Structurization Theory @ Structurization.com

A Short Essay on Structurization Theory

Mark A. Foster, Ph.D.



Structurization Theory is a nominalist-cum-particularist, or via moderna, theoretical and methodological approach to social constructionism in The MarkFoster.NETwork™, a sociology project in synchronous and asynchronous online media utilization. Its nonexclusive focus is on religious studies.

A structurization, or universal, refers to the assignment of names, attributes, categories, or rules (naming, attributing, categorizing, or ruling) to particulars defined as belonging to the same category (including subcategories). Names are here defined as accidental categorizations of relative will. (As `Abdu'l-Bahá wrote to August Forel, "The mind comprehendeth the abstract by the aid of the concrete ....") This naming process dynamically structurizes (constructs) these particulars into patterns of interrelationship and constructs knowledge. Some universals (names) can function as master categories, or taxonomies (Foucault), for other universals, such as society includes race, class, and gender.

Consistent with labeling theory, a conflict interactionist approach, the social structurizations which manifest the greatest degree of influence on others tend to be framed by persons in positions of social, political, or enonomic power. Structurizations empirically demonstrated as oppressive, such as the international corporatocracy, should be dismantled. Certain other structurizations must be examined relative to place.

Divine structurizations refer to such Bahá'í scriptural concepts as divine laws, species, kingdoms, creation/emanation, and spiritual virtues. Social structurizations would include human groups, such as societies and moral codes. Empirical structurizations, such as everyone in Kansas who owns a Ford, reflect the process of naming (structurization) by scientists and researchers, but not necessarily the actual patterns of social structurization.

One can accept, only on faith, that the attributes God has assigned to particulars bear some relation to essences (because they are unknowable). Names or structurizations are intentional, relative constructions of the attributes of particulars. Such attributes do not have an independent existence, and they are not ideal forms. They linguistic manifestations of essences in a manner suited to the concrete limitations of human and material perception. For instance, the attributes of God have no independent existence. They are only names for the appearances of God's Essence in His Prophets.