The Hysteresis Effect: Theorizing Mismatch in Action

Abstract

Widespread reliance on representationalist understandings commit social scientists to either partially or totally decouple belief from reality, limiting the domain of phenomena that can be treated by belief as an analytic concept. Developing the contrastive notion of practical belief, we introduce the hysteresis effect as a situational phenomenon involving the systematic production of agent‐environment mismatches and argue for its placement as a central problem for the theory of action. Revealing the dynamic, embodied conservation of belief in the temporality of practice, hysteresis appears when environmental contexts change in a way that leaves actors without an ontologically complicit relationship to institutions as scaffolds of action. Under these circumstances, a past‐inflected reflexiveness replaces a forward‐inflecting practical belief in the actor's temporal relation to the world. Drawing from a variety of historical case studies, we locate hysteresis in routine disjunctures between the temporality of practice and the temporality of environments. Our analysis reveals four distinct types of reflexiveness produced the hysteresis effect, each with a unique dispositional impact on actors and extensions to group‐level phenomena. We conclude the article by emphasizing the non‐eliminativist relationship between belief as disposition and belief as representation.

The quality of compliance: investigating fishers’ responses towards regulation and authorities

“…Most studies tacitly assume that fishers’ responses to regulation follow from discursive reasoning that canalizes or ‘refracts’ aspirations (e.g. wants, desires, interests, needs) (Strand and Lizardo ). In the light of recent theoretical advances in sociology, anthropology, philosophy and cognitive science, this explanation is wanting (the literature is too voluminous to cite completely, but see Vaisey ; Lizardo and Strand ; Summers‐Effler ; Hitlin ; Miles ; Kilpinen for good overviews).…”

“…In the light of recent theoretical advances in sociology, anthropology, philosophy and cognitive science, this explanation is wanting (the literature is too voluminous to cite completely, but see Vaisey ; Lizardo and Strand ; Summers‐Effler ; Hitlin ; Miles ; Kilpinen for good overviews). Work in these fields suggests that human aspirations motivate behaviour through habits, intuitions, impulses, and practical and tacit beliefs that often precede discursive reasoning (Giddens ; Camic ; Bourdieu ; Haidt ; Strand and Lizardo ). This also applies to compliance to rules (Wikström and Treiber ; Boonstra and Dang ; Wikström ).…”

“…This also applies to compliance to rules (Wikström and Treiber ; Boonstra and Dang ; Wikström ). According to this ontological assumption, practical senses and beliefs tend to predisposition people to certain types of response (Strand and Lizardo ). We hold this assumption for fishers’ response to regulation as well, which is why we will pay close attention to how fishers socially position themselves vis‐à‐vis fisheries management and governance.…”

The two stories of the habitus/structure relation and the riddle of reflexivity: A meta‐theoretical reappraisal

“…Yet, while for Lizardo (, pp. 391–392) “mismatch” cases are resolved by the same flexible and creative habitus, Strand and Lizardo () – clearly following HS/P1 – thoroughly discuss the consequences of hysteresis as a case of inability of past embodied dispositions for action to correspond to new/different structural settings; one of these consequences is the emergence of “reflexiveness”, as a rare and exceptional case of representational formulation of belief, which “can provide the basis for schematic transfers into new practical belief.” (Strand & Lizardo, , p. 188).…”

From Performativity to Representation as Intervention: Rethinking the 2008 Financial Crisis and the Recent History of Social Science

“…The claim that the performativity approach is one‐way is not necessarily an ontological claim, but rather a methodological prescription in terms that it only studies “one‐way”, focusing on how theory affects the world, not how the world affects economic theory (see also Strand & Lizardo, , p. 190).…”