Symbolic Architectures: The Infrastructures of Reflexive Reality: 5 Stratification and the Depths of Symbolic Infrastructure

Symbolic architectures are not built on a single plane. They are stratified: composed of interdependent layers of construal that differ in abstraction, generality, and regulatory power. Each stratum conditions the others, yet each has a distinct role in scaffolding reflexive reality.

We can think of these strata as symbolic depths—levels of infrastructural meaning that anchor, mediate, and constrain symbolic circulation. At the most surface level, we find tokens: individual instantiations of meaning—utterances, signs, gestures. One level deeper, we find types: recurrent patterns that organise those tokens—grammatical systems, genre conventions, classificatory schemas. Beneath that again, we find meta-systems—symbolic orders that shape what counts as a valid type in the first place.

But these strata are not ontologically separate; they are perspectival cuts within the same symbolic field. A social convention may begin as an improvised token, crystallise into a recognisable type, and eventually become embedded in institutional metadiscourse. Conversely, a disruption at a deeper layer—a change in the framing of legality, for instance—can ripple upward, reconfiguring what symbolic types are possible or permissible, and what tokens are intelligible.

This stratification is not a passive layering. It is a system of dominance and mediation. The deeper the layer, the more it tends to function as a condition for the intelligibility and circulation of the layers above. Yet the system is also reflexive: upper layers may generate feedback that refigures the strata below. A meme can provoke institutional reaction; a typographical change can lead to a spelling norm; a linguistic innovation can reshape grammatical expectation.

What matters, then, is not just that symbolic infrastructure is stratified, but that these strata participate in asymmetric reflexive alignment. Some layers are more resilient to change; others are more susceptible to reorganisation. Some changes surface rapidly; others accrue slowly over generations. The symbolic architectures we live within are thus sedimented histories of construal—layered infrastructures of collective reflexivity.

In stratified systems, access is unequal. Control over deeper layers—such as naming conventions, archival taxonomies, or legal definitions—often signals institutional or epistemic power. And just as certain actors are excluded from infrastructural design, others may have privileged access to the strata that organise symbolic life.

In the next post, we will explore how these stratified symbolic architectures are materialised—how they take form in institutions, artefacts, and spatial-temporal arrangements, and how material forms themselves participate in construal.