White’s most comprehensive work is Identity and Control. The first edition came out in 1992 and the second edition appeared in June 2008.
In this book, White discusses the social world, including “persons,” as emerging from patterns of relationships. He argues that it is a default human heuristic to organize the world in terms of attributes, but that this can often be a mistake. For instance, there are countless books on leadership that look for the attributes that make a good leader. However, no one is a leader without followers; the term describes a relationship one has with others. Without the relationships, there would be no leader. Likewise, an organization can be viewed as patterns of relationships. It would not “exist” if people did not honor and maintain specific relationships. White avoids giving attributes to things that emerge from patterns of relationships, something that goes against our natural instincts and requires some thought to process.
Read more about this topic: Harrison White
Famous quotes containing the words identity and/or control:
“There is a terrible blindness in the love that wants only to accommodate. It’s not only to do with omissions and half-truths. It implants a lack of being in the speaker and robs the self of an identity without which it is impossible for one to grow close to another.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Could it not be that just at the moment masculinity has brought us to the brink of nuclear destruction or ecological suicide, women are beginning to rise in response to the Mother’s call to save her planet and create instead the next stage of evolution? Can our revolution mean anything else than the reversion of social and economic control to Her representatives among Womankind, and the resumption of Her worship on the face of the Earth? Do we dare demand less?”
—Jane Alpert (b. 1947)