2022 Volume 41 Pages 25-42
Two modes of thinking for developing social theories have been identified. One is downstream thinking, and the other is upstream thinking. This paper tries to argue that the latter mode of upstream thinking is pertinent for clarifying the change generation process in socio-economic systems. This paper also asserts that two types of change generation logics for socio-economic systems have been identified based on this up-stream mode of thinking. The first one is micro-macro-link-based approach that attempts to elucidate the change generation in socio-economic systems from the viewpoint that there are hierarchically divided entities in society such as macro and micro, structure and agency. In the case of Imada’s Self Organizing Paradigm, it tries to elucidate the changes in society, starting from the actor’s reflection upon the macro situations. In the case of Archer’s Morphogenetic approach, it tries to elucidate the changes in society by examining the sequential steps consisting of structural conditioning, social interactions, and structural elaboration. The second one is new combinations of heterogeneous-elements-based approach that attempts to elucidate the change generation in society from the viewpoint that heterogeneous elements including non-humans are combined together to produce new configurations of socio-economic system. The change generation logic based on the new combination of such heterogeneous elements emphasizes that new configurations of socio-economic systems are created by connecting various actors （including non-humans and bodies） one after another over time and space. Theories that try to incorporate this change generation logic include TEN（Techno-Economic Network）, ANT（Actor-network Theory） and practice theory. The characteristics of these theories are examined and compared with each other in this paper.
