Week 11: Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity PDF

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Week 11: Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (1990), Chapter I (pp.1-54) and Chapter III (pp. 79-111)...

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Lecture 11 -

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Postmodernism: no grand narrative  no such thing as society  structured by power among individuals Not structured, fragmentation of perspectives Universal knowledge is impossible  endless subjectivity Marx, Durkheim, Weber : didn’t write for a living, lived to write  means to an end But with modernity, sociology has changed, writing for a living Material conditions of knowledge production has changed  Giddens Nature is not just something infinite for us to use it is autonomous with a force of its own, it is finite Rationalization was the process of making life convenient, stable for everyone In the 20th century  there is continuous war  and there is a change in the nature of warfare  WWI - gentleman’s war  they observed an etiquette  The idea of a whole civilian citizenship  contributing to the war effort  children writing cards to cheer soldiers on, etc  Global emergence of a huge arms industry M.A.D  Mutually assured destruction 20th century: seem to be using our intelligence and capacity to destroy ourselves  irrational  where is the reason and progress here?

Totalitarianism + fundamentalism -

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Completely irrational, the masses are scary  can exterminate an entire other race The idea of ethnic cleansing Religion responds to modernity in a different way  reject modernism, secularization of life At the same time, also tries to capture the power of the modern state Makes it very hard to think that there is such a thing as a society  when social relations, food, healthcare, systems are all globally diffused  how to have social solidarity when we are all extended across the planet? Not to abandon social theory, but theorizing a world that knows of its own modernity

Modernity radicalized -

People have different ideas about what is human, who deserves to die etc There is a irreconcilable of ideas Have to accept that knowledge has effects on society Have to recognize that the west no longer defines modernity  modernity is now globalized and takes on different forms How to think and conceptualize modernity A world that keeps changing based on an understanding of itself

3 Problems with classical social theory 1. A single overriding logic - Weber: rationalization - vs multiple trajectories  complexities 2. Focuses on “society” - Presumes there is such a thing of a cohesive whole, assumes that there is a particular order and function - How do we know there is some inner unity among the people? 3. For prediction and control - Guiding society into the future - How society always changes according to ideas -

Giddens: what is distinct about modernity is not just one change, not one overall dynamic, but dynamism itself Institutions in modernity is constantly changing itself in light of new knowledge Propensity to constant and rapid change Continuously changing

Theorize this dynamism -

These concepts are more abstract  rationality that because they are more abstract, they will enable us to be more specific

1. Time-space distanciation - Distance has been pulled apart between time and space - The space you live in becomes a place - Space and time were together, made up a space - Modern time is empty time - Before the existence of clocks, we only know what time it is through social activities and relations  time does not exist apart from social activities and relations - But once you have a clock, it actually extracts life from time  nothing fills these marks between time - We actually start thinking of time as a substance  can start thinking of what we want to do in one hour  this is modern - We don’t have space in an abstract sense, we have feelings of proximity  absence and presence - In modernity, we have the abstraction of time and space - We can measure time and space  can be detached and recombined  not part of an integrated experience - With modernity, we have time-space ordering devices  such as a timetable or schedule  instruments of power  whoever has control over time has control over space  gets to control what should be done in that time - We can document what will happen at this time and this space  which turns it into a place

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Can look at how time and space is recombined at different sides of the economy Look at how social relations are working in a factory, or how India callcenters live on American time in order to cater to American consumers  they live on American clocks, take on cultural influence and values too  their sense of place is constituted partly by the power of US consumers Eg, Facebook  Mark Zuckerberg gets to say who we are and not the people around us Who gets to combine time and space and who has the power to do it?

2. Disembedding a) symbolic tokens - Symbolic tokens  eg money  how does money disembed social relations - Money originated as a debt  many IOUs between different people  at some point, those particular IOU becomes standardized, guaranteed by a state  money is now a standard, universal IOU - The relation of debt can now be removed by the particular people who inculcated the debt - Money is a means of bracketing time - There doesn’t even have to be a physical IOU  nothing has to physically pass from one to another it is pure data now - There is no need for direct contact  money disembeds, just use money as transaction b) expert systems - All these systems run by people far away, whom we don’t even know - Our social relations are put in a new situation where we live in environments of trust and risk Trust.. - We trust in abstract systems  we don’t trust individuals such as the individual bankteller, but we trust the banking system - We don’t things happen due to divine will, but we think that it is a result of human action - Bad things not a matter of divine will, but human actions - Live in an environment of risk  minimize risk to a level we are comfortable with  sense of security 3. Reflexivity -

Weber and Durkheim treated modernity as something that they can get to know better and better Presumed to be a stable thing, but it is not The society we are studying takes our knowledge and changes itself New information is folded back into established narratives Modern knowledge is meaningful but never certain Giddens: we don’t have to end up with generalizations  its not black or white  we can look at how Marxist ideas were taken up by society 

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power relations  does not mean that have to take up the whole thing, that he is either worthless or important Doesn’t mean that there is no such thing as society

3 conceptual frameworks for a radically modern world -

Giddens: We have agency, not powerless against the system Saying that there is still agency Risk comes from far away, from people you will never meet Not a matter of I don’t trust, but a matter of trusting the abstract systems that your life depends on, that makes modern life possible...