Читать книгу Contemporary Sociological Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 22

Since its origins, sociology has always been engaged with the idea of modernity. Its focus was the societies that emerged out of long processes of social change. In Western Europe, there was a Renaissance in culture, Reformation (and resistance) in religion, political revolutions seeking greater representation and rule of law, industrial revolution transforming work and economies. Where there had been a shifting mosaic of kingdoms and empires, nation states tried to enforce clear borders and pursued projects of national integration. Family life and local community changed as cities grew; transportation and communication knit people together across long distances; and advances science and medicine meant that for the first time almost all children lived into adulthood and adults lived long enough and had enough resources or social support to retire. Societies grew more complex with a range of new institutions: universities, business corporations, and government agencies. Individuals gained more capacity to choose aspects of their futures, from different careers to different places to live. Women gradually gained full recognition as individuals and citizens.

Changes spread through countries Europeans colonized, building new societies and transforming old. Both slavery and empire brought struggles for liberation and self-determination in response. Spanish, French, and English became global languages. Markets extended ever-more widely and organized more and more lives. The world’s population multiplied, and life became overwhelmingly urban. Migrations were ubiquitous.

As many classical sociological theorists argued, modernity was always a contradictory reality pulled in different directions by state power, capitalism, rising individualism, and new kinds of inequality. During the 20th century, tensions turned into devastating world wars. Total wars depended on industry as well as armies. Battles were not confined to fields of clear engagement; civilians were attacked; cities were bombed. And at an extreme, millions of civilians were murdered in gas chambers. Some suggested that the Holocaust was somehow a throwback to premodern, but as Zygmunt Bauman argued persuasively, it was, sadly and centrally, a product of modernity.²⁹

Social transformations continued. Capitalism and states both expanded. New technologies transformed work, communication, and everyday life. Prosperity returned after the devastation of war – though the new Cold War between capitalist and communist alliances kept alive the fear of even more total war with nuclear weapons.

There was also optimism that the benefits of modernization could be shared throughout the world. Modernization theory drew on the actual social conditions of the richer Western European countries and the United States to construct a broadly functionalist model of modernity. They imagined former colonies following the paths of “successful modernizers” such as Britain and the United States. Modernization theory guided a range of important research projects that did indeed produce useful knowledge. However, especially in and after the 1960s, it was challenged on several fronts. Among the most important was the unilinear concept of social change widespread within it. Modernization was understood as a process moving in one predetermined direction. Closely related was the criticism that modernization theory neglected power, including the power by that some societies dominated others and also the power by which elites within societies shaped the course of their growth and change. The third was the argument that modernization theory lumped all manners of very different cultural and social formations together into the category of “traditional” or premodernity. Fourth came the argument that modernity could take different forms. Chinese, Indian, or Islamic modernity might not resemble that of the West.

Domination by the US and global capitalism was central to political economy throughout Latin America and movements to change it. Again, transnational linkages were central, symbolized by Che Guevara, a hero of the Cuban Revolution, who was killed in Bolivia in 1967 with CIA assistance. And again, the struggle was intellectual as well as material. Sociological theorists like Fernando Henrique Cardoso, influenced by Max Weber and Alain Touraine, played a leading role questioning dominant theories of modernization and showing how capitalist development was a path to dependence, not autonomous flourishing, for the postcolonial countries of the Global South.

Four thinkers who worked together in Africa expanded this perspective into a theory of the “modern world system.” Walter Rodney, from Guyana, showed how the underdevelopment of Africa was produced by Europe’s growth, domination, and exploitation, not merely a matter of lagging behind.³⁰ The Egyptian Samir Amin coined the term “Eurocentric” to describe the perspective that world-system theory sought to replace.³¹ An American student of C. Wright Mills, Immanuel Wallerstein (excerpted here), developed the most complete theorization of the “modern world system” as a product of capitalist globalization organized through a hierarchy of nation states – a richer and more powerful core, a semiperiphery trying to move up, and a periphery left nearly without power and capital. Wallerstein argued that transformations of the modern world system were inevitable. The Italian fourth founder of world-system theory, Giovanni Arrighi, analyzed the rise of China and the decline of US hegemony as just such a transformation of the modern world system.

By the 1960s and 1970s, there were widespread movements questioning whether modernity had taken a wrong turn. None fully succeeded in its attempt to correct course, though they had major impacts nonetheless. World peace was not established, but human rights and humanitarian action became prominent projects to mitigate suffering. Social justice was not established, but there was new recognition of the rights of women and racial minorities.

The 1970s saw an almost perfect storm to mark the end of one era and the launch of a new set of debates. The 1973–75 economic crisis was the biggest between the Great Depression and the still unresolved financial crisis of 2009–11. The rise of neoliberalism changed ideology. The rise of OPEC changed global power structures and, creating great reserves of investable cash in some countries, helped to launch an era of dramatic financialization. This supported growth in Asia though China’s transformative entry into global capitalist trade was still a decade away.

In the West, deindustrialization decimated old industrial heartlands and the working class organized through trade unions. “Postindustrial society” was shaped by new technologies for both the production and distribution of things and for communications and cultural creation. This transformation came with more jobs in the service sector, often filled throughout the previously industrialized countries by women, minorities, and immigrants – but mostly at lower wages than the industrial jobs that were lost. Inequality grew to levels not seen in a century.

For many people, the changes that came in the 1980s and after brought more disruption than progress. Deindustrialization is a prime example. Factory closings led to wider unraveling of towns through America’s “rust belt” or England’s once industrial Midlands. This was a demonstration that functional integration matters, even if it is not all that matters. It was proof that intentional action has unintended consequences, as the functionalist Robert Merton had argued.³² And it was a reminder that while the ability to guide change is part of the idea of agency, it is hard to achieve at large scale and in relation to social structure.

A growing range of thinkers, including contemporary sociological theorists, challenged the very idea of modernity. Jean-Francois Lyotard argued that the “master-narratives” of modernity, the great stories of progress, revolutions, and Western culture were obsolete, and we had entered a “postmodern” era.³³ One of the most influential contemporary sociological theorists, Bruno Latour (excerpted here), argued rather that we had never been “modern.” Modernity for Latour was not so much an era shaped by observable social transformations as a problematic intellectual project. One of its hallmarks was trying to draw sharp lines and clear distinctions where reality was messy and mixed. Drawing such lines between eras was an example of this. Lines between nature and culture, humans and animals, people and things were all similarly misleading. The modern project – or culture or attitude – encouraged environmental disaster and overuse of the planet’s resources.

Other contemporary sociological theorists argued that for all its disasters, modern social change was both real and sometimes positive. We should build on its strengths not give up on it. Jeffrey Alexander (excerpted here) emphasized in particular that modernity had given us not only ever-larger markets, corporations, and states but also a “civil sphere.” This is composed of independent institutions and settings for public debate and free formation of culture; it allows us freedom to pursue our values not just respond to necessity. Democratic social integration depends on the civil sphere, and when it is weakened – as it has been lately – we should shore it up. Likewise, Michele Lamont (excerpted here) suggests that efforts to reverse stigmatization and reduce inequality represent modern tendencies, not just quixotic projects. Successful modern societies involve important levels of mutual recognition across lines of difference. This complements Norbert Elias’s account of “the civilizing process” that helped to forge modernity (excerpted here). Learning to interact politely with strangers went along with learning good manners and helped to produce a culture of civility. Life in Alexander’s civil sphere is not just a matter of institutions or debates but also norms about how we should interact; these are crucial equally to Lamont’s projects of destigmatization. Uncivil politics and personal interactions are linked to polarized divisions, and civility is linked to solidarity.

The most important contemporary sociological theorist of modernity and its social transformations has been Jürgen Habermas (excerpted here). He was part of a new generation in Frankfurt School critical theory. Like Adorno and Horkheimer, he combined a broad philosophical background with strong influences from Weber and Marx. Distinctively, he drew on the classical sociology of George Herbert Mead and the pragmatist tradition more generally to develop a theory of communication action. He saw this as the basic source of social life. But it was a capacity improved through learning, which accounted for evolution and the possibility of error correction.

Habermas contributed to many of the key developments in contemporary sociological theory from the early 1960s to the present. In dialog with Niklas Luhmann, he explored the role of technology in modern society, enabling radical advances in productivity and creating depersonalized systems. He addressed the tension embedded in what Weber called “rationalization” – the relationship of growing opportunities for reasoned choice to both freedom and the development of bureaucratic and economic systems experienced as oppressive.

Concerned to defend a robust idea of the human, Habermas challenged technological transformations such as cloning and gene editing. He also sought to move beyond simplistic secularism to a “postsecular” recognition of the rights of religious citizens. Not religious himself, he nonetheless thought religious ideas could be important to counteracting the dominance of technical rationalism – and the threat of Weber’s “iron cage” – in contemporary culture.

Against theorists of power and capitalism who were tempted to give up on democracy, he makes a strong case for how democracy not only embodies citizen voice but also enables a valuable process of learning. This is grounded in public debate and also in the development of free associations in civil society. Habermas presents analyses of how democracy – and democratic use of law – can remake problematic institutions. He has been a forceful critic of nationalism and advocate for the European Union, which he thought embodied potential for cosmopolitan justice. For all his criticisms of the actually existing state of modernity, Habermas argues that the project of modernity still offered positive potential.