Interacción y Perspectiva. Revista de Trabajo Social Vol. 13 N
o
1 / enero-junio, 2023
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One of the fundamental social theories concerning this process is the assemblage
theory by the contemporary American philosopher Manuel DeLanda (2006). The basic
concepts of this theory, i.e. assemblage, multiplicity, and complexity, express the
essence of not only the changes occurring in society but also the process of a person
becoming a subject of their own life, reaching their optimal assemblage.
The notion of subject is polysemantic and has the universality of denoting the holistic
characteristic of subjectivity (which includes self-movement, autonomy, referring to
oneself, and reflection) as applied to humans, the collective human world and its
subsystems, etc. The assemblage of a subject and the assemblage of society are
mutually determined, interrelated, and conditioned. The process of a person’s
assemblage as the subject of their own life, activity, cognition, transformation, etc. in
the process of socialization is integrated into the assemblage of a subject-society, which
is formed by individual and group subjects. Marcel Mauss (1996) and later Pierre
Bourdieu (1998) by introducing and grounding the concept of habitus in sociology
essentially labeled the concentrated result of the assembly of the individual subject of
social action in the likeness of the social structures that influence this process.
In the broad sense, the habitus of personality includes any learning and habits
acquired and inherited in childhood. In a narrow sense, in Bourdieu’s interpretation, it is
a person's sense of their own place in society, which enables them to choose or discard
the opportunities open to them based on an understanding of what they can and cannot
claim in life. This sense determines the level of a person's pretensions to a place under
the sun and largely results from the influence of the subculture in which the personality
has been formed (economic, class, professional). Habitus is a certain model of the
integrated result of the influence of society and personality development, which
synthesizes the structure of the mind, the acquired cognitive constructs, dispositions,
attitudes, meanings, ways of life, and everything that encapsulates the human
experience gained in communication, interaction with people, social communities, and
social institutions.
“The individual draws the social world into itself; it, like the world, is constructed
through the dispositions of the consciousnesses of individuals, serving as nodes
for the growth of social structures, and its structure of consciousness is
isomorphic to the structural conditions of the world in which it emerges”
(Kniazeva, 2010: 86).
The assemblage of subjects occurs in a self-organizing society by means of their
synergistic interactions in the forming social groups, which gives these groups clear
advantages over other formal communities in the economic, political, or geopolitical
spheres. These advantages of highly synergistic groups of the proper assemblage are
accomplished primarily by their ability to reduce aggression and increase cooperation.
Secondly, these groups are less centralized and have significantly more internal
variability and diversity. Thirdly, they have a higher level of trust, collectivism, and a
sense of responsibility for the whole, which makes the collective mind and collective
intellect more productive.