Transactionalism

This article draws on the “transactional view” developed by John Dewey and Arthur Bentley in order to help us understand the images that circulate within our electronic networks beyond the representational figure appearing on the surface of our screens. To grasp their dynamics, one needs to take into account the multiple layers they are made of, from the materiality of electronic flows, through the strata of machine languages, the transfer protocols and the design of their interface. The image we identify and isolate in its representational features is a lure that obfuscates the multiple implications of the transactions that generate it. Taking stock of these transactions is a precondition to debunk some of the illusions carried by the images.

During the past two decades, there has been a significant growth of sociological studies into the ‘body pedagogics’ of cultural transmission, reproduction and change. Rejecting the tendency to over-valorise cognitive information, these investigations have explored the importance of corporeal capacities, habits and techniques in the processes associated with belonging to specific ‘ways of life’. Focused on practical issues associated with ‘knowing how’ to operate within specific cultures, however, body pedagogic analyses have been less effective at accounting for the incarnation of cultural values. Addressing this limitation, with reference to the radically diverse norms involved historically and contemporarily in ‘vélo worlds’, I develop Dewey’s pragmatist transactionalism by arguing that the social, material and intellectual processes involved in learning physical techniques inevitably entail a concurrent entanglement with, and development of, values.

The paper analyses Evans-Pritchard's writing on the Nuer. He took a very definite and extreme position on how to understand Nuer lineage and territorial relationships. An alternative interpretation, based in transactionalism, also presents some problems. The two theories or models can explain and facilitate understanding of different levels of reality.
The paper aims to: (1) trace the development of theory over time, and (2) emphasize that kinship among Nuer, as an example of a tribal society, are basic to social organization, as well as to social structure and function.

From a legal perspective, regional integration is defined as a process of creating and enhancing authority which exercises prescriptive and enforcement jurisdiction in pursuance of community objectives at a regional level. It is sometimes called super-partes or supranational organisation that maintains neutral power to ensure the implementation of the community’s policies and objectives according to the theories of functionalism and/or neo-functionalism. The most advanced model of a supranational organisation, the European Union, has achieved this level of development with mechanisms related to the exercise of power in a vertical or top-down direction. While a vertical mechanism would also be of benefit for the regional integration of the ASEAN Community, the adoption of such a mechanism is currently onerous due to certain obstacles, which include some common values and a lack of effective institutions. Since these are basic issues of concern for ASEAN integration, they will be re-examined in this research.

Despite the said obstacles, the ASEAN Community struggles to find ways to pursue its objectives, as delineated in the ASEAN Charter, by adopting a horizontal mechanism that could enhance regional integration. This alternative means can be illustrated by the existence and functionality of the ASEAN’s particular organs called infra-partes, which are comparable to the super-partes authority, as supported by, inter alia, the theories of transactionalism and autopoiesis. These organs include the public and non-public sectors within Member States, which  exercise a functional role in the form of sub-communities to pursue specific tasks. Some of them have been specifically established as institutions; for example, the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) and the ASEANAPOL and ASEAN University Network (AUN). However, the role of those that have not been established as institutions will be further examined in this research. 

Compared to other advanced regional blocs, such as the European Union, the MERCOSUR, and the Eastern African Community, the infra-partes organs in the ASEAN Community often compete with, and prevail over, regional and inter-governmental authority, since their operation is supported by the ASEAN common values, as evidenced in its legal and non-legal instruments, in conjunction with the practices of the relevant organs of the Member States, which endorsed the operating networks of the infra-partes organs with the assumption that this would strengthen future regional integration. The functionality of these networks has been described by non-legal doctrines, which are often discussed in sociological and political science, but it has been overlooked in law treatises. The connecting points between non-legal and legal issues need to be translated from non-legal to legal aspects for an analysis and proposal for specific legal institutions of the ASEAN Community, and this will be emphasised in this research.

In doing so, the legal fundamentals of the infra-partes organs will be ascertained, including, but not limited to, the legal mechanism of these organs to enhance integration, the law governing their activities, their role in generating and crystallising legal norms, the restrained power of member states in exercising jurisdiction over their decisions, etc. Their weaknesses will be examined and proposals made for the further contribution of these organs to the ASEAN integration.

Territorial transitions are uncertain phenomena which must be oriented through the definition of new settling forms. But how can architects design for inhabitants whose identity is uncertain as well?
The experience of the Netherlands facing both the investment programmes of the welfare state and the reforms of the neoliberal turn is exemplary with this respect. In particular, the Dutch case demonstrates how territorial transitions require architects to disregard any logic of recognition between preordained building and user types and rather consider this relation as a transaction, i.e. a process of reciprocal determination between concrete environments and subjects based on a series of situated operations the latter perform with respect to the former. Even more, an initial operation of estrangement was sometimes adopted to let subjects suspend their assumptions and establish new dwelling practices on the basis of an original inquiry.
The objective of the thesis is to define a methodology which allows architects to consider the process of transaction in both the analysis of existing buildings and the design of new projects. To this end, the research draws upon pragmatist semiotics and applies it to the analysis of Dutch case studies in order to abstract a series of transactive building types which can help us manage the territorial transitions of the near future.