Analysis of Amin and Graham's (1997) The Ordinary City

As the centrality of cities to the world economy has become reasserted in the discourse on globalization, the world-scale flows, advanced telecommunications, and transportation networks only contribute to the dynamics where cities assume key positions in the design, management, and creativity functions that put urban centers into the structures of economic exchange, institutional policy-making, and individual and collective action (Amin and Graham 1997: 411). Cities have been attracting increasing amount of attention (Jencks 1996) from social scientists and policy makers adopting structuralist and post-structuralist approaches as urban crises and regeneration strategies have become addressed by national research programmes, international organizations, and interdisciplinary conferences oriented at the metropolitan dynamics (Amin and Graham 1997: 411). However, the emergence of the urban studies has not been connected to a central theory of contemporary cities, of their multiple structures, and of their changing functions as a number of economic, social, and cultural transitions occur that demand conceptual means to group cities into clusters with shared urban trends that integrate such elements as cultural, associational, political, and economic systems into the structure of collective action (Munch 1982: 94) that via media of institutional integration (Munch 1982: 617) would allow to determine the factors of urban regeneration or decline (Amin and Graham 1997: 411-412).

Despite the multiplication of global flows cities possess assets that contribute to reflexivity and facilitation of urban regeneration, to diversification of economic, social and cultural institutions, and to collective action oriented at implementation of entrepreneurial projects ranging from urban policy to social justice (Amin and Graham 1997: 412). While the spread of telecommunications in the 1960s gave rise to the expectations of eventual demise of cities no longer exclusively offering proximity (Boden and Molotch 1994) needed for connecting economic, social, and cultural systems into integrated structure, the spatial basis for structural functional integration was expected to be replaced with the communications infrastructure (Toffler 1980) making possible the dispersal of activities across space where the distinction among residential, industrial, and managerial districts would eventually blur (Amin and Graham 1997: 412; Pascal 1987: 602). As electronic networks increasingly mediate interpersonal communication the average size of cities was expected to fall since both personal and collective integration into the structure of modernity was decoupled from the constraints of space (Naisbitt and Aburdene 1991: 329) given the urban development trends predicted transition from cities to global villages (McLuhan 1964) as the place-based determinants of action became replaced by the communications-based flows (Amin and Graham 1997: 412; Virilio 1987: 18).

The processes of urban restructuring such as deindustrialization, inner-city unemployment, and urban crises have been mapped and measured by urban economics, geography, and planning (Martin and Rowthorn 1986; McKay and Cox 1979) that have contributed to urban policy making albeit not reaching interdisciplinary conclusions about the underlying causes, structures, or implications of the post-Fordist transformation (Amin and Graham 1997: 412). The growing relevance of urban space, policy, and economy to the understanding of representation and symbolization (Westwood and Williams 1996), identity politics (Keith and Pile 1993), collective memory (Boyer 1994), and consumption (Ellin 1995) has led to overcoming (Collins 1995; Shields 1992) the deterministic theorization of the urban dynamics (Sorkin 1992; Virilio 1987) in favor of conceiving of cities as sites of systemic interpenetration involving visual media (Robins 1996), situated individuals (Pile 1996), and social struggles (Zukin 1995) into reciprocally implicative relations (Amin and Graham 1997: 412-413). As the pressure for economic competitiveness under the conditions of flexible specialization (Amin 1994; Scott 1988) has reasserted the centrality of social networks to the post-Fordist economy, the importance of face-to-face interaction has reinforced the role of cities as nodal points in the geography of global flows (Amin and Graham 1997: 413; Thrift and Olds 1996: 314-314).

The growing urbanization of the world, regeneration of formerly industrial cities, and globally increasing proportion of urban population (Parkinson 1994) have spurred the reinterpretations of cities as structures of opportunity going beyond narrow definitions of the economic system (Amin Graham 1997: 413; Jencks 1996). The theoretical attention to cities has mainly stressed their centrality to the national economic development at the same time as increasing prominence of urban milieux in tapping economic potential of cultural, educational, and research institutions has started to redefine the conceptualization of the structure of relations in which cities participate (Amin and Graham 1997: 413). Consequently, metropolitan centers are affirmed in the importance that their location in the global structure of relations of command and control, financial operations, industrial production, corporate governance, business services, cultural institutions, international organizations, governmental agencies, and infrastructural development has in maintaining the asset base critical for urban, national, and regional competitiveness (Amin and Graham 1997: 413; Castells 1989; Freedman 1995; Parkinson 1997: 7; Sassen 1991, 1994).

In contrast to the territorial dispersal of the operation of the transnational corporations (TNCs) their headquarters have become concentrated in few urban centers where multiple inter-personal, inter-organizational, inter-urban, inter-national, and inter-regional networks converge (Fitzpatrick 1997: 9) explaining thereby the global prominence of London, New York, and Tokyo (Sassen 1991, 1994) that have risen in their urban hierarchies due to the polarizing influence of the spatial decentralization (Amin and Graham 1997: 413; Graham 1997). The post-Fordist reliance on the networks of "[t]rust, reciprocity, reflexivity, and minimization of risk" (Amin and Graham 1997: 414) steeply increases the centrality of global cities to the processes of management of the structures of both positive and negative opportunities (Mitchelson and Wheeler 1994: 88). Liberalized regulation of financial, industrial, labor, and consumption markets has made possible to apply economies of scale to management of investments, risks, services, infrastructures, and assets from global cities having positional advantage of offering high level of systemic interpenetration that distinguishes global economic institutions standing in relations of cumulative causation with each other (Amin and Graham 1997: 414).

International financial centers concentrate organizational, service, and communication infrastructures that bring macro environments of reflexive workforce, organization culture, and global management (Thrift 1994) into relations of positive feedback that amplify both the influence of networks into which global cities are embedded and the share of global flows that enter into relations of exchange, translation, and coordination (Thrift 1996b) that the struggles over the access to which via personal networks, up-to-date interpretations, and real-time information play out in such global cities as London (Amin and Graham 1997: 414). The transition to post-Fordist economic relations has also changed the perception that cities represent liability absorbing public spending on urban problems as the post-Fordist logic of accumulation has shifted its base from industrial production towards cities as media of investment, development, and accumulation (Amin and Graham 1997: 414; Jacobs 1984; Sclar 1992). Correspondingly, the post-Fordist policy-making groups involved in urban development have changed the frame of their discourse from that of regulation of industry to that of regulation of investment as cities are increasingly seen as conglomerates of labor force, profit opportunities, capital funds, circulating goods, service clusters, and organizational networks (Amin and Graham 1997: 414; Cisneros 1993: 21).

The global city becomes integrated into post-Fordist capitalist accumulation not via economic instrumentalization of the industrial system and relations but via mobilization of the capital that physical, social, and financial infrastructures can yield as investment, development, and speculation bases (Amin and Graham 1997: 414; Cisneros 1993: 21). Since the post-Fordist model of capitalism has formed in response to the profitability decreases caused by research and development costs, flexible specialization, and volatile demand, the valorization of cities as sites of agglomeration economies can be considered as part of the collective enterpreneurial strategy of cost minimization as knowledge, serivices, and information are sourced from the dense urban networks nurtured by a variety of institutional relations among the economic, societal, associational, and political systems (Knight 1995; Knight and Gappert 1989; Munch 1982: 94; Ryser 1994) that within the urban structure of their relations increase competitiveness, creativity, and connectivity of collective actors (Amin and Graham 1997: 414-415; Lash and Urry 1994). The reflexive accumulation of the post-Fordist capitalism envolves the structure of collective action in its entirety (Munch 1982) in that the institutional processes of interpenetration among its systems becomes the primary process compensating for the decline of industrial capitalism in early industrial countries by the structural functional integration among corporate, media, arts, educational, scientific, and municipal institutions (Amin and Graham 1997: 415; Knight 1995: 259).

The transition to post-Fordism in the 1980s has shifted the flexibly organized industrial production to few metropolitan areas where smaller firms form clusters of innovation, knowledge, and specialization environments (Scott 1988; Storper 1996) dependent on global transportation and communication networks that reduce economic risk and transaction costs by selecting from widely diverse information, labor, and supply-chain sources (Amin and Thrift 1992) the accelerated accumulation and circulation of which increasingly depends on the existence of spatial entrepreneurial agglomerations (Amin and Graham 1997: 415; Malmberg and Maskell 1996). The policy and planning discourse on urban renewal (Bianchini et al. 1988; Montgomery 1995) reasserts the importance of creative cities (Landry and Bianchini 1995) where urban culture, media, entertainment, sport, and education undergo institutional interpenetration of their respective social systems that meet the crises of post-Fordiasm with the strategies of experience society (Schulze 1991) organized around the practices of cultural consumption and production, information and communication networks, and night-time economies (Amin and Graham 1997: 415; Gritffith 1995; Lash and Urry 1994).

The deregulated dynamics of post-Fordism enlists the repudiation of the modernist city planning (Jacobs 1961) in favor of density, diversity, stimulation, and interaction (Montgomery 1995: 102) that promote shared spaces, public realms, mixed-use landscapes, and intercultural activities called to remedy the urban alienation, decay, polarization, and privatization (Bianchini and Schwengel 1991; Worpole 1992) that beset the cities that failing to be recognized as sites of systemic interpenetration (Munch 1991) reinforce the feedback cycle of disorganized capitalism via aesthetic critique of its effects (Amin and Graham 1997: 415-416). That the urban assets have drawn theoretical, political, and economic attention in the global context of the transition to post-Fordism that promises revitalization of the cities most affected by the decline of Fordism cannot but perpetuate the crises of the post-industrial capitalism that has inherited urban infrastructures only partially adaptible to the imperatives of the flexible accumulation (Amin and Graham 1997: 416) that overly focuses on advanced management, services, design, culture, and finance whose constitutive networks have to be seen in systemic perspective to allow comprehensive analytical approach to the urban change (Thrift and Olds 1996: 312).

The analysis of urban change that does not define its constitutive social systems, their systemic interrelationships, and the variation in the structure of the systems and their relations can hardly conceptualize the differences in how various cities respond to transformations in service industries, information infrastructures, locational policies, flows architectures, and finance instrumentalization (Amin and Graham 1997: 416; Storper 1995: 28). The methodological tendencies to overgeneralize from case studies and to overemphasize the relevance of ethnographic conclusions (Thrift 1996a) have to be controlled by a theoretical framework connecting "particular spaces, senses of time and partial representations" (Amin and Graham 1997: 416) into variable urban structures. The reasons for prominence of cities vis-a-vis global flows can only be formulated with the help of the theoretical reconstruction of the structure of global and local relations into which they are built in (Munch 1982, 1984, 1986) so that urban environments have to be approached as paradigmatic examples of their diverse interrelationships (Munch 1991) that allow only analytical rather than ethnographic reconstruction (Amin and Graham 1997: 416) of post-modern urban change (Soja 1989), global network centrality (Knox and Taylor 1995), national economic motors (Storper 1995), and creative cities (Griffiths 1995).

Since different cities can occupy dissimilar positions in the structures of inter-urban relations, the changes to urban assets, the appropriate policy recommendations, and the leading economic sectors (Amin and Graham 1997: 417) invariably have to be identified in accordance with structural and functional fit with the cities enjoying regional and global centrality, with the requirements of the translocal relations of specialization, and with networks where urban particularities can offer technological, institutional, or cultural advantage. While the methodological dangers of overgeneralization have been widely discussed in relation to research of cities (Amin and Graham 1997: 417; Jencks 1996: 26; Thrift 1996b; Shields 1995: 245), the city cannot be reconstructed in either descriptive or comparative terms as long as it is approached as an agglomeration of spaces, temporalities, and representations lacking in overarching structure, stable interrelationships, or systemic impact on action (Demattes 1988; Healey et al. 1995). The frame of reference of the ethnographic research of cities has to change from sampling of single paradigmatic sites to a multi-sited institutional ethnography which would combine the theoretical framework making possible conception of systems, interrelationships, and action structurally integrated with each other (Munch 1982; 1986) with the institutional ethnography (Smith 2005) following the methodology of the multi-sited anthropology (Marcus 1994) in, for instance, connecting global financial centers, technological and organizational innovation, and social and cultural institutions into a translocal structure of urban relations (Amin and Graham 1997: 417).

From the perspective of such a multi-sited institutional ethnography it becomes possible not only to derive the national variations (Munch 1984) of the structure of modernity (Munch 1986) but also the urban structures (Munch 1991: 232-244) of relations, systems, and entrepreneurial groups that form the spatially, historically, and relationally specific structure of interpenetration of the social systems that constitutively affect the collective action as its macro environments responsive to the structural functional differentiation according to their own scale as sites of strategic centrality, interrelated diversity, or mobile interconnection (Amin and Graham 1997: 417; Shilds 1995). Similar to how aesthetic critique of capitalism reinforces its deregulation, the post-structural critique of cities (Shields 1995: 245) adds to the "dominance of partial interpretations" (Amin and Graham 1997: 417) of the urban multiplicity precisely because of its stress on its methodological and theoretical instability that combined with the complexity of globalizing networks (Dematteis 1988) hardly makes the reconstruction of the structures of urban relations possible. The social systems composing the structure of modernity (Munch 1982, 1986) represent within the system of action an integration of its latent structures, adaptive closure of its strategies, and oriented selection of goals that reduce the urban multiplicity of individual and collective actions to a dynamic structure of systemic interpenetration where the economic (Engels 1985), societal (Amin and Graham 1997: 418), associational (LeGates and Stout 1996), and political (Mumford 1937) systems reflexively arise (Munch 1982: 94).

The contradictions of modernity (Munch 1991) find their parallels in the urban life (Amin and Graham 1997: 418; Davis 1990; Sennett 1970; Wilson 1991) as individualism irreconsilably implies both the freedom of anonymity and the subjection to anomie (Munch 1991: 31-32), as universalism irreconsilably results in both unhindered transparency and dinimished involvement (Munch 1991: 32-34), as rationalism irreconsilably produces both spectacular wealth and abject poverty (Munch 1991: 29-30), and as instrumental activism irreconsilably leads both to declining compassion and to expanding solidarity (Munch 1991: 34-37). Correspondingly, the systemic structure of urban relations (Amin and Graham 1997: 418) can be cast as an interpenetration of the social systems of economic, cultural, solidarity, and political accumulation that via respective investment of money, speech, reputation, and power give rise to a structure of dynamic, interwoven, and contingent relations (Munch 1991: 371). By the same token as the lengthening of the interdependence chains cannot explain systemic interpenetration (Munch 1982: 473), an unqualified assertion of the spatial properties of cities as the wellsrping of their special place in the structure of social, economic, cultural, and political relations (Adams 1995: 279; Amin and Graham 1997: 418; Boden and Molotch 1994: 259; Thrift 1996b) cannot explain the historical, technological, social, legal, or economic dynamics of modernization on either urban or global scale (Munch 1982).

The embedding of the city-based structure of relations into the global structure of modernity assumes growing importance in the urban theorization and policy making (Amin and Graham 1997: 418) as the circuits of financial, cultural, and economic exchange have developed from the systemic differentiation between the local and the global scale towards the structural functional integration of disembedded communication networks, trans-local social relations, global business cycles, technically mediated cultures, and communicationally displaced cities (Adams 1995; Giddens 1990). The process of systemic interpenetration has been largely neglected in the discourse on growing participation of cities in the global, regional, and national economies for the reason of which the reorganization of individual and collective action on existing and evolving spatial scales has escaped its theoretical attention that is yet to conceptualize urban creativity, innovation, and economy in terms of functional differentiation and systemic integration (Amin and Graham 1997: 418-419). With the international interpenetration of economies, cultures, and societies on the rise, cities provide increasingly more adequate analytical entry-points into the dynamics of interrelationships among urban clusters of innovation, specialization, and creativity that raise the importance of place-embedded factors emphasizing personal experience, reciprocity, and trust (Amin and Graham 1997: 419).

Likewise, the relations among dense urban nodes fall into the pattern of structural functional integration with each other within the same city and trans-locally as enclaves of creativity, innovation, and learning connect across disembedded areas to "inner-city industrial districts, cultural complexes or central business districts" (Amin and Graham 1997: 419) so that the pattern of their interrelationships resembles a network connecting a multiplicity of differentiated units (Wilson 1995) that amplify urban dynamics of global adaptability precisely via cross-currents of influences tying vast variety of needs, functions, and cimpatibilities together. As the relations of interpenetration among the social systems become increasingly more important for understanding the urban dynamics than any single social domain in isolation, the heterogeneity of rationalities, spatialities, identities, and temporalities becomes critically important catalyst of economic vitality, cultural novelty, urban governance, and institutional innovation (Amin and Graham 1997: 419). The systemic interpenetration as a process unfolding in space and time receives independent theoretical support from the analyses of heterogeneous urban integration of multiple processes undergoing real-time differentiation (Harvey 1996: 259-264) within the dynamic relational structures (Amin and Graham 1997: 419) that generate interdependent geographies of time and space (Thrift 1996a: 2; Thrift et al. 1978).

The actor-network theories (Callon 1986, 1991; Latour 1993) extend the micro corrective of the structural functionalism (Colomy and Roades 1994) to the embedding of configurations of technical artifacts (Bingham 1996; Hinchcliffe 1996) into structures of collective and individual action that rather than stressing the expanded possibilities of new technological environments (Negroponte 1995) draw attention to the relational, contingent, performative, and structural effects of agents' participation in the systemic interpenetration as social ordering (Amin and Graham 1997: 420; Bingham 1996: 647; Thrift 1996a) in the context of struggles, macro environments, and opportunities where diverse individual and collective concerns are at stake (Thrift 1996b). That the systemic interpenetration creates urban macro environments for the structurally entreprenerial strategies of "heterogenerous social groups, filieres of firms, governance agencies" (Amin and Graham 1997: 420) demands analyses of cities as sites where complex macro-micro connections put into relational perspective processes, networks, actors, things, and spaces entering into configurations of simultaneous integration and differentiation (Thirft 1996b: 1485).

Within the urban structure of systemic interpenetration the individual and collective agency assumes forms that reflect the processes constitutive of social groups, actor-networks, and time-spaces as entities reflexively participating in the reproduction of social structures on global, regional, urban, and individual scales (Amin and Graham 1997: 420; Dear 1995; Graham and Marvin 1996) that produce both highly concentrated environments of electronic securities traders (Thrift 1995) and disconnected areas outside of communications networks (Graham and Aurigi 1997). Under the influence of the momentum of the systemic interpenetration (Judge et al. 1995) the institutuional structures of cities change from hierarchical architectures to interrelated networks (Stoker 1995) that contribute to the institional differentiation creating specifically urban forms of interpenetration of public, private, non-governmental, and hybrid forms of governance (Amin and Graham 1997: 420) exhibiting greater degree of adaptability, complexity, and connectivity (Amin and Hausner 1997; Healey 1995; Mayer 1995). The research of interrelationships among the systems of economic, cultural, solidarity, and political accumulation (Munch 1991: 371) goes beyond partial perpectives and case studies generalizations towards preserving the urban complexity via systemic exploration of the dimensions of its diversity, contingency, interdependence, and structure that inform the analysis of urban dynamics, urban policy and planning, urban competitiveness, cultural institutions, and collective projects (Amin and Graham 1997: 420-421).

Across the economic, cultural, solidarity, and political systems the contingency of action stemming from hierarchies and conflicts and symbolic complexity stemming from heterogeneities and particularities (Munch 1991: 370) are reduced by the uniting force of the institutionally entrepreneurial projects that provide basis for social intergation, collective identity, and shared belonging (Amin and Graham 1997: 421). From the perspective of the systemic interpenetration of the social structure (Munch 1991: 371), the focus of the post-Fordist urban policy on the stimulation of consumption (Ritzer 1999; Zukin 1995) via promotion of spectacular architecture, cultural events, and commercial theme-parks (Gottdiener 1997) neglects the dependence of the structure of modernity on the solidarity accumulation by means of mobilization of cultural values and ideas, of economic legitimacy, and of political cooperation that cannot be based on spatial exclusion (Amin and Graham 1997: 421), social ghettoization (Wilson 1995: 158), and narrow coalitions (Judge et al. 1995). Though urban spaces have historically been integrated into the practices of "socio-spatial segregation, social control and surveillance" (Amin and Graham 1997: 421), in the structure of modernity the rational discourse on the universality of human and citizen rights affects the normative regulation of the economic exchange and the legal regulation of the social relations (Munch 1991: 367) so that urban spaces cannot be vehicles for social, racial, or gender discrimination (Boyer 1995: 82, 105, 1996; Gottdeiner 1997: 134) without corresponding deficiences of the citizenship institutions.

Critique of the rational discourse (Beauregard 1996) alone cannot account for the processes of differentiation, rationalization, and interpenetration (Munch 1991: 367) that tie liberal, cultural, social, and political rights into the structure of their institutionalization (Lovering 1995: 119) that dependent on its historical, contextual, and spatial configuration can succeed or fail to lead to urban renewal and creativity. The utilitarian interpretation of the interpenetration of the social systems conceptually privileges the marketplaces of connectivity, power, money, and culture accomulation as the respective wellsprings of solidarity, polity, economy, and creativity (Amin and Graham 1997: 422; Zukin 1995: 42) that are supposed to evolve not within the social structure of the interrelationships among the respective institutional systems (Munch 1991: 370) but as a spontaneous result of the free exchange across public spaces (Zukin 1995: 260). Since the structure of action envelops the social institutions while not being restricted to them (Amin and Graham 1997: 422; Munch 1991: 369) the interaction between individuals and social systems cannot guide urban analyses, policy, and planning in isolation from the independently occurring dynamics between cultural institutions and social structure and between individual and collective strategies and the city as agglomeration of macro institutional environments for action.

From the perspective of the micro corrective to the structural functionalism (Colomy and Roades 1994) the urban innovation and creativity have to be conceptualized as institutional entrepreneurial projects that go beyond the evolutionary, economic, or organizational innovation in the form of post-Fordist networks based on reflexive rule-making, milieux of trust and reciprocity, and epistemic community-building (Amin and Graham 1997: 422) towards further differentiation of the social structure of cities rather than social homogeneity, cultural intermingling, and pleasurable consumption (Amin and Graham 1997: 422). However, the contradictions of modernity bring the pluralization of association, the universalization of moral norms, and the rule of law (Munch 1991: 367) to bear upon the citizen, urban, and, economic rights with the effect of rising "tolerance for difference, diffuse citizeship and hybrid shared spaces" (Amin and Graham 1997: 422) that binds rational capitalism, discourse, citizenry, and authority into the dynamics of interpenetration between capital mobility, discursive inflation, disciplinary state, and governance crises. Consequently, cities as macro environments for action have to stress not only the economic and solidarity accumulation via temporary and flexible employment, family and community networks, informal and industrial services, third sector employment, environmental recuperation projects, community and social assistance services, and community banks turning urban centers into hubs of productivity growth, nonmonetary exchange, skills development, and organizational innovation (Amin and Graham 1997: 423; Thrift 1996a), but also interrelated social, governmental, economic, technological, and cultural policy-making (Munch 1991: 370).

The differentiation of the cultural accumulation occurs through investment of discourse into diverse cultural goods and services, mobilization of power, and reputation building (Munch 1991: 371) that within the urban social structure contributes to its renewal, integration, and evolution in the possible direction of inclusive, hybrid, and creol (Hall 1995) development of society, economy, politics, and culture. However, the system of interrelations among the economic, cultural, solidarity, and political accumulation processes includes among its factors the legitimation of economic activity, collective action, and political agency (Munch 1991: 371) that constrain the potential for differentiation that the urban, national, and regional social structures can have (Amin and Graham 1997: 423) as multiple countervailing influences mutually bind social systems into particular configurations exhibiting varying degress of propensity for tolerance, innovation, and growth. Not only does modern citizenry has its liberal, cultural, social, and political rights institutionalized (Wilson 1991) under the universalizing impact of the rational discourse, under the legalizing effect of rational exercize of power on urban communities, and under the pluralizing influence of rational capitalism on social association (Munch 1991: 367), but also the process of modernization as growing systemic interpenetration has to bring the rational capitalism mutually to bear both on discourse via situative adaptation of cultural ideas and rational calculation and on legal authority via accountability of action and profit taxation (Munch 1991: 368) should extremes of utilitarian exploitation, income inequality, racial, ethnic or gender discrimination, and life-chances differences be avoided (Amin and Graham 1997: 423).

Rather than a site of celebration of unmanaged diversity (Robins 1991), the city should be embedded into policies promoting social justice, community empowerment, and non-hierarchical urban planning that can rely on the institutional interpenetration between the legally regulated authority of the state and the rational discourse on civic democracy (Munch 1991: 368) jointly participating in self-determination and vocal representation of communities via formalized channels of communication on civic governance (Amin and Graham 1997: 423-424). The state concentrates power by making economic, policy, social and political decisions that respectively exchanges political goods, services, and returns with the economic system and cooperation and reputation building with the solidarity system that in return for welfare payments and community goods and services engages in economic cooperation and mobilization (Munch 1991: 371) thereby creating dynamics of system-mediated links among social justice, community-building, and empowerment (Amin and Graham 1997: 424) putting political limits on the policy effects that fiscal crises or neo-liberal state can have (Mingione 1996) while increasingly involving non-governmental organizations.

In the city, as a site of institutional interpenetration of the social systems, the dynamics of differentiation of social policy, association market, public discourse, and social coalition-building (Munch 1991: 370) alters the social structure of the spatial and temporal distribution of labor, of the geography of economic exchange, of the social boundaries of market involvement, of the media of social mobilization, and of the relationships among public, private, and voluntary organizations and regulatory frameworks (Amin 1996; Amin and Graham 1997: 424; European Commission 1995). The functional integration building upon the further structural differentiation of the social system involves a change in the structure of relations among the solidarity, political, and economic systems (Munch 1991: 370) as economic goals become intedependent with social justice, as urban associations interpenetrate with market economy and welfare state, as decision-making and authority equally engage political, economic, and social actors, as urban governance embeds state and economic institutions into public discourse, and as discursively negotiated authority replaces the politics of institutional hierarchy (Amin and Graham 1997: 424; Judge et al. 1995; Lauria 1997).

Under the influence of the institutional interpenetration, interactive governance (Amin and Graham 1997: 424), dialogic democracy (Beck 1997; Giddens 1994), communicative action (Arendt 1958, 1972; Habermas 1978, 1981) and interactive reasoning (Healey 1997; Lake 1994; Patomaki 1995) connect economic, cultural, association, and political systems into a relational structure of collective action bringing businesses, organizations, government agencies, and individuals into a decentered network where multiple rationalities, institutions, and actors mesh (Amin and Hausner 1997). The effect on urban policy-making of the institutional interpenetration consists in growing discursive complexity of the relations between political institutions and interest groups (Munch 1991: 370) that via networking, partnerships, and negotiations contribute to consensus-building, conflict resolution, and innovative solutions (Amin and Graham 1997: 425) while preserving the latent structues of transparency, empowerment, deliberation, and communication (Leedbeater and Mulgan 1994) that contribute to the civic participation in the urban governance by steering urban, social, public, arbitrage, and media policy (Graham and Marvin 1996; Hill 1994).

The insitutional interpenetration among political, economic, cultural, and association systems fosters the distribution of authority and reflexivity across governmental, business, and civic organizations that develop network-based relations of equal representation, limited power, and diffuse authority that facilitate inclusive public discourse, decision-making, associational networks, and empowerment practices (Amin and Graham 1997: 425; Cohen and Rogers 1992; Hirst 1994). The dynamics of relations among the economic, solidarity, and political systems produces the self-reinforcing causal links among economic reputation-building, political benefits, and social mobilization (Munch 1991: 371) that produce polarizing effects on the processes of accumulation of money, reputation, and power having reinforcing influence on the structure of urban relations among local interests, associative networks, and urban politics (Amin and Graham 1997: 425). The position of the cultural system in the urban structure of social relations responds to the imperatives of the cultural accumulation (Munch 1991: 371) via expanding investment with discourse of civic autonomy, contestatory politics, urban authority, and civic consensus (Healey and Vigar 1996) that accumulate social capital (Putnam 1993) by economic mobilization of communication, claim urban solidarity (Mann 1986) by social mobilization of communication, and pursue universal justice (Amin and Graham 1997: 426) by political mobilization of communication.

The process of modernization as institutional interpenetration countervails the tendency to maintain the differentiation between the rational authority, capitalism and discourse in the direction of relations of mutual interdependence between goal-oriented ethical choices and rational appropriation of nature, society, and culture (Munch 1991: 367-368) as a concomitant of social, economic, political, and cultural struggles for and against collective projects of equality, welfare, inclusion, sustainability, and urbanity (Amin and Graham 1997: 426; Escobar 1992: 426-427; Walker 1994). The global generalization of the structure of modernity has raised the level of complexity of institutional relations of the urban structures around the world beyond the grasp of models of urban decentralization, pluralism, and governance (Amin and Graham 1997: 426) towards the condition of differentiation, rationalization, and interpenetration that demands detailed mapping of the dynamics of mobilization, relations, and agency among diverse institutions, plural movements, representative groups, and formal organizations. Since the social structure of modernity is embedded into the structure of individual and collective action (Munch 1991: 369), its contextualization in particular cities has to employ the micro corrective of the structural functionalism (Colomy and Rhoades 1994) to account for how struggles among competing interest groups shape the economic, cultural, association, and political systems on the urban scale where claims for social justice, empowerment, and solidarity are made (Amin and Graham 1997: 426).

An institutional project promoting further differentiation of the social structure for the sake of solidarity, social justice, and social needs cannot abstain from the dynamics of rationalization and interpenetration as the institutionally entrepreneurial groups enter into binding interrelationships with the governmental institutions, intermediate organizations, and public discourses (Amin and Graham 1997: 426). An isolated approach to the conflicts occurring in the simultaneous and interdependent processes of political, economic, cultural, and social accumulation (Munch 1991: 371) can hardly address the political challenges of urban growth, the economic loss of city assets, the urban breakdown of civic culture, and communal powerlessness before social deregulation (Amin and Graham 1997: 427). Therefore, the interpenetration of the structures of investment of capital, discourse, reputation, and power ties the social, fiscal, economic, technological, and cultural policy-making into the waxing or waning fortunes of the urban markets of economic, social, political and cultural goods and services flowing across the social structure where circulation, distribution, and accumulation are just consequences of individual and collective actions (Munch 1991: 370-371).

Analysis of Schmidt's (2006) Multiple Modernities or Varieties of Modernity?

The growing conceptual attention to multiple modernities though insufficiently theorized and lacking in empirical support gives impetus to theoretical reconciliation between a single structure of modernity and the diversity of its local realizations within the conceptual framework of the varieties of modernity that similar to the institutional analysis of the varieties of capitalism allows for comparative application of the concept of the structure of modernity to comprehensive formulation of the institutional, systemic, and contextual variation (Schmidt 2006: 77). In the 1990s, the emergence of the concept of multiple modernities (Wittrock 2000) has marked a departure from homogenizing assumptions of modernization theory, from normative privileging of Western modernity, and from oversimplification of empirically divergent processes that made it imperative to theorize historical trajectories, sociocultural backrgounds, and distinctive modernities in terms of irreducible institutional multiplicity (Schmidt 2006: 77-78). However, the modernization theory (Huntington 1971) has of necessity developed amid diversity that via its meanings, its degrees, and its patterns has determined how persistent vis-a-vis instutional change, how compatible with local conditions, and how deeply entrenched in societies, cultures, and economies it ultimately is (Schmidt 2006: 78).

Failing to disprove the modernization theory, to offer its alternative defitions, and to defend its claims to validity the conceptualization of multiple modernities (Hefner 1998; Spohn 2003) does not participate in the theoretical discussion of modernity (Weber 1978) that, as opposed to narrow focus on culture and politics, addresses modern society in its totality, processes constitutive of its emergence, and systems participant in its structure (Schmidt 2006: 78). The theory of the structure of modernity (Munch 1984, 1986) responds to the main points of the conceptualization of multiple modernities while suggesting an approach that both addresses its substantive concerns and steers clear of its pitfalls. Modernity conceived of as multiplicity of cultural rather than institutional projects (Eisenstadt 2000a) anchors the associated with it transformations of "the industrial revolution, the urban revolution, the scientific revolution, the political revolution, the educational revolution" (Schmidt 2006: 79) in the rupture with pre-modern epistemic assumptions (Wittrock 2000). The European Enlightenment has laid basis for the modernity including as contingent social order political democracy, secular state, rule of law, individual rights, market economy, civil society, and intellectual freedoms into its structure (Schmidt 2006: 79).

Though modernization is primarily associated with the industrial revolution, ascendancy of bourgeoisie, and continuous development (Kumar 1999), its expansion from the West to the rest of the world is identified with the project of modernity (Bendix 1977: 410; Habermas 1988, 1994; Marx 1936: 13; Parsons 1964) in counterposition to which stands the multiple modernities perspective (Schmidt 2006: 79). The controversial consequences that modernization has in various societies (Giddens 1990) tend to be interpreted by modernization theorists as indicators of convergent development of modern societies whereas the multiple modernities proponents draw attention to how irreducible differences are undimished by modernity (Schmidt 2006: 79-80). The multiple modernities position ranges in its applicability from states to civilizations (Huntington 1996) where diverse social institutions do not allow uniform classification according to a single set of the analytical categories of modernization (Schmidt 2006: 80; Wittrock 2000). However, the validity of culture or religion as criteria of classification into separate modernities (Tabari 2003; Weiss 2003) does not have theoretical or empirical support in so far as the comparison of the structure of the respective modernitieis is concerned (Eisenstadt 2000b) as a consequence of which the structure of modernity tolerant to variations of its particular realizations (Luhmann 1998, 2002) can be more adequate framework for comparative conceptualization of institutional, historical, and structural differences (Schmidt 2006: 80-81).

To the extent that the transition to modernity has radically revolutionary social, economic, and cultural effects (Nisbet 1966) the existence of multiple modernities is irreconsilable with modernization as a process more defined by its ruptures rather than its continuities that, though dependent on the terms of inter-institutional, inter-state, or inter-regional comparison, define modernity as a relative not an absolute condition, as a singular not a multiple event, and as a variable not a constant phenomeon (Schmidt 2006: 81). Since the definition and the magnitude of differences out of which multiple modernities could be constructed are insufficient to invalidate the theorization of the structure of modernity the latter can successfully address its criticisms by accounting for existing differences as variation of the structure common to modern societies (Schmidt 2006: 81). An approach to modernity as a singular phenomenon permits to theoretically select the decisive differences upon which claims to variation can be empirically based. Elaborating upon the varieties of capitalism approach (Hall and Soskice 2001; Streeck and Yamamura 2001; Yamamura and Streeck 2003) the varieties of modernity emphasize shared, institutional, and temporal differences that encompass the structure of modernity (Weber 1984) rather than restrict themselves to any of its systems (Schmidt 2006: 81-82).

The varieties of capitalism put the differences pertaining to cases taken for comparative analysis into structures capturing the typological features pertaining to collective action and its environments to describe each of its ideal types (Schmidt 2006: 82) so that one can classify capitalism into liberal and coordinated or into market, managed, and state-capitalist (Schmidt 2002). Importantly, institutional configurations can serve to form groups of states belonging to the same ideal type of modernity the social systems of which providing indepedent criteria for classification by similarities among welfare states employing different social policy regimes (Esping-Anderson 1990; Jones 1993), influences of Western models of capitalism on Asian welfare states (Holliday 2000; Hort and Kuhnle 2000; McLaughlin 1993), typological distinctiveness of democratic regimes (Kaiser 1997), and different legal systems across national jurisdictions (Rohl 1997) embedded into the varieties of their respective structures of modernity (Schmidt 2006: 82-83). Such comparative analyses can only draw their precision from the "concrete form and functioning" (Schmidt 2006: 83) of the institutions composing the structure of modernity that characterizes different countries as its regional varieties, historical realizations, or common types.

In the case of institution of science, the uniform benchmarks used to evaluate its results, the competition in the publication market, and the universality of scientific principles ensure that the differences among countries or regions are marginal even though the structures of access to professional positions can produce variations dependent on the degree of the structural functional differntiation of the national social structures with the system of science of the United States being more open and that of Germany more closed (Schmidt 2001, 2006: 83). The institutionalized medicine (Lock 2002) likewise does not exhibit significant differerences among modern societies where their respective social structures contribute more to the inter-state differences than the multiple modernities per se (Chirot 2001) that have to be recognized as varieties of implementation of the structure of modernity in historically, socially, and culturally specific institutions (Schmidt 2006: 83-84). Since the modernization of the European Union countries has been unevenly paced across their social systems other regions are also likely to reproduce the structure of modernity while preserving their institutional differences even as value systems, social structures, and possibilities distributions gradually increase their alignment with regionally or globally prevalent practices, principles, and arrangements as democracy (O'Donnell 1993), women rights (Dreze and Sen 1995), and universal suffrage (Phillips 1999) institutionalization processes suggest (Schmidt 2006: 84).

The departure from the multiple modernities perspective allows to take cities and regions rather than nations and civilizations into the focus of theoretical attention that puts subnational economic, political and cultural differences into explanatory context drawing on the structure of modernity having local and urban variations (Heller 1999; Putnam 1993) that position northern Italy, Kerala state of India, city-state of Singapore, region of Taiwan, state of Luxemburg, and city of Berlin vis-a-vis the modernization as more advanced representatives of a wider process of structural functional differentiation (Schmidt 2006: 84-85). Without identifying convergence with homogenization, the process of modernization involves all of the social systems of the structure of modernity as a singular phenomenon (Inglehart 1995; Inglehart and Baker 2000) qualitatively different from the pre-industrial condition that under the influence of implementation of the modern institutions (Meyer et al. 1997) gives way to structural commonalities that despite their local histories exhibit comparable struture of systemic relations (Jepperson 2002; Tu 2000) that define modern societies of mass consumption (Schmidt and Lim 2004), institutionalized individualism (Beck 1986), and post-traditional development (Phillips 1993; Schmidt 2006: 85-86; Senghaas 1998).

The multiple modernities approach does not advance understanding of modernity beyond the historical development towards the modern condition while the modernization theories do not include into their conceptual purview the structural functional analysis of modernity (Schmidt 2006: 86). Over the course of modernization, the variations of the structure of modernity exhibit convergent institutional development towards prevalence of democracy, market economy, and capitalism (Rodrick 2000; Sachs 2000; Schmidt 2006: 86; Wilensky 1975). In the global structure of the international relations the competitive advantage of the early industrial countries has been replaced by that of the late industrial nations led by China (Firebaugh 2003; Qian 2003: 298) in restoring the centrality of the East and Pacific Asia to global capitalism integrated into the international structure of modernity that as the most commonly shared condition (UNDP 2003) imposes the dynamics of structural functional differentiation and increasing autonomy and interpenetration upon the social systems involved in the process of modernization (Bell 2000) that, for instance, in China strengthens legal-rational bureaucratic instiutions, promotes freedoms of thought and speech, bolsters autonomy of scientific, legal, and economic institutions, and provides legal basis for property rights (Schmidt 2006: 86-87).

The implications of the varieties of modernity thesis require further intergation into the theory of the structure of modernity (Munch 1982, 1984, 1986) as the most promising basis for comparative study of cities, nations, and regions. The transition to modernity being the most fundamental driver of social, economic, and cultural change has released the dynamics of interrelationships among the systems of the structure of modernity that has consistently outweighed the pre-modern differences in steering the course of development towards institutional convergence (Schmidt 2006: 87-88). The theorization of the structure of modernity (Munch 1986) provides the framework to conceptualize the varieties of modernity that can accomodate existing differences among cities, nations, and regions, explicate relations among the economic, political, societal, and associational systems, delineate the social structures of societies in their entirety, and account for differentiation, integration, and interpenetration of modern institutions (Luhmann 1997; Munch 1984; Schmidt 2006: 88). The comprehensive comparison of the structures of modernity may aid in forming clusters of cities, countries, and regions based on analytical criteria of examination that within the varieties of modernity perspective takes processes of structural differentiation, systemic interpenetration, and collective agency as its benchmarks for delimitation, classification, and assessment of institutions, systems, and structures.

The varieties of modernity being clusters of societies sharing patterns of institutional configurations and relations represent a reinterpretation of Weber's approach to capitalism have to be put into the context of the structure of modernity theorization (Munch 1982, 1984, 1986). Only by building upon interdisciplinary theoretical developments and attempting to establish conceptual connections among different schools of sociology can the varieties of modernity approach be applied to such subnational entities as cities that have to be seen as representatives of the structures of modernity dependent on the coherent institional patterns clustered into structures where their component systems enter into specific relations explanatory of the economy, culture, and society. The structures of modernity approach adequately addresses the issues raised by both the multiple modernities and varieties of modernity theories since it analytically distinguishes among such systems as cultural, economic, political, legal and the interrelationships among them at the same time as specifying the terms of structural integration that are used to posit systems and conditions of their autonomy and intepenetration (Munch 1982) going beyond either clustering or classification of institutional patterns (Schmidt 2006: 89). The empirical grounding of the application of the theoretical framework of the structure of modernity to cities has to be brought into communcation with urban theories, contemporarty conceptualizations of urban change, and emerging patterns of interpenetration between economy, culture, and other social systems.

Analysis of Arnason's (2001) Capitalism in Context

The recognition that discourse on capitalism is tantamount to the discourse on modernity based on determinist and reductivist premises has to lead to elaboration of systemic relations between economy, culture, and action that in historical perspective has to incorporate the contribitions of Weber, Sombart, Castoriadis, Boltanski, Chiapello, and Braudel for recontruction of the structure of modernity (Arnason 2001: 99). Rapid development of industrial capitalism in the last two centuries has been comparably described by Weber as the most decisive influence on modernity as it took its distinctively disruptive and transformative form, by Marx as the dynamic force behind the development of modernity, and by Durkheim as the process of division of labor unprecedentedly having both positive and negative social effects (Arnason 2001: 99-100). Global deregulation (Lash and Urry 1987), capitalist development (Marx 1848), and world system (Wallerstein 1995) provide highly visible examples of conflation of capitalism with modernity ascribing to the economic system increasingly pervasive social influence with the contradictions of the capitalist logic dictating the course of events around the world increasing thereby the reach of modernization (Arnason 2001: 100).

When identified with modernity (Baechler 1995), capitalism leaves to democracy the political role of institutionalization of utilitarian individualism finding its adequate reflection in the capitalist economic system that by virtue of its inherent efficiency rules out a post-capitalist transition while its development from the late medieval Europe via the modern transformation of the Western Europe towards its global expansion by the end of the twentieth century remains driven by the economic dynamics (Arnason 2001: 100-101). As an economic system, capitalism does not overlap the social system but constitutes only one among other systems that provide prolitical, societal, and association criteria for action also determined by cultural, strategic, and personality systems (Munch 1982: 94) so that the institutionalization of modernity does not change the structure of the action system but provides a uniquely different macro environment for individual and collective action (Baechler 1995). The approaches to modernity as a primarily economic phenomenon cannot but have affinity with Marx's theory of capitalism that providing common conceptual premises drew faultlines for political divisions and struggles (Arnason 2001: 102).

The specification of capitalism in terms of the structure of modernity has to account for the historical dynamics of the disruptions that context-insensitive analyses of capitalist development do not do justice to while avoiding excessive emphasis on the functional integration, adaptive upgrading, and cybernetic control of the modernization theory of Parsons, on the rational integration of contradictions between modernity and capitalism of the critical theory of Habermas, and on the reduction of modernity and capitalism to each other of the theories of modernization (Arnason 2001: 102). The concept of capitalism in classical and post-classical theory does not allow definitional reduction of it as a historical process to basic mechanisms of markets and property rights (Albert 1993) since as a historical phenomenon the understanding of which is open to debate and interpretation it has to be put into the context of contrasting approaches to its evolving theorization (Baechler and Wallerstein 1997). In parallel to the thesis of systemic interpenetration (Munch 1982: 94), Baechler's perspective constructs capitalism as an interrelationship among the systems of property rights, markets, utilitarian actions, and cultures that are oriented at maximization of economic growth (Baechler and Wallerstein 1997: 14).

By contrast, Wallerstein only needs "the permanent accumulation of capital" (Arnason 2001: 103) for his definition of capitalism that upon gaining unprecedented autonomy as an economic system has imposed its normative culture on all other systems constitutive of society and action (Baechler and Wallerstein 1997: 15) that within the relations of interpenetration can nevertheless change strategies of collective action in accordance with their own systemic logic as did the political systems of the former communist states. Even though particular social and action systems play a key role in the constitution of capitalism they do not do that alone but in concert with other systems that interpenetrate with each other via dynamic structure of their relationships rather than deterministically so that capital accumulation, technological progress, and economic growth are subject to "unpredictable patterns of change" (Arnason 2001: 104) while being part of capitalism as subsumption of human activity in the form of abstract wealth according to Marx ([1864] 1969). For the sociological analysis of capitalism to go beyond the narrow focus on capital accumulation or economic growth a more historical attention to the relations between economy and culture is needed since neither institutionalization of democracy (Baechler 1995) nor power struggles among ruling classes (Wallerstein 1995) sufficiently explain the rapidity or stages of the capitalist development (Arnason 2001: 104-105).

Likewise, the dynamics of interrelationships among the systems constitutive of modernity demands for its adequate understanding not their reduction to institutions but their definition as constellations of forces allowing for variation and change so that capitalism cannot be stablized within a single institutional configuration but has to be seen as a recursive process involving in its reproduction the structure of modernity as a whole that is as contingent, variable, and self-reflexive as individual and collective actors themselves (Arnason 2001: 105). The justification of capitalism by its economic rationality, as Castoriadis (1999) contends, appears more properly to belong to the structure of modernity organizing the action system (Munch 1982: 94) since in the process of differentiation and interpenetration the economic system maintains a complex and dynamic relationship with systems where discourse on, institutionalization of, and action governed by rationality become related to capitalist accumulation as elaborations on the neoclassical economic theory attest to (Arnason 2001: 106; Williamson 1985). Only the reformulation of capitalist accumulation as a process belonging to the structure of modernity where the economic system is embedded (Arnason 2001: 106-107) allows to avoid the extreme positions stating that either there is only a capitalist optimum point of economic equilibrium possible between rationality and development (Baechler 1995, 1: 91; 1995, 2: 160-166) or there is no equilibrium to achive because capitalism stands for unequal relations of social power mediated by struggles, institutions, and culture (Wallerstein 1995: 84).

From its earliest formulations, the concept of the spirit of capitalism corresponds to the defining configuration of the interpenetration between economy and culture that sets modernity apart from other historical macro environments for individual and collective action so that "orientation, justification and motivation" (Arnason 2001: 107) reinforce the capitalist economic growth within the structure of contraditions of modernity (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999: 41) as strategies, goals, and conditions of action become increasingly mediated by systems external to, autonomous from, and integrated with their participants (Arnason 2001: 108). The necessity of interpenetration between economy and culture finds its earliest reflection in the absolute, objective, and subjective determinants of action defined by Hegel as spirits that within the sociological context (Hintze 1987: 328) respectively consist in religious, philosophical, secular, and scientific discourses, in economic, social, and cultural institutions, and in motivations, values, and orientations (Arnason 2001: 108). Weber's thesis on the spirit of capitalism restrictively represents the interpenetration between economy and culture as an underdefined interconnection between the protestant ethic and traditional values while excluding their institutional context that only receives its credit for the captialist development as modern bureaucracy (Arnason 2001: 108-109) even though his later analyses of capitalism concentrate on historical and institutional preconditions of economic systems' differentiation (Collins 1986; Swedberg 1998) remaining to be developed into economic sociology of capitalism (Simmel [1900] 1978).

Centering on the psychological analysis of the interpenetration between economy and culture, Sombart's (1987) decription of entrepreneurial individuals that subject to enterprise-oriented goals drive economic growth to historically unprecedented social centrality combines utilitarian calculation with limitlessness of economic development lacking in normative culture to steer its direction (Arnason 2001: 109-110). Boltanski and Chiapello (1999) attempt to develop Weber's thesis within more abstract framework of economic institutions and cultural logic that in conjunction justify and legitimize the economic accumulation exhibiting regional and historical variation hardly accounted for by the concept of spirit of capitalism that as system of culture historically undergoing bourgeois, managerial, and network development has ambiguous relation to capitalism (Arnason 2001: 110). Boltanski and Chiapello extrapolate and abstract the political justification of capitalism from shared orders of worth (Boltanski and Thevenot 1999) that as structural relations among economy, politics, and culture played in early modern Europe (Hirschman 1977) the role of argumentation in favor of capitalism that under contemporary conditions corresponds to a project-oriented principle of legitimization representing a rupture with civic, market, or industrial regimes of justification (Arnason 2001: 110).

Since the spirit of capitalism implies causal relations between economy and culture, the critique of capitalism has accompanied the dynamics of economic development of modernity as its active participant via entrepreneurial strategies of collective actors, institutionalized contestation of its organizational foundations, and structural integration into its self-reflexive reproduction. In the dynamics of the spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999: 82) aesthetic and social critique have differential relation to the development of capitalism since aethetic criticism stressing disenchantment, inauthenticity, and oppression is concerned with impact of capitalist society on individuals while social criticism opposing misery, inequality, opportunism, and egoism is decrying the collective effects of capitalism (Arnason 2001: 111). Exhibiting close affinity to the anthropological critique of capitalism as ideology (Dumont 1979, 1983, 1991), Boltanski and Chiapello (1999) have primarily contributed to the ethnographic study of how contemporary capitalism integrated aesthetic critique, post-Fordism, and organizational innovation into its structure rather than to the theoretical discussion on variability of capitalist development, systemic relations between economy and culture, or institutional framework of economic analysis (Arnason 2001: 111-112).

While the interpenetration between economy and culture does not cease to be debated as the spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999), as the capitalist modernity (Marx 1848), and as social and historical contingency of economic development (Weber 1922), the contradictions of the structure of modernity (Castoriadis 1993; Munch 1992) go beyond Marx's theory of capitalism that depends on the growing role of rationality of its institutions in the theorization of which Marx's and Weber's contributions have to be systemically integrated to account for the institutions-driven economic, social, and cultural development encompassing both autonomy and interdependence as its goals (Arnason 2001: 112-113; Munch 1981). Since in the structure of modernity the economic system does not occupy a central position (Munch 1992: 94), the location of conflict, struggle, and critique in the theoretical discussion of modernity (Castoriadis 1999) is likewise determined by systematic analysis of the historical process of interpenetration of the economic system with other social and action systems that put rationality, autonomy, and variability of capitalism into reciprocal relation to the transformations in the structure of modernity (Arnason 2001: 113).

The defining impact of rationality on the modern interpenetration of economy and culture results from the historical process long preceding the chronology of modernity so that its structure has had variant realizations in much earlier historical periods as collective and individual action oriented at mastery and conquest became translated within the structure of modernity into domination of nature, rationalization of society, and maximization of economic growth harnessing other social systems to the imperatives of economic accumulation (Arnason 2001: 113-114). The interpenetration of economy and culture involves positive feedback between the social and the action systems as the political, societal, and cultural systems develop within the interdependent structure of modernity that via technological innovation, scientific knowledge, and capital investment puts rationality into historical context of economic accumulation that depends on mobilizing myths (Castoriadis 1999; Deutschmann 1997, 2001) as much as on the expanding rationalization (Arnason 2001: 114). The emergence of modernity is coterminous with the institutionalization of territorial states whose competing fiscal, administrative, and military development has connected capitalism with myths of absolutism (Henshall 1992), virtual state (Rosencrance 1999), and nation (Castoriadis 1999) whereby economic accumulation is joined with cultural frames as demarcation, regulation, and rationalization of national, modern, and capitalist spaces brings about a restructuring of individual and collective action (Arnason 2001: 114).

The dual movement of capitalist development towards both autonomy and interdependence took place amid social conflict, radical critique, political divisions (Castoriadis 1993, 1999: 75) that rather than driving capitalism and democracy to mutual negation have seen functional differentiationa and structural integration of the respective systems of action into a dynamic structure of related contradictions of economic, political, social, and cultural development (Arnason 2001: 115). Though Castoriadis recognizes capitalism, autonomy, and modernity as interrelated phenomena he nevertheless does not establish theoretically systematic relations among the structures, logics, and variants of modernity (Wagner 1994) that in his theoretical perspective being closely related to capitalism would allow an institutional alternative had criteria for specifying the social and historical meaning of an alternative modernity existed (Arnason 2001: 115). The permanent processes of growth of autonomy, rationality, and economy relies on their mutual interpenetration (Castoriadis 1999) that realizing itself in a variety of historical configurations is part of a stable structure of modernity mediating economy and culture as systems of action (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999) so that democratic politics, consumer choice, and individual autonomy are system-specific institutionalizations of the stage of economic development that makes them possible (Simmel 1990; Arnason 2001: 115-116).

The reproduction of capitalism within the structure of modernity encompasses the totality of its constitutive systems and interrelationships to integrate autonomy, authority, and rationality into dymanics of economic accumulation (Castoriadis 1993: 180) that transforms productive forces, financial capital, and commercial markets into continually expanding means for exercise of power, regulation, and mobilization (Arnason 2001: 116; Braudel 1979; Deutschmann 2001). That autonomy and interpenetration are organizing principles of the structure of modernity accounts for the political, social, and cultural contestation of capitalism as a side-effect of its development (Baechler 1995, 2: 268; Bauman 1992) since the unfettered process of inter-institutional communication makes proliferation of entrepreneurial collective projects across the structure of modernity into both consequence of and precondition for its further structural-functional differentiation (Arnason 2001: 116-117). The continued relevance of the analysis of the spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999; Castoriadis 1999) opens opportunity for application of the systematically elaborated modeling of the structure of modernity (Munch 1982, 1984, 1986) vis-a-vis its historical typology, changing configurations, and dynamic interrelationships bearing upon developmental trajectories and inter-systemic exchange that serve as macro environments for engagement of individual and collective action (Arnason 2001: 117).

In this perspective it is possible to interpret the theoretical discussion on the varieties of capitalism as part of a broader analysis of the structure of modernity (Arnason 2001: 118). In classical sociology, Weber (1968) has adumbrated the typology of capitalism, seen as gain-seeking, rationalizing, organizing, and commercial activity, that consists of six types covering economic instrumentalization of politics, war, trade, investment, industry, and finance (Weber [1922] 1976) the institutional implications of which for individual and collective action (Swedberg 1999) remain to be complemented with structural analysis of industrial and financial capitalist economies as particular institutional realizations of the structure of modernity where rationality is a salient feature of interpenetration between culture and economy (Arnason 2001: 118). Varieties of capitalism are mainly theorized based on contemporary regional and economic variation (Orru 1997) conceived of in terms of economic regimes, economic structures, capitalist institutions, functional integration, power structures, and institutional formations that are in need of micro correction of their privileging of structures at the expense of individual and collective agency (Arnason 2001: 118-119; Hall and Soskice 2001).

To capture the complexity of institutional patterns, historical backgrounds, and path-dependent developments a theoretical reconstruction of variants of the economic system such as national economies, macro-economic models (Coates 2000), regional configurations, and civilizational contexts (Eisenstadt 1996; Hamilton 1994) has to be conceptualized within the structure of modernity as much dependent on its constituent systems as the latter on their autonomous and interactive dynamics (Arnason 2001: 119-120). Consequently, the influence of the structure of modernity on the economic system obtains wihin the more general configuration of relations (Elias 1994) that involves the institutional development of the systems acting as factors giving rise to change in the structural relations both internal and external to the organization of economic institutions, social contexts, and state structures with effects contingent on relative position in the structure of modernity, in the process of its development, and in the emergent effects of inter-systemic interaction (Arnason 2001: 120). Given the interpenetration between economy and culture, the plurality of economic systems has to be theorized in the context of the corresponding variability of the structure of modernity that elaborates on Weber's rather than Marx's framework for the analysis of capitalism in comparative and historical perspective (Arnason 2001: 120; Braudel 1979; Frank 1978a, 1978b, 1998; Wallerstein 1982, 1989, 1995, 2004).

While the economic system has existed long before the rapid changes that institutionalization of the structure of modernity has introduced (Swedberg 1999: 9), the internal and interactive systemic changes that have defined the modern period have to be seen in the broad comparative perspective (Arnason 2001: 120-121). The structure of modernity as a macro environment for each of its systems also follows a long-term period of development (Braudel 1979, 3: 532) proceeding via the structural-functional differentiation towards autonomous interpenetration of its systems changing the structure of their relations rather than replacing each other over the course of their mutual development formally separable from its constitutive relations that in their modern configuration make autonomous individual and collective action possible (Braudel 1979, 2: 353) as much as its interpenetration with its systemic environments (Arnason 2001: 121; Braudel 1979, 2: 355). The institutionalization of the interpenetration of the economic system with other systems leads not only to coordination between their systemic logics but also to their conflicts as economic circulation, accumulation, and regulation forges strong systemic linkages with association, political, and societal systems (Braudel 1977: 111; Munch 1982: 94) that put purely economic action into macro environments obtaining from the larger structure of systemic relations where monopolies, state patronage, and global trade participate in already constituted economic worlds (Arnason 2001: 121-122; Braudel 1977: 62).

The dynamics of economic accumulation brings different economic systems into contact with each other developing forms of systemic interpenetration extending to their respective development of the structures of modernity that through overlapping, learning, and intergation transmit ideas, devices, and organizations, as did Islamic and European civilizations and economies, (Braudel 1979, 2: 495-499) which in the process of the growing complexity both of inter-systemic relations and of intra-systemic organization produced integrated differentiation of the instutions of modernity (Arnason 2001: 122; Braudel 1979, 2: 515). The analysis of the structure of modernity (Munch 1982, 1986) can be applied to its contemporary varieties especially given the salience of social changes associated with transition to modernity (Braudel 1979, 3: 540; Munch 1984) as compared to the economic, technological, or industrial developments (Braudel 1979, 2: 216) so that the dominance of the economic accumulation is largely owed to "social structures, political forces and cultural frameworks" (Arnason 2001: 123) putting the diverse configurations of durable inter-systemic relations into the context of comparative conceptualization of systemic coordination, differentiated networks, social institutions, communication infrastructures, entreprenerial strategies, and power accumulation in the environment of which the individual and collective action unfolds (Braudel 1977: 63).

The interpenetration of culture and economy has to be analyzed from the perspective of the strucutre of modernity (Munch 1986) within which the dynamics of transformation, instutionalization, and integration have taken place in the economic, social, and cultural systems (Braudel 1979; Castoriadis 1999; Sombart 1987; Weber [1922] 1976) that allow for multiple varieties of inter-systemic interpenetration definitive both of their respective historical development and of the emergent structures of modernity connecting them into contingent, evolving, and comparable patterns (Arnason 2001: 123-124).

Analysis of Boltanski and Chiapello's (2005) The New Spirit of Capitalism

Among the most remarkable economic changes taking place in France between the 1960s and 1990s are disappearance, erosion, and diminution of active social movements, involved trade unions, real wage increases, high market positioning, upward productivitiy trends, and rapport between labor and management. The period starting in 1990s witnesses minimal social movements, defensive and passive social unions, spreading precarious employment, growing income disparity, decreasing strikes and social conflicts, growing work discipline, and improvements in industrial production. Such wide-ranging transition in the economic relations taking place with unprecedented rapidity and without meeting with significant resistance has provoked ethnographic attempts (Boltanski and Chiapello [1999] 2005) to provide explanation of the underlying factors driving such historical change. Weber's sociology of capitalism has centered on the concept of the spirit of capitalism that promises to capture the dynamic economic changes of the second half of the twentieth century especially concerning the cultural implications of the transformation reflected in the economic discourse governing the corresponding practices.

The premise of multi-sited ethnography of managerial discourse is that the practices promoted by it have more influence on general economy than their direct field of application in around one fifth of leading and multinational companies usually applying best practices later adopted by other firms, governmental agencies, and other organizations (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 162). Denoting the interpenetration between culture and economy, the spirit of capitalism changes in correspondence with structural differentiation of the area of overlap between value system and economic system that has developed over last decades of the twenthieth century since the economic transformation of the period has not met with sustained value-based resistance that should have occurred in case value system had remained unaffected. The social dynamics encompassing capitalist economic organization, interpenetration of economy and culture, and value system lends itself to modeling the general relations among these components in the specific form their configuration has taken in France over the period from 1970s to 1990s to contextualize the transformation of relations between economy and culture partly shared by the developed industrial economies and partly specific to structural functional relations and their development within a single country's history (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 162).

Purely ethnographic perspective on the process of interpenetration between culture and economy cannot analytically distinguish between the integration of economic, cultural, strategic, and personal systems into more general action system and the dynamic effects of the mutual development of these systems since contradictions between personal and economic systems, between economic and cultural systems, and between strategic and economic systems threaten to undermine the collective action they give rise to given the unequal structure of distribution of economic rewards, requirements of long-term commitment, and the importance of justification in terms of each of the action systems (Munch 1982: 94). Economic system is both integrated and differentiated from such other systems as political system given its need to mobilize economic resources for collective purposes in a self-perpertuating process of effective allocation and accumulation of capital via circulation, association system given the competition for resources and demands satisfaction creating concern for meeting market standards and for economic means via accumulation, and social system given the necessity to purchase labor power for wages and the exchange of produced goods consumed according to demand within culturally defined economic relations (Munch 1982: 129, 131; Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 162).

Weber's formulation of the interpenetration between economy and culture broke the ground for historical contextualization of economic development and for exploring of its integration with other systems in view of the growing interpenetration of economic action with principles of equity and ethical responsibility in response to restitutive sanctions and organized activism, as association and goal-setting systems interpenetrate, and to universalistic ethics and rational action, as cultural and association systems interpenetrate, (Munch 1982: 94, 534) so that economic accumulation becoming increasingly affected by all segments of action system connects to norms of justice, rationality, and governmentality (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 163). Reductively Marxist approaches to economic accumulation cannot adequately account for such central characteristic of capitalism as interpenetration of culture and economy since rather than lacking restraint economic system appears to be integrated into action system that via placing restraints upon economic activity integrates it into the rest of the social system by recognition of its legitimacy and legality that personality, cultural and strategic systems have to internalize in their turn in order that lager social structure maintains its integration through discursive means of justification and normative steering of social order.

The conventional economic theory neglects its interpenetration with other systems of collective action since it restricts economy to narrowly defined links between technological progress and economic order, between enterpreneurial activity and rational economic association, and between economic market and system of rights and liberties (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 163; Munch 1982: 113). Such economistic definition of economic system does not allow for theoretical sensitivity to regional variation and historical change in the affective and cultural components of association system, in the normative and professional components of societal system, and in the justification and administrative components of the political system (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 163; Munch 1982: 113). The economic system interpenetrates with the societal system via exchange of individual commitment for possibilities offered by money, with the association system via exchange of economic security for the commitment it generates on resource markets, and with the political system via exchange of money for political power establishing rules for justice, fairness, and common good (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 163; Munch 1982: 131).

Seen in this perspective the interpenetration of economic system with the rest of the action system as a historical process has gone through such developmental stages as bourgeois capitalism stressing association system via enterpreneurial firms, bourgeois culture and morality, interest association politics, and personal assistance and charity socieities, as large corporation capitalism stressing societal system via professional management, welfare state, career development, and merit and credentials culture, and as contemporary capitalism stressing political system via executive administration, political exchange, legal system, and governmental policies (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 164; Munch 1982: 113). Business practices texts illustrate the change in the interpenetration between economy and culture occurring between 1960s and 1990s in the managerial discourse sampled with the help of two sets of representative literature composed in the respective decades largely covering the French economy so that a particular type of societal, economic, association, and political system exemplified by professional environments, work conditions, organizational forms, and management types corresponds to each period.

Thematic analysis of the two samples of professional literature has sought to uncover the prevalent formulations, problems, solutions, and negations. Additionally, for the two text samples the frequencies of usage of key terms of the analysis were computed (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 165). Among the conclusions that the analysis of the configuration of relations between economy and culture in the 1990s has arrived at are emegence of flexible organizations, project-centric work environments, networks replacing hierarchies, freely circulating flows, loose organizational intergation, horizontal firm structures, and minimization of bureaucracy (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 165-166). The problems of the 1960s' managerial literature centering on dissatisfaction with restricted decision-making, narrowly defined roles, powerful management, bureaucratic organization, and large dominating companies have become replaced in the 1990s with non-hierarchical organization, diffuse power structure, self-guiding workforce, competitive culture, and permanent organizational change. The solutions of the 1960s centered on decentralization, meritocracy, objectives-driven management, competent management, and hierarchical control, while the 1990s advised lean restructured companies, network or project organization, flexibility, innovation, competence, motivational leadership, expertise- and councel-oriented management, self-reflexivity, client-orientation, and trust. The 1960s rejected private sphere, personal judgment, nepotism, political promotions, personal ties, and privileges, while the 1990s decried old-style management, bureaucracy, and separation between private and professional spheres (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 165).

The requirements for job security have shifted from merit-based approach based on agreed-upon targets of the 1960s to project-oriented experience accumulation of the 1990s. Managerial discourse of the 1990s proposes organization models, structures, and strategies that suggest by their contrast to the organizational culture of the 1960s a different structure of relations the economic system is embedded into that has become established between the two periods. In the history of interpenetration between culture and economy the contemporary configuration of relations between them involves radical change in the type of interpenetration that obtains between the economic and the societal systems since the relations between the association and the societal systems have signficantly altered the acceptable definition of work situation, justifiable treatment of employees, and the desirable forms of entrepreneurial strategies (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 166). Correspondingly, the economic system has predominantly comprised family-owned pre-Fordist firms in the nineteenth century, large professionally managed Fordist companies from the late nineteenth to late twentieth century, and networked, start-up, financial, and niche post-Fordist companies beginning in the 1980s.

In the period of pre-Fordist capitalism, the association system emphasized independence from local communities and progress, during the phase of Fordist capitalism career development, organizational power, and industrial efficiency came to the forefront, and the transition to post-Fordist capitalism favored non-authoritarian management, fuzzy organizations, creativity and innovation, and permanent change. The societal system before Fordism consisted of domestic and market-based normative culture, during Fordism merit-based professionalism, scientific effectiveness, and objectives-oriented management gained dominance, and after demise of Fordist capitalism professional mobility, network compatibility, project-centric normative culture, and experience-based employability took center-stage. The pre-Fordist political system revolved around personal property, personal relations, charity, and paternalism, the Fordist system allowed long-term planning, career-based management, and welfare state, and the post-Fordist system is largely built around ideas of mobility, adaptability, self-reflexive aministration, self-reliance capabilities, and self-help policies (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 166; Munch 1982: 113).

For the purposes of the multi-sited ethnographic study of the management texts, the place in the social system that the normative culture occupies with respect to communities, professions, sciences, and cultural discourses has been denoted via notion of justificatory regime (Boltanski and Thevenot 1991) corresponding to normative validity of meaningful agrumentation, communal anchoring of commitment, and socially binding fairness and legitimacy (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 167; Munch 1982: 617). To bring idealist and positivist strands of sociology into common conceptual framework the changes to the normative culture as justificatory regime should be considered as a process of interpenetration among the components of social system that in the process of mutually accepted interchange correspond to the specifically involved systems thereby combining both hermeneutic understanding and causal explanation into the methodology of general theory of action that ethnography establishes corresponding parallels with standardized procedures of tests (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 167; Munch 1982: 254). Considered within the system of Weber's traditional, charismatic, legal-rational, and value-rational authority types, the justificatory regimes functionally differentiate into such areas of systemic interpenetration as inspirational area between charistmatic and value-rational authority, domestic area between traditional and charistmatic authority, renown area between traditional and legal-rational authority, civic area between traditional and value-rational athority, market area between charismatic and legal-rational athority, and industrial area between value-rational and legal-rational authority (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 167; Munch 1982: 562).

The identified justificatory regimes through evaluation, testing, categorization, and ordering generate their specific standards of comaprison that produce distributions of individuals on the legitimate scale of worth corresponding to the assessment procedure. Consequently, such regimes of justification as inspirational deriving from value specification and affective generalization emphasize spirituality and authenticity, domestic deriving from affective selection and affective bonding emphasize subordination and allegience, renown deriving from norm connection openness and normative constraint emphasize popularity and esteem, civic deriving from norm generalization and value boundedness emphasize representation and collective will, market deriving from means mobilization and goal setting emphasize competition and opportunities, and industrial deriving from rational learning and ethical control emphasize efficiency and professionalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 167-168; Munch 1982: 562). The justificatory regimes are specified in accordance with comparison principles encompassing human, natural, action, and symbolic systems, with scale of worth where relative positions are defined, with interpenetration among the human, action, symbolic and natural systems, with structure of social relations deriving from relations of worth, with relations of exchange reproducing the structure of worth, with standard test establishing a person's worth, and with ideal-typical social order corresponding to the distribution of worth (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 168; Munch 1982: 163).

The ethnographic study of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005) that does not rely on highly developed theoretical framework (Munch 1982) reduces the cases of systemic interpenetration, as the justificatory regimes are shown to be, to typological procedure of identification of a "new and increasingly influential justificatory logic" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 168) rather than recognizing it as an indicator of structural change so that mobility, availabolity, and networks are taken for a projects-oriented justificatory logic representing normative culture of network society. The projects-oriented justificatory regime is specified in terms of its assessment by activity, project involvement, and network connections, its low worth being connected to passivity, close-mindedness, authoritarianism, rigidity, and parochialism, its high worth dependent on adaptability, flexibility, sincerity, supportiveness, and leadership, its subjects being managers, mentors, and innovators, its objects being information technologies and work structures of sub-contracting, flexibility, outsourcing, autonomy, and franchises, its relations building on trust, communication, and adaptability, its worth structure enhancing employability within project organization, its exchange structure favours availability and short-term planning, its standard test measuring mobility between projects, and its ideal-typical order being network society (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 169).

The underlying argument behind the ethnographic identification of a new, network-oriented justificatory regime consists in structural functional differentiation of an autonomous agency of networking as an "art of connecting and making use of the most diverse and furtherst ties" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 168) coming in contrast to asserting novelty of networks as such or of their wide reach achieved in the late 1970s. Activity serving as the general standard of the project-oriented justificatory regime differs from the industrial standard in its departure from steady and salaried work towards diffusion of distinctions between work and leisure, stability and unsteadiness, earning and volunteering, and productivity and performance as movement between projects increases in value, as activity becomes permanent state, and as encounters are structured around project-orientation (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 169). Duraion of projects is structured according to short-term timelines that promote, motivate, and maintain networking and contact accumulation of their participants. The project-oriented systemic logic values adaptability, flexibility, polyvalency, mobility, initiative, autonomy, risk-taking, and openness to new people, possibilities, and information (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 169).

Project-oriented justificatory regime defines personal worth in non-instrumental terms that encourage contribution to the common good, generation of trust, non-authoritarian leadership, toleran management, respect for differences, sharing of connections, and general enhancement of employability. Since each justificatory regime is represented by a specific vocabulary the content analysis of the management literature samples chosen for their ethographic study has uncovered the frequences of appearance of key terms in the respective bodies of literature (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 170). Unsurprisingly, the industrial justificatory logic dominates the textual samples both for the 1960s and for the 1990s, its criticism has increased between the two periods, its proportion to other logics of justification has decreased in the 1990s with the network logic becoming more represented, its next-ranked logic changing from domestic in the 1960s to project-oriented in the 1990s and doubling its weight in the overall ranking structure of logics of justification (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 170). Greatest discursive changes between the Fordist and post-Fordist periods are that network logic has risen to second ranking place in its frequency, that market logic has increased its presence in response to more competitive, restructured, and client-driven macro environment, that inspirational logic grew in strength as innovation, risk-taking, and personalization gain in traction, and that domestic and civic logics lost in presence to even greater degree than did industrial (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 170).

Transition of France's capitalism from Fordism to post-Fordism was accompanied by the restructuring of the systems of value, legitimacy, and relevance as people, things, and situations have become embedded into normative culture, organization types, and entrepreneurial strategies corresponding to the transformed justificatory regime that by changing standard tests alters its own systemic logic (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 171). As part of theoretical framework for analysis of normative change standard tests are subdivided into tests of strength and legitimate tests (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 171). A legitimate test is a kind of test for which the justificatory regime it belongs to supplies legitimacy by clearly stating the strength type, testing device, and test definition used for carrying out its procedure should unambiguous, qualifiable and categorizable results be obtained. In contrast, while dependent on the decision over its succes or failure, a test of strength does not prohibit mobilization of as many capabilities as possible, offers no preliminary specifications or instructions, and the possibilities of what course the test process takes are unlimited (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 171). In the economic system a legitimate test is embedded in the dominant mode of accumulation via normative culture that exerts both constraining and legitimizing influence on corporate activities, organizational models, and general management.

Within the market justificatory regime, the normative culture provides the existing mode of accumulation with legitimization by applying criteria of equality of chances, merit-based success, market opportunities, and competitive advantage while balance of power, "dominant positions, previous agreements and cartels" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 172) prevent the income distribution in the economic system from taking form solely attributable to the market forces that are not either identical with or reducible to the normative culture. In the social system the normative culture institutionalized in its legitimate tests does not allow interpenetration among the economic, societal, associational, and political systems that constitute it as a whole even though particular enterpreneurial groups or individuals may possess strategic means to exploit opportunities where independent criteria of systemic evaluation diminish their strengths (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 172; Munch 1982: 131). There are situations in which tests of strengths and legitimate tests, without ever being completely separate, either coincide or are related to each other thus putting into question the legitimatory regime they avowedly reproduce as does the correlation between socioeconomic background and scholastic aptitude (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 172).

The legitimate test is embedded into the action system as its mode of categorization since it involves public, explicit, and institutionalized judgment that is independent of the situation of its application. The test of strength represents the mode of displacement corresponding within the action system to the entrepreneurial strategies oriented at changing macro environments in which the situational, singular, and dynamic circumstances call for entrepreneurial action rather than rule-based judgment (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 172). Systemic change usually involves institutional innovation by enterpreneurial groups or individuals that seeking to improve their structural position reduce the binding power of legitimate tests via strategic action involving risk, opportunity, and institutional innovation. Success of such enterpreneurial strategies gradually shifts the definition criteria of normative culture from legitimate tests to the tests of strength in any given institutional environment where novel, covert, and unregulated relationships consequently gain in importance (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 172). However, enterpreneurial strategies that prove to be effective in their action environment entail their institutionalization as the structural differentiation they have triggered takes form of new legitimate tests in case the change is intended to be either widely accepted or reproduced in other institutional contexts (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 173).

Actors benefiting from the enterpreneurial innovation tend to describe such institutional change in terms of a justificatory regime that puts high worth value on their structural position thereby rendering their achievement transparent, moral, and justifiable. Institutional change in the process of its legitimization employs legal regulation to draw the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable utilization of new opportunities, resources, and strategies. In this respect, a justificatory regime appears to derive from a process of institutionalization of a wide-ranging transformation that in case of the transition to post-Fordist mode of regulation has made network- and project-oriented individual and collective action into a subject of discursive legitimization enabling and restricting the reproduction of the post-Fordist accumulation at the same time (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 173). The change of justificatory regimes depends on dual influences of the balance of power and legitimate relations that in their interplay make use of criticism of the existing system to either promote a desirable situation different from the status quo or put into question the existing normative foundations so that the discrepancies betweent the actual state of affairs and the justificatory regime constitute part of the self-reflexive dynamic of their transformation (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 173).

In the action system, criticism and testing practices are interrelated in as much as, on the one hand, enterpreneurial groups and individuals put into question the legitimacy of the social structure while, on the other hand, testing procedures legitimize the distributtion of individuals within the social structure. Corrective criticism of tests aims to maintain them within the boundaries of normative culture so that the application of tests and the strengths' distribution in the action system adequately reproduce its guiding principles that are assured via methodological, conventional, legal, and regulatory means used for the institutionalization of test coherence, openness, and improvement (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 174). Radical criticism of tests aims at their elimination or replacement on the grounds that their validity is in question. Based on the legitimacy principles of the relevant justificatory regime, corrective criticism of tests institutionalized within the action system calls for either refutation of the former by recourse to evidence or its bringing to bear on the testing procedure. Also, corrective criticism can elicit a strategic action oriented at cirucumvention of rather than direct reaction to the possible loss in legitimacy of the test so that the trade-off between test improvement and its marginalization is decided in favor of transformation of the legitimacy test into a test of strength where costs are shifted to the test-takers (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 174).

For the economic system the cost displacement strategies in response to contradictory pressures for both higher profits and increased wages can involve geographic relocation into regions with labor relations or environmental regulations favorable for the employers, redefinition of the career-management policy by dropping its expensive components, and transition to informal recroutment techniques to avoid testing and screening costs (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 174-175). These entrepreneurial strategies of displacement alter the action system as a whole so that the criticism of its justificatory regimes can no longer be waged based on previous normative culture since the configuration of interpenetration between the societal, economic, association, and political systems necessitates elaboration of new critical concepts to account for emegrent interrelationships whose "recognition, institutionalisation, codification or categorisation" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 175) is yet to crystallize into the standard tests that the criticism can apply to. Criticism, therefore, can have bearing on testing processes by catagorizing tests by legitimacy and measured strengths in order to show their role in the structural and functional differentiation of individuals, by ensuring the conformity of tests to the precepts of normative culture via regulation, oversight, and correction, by maintaining the centrality of legitimate tests to the reproduction of the action system according to its normative culture, and by eliminating tests that are widely perceived to impede desirable social change (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 175).

The form of interpenetration characteristic of a particular action system finds its reflection the legitimate tests applied in its economic system. Interpenetration among societal, economic, association, and political systems dates to the beginning of modernity that employs justificatory regimes for its reproduction. Criticism as an integral part of a justificatory regime focuses on indequality, exploitation, and individualism when it is oriented qua social criticism at the association system where it calls labor movements to life. Criticism of the economic system takes the form of artistic criticism (Chiapello 1998) deriving from aesthetic critique of oppressive discipline, mass society, standardization, and commodification in defence of ideals of liberation, autonomy, originality, and authenticy (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 175-176). The transition from Fordism to post-Fordism has as its underpinning the changing configuration of interpenetration within the action system going beyond the impact of globalization, economic development, or technological change that on the example of France exemplifies the dynamics common to industrial economies. In France, the transition to post-Fordism began with the crisis in its normative culture in 1960s, when the criticism of its justificatory regimes reached its peak of labor strikes and violent confrontations, with the disorganization of industrial production when product quality fell and labor costs rose, and with the pervasive loss of legitimacy of standard tests establishing distribution of wages and profits, justifying power relations and social hierarchies, and reproducing educational, economic, and social institutions (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 176).

The criticisms raised at the Fordist action system centered on the crisis of its normative culture, as reflected in the corruption of the standard tests since both legitimate tests were growing more marginal to the actual reproduction of social structure and tests of steength were gaining in centrality within the action system. Institution leaders within the economic system have imputed responsibility for the crisis of the normative culture to the labor force failing to uphold discipline and common goals and to the inadequate socialization of younger entrants into the job market (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 176). For the crisis of 1968 in France both artistic and social criticism played equally important role as in the previous decade cultural capital stopped being restricted to narrow social circles to become available to rapidly increasing student numbers who subsequently filled managerial, professional, and technological positions it the economic system. In France the artisitic criticism demanding self-management, personal autonomy, and creativity was supported by holders of executive, professional, and technical eduication while the social criticism had its primary base of support among skilled and manual workers (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 176-177).

The first stage of the transition to post-Fordism taking place between 1968 and 1973 has responded to social criticism only by reliance on established procedures of collective bargaining involving state, unions, and employer organizations with improvements in minimum wage, reduction of income disparities, and improvement in job security as a result at the same time as allocation of authority was brought into closer alignment with normative culture of meritocracy (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 177). Thereby the centrality of the legitimate tests to the action system was restored by increasing penalties for undue advantages. The second stage of post-Fordist transition commenced in 1975 after the crisis of Fordism has continued to deepen as its justificatory regimes failed to regain legitimacy, as profits of industrial production continued to fall, and as Fordist normative culture started to be abandonded. By the late 1970s large companies have changed labor relations and working conditions based on best practices developed by sociologists and consultants that together with employer organizations have implemented a post-Fordist mode of regulation emerging out of crises of the previous decade (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 177).

In the economic system the disintegration of the Fordist mode of regulation into "autonomous teams, flexible schedules, bonuses, efficiency-related salaries" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 177) has spread across economic structure from the management to the production organization broken down into a network of small, contract-connected, project-oriented units on the periphery of company's core activities. In the economic system the second stage of the transition to post-Fordism has involved replacing legitimate tests with tests of strength less amenable to criticism due to the incapacity of the Fordist normative culture of their "qualification, categorisation, and regulation" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 178). In the 1980s, the post-Fordist mode of regulation has consolidated around networks discourse, effective labor force control, and reinvigorated economic expansion. Since post-Fordist normative culture has failed to form, the transition to post-Fordism was not met with criticism. Moreover, the post-Fordist interpenetration among economic, societal, association, and political systems has left the social criticism by labor unions without an independent object because the worker movement has lost its "isomorphic relationship to its opponent, the large integrated firm" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 178).

There was no artistic criticism of post-Fordism because it has achieved its economic, social, and cultural goals, its frame of reference cannot account for systemic interpenetration replacing structures of Fordism, and its proponents have become integrated into dominant positions across social structure in France (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 178). The economic growth of 1980s stems from the overcoming of limitations of Fordism, the systemic interpenetration of diverse macro environment, and the transformation of normative culture that with tests of strength at its center has led to rising inequality, precarious employment, and worker impoverishment. In the economic system, the negative effects of post-Fordism brought social criticism and labor strikes of the 1990s to bear upon the efforts to introduce legitimate tests into the project-based normative culture by new regulatory means seeking to governmentally structure the flexibility, to stabilize the precarious work conditions, and to integrate profit and non-profit organization of labor relations (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 178). While the configuration of the action system in France is defined by the network-oriented transformation led by socialist governments responsive to the artistic criticism of the economic system, in other countries, as in the Great Britain where Thatcher government implemented market-oriented reforms, the models of systemic interpenetration depending on the outcome of collective struggles, dominant normative cultures, and legitimate justificatory regimes vary according to historical interrelationships among these components of their respectively constitutive systems (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 178-179).

On the basis of the ethnographic study of France's transition to post-Fordism, I have tentatively demonstrated applicability of the action theory (Munch 1982) and structural functionalist approach (Colomy and Rhoades 1994) to the ethnographic and multi-sited data exploring the crisis of French Fordism and systemic dymensions of its post-Fordist change (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005) within the framework of systemic interpenetration dynamically articulating action system and interpenetration among its differentiating subsystems. Within the proposed theoretical framework I placed the emphasis on the entrepreneurial strategies that collective and individual agents undertake within the specific macro environments they confront, on the effects that collective struggles have on the historical change in the configuration of systemic interpenetration, and on the empirical application of more general theoretical specifications of action theory, structural functionalism, and micro-macro link.

The ethnographic and multi-sited reasearch of social and economic change (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005) when decoupled from detailed theoretical frameworks (Munch 1982, 1992) exemplifies insufficiences that include lack of conceptualization of individual and collective action as strategic agency oriented at systemic environments, inability to construct capitalism as subject of theoretical reflection and to embed discussion of economic change into framework of systematically related concepts leading to their substitution by such artifacts of ethnographic methodology as tests, regimes, capitalisms, and criticisms, and weakness of explanatory models as applied to ideal-typical relations that characterize one historical configuration of systemic interpenetration from another. Nevertheless, France's example of the more general phenomenon of transition to post-Fordism has served to outline an analysis of the structure of systemic relations of interpenetration that an economic system can enter in the process of historical change that in order to avoid a macro-analytical bias has brought the theory of action (Munch 1982) to bear upon systemic relations in which individual and collective enterepreneurial strategies are deployed by active agents facing particular national traditions, political situations, economic practices, and ideological expressions (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 179-180).