Ontologies in Action, Part 4: Collective Action and Social Formation

If reality is the evolution of possibility, then social life is one of its most powerful sites of actualisation. Every collective — from a conversation to an institution — is an ongoing process of aligning construals, coordinating action, and sustaining possibility across scales.

From individuals to collectives

In a substance-based ontology, society is often imagined as a collection of individuals. In a relational ontology, collectives are not aggregates of substances but configurations of relational alignment. Individuals and collectives are two perspectives on the same evolving potential: the former highlighting differentiation, the latter integration.

Coordination as relational work

Social formation depends on coordinating construals — aligning how participants carve up potential into events and meanings. Value systems organise what matters, while symbolic systems provide the means for construal and alignment. The interplay of the two sustains collective life.

Phasing futures

Collective action is never static. It involves phasing construals over time, scaling from local interactions to global institutions. Each phase actualises some possibilities while holding others in reserve. Politics, culture, and economy can all be read as different architectures of possibility, structuring which futures remain open.

Agency as alignment

Agency, in this view, is not an attribute of isolated individuals but a property of relational configurations. What a collective can do depends on how construals are aligned and potentials are sustained. Power, then, is the capacity to open or foreclose futures through relational organisation.

The collective horizon

Social life is where the stakes of relational ontology become most tangible. It is here that possibility is most visibly expanded or constrained, often with consequences across generations. To understand society as possibility-in-motion is to see collective life not as fixed structures but as ongoing architectures of potential, open to transformation.

With this, the Ontologies in Action series concludes. From education to ethics, from science to collective life, the point has been consistent: a relational ontology reframes not only how we theorise, but how we live. It invites us to act as custodians of possibility, aligning construals in ways that keep futures open.