Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence
Alicia Juarrero
This book challenges foundational assumptions about causality, agency and identity. It argues that interactions and relations are not secondary features of the world but constitutive of how things come to be what they are.
Rather than treating causes simply as forces acting on objects, the book shows that causation also operates through regimes of constraints. These constraints can govern processes from above and enable them from below. In this sense, structures such as culture, institutions or team dynamics are not abstract descriptions but real patterns that shape what actions become possible or probable.
Importantly, the idea of constraints differs from the everyday understanding of the word. We typically think of constraints as limits that restrict behaviour. While they do limit possibilities, they also channel energy and activity in particular directions. By shaping the space of possible outcomes, constraints can decrease the likelihood of some events while increasing the likelihood of others. In this sense, constraints are not only limiting but also generative. They are part of how new forms of order, action and meaning emerge.
Understanding systems change through the lens of constraints offers a powerful strategic and creative perspective for innovation.
"The idea of nature or essence as internal and standalone is noteworthy because of the unacknowledged assumptions it uncritically accepts. Essence as internal represents a refusal to acknowledge that interactions and relations play a role in a thing’s nature; it also refuses to recognize that relational properties like coordination, integration, and context embeddedness are real. It ignores both the past and current circumstances. It underpins, in short, a worldview that dismisses time and place, context in general, from reality. These become passive containers instead. Such failures make it impossible to understand coherence and identity."
Steven Sullivan
Strategic Design Director
