Politics of Schism: Routinization and Social Control in the International Socialists/Socialist Workers' Party

摘要

The received wisdom of social science holds that voluntary organizations founded on egalitarian principles, can only survive by undergoing transformation into hierarchical systems. The underlying logic of Weber, Michels and Toennies' descriptions is that social organizations sustain themselves over time by generating increasingly complex systems of rules that become sources of inequality. This article argues that routinization in voluntary groups does not consist of a gradual accumulation of rules that promote internal inequality. Instead, two analytically distinct steps are proposed: (1) construction of a distinctive organizational boundary, which is a necessary condition for (2) the ultimate imposition of a complex organizational hierarchy. The case used to illustrate this argument is drawn from the history of the British Trotskyist movement prior to 1978. The argument itself is framed within a formal model of the sociology of knowledge called grid/group analysis. (ERA citation 10:033070)