at the edge of chaos. Identities locked in netdoms that are too
orderly are incapable of responding to switches, and thus incapable of reflexivity. To
be sure, there is no meaning without ambiguity. Polyphony is the congruent term
here, rather than harmony: netdom heteroglossia rather than system self-reference.

17 Cliques are fully connected (sub)networks, i.e., every element is directly linked to every other element.
18 According to Luhmann (1995), double contingency reflects the basic problem that underlies every
social encounter, i.e., alter and ego experience each other as “black boxes”—I don’t know what the other
is going to do, but I do know that she does not know what I am going to do. This circularity—that
both know that both know that one could also act differently—creates a fundamental indeterminacy in
social relations. Social systems, Luhmann argues, can only emerge through solving the problem of double
contingency.
196 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

Our analyses must offer the capacity to convey uneven, distorted, and unfinished
perception.
In social life what creates continuity and yet freedom of contingency is the ability
to reflexively transpose and reassemble indexical stories, genres, styles, and rhetorics
across networks of ties and domains. Transitional phases composed of unfinished
narratives of social ties, of the self, stories and rationalizations, and multiple fram-
ings are the stuff that creates enough meaning redundancies and meta-communicative
complexities to carry a social system to the edge of chaos—not too congealed to
anticipate systemic change. Far from self-referential meaning and closure, functional
systems owe their supple existence to identities weaving incomplete meshes of index-
ical ambiguities as they switch netdoms in their struggle for control.
The traditional focus of theory on the micro/macro gap is thus put aside as tan-
gential, as also is a preoccupation with levels and embeddings. Horizontal is a more
apt metaphor than vertical for these switchings. Some theoretical progress has been
made in this direction in Identity and Control (White 2008) by using the concepts of
control regimes, institutional rhetorics, and disciplines, all of which constitute reflex-
ive arrangements that bridge systems differentiation, action, and language. What we
have done is to analytically link reflexivity, switchings, stories, and heteroglossia back
to our targets of ambiguity and functional differentiation, in a counterpoint between
harmony and polyphony across systems. Domination is conjoined with habituation.

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