Page - (000143) - in Knowledge and Networks

136 can be brought together as status and rules by which opposing parties collaborate nevertheless. Catching up “depends upon the swift succession of positive feedback cycles…, all of which lead to new variety fostering further variety” (Archer, 2013, p. 14). It also matters who manages to stabilize their powerful position in multilevel, OMRT systems. Analyses in the courthouse case study above show that organiza- tional members who have enough staying capacity, status, and epistemic authority also represent specific forces in the joint regulation of markets: bankers with a law degree. The study shows that advice-seeking does converge toward central and supercentral members and reflects a process of epistemic alignment with members who have gained the authority to know, who provide social approval for specific decisions. Actors and their groups do not learn mechanically. This capacity to learn collectively depends particularly on their stability and reframing capacities in changing networks, that is, on their switching capacities across social boundaries (Breiger, 2010; White, 2008). Members with specific forms of status frame collec- tive action by providing the judgments of appropriateness that are shared in collec- tive learning (Lazega, 1992). OMRT is thus based on limited transformation of the structure (examined in this chapter through the status system), which could nevertheless either be controlled homeostatically or change more profoundly. This juncture is where such transfor- mation can, in turn, change the social processes that help members manage the problems of collective action. Endogenizing Systems of Places: OMRT Research Agenda for Sociology and Geography Reasoning in terms of OMRT dynamics is important because it helps one under- stand how stability in the system can be precisely created by the enormous quantity of movement that it organizes, directly or indirectly. New attention to OMRT dynamics is also needed because they assume new forms in contemporary society (Archer, 2013, 2014). Speed matters more than ever in everything, members are exposed to increasingly open competition as they descend through the social hierar- chy, and social control has become ever more intrusive. When various sorts of mobility slow down or accelerate, new people are left behind and disenfranchised in many respects, exclusion that reproduces or creates new social inequalities and hier- archies. Actors who know how to instrumentalize organizations do better than oth- ers because they can navigate or even reshape the prior system of places. Relational capital of individuals and social capital of organizations have always been leading determinants of inequalities (Breiger, 1990, 2011). Some people’s movements and mobility create and recreate the stability and wealth of other people, including the capacity of those others to acquire and capitalize resources (e.g., status) and E. Lazega