Relationality: Embedded autonomy: a balance between having autonomy and being embedded in a community, a balance between closeness and distance, citizenship and private life.
Social therapy would not be worthy of its name without a strong focus on how the client’s social situation can be improved. Social psychologist Alexander Haslam and others have shown that the more groups you are connected to and identify with, the better your physical and mental health (2016). “Social prescribing” is the medicalized term used for this concept in research. There are some meta, analyses that struggle to specify the effects and how effective it is compared to other interventions. It is a more expensive intervention in the short term, but there is a theory that it can reduce costs in the long term. Social prescribing takes various forms; it can involve joining a choir, participating in organizations, or staying on farms (Davies, 2015). It has also been combined with positive activities such as group exercise for people with depression, to provide both the positive effects of exercise and a sense of community. As with everything, social prescribing needs to be done correctly. Based on Collins’ theory of interaction rituals, social prescribing will not lead to improvements if social interactions are not successful. In that case, no emotional energy will be generated in the individual (Collins, 2004).
Social interaction must therefore be tailored to the client’s needs and condition. The potential of social engagement can be understood through ABT. Social engagement is effective when all the various balances are strengthened. Heroic citizenship is achieved when a person becomes involved in a local charity or some form of community activity. This is a good start, but the full potential is realized when the person is fully politically engaged, which strengthens their broader perspective. Not everyone is ready for direct political engagement right away, and political engagement requires time to learn. There must therefore be a connection to the individual beginning to learn about the world, which may be completely stunted. “Playful” engagement can be cultivated as a balancing factor if the individual regularly participates in group games or sports.
Building communities and a sense of belonging, is it possible in a post, social, post, traditional world? William Davies (2015) writes:
“Loneliness now appears as an objective problem, but only because it manifests in the physical brain and body, with calculable costs for governments and health insurers.”
Davies and others have pointed out that social interaction becomes a way to feel better, but from an overly instrumental perspective (Davies, 2015). What is often overlooked when calls for social interaction are made solely from the perspective of health discourse is that this is not sufficiently engaging for the individual. Furthermore, this trivializes the sense of meaning and happiness that social encounters provide for people. This sense of meaning is also linked to the idea that being social is a moral act: being with others, helping others, encountering and understanding them, discovering the world together, teaching them, and letting them teach you. It involves building moral communities that are good for society, not just communities in the general sense.
Counter-strategies to social withdrawal: Why do we give up on socializing? What causes us to withdraw? Why do we withdraw when there are so many communities to belong to today that we can choose from? What leads many people to become increasingly lonely as they get older? Why does it become harder to find communities you want to be part of as you get older? A major factor is a lack of successful social interactions, which leads to negative feelings and frustration (Collins, 2004). One counterstrategy is to view socializing as a duty to try to maintain social connections. The feelings one experiences can be seen as a symptom of society’s lack of social connections.
Embedded autonomy: How can you become more embedded, and how can you gain more autonomy? Be part of various social communities where you experience a sense of belonging but can also have a say in decisions on some level. Get involved in your community, in organizations, adult education, as a forum moderator, in your homeowners’ association, discussion groups, or book clubs.
Embedded autonomy, exercises in “self”, control. Self, control is more often viewed in sociology as an “agencement,” that is, an arrangement of agency (Callon, 2021). Given the assumption that our agency and cognition are limited, varied, partial, and distributed, agency needs to be structured and organized. Agency and cognition are like a boat we steer, but we cannot fully control the boat’s design or the weather. There is sufficient agency to be able to direct one’s life toward the good life. This can be done by creating “bindungen” to various socialities, biosocialities, technosocialities, discourses, practices, routines, and symbols. This embeds our agency within the social.
Create a new inner dialogue. This requires encounters with others from the social sphere. Ultimately, the internalization of a new reality. This new reality is more difficult to establish if the social sphere directs the person to recognize that this is not something to be taken for granted, but rather a cultural tool, among other things.
Individuation exercises: create a sense of self connected to various groups, fostering compromise and reflexivity so that the person can engage with groups beyond their immediate circle (Collins, 2013).
The “Organize” Heuristic. Organize something in your life with other people. Take the initiative to do something social. Organize something political. Join an organization that is undergoing significant change. This builds a habit of participating in and organizing.
The Mentor Heuristic. Find a mentor in your field. Have several and gradually expand the circle of those you reach out to. Have a mentor at a distance by reading what they write in books, for example. Act as if they were your personal mentor. Have a personal mentor. Act as if you had your ideal mentor. What would your mentor have said to you? Use perspective, taking and socializing with others in general. This is a way to draw out resources and energy. Meet with your mentor; this will give you things to show so you don’t disappoint them. Turn enemies into mentors, what can you learn from enemies about how they act, and how can you act better than them?
The heuristic for network positioning. To become bold, position yourself as close as possible to the center of a network centered on ideas you’re passionate about (Collins, 2000). It’s not “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”; according to Collins, it’s “what you know is connected to who you know.” It’s a stroke of luck to find yourself at the center of change. Build cultural capital so you can participate in conversations within a specific network. Be a bridge, builder between different networks separated by structural gaps.
Practices of Autonomy
Competency development. Sennett points to the “decompetentization” of society (2013). Without competencies and abilities, one lacks the resources and opportunity to influence one’s life sufficiently in complex societies. Autonomy stems from various abilities such as reflection, collaboration, civic education, cultural education, reading, technical know, how, and so on.
Become as independent of heteronomies as possible. One suggestion for reducing heteronomies is to try to cut back on the time spent in paid work (Paulsen, 2010) that is not in harmony with one’s values for improving society. Another way is to reduce dependence on the market, for example through self, sufficiency and commons, based practices.
Commons- based practices. Commons-based practices are utilized far too little in both the public sphere and the economy. Participating in and contributing to various commons, allows one to derive value oneself while enabling others to share in that value without it being fenced off. This can include knowledge, food, clothing, all sorts of things. It can serve as a complement to other forms of governance in today’s hybrid governance system (Berglund, 2026).
Decolonization from the system world and the expansion of the lifeworld. The system world, in the form of economics, politics, and experts, tends to dominate individuals’ lifeworld (Habermas, 1984; Alvesson, 2019). Reflecting, thinking alongside and in opposition to experts, and thinking with a certain distance from experts. The lifeworld can be expanded through new experiences that make room for broader and longer horizons.
The cultural toolbox. Identify the various cultural ideals that exist and how to navigate them (Illouz, 2019). The exercise would be to identify and then expand one’s cultural toolbox (Swidler, 1986). Swidler argues that in settled cultures, culture as a tool is less visible because it is embedded in common sense. The exercise involves unembedding the various cultural tools to make them visible and then determining whether they are useful or not. What cultural ideals surround you? Which ideals are in conflict? Have you been affected by the fact that these ideals are in conflict? Which cultural values should you prioritize, and why? Whose advice should you follow? You must choose, or at least experiment. What kinds of lives and practices are linked to these ideals? Do you want to live these lives? What is it about these practices that appeals to you? Are there alternative cultural ideals you can draw upon, or a hierarchy of cultural ideals that allows you to move toward the good life?
Reduce the status struggle. If we make ourselves too dependent on achieving status in an arbitrary way, we become trapped in a status struggle. We need to derive status and self, esteem from ways of being that are more accessible and maintain a critical distance from the dominant ways of accumulating status points. For example, if status is based on how much money one has, one must question the idea that money is neutral and that it doesn’t matter how one acquired it. This means that status comes more from the work and service you provide to others. This means that even jobs other than the highest, paying ones can give you status and self-esteem. Through this, you develop a resistance to others’ views on what status is. You can distance yourself from status based on appearance by considering how arbitrary it is, since appearance is largely genetic. Appearance as a status marker is arbitrary because it has no connection to any moral dimension. Appearance is a status marker because we live in a “lookist” society, one that discriminates based on people’s appearance. The struggle for status, such as striving to be “just perfect” across a multitude of dimensions simultaneously: leisure activities, appearance, academic performance, and personality, consists entirely of other, oriented thoughts (Hiltunen, 2017; Reisman, 1950). The “status inferiority” that some people feel, perhaps most people feel, since we often aim to climb higher in the status struggle, can be set aside by engaging in immersive activities where, for a moment, we don’t have to be self-conscious. These are activities where we enter a state of flow with a perfect balance between challenge and competence.
Reduce the need for money. Simple and inexpensive pleasures are generally the ones that bring the most happiness: friends, parties, nature, dinners, physical activity, and games. Materialism is both expensive and has little impact on happiness, since it often creates happiness only at the moment of purchase or by granting access to certain groups through the consumption of status symbols such as designer clothing, cars, and so on.
Reduce the burden of private struggles. The intimate sphere was a place, Sennett argues, where people retreated as a shield against the uncertainty that existed in the larger, rapidly changing society (2002). However, if we make ourselves entirely dependent on our happiness in the private sphere, we may become trapped in a golden but private cage. Our private relationships take on disproportionate importance, and the setbacks we experience in our private lives become major tragedies because we’ve lost perspective. If we make the private sphere our entire world, we have less freedom of choice in how we value our lives and what we can do with them. If we engage in civic struggle and build communities that extend beyond our friends, family, and networks, we bring openness into our lives.
Reduce the time we spend in communities mediated by technology. Part of the reason we spend so much time on social media is that everyone else is there, and we can participate in human community from a safe distance where no expectations are placed on us. However, this comes with significant risks, such as becoming addicted and overusing social media. What we experience is “being alone together with others,” as Sherry Turkle put it. Technology connects us and draws us into social interactions, but it almost always makes us feel more lonely, except occasionally, when we find a community.
Solitude as a strength. Solitude should not be underestimated as part of a good life. A fulfilling solitude can be found in writing, starting your own projects, in nature, by the sea, or alone with your own thoughts while engaging with an author. Cal Newport (2016) writes:
“It’s now possible to completely banish solitude from your life. Thoreau and Storr worried about people enjoying less solitude. We must now wonder if people might forget this state of being altogether.”
“As Virginia Woolf argues in her 1929 feminist manifesto, A Room of One’s Own, this imbalance should come as no surprise. Woolf would agree that solitude is a prerequisite for original and creative thought, but she would then add that women had been systematically denied both the literal and figurative ‘room of their own’ in which to cultivate this state. To Woolf, in other words, solitude is not a pleasant diversion, but rather, a form of liberation from the cognitive oppression that results from its absence.”