Transcript Lecture 8 slides

Introduction to Social Analysis
Lecture 8
How is contemporary society
different from classic images of
modern industrial society?
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• Chuck Berry No Particular Place to Go
• http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ofyn_
chuck-berry-no-particular-place-to_music
• Barry McGuire The Eve of Destruction
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8SfiCn
wF28
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How is contemporary society different from
classic images of modern industrial society?
• This lecture is about how Sociologists Anthony
Giddens, and Ulrich Beck have tried to
understand contemporary society in contrast to
‘post-modern’ perspectives.
• What features of contemporary society make it
different from the classic views of modernity?
• Their answers use the concepts of ‘reflexivity’
and ‘risk’.
• These concepts will be illustrate through
examples from contemporary empirical
sociology which have used their ideas.
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Studies
Introductions to the theory:
• Beck, Ulrich, Giddens, Anthony and Lash Scott (1994) Reflexive
Modernisation: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order.
Cambridge: Polity Press. (in particular pp. 184-197.) 301.01 BEC
• Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and self-identity : self and society in the
Late Modern Age Cambridge : Polity, 301.157 GID
• Pip Jones 2003 Introducing Social Theory. Polity Press, Chap. 10. Critical
Responses to Post-modernity and Postmodernism.
Empirical studies:
• Burrows, Roger and Nicholas Gane (2006) “Geodemographics, Software
and Class” Sociology 40(5):793-812.
• Green, Eileen and Carrie Singleton (2006) “Young Women Negotiating
Space and Place” Sociology 40(5):853-872.
•
http://0-ejournals.ebsco.com.lib.exeter.ac.uk/direct.asp?IssueID=CF2B4B49015B
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Key points of reflexive modernity. 1.
• Giddens position is an attempt to deal with
the post-modern critique without throwing
out key elements of classic sociology hence a revised rather than a post
modernity.
• His arguments are summerised in his table
of contrasts [slides 23-31, final page of
course pack reading ]
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Key points of reflexive modernity. 2.
• Individuals have dramatically increased
knowledge about themselves and thus to
manipulate and control aspects of
themselves which were not previously
possible.
• This is manifest is such issues as selfmonitoring, manipulation and shaping of
the body.
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Fertility monitor
Breathaliser
Nike+iPod kit
This new product lets runners monitor
their efforts with short-range radio
transmissions
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Key points of reflexive modernity. 3.
• Society has dramatically increased
knowledge about itself and thus some
institutions have the ability to manipulate
and control aspects of social life that were
not previously possible.
• This is manifest in such issues as
evaluating and dealing with risk.
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Collection and analysis of data
• Government - census, surveys, migration,
prices, consumption, university entrance
• Commercial – profiling, consumer risk
• Surveillance – crime, terrorism
• Medical monitoring and control – swine flu
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Who is watching?
Who is watched?
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Technologies of surveilance
• www.ctcdevon.co.uk/exeter.htm
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/webcams/exet
er_pop01.html
• http://www.letopweb.net/webcam-dumonde.html
Google earth
Tsunami watch
Video by and of the police at demonstrations
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Risk assessment
•
•
•
•
Pandemic alert
Terror alert status
Flood watch status
Car insurance, home insurance
• New technologies bring both benefits and
risks 12
Choice, risk, reflexivity
• risk as an organizing principle of the late
modern industrial society,
• Beck and Giddens suggest that risk has
far reaching effects on the construction of
contemporary identities (Beck 1992;
Giddens, 1991).
• identity is increasingly articulated through
differing dispositions towards risk,
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Risk society
• We can anticipate risks
• Make choices of life style as a result
• Can anticipate growing range of apocalyptic
scenarios – nuclear war, pandemic, meteor
strike, climate change etc.
• Variety of adaptations – personality / self –
society / institutions
• Risk averse, health and safety
• Thrill seeking, hedonism, live for today
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• risk theorists also claim that a number of
traditional features of industrial society,
such as class, community and family are
decreasing in influence, and relationships
with strangers, encountered through
greater national and global flows of people
and cultures, are taking on greater
significance.
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Burrows, Roger and Nicholas Gane (2006)
“Geodemographics, Software and Class” Sociology
40(5):793-812.
http://ejscontent.ebsco.com/ContentServer/FullTextServer.asp?format=fulltext&ciid=AFF6FE0D2C11B5A
D33A5C39287A4498B12358FD79662C83E5A73A26C0C5BCAFCA32BCF1055F90842&ftindex=1&cid=
F35D3D648505FA48F6657AA16B59DF7E37A882374E0FF73373CA921EDDA876B9&ext=.pdf
• About modern data bases and software
which are primarily designed for
marketing, which classify and label micro
localities with detailed socio-metric data.
• They make explicit links to key figures of
modern social theory - Bourdieu
(Distinction) ,Beck (Risk Society) and
Bauman.
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Choice, risk, reflexivity
• The success of such classification systems [such as
ACORN and MOSAIC ] lies in their ability to map out and
structure patterns of consumption that in turn aid both
the enhancement and regulation of the capitalist market.
…businesses and policy makers alike use
geodemographic classifications extensively to inform the
targeting of goods, services and policy interventions.
• belonging to place: to places through which we can
identify ourselves and be identified and placed (in a
social landscape) by others. ‘One’s residence is a
crucial, possibly the crucial, identifier of who you are’.
• This, then, is the most striking feature of
geodemographic classification systems and their
migration into software: they map consumer habits onto
territory, and in so doing recast class and status as
spatial categories.
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Choice, risk, reflexivity
• This is very much a part of what Bauman and Beck call
individualized society, in which identities become the responsibility
of individuals rather than state-run institutions, and where we are left
to ‘sort ourselves out’.
• The other side to this, however, is that the classification systems
considered in this article offer ready-made ‘class’ identities that have
been generated from consumer surveys and the like. This means
that identities are shackled to and to some extent ascribed from real
and desired patterns of consumption (desires that in themselves are,
of course, products of capitalism).
• At the same time, these classification systems are automated
through complex algorithms that remain hidden from the user’s eye,
so that the sorting mechanisms that underpin the classifications
themselves are all but invisible.
• Burrows, Roger and Nicholas Gane (2006) “Geodemographics,
Software and Class” Sociology 40(5):793-812. pp807
• i.e. class remains important but reflexivity enables people and
institutions to actively respond and modify class behaviour
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Green, Eileen and Carrie Singleton (2006) “Young Women
.
Negotiating Space and Place” Sociology 40(5):853-872
• Explores social construction of risk
• Leisure activities of two groups of young
women, one white the other south Asian in
a north-eastern industrial town.
[Middlesborough]
• Look at emotions, calculations and
management strategies associated with
risk reported by the women in unstructured
interviews.
• How these are understood by the
participants is embedded in discourse
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about female ‘respectability’
Green, Eileen and Carrie Singleton (2006) “Young Women
.
Negotiating Space and Place” Sociology 40(5):853-872
• Young women share perceptions and
experiences of risk, linked to male violence
• Many choose inside ‘safe’ place for leisure
• Manifest differences between cultures how this
is expressed and understood
• But risk taking can be a fun a desirable aspect of
leisure activity
• ‘risky’ behaviour is contextualised by the young
women through dominant discourses about
feminine and ethic identities.
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Choice, risk, reflexivity
• “In the accounts that we have presented, risk is
depicted as an organizing principle of daily
routines and leisure practices that dictate young
women’s use of time and space. Because
certain times of the day and spaces are
perceived as risky, their own position or place in
time and space is continually under negotiation.”
(Green and Singleton 2006: 867)
• i.e risk is a life-style choice not the absence of
moral authority
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a revised rather than a post modernity
• Gidden's summary diagramme which
contrasts his position to that of postmodernity.
• Exercise: try and locate research
examples given in the lecture within
Gidden’s framework.
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A Comparison of Conceptions of "Post-Modernity" (PM)
and "Radicalised Modernity" (RM)*
Post-Modernity
Radicalised Modernity
1. Understands current transitions in 1. Identifies the institutional
epistemological terms or as
developments which create a sense
dissolving epistemology altogether. of fragmentation and dispersal.
2. Focuses upon the centrifugal
tendencies of current social
transformations and their dislocating
character.
2. Sees high modernity as a set of
circumstances in which dispersal is
dialectically connected to profound
tendencies towards global
integration.
3. Sees the self as dissolved or
dismembered by the fragmenting of
experience.
3. Sees the self as more than just a
site of intersecting forces; active
processes of reflexive self-identity
are made possible by modernity.
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A Comparison of Conceptions of "Post-Modernity"
(PM) and "Radicalised Modernity" (RM)*
• 1. Understands current
transitions in epistemological
terms or as dissolving
epistemology altogether.
• The way the world is changing
makes it impossible to
understand, (or at least
understand in traditional terms)
• It is not possible to say when
and where a ‘respectable’ girl
should be out alone.
• 1. Identifies the institutional
developments which create a
sense of fragmentation and
dispersal.
• Some social institutions are
changing in such a way that
they create a feeling that
things are falling apart and
nothing is certain any more.
• Families have become
uncertain how to bring up
teenage girls and use a
diverse set of standards.
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A Comparison of Conceptions of "Post-Modernity"
(PM) and "Radicalised Modernity" (RM)*
• “Focuses upon the centrifugal
tendencies of current social
transformations and their
dislocating character.”
• Society tends to fly apart and
upset peoples expectations
• You can’t tell who is working
class any more because there
are now too many different
ways of understanding what
working class means
“Sees high modernity as a set
of circumstances in which
dispersal is dialectically
connected to profound
tendencies towards global
integration.”
Society’s tendency to fly apart
is met with an opposing
tendency which links the whole
world together
We don’t know who are the
working class any more but the
whole world knows about and
resents the vast personal
incomes of failed bankers
living in lavish mansions in
prime locations
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A Comparison of Conceptions of "Post-Modernity"
(PM) and "Radicalised Modernity" (RM)*
• 3. Sees the self as dissolved or
dismembered by the
fragmenting of experience.
• There are too many looking
glasses to see oneself clearly
• Girls in Middlesborough are
faced with confusion by
radically different expectations
from family, school, their peers,
the media, etc.
• 3. Sees the self as more than
just a site of intersecting
forces; active processes of
reflexive self-identity are made
possible by modernity.
• We can use the many new
ways of looking at ourselves to
create ourselves anew many
times
• Girls in Middlesborough are
forging new identities built from
elements drawn across the
world.
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A Comparison of Conceptions of "Post-Modernity" (PM)
and "Radicalised Modernity" (RM)*
Post-Modernity
Radicalised Modernity
4. Argues for the contextuality of
truth claims or sees them as
"historical."
4. Argues that the universal features
of truth claims force themselves
upon us in an irresistible way given
the primacy of problems of a global
kind. Systematic knowledge about
these developments is not
precluded by the reflexivity of
modernity.
5. Theorises powerlessness which
individuals feel in the face of
globalising tendencies.
5. Analyses a dialectic of
powerlessness and empowerment,
in terms of both experience and
action.
6. Sees the "emptying" of day- to6. Sees day-to-day life as an active
day life as a result of the intrusion of complex of reactions to abstract
abstract systems.
systems, involving appropriation as
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well as loss.
• 4. Argues for the contextuality
of truth claims or sees them as
"historical."
• No right or wrong judgments
are possible
• Cannot trust any one account
of the girls risk taking more
than another
• 4. Argues that the universal
features of truth claims force
themselves upon us in an
irresistible way given the
primacy of problems of a
global kind. Systematic
knowledge about these
developments is not precluded
by the reflexivity of modernity.
• Knowledge about society is
possible even although people
can change their behaviour
through gaining knowledge,
• Can identify more from less
truthful account of girls risk
taking
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• 5. Theorises
powerlessness which
individuals feel in the face
of globalising tendencies.
• People feel they can do
nothing to change their
situation
• Girls feel powerless to
change the risky
situations they find
themselves in
• 5. Analyses a dialectic of
powerlessness and
empowerment, in terms of both
experience and action.
• People respond more or less
successfully to their
predicament
• Girls manage themselves to
minimise the risks they don’t
want and experience the ones
they do.
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• 6. Sees the "emptying" of
day- to-day life as a result
of the intrusion of abstract
systems.
• Experts with scientific
knowledge will always
know our situation and its
risks better than
ourselves
• Experts can predict better
than the girls who will get
in trouble
• 6. Sees day-to-day life as an
active complex of reactions to
abstract systems, involving
appropriation as well as loss.
• People use and react to expert
scientific knowledge in a
variety of ways
• Girls know about the risks on
the street and adapt to them to
both avoid and enjoy them
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A Comparison of Conceptions of "Post-Modernity" (PM)
and "Radicalised Modernity" (RM)*
Post-Modernity
Radicalised Modernity
7. Regards coordinated
political engagement as
precluded by the primacy
of contextuality and
dispersal.
8. Defines post-modernity
as the end of
epistemology/the
individual/ethics.
7. Regards coordinated
political engagement as
both possible and
necessary, on a global
level as well as locally.
8. Defines post-modernity
as possible
transformations moving
"beyond" the institutions
of modernity.
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*From Consequences of Modernity by Anthony Giddens (p. 151)