25 Evolving the Collective: From Reproduction to Reflexive Becoming

Series: Construal and the Collective – Part 25

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Introduction: More Than Reproduction

Much of social theory treats collectives as systems of reproduction—of norms, roles, identities, institutions. But if collectives are also systems of construal, then they do more than repeat. They can evolve, differentiate, and reflexively reconfigure.

This post asks how collective construal enables not just social continuity, but reflexive becoming—the capacity for a collective to evolve its own symbolic form.

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1. The Limits of Reproduction

Reproduction implies:

• Stability across generations

• The transmission of form

• Resistance to change

But this view occludes the very mechanisms of change internal to symbolic life: ambiguity, reinterpretation, creative misalignment, rephasing.

Reproduction is not a baseline. It is a constraint on construal—a narrowing of reflexive potential in the name of coherence.

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2. Construal as Evolutionary Capacity

If construal phases meaning into being, then:

Evolution becomes a matter of shifting how a collective construes itself.

This shift can occur via:

• New symbolic distinctions (e.g. gender, race, class rearticulated)

• Shifts in alignment (who construes with whom, and how)

• Changes in scale or scope (what counts as 'we', or 'the world')

• Emergent meta-construals (reflecting on how construal happens)

This is not mere adaptation. It is reflexive transformation.

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3. The Collective as Metasystem

A collective capable of reflexive becoming must:

• Hold multiple symbolic frames in tension

• Support cross-scale alignment

• Sustain openness to its own reconstrual

Such a system is not merely complex. It is meta-complex—able to construe and re-construe the very grounds of its coordination.

This reflexivity is not given. It must be symbolically constructed and collectively maintained.

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4. Constraints on Reflexive Evolution

Several forces constrain this capacity:

• Infrastructural inertia (material systems lag behind symbolic shifts)

• Narrative foreclosure (master-stories that suppress alternatives)

• Social disciplining (policing of meaning and identification)

• Economic capture (meaning tethered to value extraction)

These forces don't just block change; they phase-lock construal, inhibiting evolution at the symbolic level.

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5. Designing for Becoming

To evolve collectively, a symbolic ecology must:

• Embed reflexivity into its own symbolic structures

• Foster heterogeneity of construal without collapse

• Stabilise transitions without foreclosing possibilities

• Inhabit time as an open field of construal, not a closed sequence of outcomes

This is not a blueprint for revolution. It is a practice of rephasing reality—again and again, together.

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Conclusion: From Social Form to Symbolic Life

A collective that reproduces itself without reflexivity becomes brittle. But a collective that evolves its own construals becomes alive to meaning, and to its own becoming. The work of such collectives is not just political or cultural. It is ontological.

Next, we ask: What does it mean to hold space—not just for difference, but for incommensurable construals within a shared symbolic world?