Sedimentation
Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: : The persistence of social institutions raises a fundamental ontological question concerning the relationship between structural continuity and the preservation of human agency. Institutions may reproduce their organizational forms through repeated practices, regulatory mechanisms, and historically stabilized expectations while progressively diminishing the capacities of individuals to interpret, revise, and reorganize their own lives. This study develops the concept of institutional sedimentation within the philosophy of Finite Continuance to examine this discrepancy between institutional persistence and the erosion of human possibilities. It argues that institutional responsibility must be understood through the temporal accumulation of structural consequences rather than exclusively through the intentions of identifiable individual agents. Institutional sedimentation describes the process through which historically contingent arrangements become stabilized conditions of action, progressively shaping the range of possibilities available to subsequent generations. The study introduces a threefold ontology of institutional responsibility comprising responsibility of origination, responsibility of reproduction, and responsibility of reconfiguration. It further develops the concepts of modal compression, relational capacity, and the non-appropriation of future agency to explain how institutional arrangements affect the temporal and relational conditions of human existence. The analysis uses the institutional organization of intimacy and marriage as a philosophical case through which to investigate the relationship between sexual desire, restricted relational possibilities, and the distribution of responsibility. The central argument is that the legitimacy of an institution must be assessed partly through its capacity to preserve the conditions under which those affected by it can participate in the revision of their own futures. Keywords: Finite Continuance, institutional sedimentation, distributed responsibility, social ontology, institutional erosion, relational agency, modal compression, future agency, responsible suspension, institutional ethics.
Author: Niami, Morteza
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225319947