Most concepts break when we try to coordinate action and theory across levels. They either flatten into vibes or fragment under pressure. Organizing constructs are tools that don’t.
Disclaimer: This is novel work with minimal empirical grounding. I’m fleshing out an idea that’s been useful in my own thinking, but I don’t yet know how far it extends.
Two decades ago, empowerment was everywhere. It was an idea you could see in a grant application, a grassroots zine, and a Nature article in the same day. For a while, that was its strength. It allowed researchers and practitioners to talk about personal, community, and systemic change in a single breath, and offered energizing, accessible language to community members.
Eventually, though, the term collapsed under its own weight. Critics rightly called out its vagueness, its co-optation, and its use as rhetorical cover for power imbalances and chauvinism. Empowerment became, too often, a feel-good floating signifier. Able to mean almost anything, it stopped meaning much at all.
But the reason it spread in the first place was important: it met a vital, underappreciated need. In social life, big problems span many levels at once. Therefore, our attempts to solve them need to hold for individuals, communities, institutions, and sometimes even societies. When a concept does this well, and when it is backed up with the sort of structure that keeps it from drifting, I call it an organizing construct.
What does it mean to hold in this way? What sort of structure keeps meaning stable? I'll start with an example, then discuss what makes an organizing construct work in theory and, speculatively, in practice.
I developed the idea of organizing constructs while trying to solve a specific problem in my dissertation: why did mattering feel so much more practical than related concepts like empowerment?
Mattering is just what it sounds like: the sense that we are significant, that we are valued, and that we have an impact on the world around us. It's a construct that has a significant, if relatively quiet, history in sociology and psychology. Empirically, it has been connected to everything from suicidality to overcoming stigma.
Multidimensional Mattering (MDM) is the name I gave to the comprehensive version of mattering measured by Isaac Prilleltensky's MIDLS (Mattering in Domains of Life) scale*. This scale assesses an individual's sense of mattering in different areas of their life. Do you feel significant in close relationships, at work, in your community, and to yourself? This scale assesses mattering in each of those areas, but it also measures a general sense of mattering. MDM is the total construct comprised of both domain-level and overall mattering.
You may have already realized that MDM is inherently cross-level. ** This is part of why it makes a good organizing construct. Because it exists naturally at the level of the self, relationships, and communities, it can naturally connect to ideas and theories at each of those levels. The same construct can connect at the individual level to, say, internalized shame, while engaging with sense of community at the neighborhood level.
But there's also another reason. Baked into the definition are two distinct, yet related, experiences: feeling valued and adding value. Something only truly counts as mattering, under this formulation, if it includes both. As I'll talk about below, I suspect this bifurcation is key to the stability that characterizes a strong organizing construct.
** Disclosure: Isaac was my PhD advisor, and remains a good friend.*
** Astute readers may object - isn’t this still just an individual measure applied to different domains of life? Yes. But the domains prefigure a more multilevel treatment, which I have begun to spell out in published pieces and which I hope to expand upon in this blog. In the natural language register where OCs shine, mattering holds up across levels.
In my dissertation I suggested that mattering works because it maintains meaning across levels without dissipating. But what makes it different from empowerment, which also stretched across contexts? Why does mattering hold up when similar concepts drift into vagueness? The answer lies in the specifics of organizing constructs.
Let’s start with a definition. An organizing construct is a durable conceptual tool that provides relational coherence across multiple levels of analysis. It holds meaning that adapts across frames (individual, organizational, societal) without collapsing into vagueness. Its power lies in its ability to align action, communication, and decision-making across domains.
What kind of decision-making? Think of an initiative entitled Healthy St. Louis. Polls show health is a popular cause across the city. Studies suggest there’s huge opportunity to improve health across the population. Even better, analysts find that better health could boost economic outcomes. It feels like a win-win-win… until everyone gets in a room and tries to figure out what to actually focus on.
The mayor thinks people should eat more vegetables. The hospital advisory council cites data suggesting that reduced alcohol consumption would have the biggest impact. Meanwhile, ward leaders argue that pollution and chronic stress are the real threats, and that without addressing those, everything else is just window dressing. They’re all pointing at health, but they’re doing it at different levels, with different levers.