Schismogenesis
Encyclopedia
Schismogenesis literally means "creation of division". The term derives from the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 words skhisma "cleft" (borrowed into English as schism
Schism (religion)
A schism , from Greek σχίσμα, skhísma , is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization or movement religious denomination. The word is most frequently applied to a break of communion between two sections of Christianity that were previously a single body, or to a division within...

, "division into opposing factions"), and genesis "generation, creation" (deriving in turn from gignesthai "be born or produced, creation, a coming into being").

In anthropology

The concept of schismogenesis was developed by the anthropologist
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...

 in the 1930s, to account for certain forms of social behavior between groups. Analogous to Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...

's concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity (see functionalism), Bateson posited a symmetrical form of schismogenic behavior that consisted of a competitive relationship between categorical equals (e.g., rivalry) and complementary schismogenesis between categorical unequals (e.g., dominance and submission). Bateson's specific contribution was to suggest that certain concrete ritual behaviors either inhibited or stimulated the schismogenic relationship in its various forms. In his earlier formulations, Bateson tied the notion to that of ethos
Ethos
Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of...

.

In music

Steven Feld
Steven Feld
Steven Feld is an American ethnomusicologist anthropologist, and linguist, who worked for many years with the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea. He earned a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991....

 (1994, p.265-271), apparently in response to R. Murray Schafer
R. Murray Schafer
Raymond Murray Schafer is a Canadian composer, writer, music educator and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World...

's schizophonia
Schizophonia
- Track listing :# "Get Ready Now"# "Stop It"# "Bitch"# "Fiction Dancer"# "Skin"# "Pleasure and Pain"# "My Demons"# "Cubicle"# "Fucky Funky Music" [Motorcycle Boy Version]# "Fahr Zur Hölle"# "323 Secondes de Silence Répétitif Avec Guitare Espagnole"...

and borrowing the term from Bateson, employs schismogenesis to name the recombination and recontextualization of sounds split from their sources. Schismogenesis is also the name of the final boss theme of The Last Remnant
The Last Remnant
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix. The game is directed at both Japanese and Western audiences and had a simultaneous release in Japan, North America and Europe, on November 20, 2008 for the Xbox 360. The game was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows at the end...

.

Types

Bateson, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind describes the two forms of schismogenesis and proposes that both forms are self-destructive to the parties involved. He goes on to suggest that researchers look into methods that one or both parties may employ to stop a schismogenesis before it reaches its destructive stage.

Complementary schismogenesis

The first type of schismogenesis is best characterized by a class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....

, but is defined more broadly to include a range of other possible social phenomena. Given two groups of people, the interaction between them is such that a behavior X from one side elicits a behavior Y from the other side, The two behaviors complement one another, exemplified in the dominant-submissive behaviors of a class struggle. Furthermore, the behaviors may exaggerate one another, leading to a severe rift and possible conflict.

Symmetrical schismogenesis

The second type of schismogenesis is best shown by an arms race
Arms race
The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...

. The behaviors of the parties involved elicit similar or symmetrical behaviors from the other parties. In the case of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, each party continually sought to amass more nuclear weapons than the other party, a clearly fruitless but seemingly necessary endeavor on both sides.

A form of symmetrical schismogenesis exists in common sporting events, such as baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

, where the rules are the same for both teams.

Sociolinguistics

In sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...

, complementary schismogenesis is a force that can take effect in a conversation
Conversation
Conversation is a form of interactive, spontaneous communication between two or more people who are following rules of etiquette.Conversation analysis is a branch of sociology which studies the structure and organization of human interaction, with a more specific focus on conversational...

 where people have different conversational styles, id est "[complementary schismogenesis is] creating a split in a mutually aggravating way". The effect causes two well-meaning individuals having a conversation to ramp up different styles, resulting in a disagreement that does not stem from actual difference of opinion. For example, if one person's conversational style favoured louder voices, while the other favoured softer speech, the first person might increase the loudness in their voice while the other spoke softer and softer, each trying to lead the conversation towards their style's conception of normal talking.

Systems of holding back

Systems of holding back are also a form of schismogenesis. They are defined as "mutually aggregating spirals which lead people to hold back contributions they could make because others hold back contributions they could make."
. In Systems intelligence
Systems intelligence
Systems intelligence is human action that connects sensitivity about a systemic environment with systems thinking, thus spurring a person's problem solving capabilities and invoking performance and productivity in everyday situations. Systems intelligence, abbreviated SI, is intelligent behavior in...

literature it is held that human interaction has a tendency to fall into such systems unless conscious effort is made to counter this tendency. For example, although most managers would want to give support to their team and most team members would like to receive such support many times support does not result. This is because both parties might feel that the other party is not giving enough and thus they will themselves hold back what they in the best case could give. It has been suggested that systems of holding back are "the single most important key to life-decreasing, reciprocity-trivializing and vitality-downgrading mechanisms in human life."
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