Exogroup

The entry exists to refuse the word. Symmetry invites the term, since endogroup has a prefix that seems to demand an opposite, and Marsh blocks the inference rather than supplying a definition. What would occupy the position is simply a cluster of interactions, which is not a group in the sense the other word uses, because it has no membrane, no inside, no ideal member and no mechanism for inclusion or shunning. An endogroup is a structure with a function, creating power by transferring energy, and there is no corresponding structure on the other side, only the absence of one. The consequence runs through the whole framework. In an endogroup people are either in or out, while in exosocial relationships they are accepted or rejected through each interaction separately, so nothing persists between interactions to constitute a membership. This is why exosocial arrangements are described as networks rather than as groups. Exosocial networks are one of the three types of governance Marsh names, and they operate through anima connections rather than through a centre. The refusal also blocks a tempting move in her own theory. If exogroups existed, an exosocial politics could be built by forming better groups, and the entry says plainly that it cannot, since forming a group is the operation being objected to.

Outgroup in social psychology means something entirely different, the group one does not belong to as seen from inside an ingroup, and it is not the term Marsh is declining to define. Network theory supplies the closest positive account of what she describes, treating social structure as ties rather than as bounded sets, and Manuel Castells built an analysis of contemporary society on the network as an alternative to the organization. Anarchist and horizontalist organizing traditions have long argued for affinity and association over membership. Marsh's contribution is negative and precise, since defining the term as nonexistent is stronger than preferring networks, and it forecloses the move of building an exosocial politics out of well-designed groups.