Social Positioning Theory and Dewey S Ontology of Persons Objects and Offices

Journal of Critical Realism
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Social positioning theory and Dewey’s ontology of

persons, objects and offices
Stephen Pratten
To cite this article: Stephen Pratten (2022) Social positioning theory and Dewey’s
ontology of persons, objects and offices, Journal of Critical Realism, 21:3, 288-308, DOI:
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JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REALISM
2022, VOL. 21, NO. 3, 288–308
https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2022.2049091
Social positioning theory and Dewey’s ontology of persons,

objects and offices
Stephen Pratten
King’s Business School, King’s College London, London, UK
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Social positioning theory, in defending a general social ontology, is Dewey; ontology; positions;
a particular extension of critical realism. It is a theory of social offices; persons; objects
constitution that clarifies how items including human beings and
things are relationally organized as instances of community
components. This extension of critical realism is directly comparable
to fundamental but underexamined contributions of the classical
American pragmatist John Dewey and specifically his elaboration of
a social ontology incorporating an emphasis upon offices that
individuals and things come to occupy. In this paper, it is argued
that there are substantial correspondences between social
positioning theory and Dewey’s concern with offices that come to
be filled. By drawing on social positioning theory the significance of
an overlooked feature of Dewey’s social ontology comes to be
better appreciated. Equally by conducting this comparison Dewey’s
discussion of offices is recognized as anticipating some of the
insights that social positioning theory has recently systematised.
1. Introduction
In recent years a group of scholars have extended critical realism in a particular direction
that has come to be systematised as social positioning theory. The theory of social posi-
tioning is advanced as an account of social constitution (see Lawson 2012, 2016b, 2019a,
2021; Faulkner and Runde 2013; Faulkner, Pratten, and Runde 2017; Pratten 2017, 2018,
2020; Cardinale and Runde 2020; Lawson and Morgan 2021; Martins 2021; Slade-
Caffarel 2022). Organized social totalities are the wholes of primary concern to social posi-
tioning theory and its central focus is the manner in which the components of these total-
ities are constituted. Communities are understood as particularly significant social
totalities. All human beings enter a set of communities at birth and only ever interact
as participants in a number of communities. The particular contribution of social position-
ing theory is to elaborate upon the community relational structures that serve to coordi-
nate the human interactions that take place in communities. Within the theory, explicit
attention is also given to the nature (and manner of social determination) of social
objects.
CONTACT Stephen Pratten stephen.pratten@kcl.ac.uk King’s Business School, King’s College London, Bush
House, 30 Aldwych, London WC2B 4BG, UK
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under
the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REALISM 289
Not all critical realists are involved in developing this theory of social positioning of
course and some may have reservations about (or criticisms of) it. However, a feature
of this extension of relevance to this special issue is that it is directly comparable to fun-
damental but underexamined contributions of the classical American pragmatist John
Dewey and in particular his elaboration of a social ontology that incorporates an emphasis
upon offices individuals and things come to occupy. Or at least this is the thesis I seek to
explore and establish here.
The social ontology advanced by John Dewey has received increasing recognition and
critical attention in recent years. The account of the social world that Dewey defends has
been compared with influential contemporary perspectives on social ontology such as
that associated with the work of John Searle (Testa 2017a). The understanding of social
reproduction and transformation that it sponsors has also been explored (Pratten 2015;
Frega 2017; Särkelä 2017; Testa 2017b, 2017c; Gregoratto and Särkelä 2020; Midtgarden
2020). Despite this increasing volume of commentary, there are aspects of Dewey’s
social ontology that remain obscure. Both in his treatment of persons and social
objects the notion that individuals and things come to occupy offices at times features
prominently but this aspect of Dewey’s account of the social realm has received relatively
little attention.1 This paper engages with Dewey’s social ontology and especially this neg-
lected feature of it by developing a contrast with aspects of the theory of social position-
ing. The argument is that a more focussed understanding of this overlooked aspect of
Dewey’s social ontology can be achieved by conducting such a comparison and that
Dewey in his discussion of offices anticipates some of the insights recently systematised
in social positioning theory.
Similar sets of broad ontological commitments underpin both Dewey’s account of
social reality and the theory of social positioning. Both emphasize the ontological irredu-
cibility of social phenomena and each provides a framework in which such irreducibility is
accounted for in thoroughly naturalistic terms. Within both perspectives, specific
common philosophical/ontological errors are highlighted as needing to be avoided if a
sustainable account of the social realm is to be developed. There are some commonalities
too in the way that communities are characterized by Dewey and within social positioning
theory. While these similarities at the level of broad ontological commitments will be
briefly commented upon the primary focus in this paper is Dewey’s treatment of
persons and things where he places emphasis on offices being occupied.
The terms office and position may for many carry similar immediate connotations but
the correspondences between this aspect of Dewey’s social ontology and social position-
ing theory are a good deal more extensive and substantial than this. Both approaches
maintain that human beings are not intrinsically persons but rather that certain individ-
uals and groups of individuals come to occupy the office of person or position of legal
person. For Dewey and social positioning theory individuals in coming to occupy an
office or being positioned are thereby enmeshed in configurations of social relations
involving paired sets of matching rights and obligations or duties. Dewey argues that
the traits of the individual as a human being and those that arise from holding an
office are distinct, social positioning theory distinguishes the relational properties pos-
sessed by positioned items from the properties of the items positioned. According to
Dewey central to the establishment of an office is widespread habitual compliance
with group requirements, for social positioning theory community participant collective
290 S. PRATTEN
acceptance grounds community social constitution. Neither Dewey nor social positioning
theory conceives of there being a unique, or privileged, way in which offices or positions
are established – they are understood as emerging from various types of process. Both
perspectives see things as well as individuals as being capable of coming to occupy
offices or positions, albeit with individuals occupying offices/positions in a distinctive
manner. In recognizing that things come to occupy offices Dewey is concerned to empha-
size the importance of distinguishing within the appearing object between itself in its
‘primary qualities’ and itself in its ‘signifying office’, in social positioning theory the posi-
tioning of things implies they, as components of embedding totalities, are never reducible
to the things that become relationally organized in forming the components. It is by ela-
borating on these and related connections that I demonstrate how it is possible to reach a
more adequate appreciation of a relatively neglected aspect of Dewey’s social ontology
and see how he anticipates some of the insights later systematised within social position-
ing theory.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides a short summary of key relevant
aspects of social positioning theory. Section 3 sets out relevant further context by identi-
fying the common broad ontological commitments that Dewey and the theory of social
positioning share and explores similarities in their respective characterizations of commu-
nities. Section 4 examines the treatment of persons in the two approaches and Section 5
turns to their respective accounts of social objects. Concluding remarks follow.
2. Social positioning theory

Social positioning theory provides an account of how items – including individuals and
other phenomena – are constituted as components of communities. A central insight
associated with this perspective is that a positioned item is not identical to, is always
more than, the thing or individual positioned.
Within this framework, phenomena are classified as social where their existence
depends necessarily on human beings. Such phenomena are understood as always
being community relative. It is within the context of particular communities that social
phenomena arise. Social phenomena are constituted in a range of communities (that
differ in scale and persistence) through processes of positioning involving individuals
and things being installed in, or allocated to, positions and thereby forming community
component instances. Community components are essentially linked to specific commu-
nity positions. While positioned as community components individuals and things, when
considered under the aspect of their being component instances, are oriented – by being
incorporated into specific sets of social relations – to facilitating the operations of the rel-
evant system or totality. Community components are associated with functions oriented
to facilitating particular ways of working of the wider system. Instances of components
bear the function associated with the relevant position. The positioned items or com-
ponent instances possess relational, including functional, properties that the items posi-
tioned do not. The capacities of components, though not reducible to, include those of
the elements out of which they are formed. Communities as social totalities operate
through their components and the capacities of components depend upon but remain
irreducible to the capacities of the underlying elements (see Lawson 2019a; Lawson
2021; Lawson and Morgan 2021).
Human beings as they come to be positioned as instances of community components

access rights and acquire obligations that serve to facilitate and constrain their ways of
acting. Individuals positioned, for example, as lecturers in the context of a modern UK uni-
versity acquire various rights involving access to resources and also certain obligations
including preparing assessments, attending faculty meetings and being available to see
students at certain times of the academic year, etc. The rights of one individual or
group are configured in relation to the obligations of other individuals or groups. The
kinds of rights that lecturers are able to access are matched to obligations others have,
including, in this example, the university management’s obligation to supply appropriate
facilities. The rights that students can access, such as to attend lectures, are matched to
the obligations of lecturers to prepare and deliver them. The packages of rights and obli-
gations associated with the various positions within the university work so as to ensure
that, at least for much of the time, lecturers do lecture and they do research and students
study thereby facilitating the working of the university community. Equally, where a
specific, clearly determined, function is anticipated of a component in a totality then
the positioned occupant as a component instance can be evaluated relative to fulfilling
that function and when shown to make the relevant contribution considered successful.
According to this perspective, there is no intrinsic characteristic of individuals prior to
positioning that in and by itself suffices to guarantee access to a right. An individual may
have in abundance all the capabilities needed to perform very successfully as a university
lecturer and yet, without being installed in the position and thereby formed into an
instance of the relevant component, they cannot access or participate in the relevant
rights. Individuals are empowered and constrained through being positioned in particular
ways as members or participants in a community. Positional powers are always system
properties and individuals remain agents of these powers and are so only when appropri-
ately positioned and relationally organized as component instances within the system. At
the same time, particular occupants of social positions can make a difference to outcomes
by, within limits, choosing and being capable of drawing on rights they have access to
and fulfilling the obligations associated with the position in distinctive ways.
Where, rather than human beings, it is things – non-human objects – that are posi-
tioned as instances of community components various human participants in the wider
community acquire rights and obligations that bear on the way in which these items
are or are not to be used. Consider a table, perhaps identical to others used in the
venue, being designated at a wedding reception as the Head table, the table is thereby
formed into a community component where its use – in being reserved for only some par-
ticipants – is constrained by rights and obligations borne by the variously positioned indi-
viduals. The social positioning of things means that, when considered as components,
they are never reducible to the things that become relationally organized in forming
them as components.
On this kind of account of social reality the determination of positions with associated
rights and obligations together with the allocation of people and things to positions are
grounded in a form of community participant acceptance. This notion does not imply
necessary agreement, it signifies simply a preparedness on the part of community partici-
pants, at least for the time being, to go along with a certain arrangement of structures and
outcomes. How community acceptance comes about varies significantly from case to
case. It may be encouraged through declarations being made by some community
292 S. PRATTEN
accepted and delegated authority but equally may arise in an altogether more spon-
taneous manner through general practice. The creation and continued existence of the
positions, instances of community components and the social totalities they form all
depend upon their being widely accepted in the community. Community participants
in demonstrating a willingness to go along with the relevant elements of the social
environment typically do so in the expectation that all other members will conform in
a similar manner and respect the rights and obligations in place (see Lawson 2019a,
2021; Lawson and Morgan 2021).
3. Initial commonalities
Before demonstrating that social positioning theory is an illuminating perspective from
which to consider the significance of certain features of Dewey’s social ontology and
especially his emphasis on the offices individuals and things occupy, it is useful to
provide some context by highlighting their similar underlying metaphysical commitments
and complementary characterizations of communities.
Dewey is interested in identifying the distinctive patterns of association that distinguish
social phenomena. Dewey discusses how it is through patterns of association that novel
assemblies are brought into existence where both the resulting assembly and its constitu-
ent parts have new properties. He writes:
Everything that exists in as far as it is known and knowable is in interaction with other things.
It is associated, as well as solitary, single. The catching up of human individuals into associ-
ation is thus no new and unprecedented fact; it is a manifestation of a commonplace of exist-
ence. Significance resides not in the bare fact of association, therefore, but in the
consequences that flow from the distinctive patterns of human association. There is again
nothing new or unprecedented in the fact that assemblage of things confers upon the assem-
bly and its constituents, new properties by means of unlocking energies hitherto pent in. The
significant consideration is that assemblage of organic human beings transforms sequence
and coexistence into participation. (Dewey 1981, 138)
The forming of assemblies by way of distinctive patterns, modes or types of association

is not a process that is unique to the social domain but characterizes all domains. Dewey
recognizes that the category of association is highly abstract and that it is a definite type
or mode of association that ultimately differentiates social cases. He writes:
If reference to association is to be anything more than a ceremonial and barren act of defer-
ence, if it is to be used in any enterprise of philosophic description and understanding, it indi-
cates the necessity of study and analysis of the different modes of association that present
themselves in experience. And the implication of our argument is that in such a comparison
of definite types of association the social, in its human sense, is the richest, fullest and most
delicately subtle of any mode actually experienced […]. Association in general is but a matrix;
its filling are the facts of association actually displayed in nature. Indeed, the category of
association is but a highly abstract notion of what is formally common to the special
modes. (Dewey 1984b, 44)
According to Dewey as physical and vital or organic items are taken up or incorporated
in social and human forms of association they acquire new properties:
[I]n the social the physical is taken up into a wider and more complex and delicate system of
interactions so they take on new properties by release of potentialities previously confined
because of absence of full interaction. The same consideration applies to the inclusion within
the social of the vital or organic. The members of society are living beings with the charac-
teristics of living creatures; but as these enter into distinctly human associations their strictly
organic properties are modified and even transformed. Certain physiological factors of sex, of
procreation, immaturity and need of care, are assuredly implicated in the functions expressed
in family life. But however great the role of animal lust, there is something more in any family
association than bare physiological factors. (Dewey 1984b, 47–48)
For Dewey certain powers of coordinated interactions are available to individuals qua
members of human communities that would not have emerged if human individuals
were instead mere biological beings that just happened to be situated in close physical
proximity to one another. He insists that reductionist and supernatural interpretations
of distinctively social phenomena can be avoided since given his general framework
there is an obvious empirically compelling alternative understanding available:
The fact of transformation of the purely organic by inclusion within the scope of human associ-
ation is so obvious – note the significant change of cries into speech – that it has indeed led to
belief in the intrusive intervention of unnatural and supernatural factors in order to account for
the differences between the animal and the human. The disjunction between the assertion
that the human is merely animal and the assertion that an extraneous force is obtruded is
not however exhaustive. There remains an alternative which is most fully confirmed by empiri-
cal fact, namely that the difference is made when new potentialities are actualised, when the
range of interactions that delimits the notion of the organic is taken into the wider and more
subtly complex association which forms human society. (Dewey 1984b, 48)
Dewey’s opposition to ontological reductionism is manifest as he articulates what he

perceives to be a pervasive philosophical fallacy: ‘The commonest of all philosophical falla-
cies is the fallacy of converting eventual outcomes into antecedent conditions thereby
escaping the need (and salutary effect) of taking into account the operations and processes
that conditions the eventual subject matter’ (Dewey 1981, 352). For Dewey conceiving of
entities as isolated and as comprehensively possessing their properties prior to constitutive
processes of the interaction is a dangerous presupposition that needs to be avoided.
In providing examples of modes of associated or community life Dewey emphasizes
that some care is required since the terms ‘society’ and ‘community’ carry connotations
likely to mislead. He worries specifically that these terms will obscure the plurality of
social existences associated especially with modern conditions. He writes:
Such words as ‘society’ and ‘community’ are likely to be misleading, for they have a tendency
to make us think there is a single thing corresponding to the single word. As a matter of fact, a
modern society is many societies more or less loosely connected. Each household with its
immediate extension of friends makes a society; the village or street group of playmates is
a community; each business group, each club, is another … . Inside the modern city, in
spite of its nominal political unity, there are probably more communities, more differing
customs, traditions, aspirations, and forms of government or control, than existed in an
entire continent at an earlier epoch. Each such group exercises a formative influence on
the active dispositions of its members. (Dewey 1980, 25)
He also emphasizes that coherent communities such as guilds of artists, learned societies
composed of members who have no direct physical contact with one another may be con-
stituted as spatially disconnected parts since ‘they have aims in common, and the activity of
each member is directly modified by knowledge of what others are doing’ (Dewey 1980, 25).
294 S. PRATTEN
Certain underlying commitments informing the theory of social positioning corre-

spond closely to the principles Dewey outlines in his discussion of modes of association
albeit with a rather different terminology deployed. Rather than assemblies and their
modes of association reference is made to totalities, their relational organization and
formed components. Totalities are understood as organized systems that have an integ-
rity and coherence at their own level of being. Within the theory of social positioning
novel social phenomena are understood as everywhere constituted by processes
whereby various (mostly already existing) elements are relationally organized in some
way to form totalities, with the items so organized thereby formed into its relational com-
ponents. It is fully appreciated that the forming of totalities by way of organizing various,
typically already existing, elements into components is not a process confined to the
social domain. Such processes of organization characterize all domains. It is the nature
of the processes through which organization happens that ultimately differentiates
cases. As with Dewey ontological reductionism is resisted, totalities are recognized as
having novel powers of their own. It is argued that a totality formed by way of organizing
pre-existing elements into components is causally and ontologically irreducible to those
elements considered apart from their being organized.2 Just as Dewey emphasizes the
need to be aware of and avoid certain typical philosophical fallacies the theory of
social positioning identifies the tendency to treat components of totalities and their rela-
tional properties as if they are no more than the items used to form them as a common
ontological error it is necessary to guard against.
In terms of the use of the term community, in social positioning theory, it is deployed in
a manner that fully acknowledges the plurality of social existences. Lawson, for example,
supplies a list of illustrations that suggests as encompassing a conception as that
advanced by Dewey. Lawson points to examples of communities such as families,
schools, sports teams, clubs, corporations, research groups (even where scattered
across the globe), political parties, nations and unions of nations. The conception
within social positioning theory is very much one of complex patterns of overlapping
communities. Lawson notes:
We are all born into some or other set of communities, and in the modern world anyway, we
interact as human beings only as participants in a number of communities; all coordinated
interactions take place in and depend fundamentally upon the organising structure of
human communities. (Lawson 2021, 7)3
4. Social positioning, persons and offices

Within his social ontology Dewey offers a particular characterization of persons. For
Dewey, a person is a human being who functions within a human association in a repre-
sentative capacity. No one exists as a person except as a member of a social group or
association of some kind. Within human associations, powers are acquired by human
beings as they function in ways conforming to recognized rights and duties. He writes:
And as matter of fact, ‘person’ stands for something more than ‘man’ does; it stands for man
plus a special representative power that has evolved in social groups in which jural relations
have received a fairly high degree of enunciation. Perhaps the fact that in most modern
societies ‘voter’ has meant more than ‘Citizen’ just as ‘Citizen’ has fuller meaning than
‘alien’ may suggest the kind of difference. A voter must be a citizen, but the citizen to be a
voter must satisfy certain further socially defined conditions. Similarly a person must be a
human being, a man or woman, but must also possess additional capacities that exist
(operate) only in a group in which there exist such relational functions as formulated liabil-
ities, rights, duties, and immunities. (Dewey 2012, 199)4
For Dewey human beings are not always persons. Human beings become persons only in
certain social conditions. Historically some human beings have been treated as things
rather than persons – as utensils deployed as other human beings or social existents
pursue their distinct ends. The recognition that all human beings have at least the poten-
tial to be persons is seen by Dewey as marking a significant moral advance:
When we speak of human beings as persons in the case of certain primitive groups, the attri-
bution is not metaphorical as it is in the case of personification of, say, animals. But the word
is used to designate a potentiality, rather than something as yet actualized. The same thing is
true of infants in the legal sense of the word. In some pagan and most of early Christian lit-
erature, it was debatable whether women had souls in their own right and consequently
whether or not they were persons. In the case of chattel slavery the same controversy has
taken place regarding men and women held as slaves. Aristotle quite expressly reduced dom-
estic slaves to the status of things since they were, with social sanction, employed as useful
tools for accomplishing the ends of others – like other domestic utensils. The recognition that
all normal human beings are persons potentially is itself the product and mark of a great
moral advance in the constitution of human society. (Dewey 2012, 199)
For Dewey personhood is not a property intrinsic to human beings but rather is
acquired. The term office features heavily in Dewey’s analysis of persons. To be a
person for Dewey is to be installed in and be recognized as occupying an office. An
office is itself bound up with a package of reciprocal rights and duties. When considering
certain offices, such as parenthood, he explores how, while these might be conceived of
as being partially anticipated in particular biological traits, in becoming established as
offices rights and duties are necessarily implicated. If it is the case for example that an indi-
vidual occupying one office has a certain right to a level of care this must imply, according
to Dewey, that within the relevant group some other party occupying another office has a
responsibility for providing that care, there must be some other office holder with a cor-
responding representative function. Dewey writes:
To possess and exercise an office is to be representative and the history or development of
offices, or representative functions, is the history of transformation of biological traits into
traits constituting persons. The case of the parental function is typical. Biologically parent-
hood may be merely the begetting or the bearing of offspring. Even among some animal
forms, the male becomes the provider of food over a period of time and the female
becomes directly the nurse and nurturer. Biological traits of this sort are prototypes of the
offices that create the properties which provide the traits which constitute being personal
until the nature of something with responsibility for performance of the functions comes
into existence on the part of progenitors and something of the nature of a right to protection
and nurturance on the part of offspring. Then the execution of a biological function becomes
an office, and an office takes on rudimentary moral quality. (Dewey 2012, 189–90)
According to Dewey, offices are socially established and individuals are installed in, or
come to bear, office through a process of community conferment:
As in so many other cases, theoretical doctrine executes an inversion of actual order. Instead
of moral relations existing because human beings are intrinsically persons, they become
296 S. PRATTEN
personal because of the rise and development of offices having at least rudimentary moral
qualities. And this change from the biological to the distinctively human and moral takes
place not just under social conditions but because of influences, pressures, and commenda-
tions (approvals) occurring in group and communal life. (Dewey 2012, 189–90)
Dewey is interested in how offices can sometimes emerge from prototypes that might
have a biological basis but does not view social forms as being biologically determined.
He emphasizes that family groups are often structured via collective patterns of inter-
action that involve the systematic ‘subordination of women to men’ in which the pos-
itions available to women are subordinate or devalued whilst those available to men
are privileged. Often the relation of women to men in such systems involves a relation
‘of inferiors to superiors fixed naturally, physically and inalterably. Aristotle on position
of women, and some persons naturally slaves, tools’ (Dewey 2015, 19). For Dewey
there is nothing biologically fixed or invariable about such distributions of opportunities,
they can be reconfigured in a manner that will enhance associated living.5
The range of offices that exist within a social group are not limited to those that had
prototypes in biological functioning. Offices and the rights and obligations bound up with
them can arise in a variety of ways. In advanced social groups, they may arise as a conse-
quence of legal regulations authoritatively enforced. But they may equally emerge with
the development of customary expectations among group participants which are only
loosely enforced by subtle signs of approval and disapproval or by habitual demands
that are more systematically enforced by social pressures. In discussing the relevant
issues Dewey considers how habitual compliance of group members with group require-
ments is achieved:
The exactness of meaning ‘responsibility’ carries in relatively advanced social groups in which
enforcement of authoritative legal regulations [is practiced] has given sharp definition to the
meaning it did not have in earlier stages of culture. What we have primarily to think of is the
fact that, in even the most primitive social group, there are demands of a habitual [kind] made
upon human beings which they are expected to carry; that short of demands there are cus-
tomary expectations that, in certain types of situations, certain kinds of actions will be
engaged in and that fulfilment of these expectations is attended with commendation and
other signs of approval … while non-fulfilment calls out coldness, frowns, disesteem, if not
overt imposition of penalty. These types of response have only to become customary to
be recognized as obligations, and their performance to be a duty. The time comes with
growth in social complexity and increased range of intelligent behaviour when folkways
are not the whole of morals; when expectation comes to include what is called ‘inward dis-
position’, because, on its distinctively reasonable aspect, it is recognized that an habitual atti-
tude is the surest guarantee there is for habitual compliance with group requirements and
loyalty to group customs which make for social well-being. It is in and because of interplay
among expectations, demands, fulfilments and evasions, with accompanying praise and
blame, reward and penalty, approval and disapproval, that modes of behaviour take on
acknowledged social importance and become representative of social values; that is, of activi-
ties which are taken by the group to be important for group welfare and perpetuation.
Human beings as the bearers of these representative functions, or offices, come into posses-
sion of the properties that describe a personal being. (Dewey 2012, 190)
Dewey is sensitive to the distinction between the office and the office holder and
acknowledges that any occupant may fulfil the function associated with the office
more or less adequately. He also recognizes that disputes of entitlement can arise. In
cases where it is socially accepted that certain credentials need to be in place prior to
anyone entering an office then questions about whether the required credentials are in
fact in place and/or whether they were appropriately conferred can arise and where
they do will require resolution. He writes:
A representative exhibition may be more or less adequate or perfect, as in the case of lawyer,
diplomat, and actor. We say they are or are not true, faithful, to their function. They may mis-
represent. Moreover, in the case of a delegate, a diplomat credentials are demanded and
offered. The question of claim and right enters in. When an appearance is taken as a manifes-
tation and organised whole is presupposed. The whole is known and the special place and
role of the part is taken for granted. Suppose however a doubt arises as to whether the
thing appearing is entitled to act on behalf of another; a claim is involved which must be
investigated before ‘manifestation’ may be predicated. Representative capacity instead of
being assumed presents a problem, an inquiry to be undertaken. Yet we must not confuse
the nature of the problem. We may assert that it is false that a man is an agent or represen-
tative of those whom he pretends to appear on behalf of. This does not mean the ‘appear-
ance’ is false or unreal, but that the objective relations required to confer upon it the role
which is claimed are lacking. Are the delegates credentials in order? What is the nature of
the body by whom he was chosen. (Dewey 1984a, 59)
While interested in the credentials necessary to occupy an office in a legitimate fashion

within a particular group, Dewey emphasizes that once recognized as occupying an office
then the party concerned engages in distinctive patterns of interactions with others.
These interactions would not have been possible for the party who comes to occupy
the office had they not been installed in the office:
It is the consequences which follow when the claim to a certain office is legitimate and which
do not follow when it is not justified which make it necessary in case of doubt to ascertain the
rightness of the claim. In virtue of being an officer of the law a man has distinctive dealings
with other persons; he has effective connections with them which he does not have as a
human being apart from the representative capacity. (Dewey 1984a, 61)6
Dewey highlights how an office becomes operative via various traits of human beings
being harnessed and he warns of the dangers of conceiving an office as some disembo-
died function. He writes:
just as a sheriff can neither identify his office as sheriff with all his personal peculiarities, needs
and capacities, nor yet wholly sink the latter in his official capacity. He must distinguish within
himself characteristics which belong to him qua human being from characteristics belonging
to him as officer, and at the same time relate them to each other. Unless he does the latter, his
office becomes a purely disembodied function; it can become operative only through traits
which belong to him as a human being, his hands, legs, tongue and wits. (Dewey 1984a, 63)
For Dewey individuals behave differently depending on the kinds of integrated associ-
ations they become enrolled into. In elaborating on this point instead of the term office he
refers to roles and status. Given his extensive use of the term, it seems likely that Dewey
regards office as the generic term with it perhaps embracing role and status as special
cases. He argues that it is an error to reify associations or unions. He maintains that the
powers and traits possessed by members of a union are properties possessed in virtue
of the union and are irreducible to traits possessed independently of relations constitutive
of the union. He writes:
A single man when he is joined in marriage is different in that connection to what he was as
single or to what he is in some other union, as a member, say, of a club. He has new powers
298 S. PRATTEN
and immunities, new responsibilities. He can be contrasted with himself as he behaves in

other connections. He may be compared and contrasted with his wife in their distinctive
roles within the union. But as a member of the union he cannot be treated as antithetical
to the union in which he belongs. As a member of the union, his traits and acts are evidently
those which he possesses in virtue of it, while those of the integrated association are what
they are in virtue of his status in the union. The only reason we fail to see this, or are confused
by the statement of it, is because we pass so easily from the man in one connection to the
man in some other connection, to the man not as husband but as business man, scientific
investigator, church member or citizen, in which connections his acts and their consequences
are obviously different to those due to union in wedlock. (Dewey 1984c, 353–354)
Dewey in considering the case of the corporation restates his worries about the
common tendency, as he sees it, to reify structured unities further exploring how this
manifests itself at the level of social ontology. Dewey is keen to emphasize that the cor-
poration as an integrated association only acts through its components. The individuals
who are parts of the corporation interact not with corporate behaviour as a collective
union but are faced with specific sets of rights and obligations and act on the basis of
these and thereby contribute as a legitimate member in this specific form of integrated
association:
Since the corporation can do things which its individual members, in their many relationships
outside of their connections in the corporation, cannot do, the problem is raised as to the
relation of the corporate collective union to that of individuals as such. It is forgotten that
as members of the corporation the individuals themselves are different, have different
characteristics, rights and duties, than they would possess if they were not its members
and different from those which they possess in other forms of conjoint behaviour. But
what the individuals may do legitimately as members of the corporation in their respective
corporate roles, the corporation does and vice versa … An individual cannot be opposed
to the association of which he is an integral part nor can the association be set against its
integral members. (Dewey 1984c, 354)
For Dewey then human beings are not inevitably or intrinsically persons but rather
become persons by occupying an office. Human beings are constituted as persons only
in certain social conditions and specifically where they become enmeshed in configur-
ations of social relations involving particular rights and obligations. He also acknowledges
that there are a multitude of offices with specific sets of paired rights and obligations
associated with them and that offices and the social relations they involve can arise as
a consequence of various processes. In considering how offices emerge he is interested
in how habitual compliance with group requirements is accomplished. According to
Dewey social groups or unions do what they do only ever through their members
acting. He maintains that the occupied office cannot be reduced to the individual that
comes to occupy the office treated in isolation. Dewey recognizes that performance in
an office can be variable and is interested in the credentials that a potential office
holder may be required to have before being considered legitimate.
There are notable correspondences between these features of Dewey’s social ontology
and central themes in the theory of social positioning. Moreover, the systematic treatment
of the relevant themes within social positioning theory helps clarify points Dewey some-
times makes only in passing and without detailed elaboration.
For Dewey members of a group are constituted by individuals acquiring offices. As a
member of the group, the individual comes to possess or bear the representative function
associated with the relevant office. Where the functions associated with offices are
fulfilled this is achieved not in any kind of disembodied fashion but through the traits
of the individuals who come to occupy the offices being harnessed. Within social position-
ing theory, relational components of social totalities are formed as individuals are allo-
cated to positions. Social positions, sometimes by design more commonly otherwise,
orient occupants qua positioned occupants enabling them to contribute to the overall
characteristic workings of the community. The capacities brought to the positions by
occupants are harnessed in ways that contribute to the working of the community.
Within social positioning theory, a clear distinction is drawn between the component
of the system and instances of the component or more concretely between the position
and the position occupant. Each community component – each position – possesses a
function and each component instance comes to possess or bear the function associated
with the relevant component/position.7 Dewey’s emphasis on wholes acting
through their parts is echoed in the emphasis within social positioning theory on
social totalities operating as they do through the performances of their respective
components.
According to Dewey the offices individuals occupy arise only once relevant rights and
duties are established. Within social positioning theory, the social positions people come
to occupy are correspondingly constituted in terms of specific packages of rights and obli-
gations. Each right (and obligation) in any such package is matched to at least one obli-
gation (right) of a typically distinct package constitutive of a different position. Such
matched right/obligation pairs are, on this view, social relations of particular importance
and represent a form of ‘power over’ relation. Corresponding to Dewey’s emphasis on
individuals coming to occupy offices and thereby being enabled to engage in distinctive
patterns of interaction, social positioning theory sees individuals as accessing positions
that enable them to act in certain ways or push/ oblige them to act in others. The rela-
tional nature of the community components formed through social positioning means
they cannot be reduced to the individuals that come to be relationally organized in
forming the components. In understanding the sort of interactions those installed in pos-
itions can engage in relations cannot be ignored or set aside. Each component or position
is substantially more than the individual human being relationally organized to form the
component instance. In line with Dewey’s observation that as a member of a social union
the members traits and acts are those he or she possesses in virtue of the union, according
to social positioning theory the relational aspects of components are community proper-
ties irreducible to the intrinsic capacities of the individuals related.
Dewey sees person as an office that certain individuals come to occupy. He acknowl-
edges that historically it is an office that has been inaccessible to many. Within social posi-
tioning theory, a distinction is drawn between person positions and object positions with
person positions understood as those where the installed parties have direct access to the
relevant rights and obligations. Object positions are those constituted in terms of sets of
rights and obligations linked to person positions stipulating the recognized, allowed,
required and prohibited uses of the installed items. Matching Dewey’s emphasis on the
historical contingency of who is eligible to enter the office of person social positioning
theory recognizes that over time numerous communities have denied access to the pos-
ition of legal person to some including those identified as slaves, women and those with
various perceived disabilities etc.8
300 S. PRATTEN
Just as Dewey argues that there is no single route through which offices are estab-
lished, from the perspective of social positioning theory positions and the social relations
associated with them can emerge through a variety of processes. It is acknowledged
within the theory that many positions and constituting social relations are informal and
emergent through practice with obligations taking the form of implicit norms. It is at
the same time recognized that others result from authoritative declarations and are for-
mally expressed. For Dewey exploring the routes through which offices become estab-
lished involves an examination of the ways in which habitual compliance with group
requirements is achieved. Within social positioning theory, particular emphasis is
placed on how collective acceptance grounds community social constitution. As noted
above a particular understanding of acceptance is deployed here. The focus is upon com-
munity participants and their preparedness to go along with the phenomena being con-
stituted, and in that sense endorse them, if sometimes only provisionally. There is no
suggestion that acceptance in this sense implies participant agreement, liking or any
kind of positive orientation. Indeed, it is recognized that community participant accep-
tance may be offered in a grudging, resigned or even despairing manner.9 Equally it is
understood that the social relations involved in constituting social phenomena are
likely to be grasped in highly partial, always situated, often superficial, mostly tacit and
always fallible ways (see Lawson 2021, 9).
According to Dewey the extent to which an occupant of an office fulfils the function
associated with that office can vary – it can he suggests be more or less adequate or
perfect. Within social positioning theory, care is taken to distinguish between issues of
constitution – that ultimately are organizational in nature – and matters related to the
level of performance a contingent occupant of a position achieves. It is through position
occupancy alone that a component is constituted. Once it is widely accepted within the
relevant community that an individual has been installed in a position they are, in a broad
sense, legally constituted as a component (see Lawson 2021, 21). When attention is upon
the level of component performance or the degree to which a component instance fulfils
the function it bears then the capacities of the position occupant become especially
relevant.
Dewey recognizes that coming to legitimately occupy an office may often be a complex
and contested affair. Access may be possible only if certain ratified credentials can be sup-
plied, disputes may arise that require resolution and access blocked to many. Social posi-
tioning theory emphasizes that individuals are never able to simply, unilaterally, choose a
position and then enter it at their own discretion. A process of position allocation or con-
ferment is involved where, in each case, a candidate will need to overcome various
obstacles sometimes including the need for certain formal requirements of entry.
5. Social positioning, objects and offices

For Dewey, it is not only human beings that occupy offices. He deploys the term office in
an expansive fashion, seeing things other than human beings as capable, in certain cir-
cumstances, of serving an office. He writes: ‘When things seen, heard, touched, smelled
and tasted are observed, noted, heeded, they are treated as serving a specific function
or office. The office in question is that serving an end in view, or purpose which is enter-
tained’ (Dewey 1989, 322).10
Just as with the case of the sheriff, where (as seen above) Dewey argues it is important
to distinguish between the traits and characteristics that belong to the individual qua
human being from those possessed as office holder, in the case of objects a corresponding
distinction needs to be ‘set up within the appearing object between itself in its primary
qualities and itself in its signifying office’ (Dewey 1984a, 63). In seeking to illustrate the dis-
tinction he turns to components of modern monetary systems – ‘in our monetary system a
bullion value is reduced existentially to a piece of paper while the paper at the same time
gains value as a token of indebtedness’ (Dewey 1984a, 64). While Dewey does not develop
a detailed conception of money, the kinds of distinctions that he draws in elaborating his
social ontology allows him, when he refers to money as an example, to avoid treating the
items that come to form money as if identical with the money once formed: ‘Now gold,
silver and instrumentalities of credit are first of all, prior to being money, physical things
with their own immediate and final qualities. But as money, they are substitutes, represen-
tations and surrogates, which embody relationships’ (Dewey 1981, 137).
Dewey emphasizes that some items, including human beings, as bearers of rights and
duties act differently to what would be the case had they not come to bear such rights
and duties. With some things that come to be incorporated into integrated associations
featuring rights and duties their interactions are directly impacted whereas the behaviour
of certain other items, while having social impacts, are not as directly impacted by being
so located – that is they continue to act as they would have done in the absence of rights
and duties. He writes:
the right-and-duty bearing unit, or subject signifies whatever has consequences of a specified
kind. The reason that molecules or trees are not juridical ‘subjects’ is then clear; they do not
display the specified consequences. The definition of a legal subject is thus a legitimate, and
quite conceivably a practically important matter. But it is a matter of analysis of facts, not of
search for an inhering essence. The facts in question are whatever specific consequences flow
from being right and duty bearing units … The consequences must be social in character,
and they must be such social consequences as are controlled and modified by being the
bearer of rights and obligations, privileges and immunities. Molecules and trees certainly
have social consequences; but these consequences are what they are irrespective of their
having rights and duties. Molecules and trees would continue to behave exactly as they
do whether or not rights and duties were ascribed to them; their consequences would be
what they are anyway. But there are some things, bodies singular and corporate which
clearly act differently, and produce different consequences depending upon whether or
not they possess rights and duties, and according to what specific rights they possess and
what obligations are placed upon them. (Dewey 1984d, 29)
It is illuminating to consider Dewey’s recognition that things too can come to occupy
offices alongside his discussion of the relation between material and nonmaterial con-
stituents of the social realm. When it comes to understanding the relation between the
material and the nonmaterial Dewey argues that connection is as important as distinction.
For Dewey accepted meanings are constitutive of social objects. Were the relevant
accepted meanings to be absent the objects would not exist. He argues that this
feature of social objects is clearer in certain cases than others. For example, he suggests
that dependence upon accepted meanings is apparent in the case of recognized places of
religious worship or works of fine art. However, he maintains that accepted meanings are
equally constitutive of more commonplace social objects including chairs, spades and
houses. He writes:
302 S. PRATTEN
What, it will be asked in effect, do you mean to say that when we see a chair, a spade, a house,
and recognize it for what it is, we do not know at once that it is material? Or that when we
enter into a religious service, see or hear of a noble deed, or entertain an idea, we do not
know as directly that the object is ideal, spiritual, or at least ideational? These questions
bring out by way of contrast exactly the point that is intended. Chair, spade, or house are
meanings as well as physical things. And this statement means more than that the words
have meaning. It signifies that the things called by these names have meanings and that if
we eliminate or exclude the meanings, the things in question are no longer spades, chairs
or houses. If we substitute things like the flag of our own country, a crucifix, or a
memento of a dearly loved friend, for the commonplace chair or spade and a temple, say
Westminster in London or St. Peter’s in Rome for house, it is probable that the meaning
which is intended will stand out more clearly. In fact, if any work of fine art, genuinely appreci-
ated as such, is substituted for the prosaic things first mentioned, it should be seen that the
position taken is at least not self-evidently absurd. For if the object is a work of fine art and is
appreciated as such, matter and meaning are so completely interfused that it will be seen, if
the case is surveyed without a dominating influence from preconceived theory, that they are
distinguished only in reflection – which, as reflection, is always an ex post facto affair. (Dewey
2012, 294–5)
For Dewey, these public or accepted meanings are not just ‘in our heads’ or exclusively
representations. As Levine (2019, 218) explains Dewey sees such meanings as ‘embodied
in the world-directed habits that underlie the context in which we act’.
Alongside this emphasis upon shared public meanings being constitutive of even com-
monplace social objects Dewey also argues that any suggested nonmaterial constituents
of the social realm only ever exist in their material incarnations:
For when the identity of social in its human sense and bearing with the cultural is admitted, it
has also to be admitted that material aspects of culture (the artifacts of the anthropologist)
exist and act only in connection with that which is non-material; only in connection with
knowledge, valuations and communication of meanings, while it is equally true that the
latter exist in a social sense only through the instrumentality of a more or less complex equip-
ment of material agencies … the material and non-material are so fused or interpenetrated in
culture that the subject matters in question represent only distinctions in inquiry and dis-
course, not separations in existence. (Dewey 2012, 294)
With regard objects, Dewey is interested in exploring processes of social constitution

and reconstitution. Dewey examines how transformations in accepted or public meanings
can bring new agencies into existence. He writes:
It was not simply states of consciousness or ideas inside the heads of men that were
altered when America was actually discovered; the modification was one in the public
meaning of the world in which men publicly act. To cut off this meaning from the
world is to leave us in a situation where it makes no difference what change takes
place in the world … Changing the meaning of the world effected an existential
change. The map of the world is something more than a piece of linen hung on the
wall. A new world does not appear without profound transformation in the old one; a dis-
covered America was a factor interacting with Europe and Asia to produce consequences
previously impossible. A potential object of further exploration and discoveries not existed
in Europe itself; a source of gold; an opportunity for adventure; an outlet for crowded and
depressed populations, an abode for exiles … In short an agency of new events and
fruitions, at home as well as abroad. In some degree, every genuine discovery creates
some such transformation of both the meanings and the existences of nature. (Dewey
1981, 125)
According to Dewey, an alteration in the map of the world involves other objective
changes and serves to reconstruct the world. Such an alteration reconfigures the exist-
ences constitutive of nature because, through new and distinctive patterns of interaction,
the world ‘thereby gains new potencies, new capacities’ (Dewey 1983, 206).
Dewey then says that not only individuals but also things can come to occupy offices.
In acknowledging this he highlights the distinction between the item in its primary qual-
ities and when it occupies an office. He considers how certain items, including human
beings, act differently when incorporated into associations that feature rights and obli-
gations while the behaviour of other items remains unaffected. He explains how shared
public meanings are constitutive of even commonplace social objects and notes that non-
material constituents exist in their material incarnations. He also explores how transform-
ations in public meanings reconfigure and augment the existences of nature. Similar
themes, albeit differently expressed, are evident in social positioning theory too.
Just as Dewey acknowledges that things can come to occupy offices, social positioning
theory similarly emphasizes that it is not only human beings that occupy social positions.
Things can come to occupy object positions and thereby be formed into instances of
components of social communities. As with the positions that individuals occupy,
rights and obligations are central to the constitution of the positions things come to
occupy. However, with regard such positions the relevant rights and obligations do not
directly enable and or push the position occupant to act in certain ways. Within social
positioning theory, it is argued that individuals by coming to occupy a person position
thereby gain access to the rights and obligations that constitute those positions. It is
by accessing the relevant rights and obligations that the positioned individuals are
enabled to act in certain ways and constrained to act in others. In contrast, with
respect to the positions things occupy, it is their uses that are subject to the rights and
obligations of positioned human individuals in the relevant community. The positions
things occupy are constituted by the set of rights and obligations that bear on the use
of the items, qua positioned object, allocated to it. In order to understand the treatment
of the positions things occupy within the theory of social positioning, it is necessary to
appreciate how they are linked to the positions individual human beings occupy. The
object positions things occupy are characterized in terms of sets of rights and obligations
which feature in the packages of rights and obligations associated with the positions indi-
viduals come to occupy and relate to the uses of the community components formed
from items occupying the relevant positions (see Lawson 2021).
Dewey highlights, when considering social objects, the importance of distinguishing
between the object itself ‘in its primary qualities’ and ‘itself in its signifying office’. This
mirrors his emphasis on distinguishing between the traits of the individual as a human
being and those that arise as a consequence of an individual acquiring an office. Social
positioning theory takes particular care to emphasize similar distinctions, in fact, sees
the drawing of such distinctions as central to its contributions. According to social posi-
tioning theory, the relational nature of the community components formed through the
social positioning of things implies that they (as components) are never reducible to the
things that become relationally organized in forming the components. Social positioning
theory is a powerful resource assisting the social theorist avoid the error of collapsing the
distinction between an item x and a system component formed by positioning x as part of
a broader totality.
304 S. PRATTEN
While Dewey only ever points to money as a passing example, social positioning theory
has been deployed to develop a distinctive account of the nature of money (see Lawson
2016b, 2019b; Pratten 2020). This account of money helpfully serves, in the current
context, to illustrate the point that a positioned x is never reducible to the x positioned.
On this account, money is a relational component embedded within the community
system of value accounting. From this perspective, it is important to distinguish
between a money position and a money formed out of an occupant of the position.
Money is formed through the creation of a money position, constituted in terms of a
specific package of rights and obligations that bear on how the system component
formed out of any occupant of the money position, namely the money component or
money, is used by members of the relevant community. Specifically, the rights and obli-
gations involved stipulate that within the relevant community all debtors holding any of
this money have the right to use it to cancel their debts, and all creditors offered an appro-
priate amount of money to cancel debts are obliged to accept it (or at least are so if no
prior special agreement had been entered into specifying an alternative form of
payment). From this perspective, many of the problems encountered in generating a
coherent account of the nature of money stem precisely from a tendency among monet-
ary theorists to try and locate money’s essential properties in the money things them-
selves considered apart from their being organized as community components.
Dewey argues that material aspects of culture – chairs, spades and houses – exist only
in connection with that which is nonmaterial in that it is shared public meanings that are
constitutive of such commonplace objects. He also maintains that nonmaterial constitu-
ents of the social realm can only ever be observed in their material incarnations. Within
social positioning theory, the functionings of non-human objects positioned directly as
instances of community components are controlled by rights and obligations allocated
differentially to members of the relevant community. It is social relations that are the
dominant determining feature of the components constituted. The use of such commu-
nity components is down to community participant agreement. Social positioning theory
acknowledges at a general level that social reality, while able to causally act back upon,
only ever emerges from and remains existentially dependent upon the non-social realm.
More specifically with regard processes of social positioning, it is recognized that these
must bottom out in materials available that have themselves not been formed through
such processes (see Lawson 2021, 17).
Dewey argues that social reconstitution is bound up with changes in the relational
properties things and individuals come to acquire within integrated associations.
Within social positioning theory, all human interaction is understood as being undertaken
within communities and organized through community relational structures. Thus, all
forms of social reconstruction imply transformation at the level of social relations and
the positions things and individuals can come to occupy.
6. Concluding remarks
Social positioning theory elaborates on the constitution of social objects and explores
how human beings and their conditioning social structures interrelate and does so in a
manner that is consistent with critical realism. It offers a useful perspective from which
to explore aspects of the contributions of the classical American pragmatists.11 While
Dewey’s social ontology has been subject to substantial re-evaluation in recent years his
emphasis upon individuals and things coming to occupy offices has not received much
comment, nor has its significance and implications been considered in detail. Yet this
emphasis on offices coming to be occupied is an important aspect of the way Dewey
at times sets out his account of the social realm. The substance and significance of
Dewey’s emphasis on offices in his social ontology can be appreciated more fully by con-
sidering it alongside central themes in social positioning theory. As documented above
there are numerous similarities in how offices and positions feature in the accounts of
social reality set out respectively by Dewey and in social positioning theory. The two
approaches also identify corresponding ontological errors generated by the failure to
recognize positions or offices and draw related required distinctions. Dewey’s discussion
of offices anticipates some of the insights that social positioning theory has recently sys-
tematised to an extent that suggests he was engaged in developing a somewhat similar
sort of theory.
Notes
1. One contribution that does focus directly upon (and highlights the importance of) Dewey’s
discussion of offices is Rucker (1980), where substantial reference is made to Dewey’s, at
the time, unpublished manuscript – ‘Things and Persons’. This was subsequently published
as part of Dewey (2012) and I too extensively refer to this important piece in the discussion
below. For discussion of how the category of office informs Dewey’s political philosophy see
Pedersen (2020).
2. Slade-Caffarel (2020) clarifies the central significance of organisation to the social ontology
Lawson defends when outlining social positioning theory. For a detailed comparison of
Lawson’s treatment of organisation and Dewey’s deployment of related categories, see
Pratten (2019). For further discussion of Dewey’s broad ontological commitments, see Alex-
ander (2020).
3. For critical discussion of Dewey’s account of community see Singer (1985). Pratten (2013)
compares the way those developing social positioning theory deploy the term community
with its use by contemporary writers inspired by classical pragmatism.
4. Dewey in emphasising how the existence of persons presupposes a form of group association
in which jural relations have been established seems to deploy a broad understanding of the
law. Elsewhere, Dewey argues that there are two main functions of law: ‘first people are
granted a number of rights by law; and second, law imposes upon people a number of obli-
gations’. According to Dewey in this broad sense ‘the law prescribes the scope or range of
behaviour – the things a person may do, those he must do, and those he must not do’
(Dewey 1973, 148).
5. For discussion of Dewey’s account of social domination in patriarchal societies see Testa
(2017c).
6. At times Dewey expresses this same idea deploying the term position rather than office: ‘In
the concrete, that end which possesses claim to regulate desire is the one which grows
out of the social position or function of the agent, out of a course of action to which he is
committed by a regular socially established connection between himself and others. The
man who has assumed the position of a husband and a parent has by that very fact
entered upon a line of action, something continuous, running far into the future; something
so fundamental that it modifies and pervades his other activities, requiring them to be coor-
dinated or re-arranged from its point of view. The same thing holds of course, of the calling of
a doctor, a lawyer, a merchant, a banker, a judge, or other officer of the State. Each social
calling implies a continuous, regular mode of action, binding together into a whole a multi-
tude of acts occurring at different times, and giving rise to definite expectations and demands
306 S. PRATTEN
on the part of others. Every relationship in life is, as it were, a tacit or expressed contract with
others committing one, by the simple fact that he occupies that relationship to a correspond-
ing mode of action. Everyone willy-nilly, occupies a social position’ (Dewey 1978, 311–2).
7. In the most recent and systematic articulation of social positioning theory (Lawson 2021) the
term function is linked to community components rather than social totalities that are instead
seen as having characteristic ways of working. Dewey’s seemingly broader use of the term
function may not map directly onto this specific deployment.
8. Equally it is recognised that parties other than individual human beings – including business
communities – can be installed in the legal person position. For discussion of how social posi-
tioning theory can be deployed to develop an account of the complex processes of multiple
social positioning associated with the constitution of the modern corporation see Lawson
(2019a, chapters 3 and 4) and Lawson (2016a). For some initial discussion of how the
human organism is distinguished from the human person within the social positioning frame-
work see Lawson (2019a, 245–6).
9. Slade-Caffarel (2022) in arguing that those advancing social positioning theory by consist-
ently recognising a practical dimension effectively differentiate their account of social
reality from that advanced by Searle, explores in some detail the respective deployment of
the term acceptance. The way Slade-Caffarel differentiates between social positioning
theory and Searle has interesting connections to Testa’s (2017a) comparative assessment
of Dewey’s and Searle’s social ontologies.
10. At times the term office seems central to Dewey’s account of how things other than human
beings become incorporated in social totalities, in later writings the terminology of trans-
actions is deployed to review the same set of issues. Dewey and Bentley referring to a com-
mercial trade as an example write: ‘This transaction determines one participant to be a buyer
and the other to be a seller. No one exists as buyer or seller save in and because of a trans-
action in which each is engaged. Nor is that all: specific things become goods or commodities
because they are engaged in the transaction. There is no commercial transaction without
things which only are goods, utilities, commodities, in and because of a transaction. More-
over, because of the exchange or transfer, both parties (the idiomatic name for participants)
undergo change; and the goods undergo at the very least a change of locus by which they
gain and lose certain connective relations or “capacities” previously possessed’ (Dewey and
Bentley 1989, 242).
11. Dewey’s contributions are especially wide ranging. A more comprehensive comparison of
Dewey and social positioning theory would consider differences (e.g. the place of habit in
the two accounts) and their converging understanding of emancipatory change. Beyond
Dewey, who has been the focus in this contribution, Baggio (2020) carefully draws out com-
plementarities between aspects of the work of George Herbert Mead and relevant features of
the theory of social positioning.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Tony Lawson, Yannick Slade-Caffarel and two anonymous referees for very
helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Stephen Pratten is a Professor of Economics and Philosophy at King’s College London.
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Social positioning theory and Dewey’s ontology of persons,

2. Social positioning theory

Human beings as they come to be positioned as instances of community components

The forming of assemblies by way of distinctive patterns, modes or types of association

Dewey’s opposition to ontological reductionism is manifest as he articulates what he

Certain underlying commitments informing the theory of social positioning corre-

4. Social positioning, persons and oﬃces

While interested in the credentials necessary to occupy an oﬃce in a legitimate fashion

and immunities, new responsibilities. He can be contrasted with himself as he behaves in

5. Social positioning, objects and oﬃces

With regard objects, Dewey is interested in exploring processes of social constitution

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