3 The Production and Reproduction of Social Life Order, power, conflict: Dürkheim and Parsons Durkheim's treatment of the 'externality' of social facts, and the 'constraint' which they exert over actors' conduct, was an attempt to provide a theory of the relation between action and the properties of social collectivities. When he first introduced the notions of externality and constraint, in The Rules of Sociological Method, Dürkheim failed to separate out the general ontological sense in which the physical world has an existence independent of the knowing subject, and may causally influence his or her conduct, from the constraining properties of social organization Later, however, he came to clarify the assumption, in fact already strongly developed even in his very first writings, that social phenomena are, in their very essence, moral phenomena. Utilitarian' sanctions, which influence human conduct in a mechanical way, are distinguished from moral sanctions, whose content ,s specific to the moral universe to which they relate (the conscience collective)- he came to hold that attachment to moral ideals is not merely constraining but is the very source of purposive conduct In this latter aspect, a threefold connection is drawn: social-moral-purposive. This is the key to Durkheimian sociology, although it remains confused with a tendency to see some purposes as 'egocentric', based upon organic impulses, and as resistant to incorporation within the social universe of moral imperatives.1 ^ Production and Reproduction of Social Life 101 values' \shVi&VI ^ purposes can be treated as 'introjected C(Jntrarv jfy "° means unique to Durkheim's writings; on the the works afPP,ears in very many different places, and often in fro,Ti and I 6 whose views are apparently quite distinct Core axiom'" direct'y opposed to, those of Dürkheim. The World is .S lnvolved may be expressed as follows. The social becauSe of ntiated from the world of nature essentially radical dK ltS.moral ('normative') character. This is a very l;,tion of 'SjUnctlon' because moral imperatives stand in no re-be deriv S^mfmetry to those of nature, and can hence in no way fcgarded m them' 'action'' lt is tnen declared, may be Ventions Th C°nduct which 's oriented towards norms or con-dePend'S theorem can then lead in divergent directions, Purpose ^ UP°n wnetner tne analysis concentrates upon actors' Zurich S °r motives' or whether the emphasis is placed, as by The n Up°n norms themselves as properties of collectivities, the fj °St"Wiu8ensteinian philosophers have inevitably followed cond °^ tbese routes, approaching the study of purposive beh' • V'a t'le assimilation of 'meaningful' with 'rule-governed' thev V">fUr' 'eav'n8 unexplained the origins of the rules to which sarrie ' ^S WC" aS '§norm8 their character as sanctioned). The who nas been followed by numerous other recent writers jjjis ' a"hough they are not themselves philosophers, have been ste Uenccd by the views of the professed followers of Wittgen-aufh rhUS one sucn text we are to,d: 'Motives [by which the hor means, in my terminology, "purposes"] are a way for an r Server to assign relevance to behaviour in order that it may be ec°gnized as another instance of normatively ordered action', or again: 'motive is a rule which depicts the social character of the a« itself .2 1 have already indicated some of the flaws inherent in this Sort of reasoning, and it is appropriate at this point to try to con-nect these up with the weaknesses involved in the one which ls nominally its contrary: that is, that proposed by Dürkheim -an and only in so far as, a social order memberr°fXlmately t0 match the purposes of the vanou mto an Lt " w"h the integration of value-standards HhL c0„cemnfV Symmetrical consensus. 'Conflict of interest-toween ,he PIOn> "eVer b<*°mes anything more than a clash the X fivifyUreS 1individual ac"OTS a"d 'mttebe ome treated as Tprob 2 3 P^dve, power cannot become embodied iiT^^P°nent of diVT« treated first anH f„ "' Slnce the meshing ot iniei 'the a question of the relation between embodied tVÄ,^ are more complex than «hose Dürkheim held tharl %'em in at least one important^way. interests of a*^^*» ^1"^ One is based upo'^"6 re'ati°n between these in his thought impulses, which are 'no r°le °f ^"-cally given, egocentric moral demands of sodetT^0 be to COnS,ant ^^dual istic personality of the a*' ^ S0ciali2ed seSmcnt of the dual the anomic lack of con,, n';^6 °ther is the familiar ^ fah lished moral norms of amors' purposes with estab- recoenition nf intZ ,kheim 's treatment of anomie offers some recognition of interest-conflict in so far as anomic 'deregulation' Production and Reproduction of Social Life 105 derives from a situation in which actors have definite aspirations which are not 'realizable' (an avenue later developed by Merton), rather than from a moral vacuum, an absence of moral norms which are binding upon actions.8 But this possibility, which could have been linked to the analysis of what Dürkheim referred to as the 'forced division of labour', and thereby to the analysis of class conflict, remained largely unexplored in Durkheim's writings, and disappears from view in Parsons's theoretical scheme altogether, since Parsons defines anomie as 'the polar antithesis of full institutionalization' or 'the complete breakdown of normative order'. Although Parsons's interpretation of the drift of Durkheim's thought offered in The Structure of Social Action is to my mind definitely a misleading one,9 the above emphasis undoubtedly ties together the work of Dürkheim and Parsons, thereby unifying one dominant tradition in sociology. The 'problem of order', from this angle, depends upon the centrality of a tension which is conceived to exist between 'egoism' and 'altruism': a problem of reconciling the sectional interests of individual actors with social morality, the conscience collective or 'common value system'. Given such an orientation to social theory, it is impossible satisfactorily to analyse the interests which intervene between the actions of individuals and the overall global community, the conflicts that are predicated upon these, and the power alignments with which they are interlaced. The characteristic interpretation of 'order' as moral consensus appears very early in Parsons's work, and is attributed to Weber as well as Dürkheim. Thus in commenting on his translation of Weber's discussion of legitimate order (Ordnung) Parsons remarks, 'it is clear that by "order" Weber here means a normative system. The pattern for the concept of "order" is not, as in the law of gravitation, the "order of nature".'10 Whether Weber meant this or not, the 'problem of order' for Parsons is certainly one of normative regulation, a problem of control. The puzzle to which Parsons's formulations are offered as a solution is not equivalent in generality to Simmel's famous query: 'How is society possible?', which retains its significance if Parsons's presentation of the 'problem of order' is abandoned, as I hold it must be. If the term 'order' is to be used, I think, it should be in the 106 Production and Reproduction of Social Life ^tT^ir1^ Parsons's comments on Weber mentioned above, svnonvTf 18 maPPr°Priate to social science - as a loose synonym for pattern' or the antithesis of 'chaos'. Order, power, conflict: Marx In looking for m ait turn towards Marx l° thiS type °f the°ry' °nC tendS t0 process, conflict ^j11'^lth apparently ubiquitous stress upon in the movement0 n8e> Two torms or dialectical relation writings. One is" °r history may be distinguished in Marx's other is a dialect I ic between humanity and nature; the ation of history ° h dasses' Both are linked to the transform-animals, are not abl CUlture' Human beings, unlike the lower material world Th & f ° GXiSt3 State of mere adaPtation to tne built apparatus of' & that the former do not possess an in-interplay with theInstlnctual responses forces them into a creative master their envir I SUrroundings, such that they must seek to given; thus human^™^ Father than simply adjUSt f° !t aS a the world around th Cnan§e themselves through changing this general 'philoso^^ * continual and reciprocal process. But to Marx and, in th P f1CaI anthropology' (which was not original writi"gs in particula in which [t was stated in the early 'Feuerbachian invers ' >d0eS UttIe more than to interJect the Marx's subsequent w Jnt° Hegel's scheme) remains latent in brundrisse, in which 1 ^With the PartiaI exception of the mentary). Consequent reworking of these ideas is still frag-way of a systematic 1 « is ,itt,e to be found in Marx in the ot Praxis. We find t andlVsis or elaboration of the basic notion very beginning a SOc-q, ents Hke 'Consciousness is .. . from the exist at all' and m Pr°duct' and remains so as long as men consciousness, langUa.°pre sPecifically, 'Language is as old as ror other men ... janP ls Practical consciousness that exists also e need, the necessity ^ Ilke consc,'ousness, only arises from tnan exploring the im', ,ntercourse with other men.'11 Rather Principally interest. P,Cations of such propositions, Marx was historical interpretation1" fm°vin8 directly to the task of the ot society via the cone deveIoPment of particular types ePts of modes of production, division of Production and Reproduction of Social Life 107 labour, private property and classes, concentrating of course upon the critique of political economy and the optative transformation of capitalism by socialism. Marx's discussions of material interest, conflict and power were worked out in this context, and reflect some of the ambiguities in the intellectual resources upon which they drew. It is clear enough that, within the capitalist order, the two major classes, capital and wage-labour, have divergent interests (both in the narrow sense of the appropriation of economic returns and in the more profound sense in which the interests of the working class promote the incipient socialization of labour, clashing with the entrenched defence of private property on the part of the dominant class); that these entail that class conflict, latent or manifest, is endemic in capitalist society; and that this condition of antagonism is more or less directly controlled or stabilized through the agency of the political power of the state. The transcendence of capitalism, however, marks the transcendence of classes, of their conflicts of interest, and of 'political power' itself. In this later regard, one can trace without difficulty the residual influence of Saint-Simon's doctrine, the idea that the administration of human beings by others will give way to the administration of humans over things. Marx's notion of the transcendence of the state is certainly vastly more sophisticated than that, as is evident in his remarks in his early critiques of Hegel, and his later comments on the Commune and the Gotha Programme. But classes, class interests, class conflict and political power are for Marx in a basic sense contingent upon the existence of a given type of society (class society), and since he rarely discusses 'interests', 'conflict' and 'power' outside of the context of classes, how far these concepts relate to socialist society is left obscure. Class interests and class conflicts may disappear in socialist society, but what happens to the interest divisions and conflicts which are not specifically linked to classes? There are statements in Marx's early writings which could be read as indicating that the arrival of communism signals the end of all forms of division of interest. We must surely presume that Marx did not hold such a view; but the absence of anything more than scattered hints about such matters makes it impossible to say much of a concrete sort about them. Now it may 108 Production and Reproduction of Social Life be pointed out that Marx refused to go into any detail about the society of the future on the grounds that such speculation degenerates into Utopian socialism, since it is not possible to foresee the form of social organization that will characterize a society based on very different principles to the existing ones; and similarly it may perhaps be argued that concepts developed within one type of society - capitalism - would not be appropriate to the analysis of another - socialism. But these arguments do not detract from the main point: that the only cogent analyses of conflict and power in Marx link these specifically with class interests. From this aspect, Marx's writings do not provide an elaborated alternative to those main traditions of social thought whose philosophical anthropology' is centred upon the concepts of value, norm or convention What follows relies upon the fundamental idea of the produc-ZLZ trePu°iUC'ion °f soci"l m, which certainly appears cons stent with the Marxian ontology of Praxis. In Marx's words: thereht * T™* their life> " 'hey are. What they are, m^u^nT^ WUh their Production, both with what they blunder T H h°W theV Produce."^ But 'production' has to u^S ~e,nhaavVe7obr0ad ^ ^ lately available in Marx s worLs. 8° ^ bCy°nd '*"' * StaK^J* rStitWion of s<*iety is a skilled accom- hended by them Th,Wh°Uy intended or wh°"y most general sense of ,h2 ° unde™»nding social order - m the - is not the 'intern 1 'term which 1 have distinguished above between the ST 1 ^ but the shi"ing "TZ constituent JSTmrTasocial life by .ts however: and the' seed Tt*"*"' " production contributes towards The there in every 1 * f social life. The process o T I* of ^ 'ordered' f°rm h upon the reproduction of r,epr0ductio« begins with and depends existence- that). A ma,erial circumstances of human ssz£ which are casually normative or moral ^Wttgensteiümii philosophers; more ai,.IncJusJve «■shall treat as a sub-category of the wim mat of 'structure' ruIe'> which f shall wish to connect I he constitution of j„, as the actuali^"'0" as a -"oral order may be under-tT'"nS- There » a C f and the enactment of nowever, can be factuallv hr u ynimetry between these which, of one par,icipam in an en™ That is <° say, what is a right a "her ^ respond ,n JJ «"«»unter appears as an obligation of out ran tie can be severed 7fPropriate' fashion. and vice versa; or honoured, and no sanction T °bIi8ation is not acknowledged ' hus, m the production ofl?" effect«'vely be brought to bear, have to be treated as a serielT/V^ *« normative elements trngent upon the successful L? ^ whose realization is con-tne medium of the responsesfa,'2ation of obligations through nctlons are thus essentially diff °ther ^aniciP^ts. Normative t (as Dürkheim recognized) Production and Reproduction of Social Life 115 from those connected with the transgression of technical or utilitarian prescriptions, which involve what von Wright calls 'anankastic propositions'.18 In prescriptions such as 'avoid drinking contaminated water', the sanction that is involved (the risk of being poisoned) follows 'mechanically' from the execution of the act: it depends upon causal relations that have the form of natural events. In making this distinction, however, Dürkheim neglected a vital sense in which norms may be approached in a 'utilitarian' fashion by participants in the production of interaction, and which must be conceptually related to the contingent character of the realization of normative claims. This is that a normative claim may be acknowledged as binding, not because an actor to whom it applies as an obligation accepts that obligation as a moral commitment, but because she or he anticipates, and wants to avoid, the sanctions which will be applied in the case of her or his non-compliance. In relation to the pursuance of her or his interests, therefore, an actor may approach moral claims in exactly the same way as she or he does technical prescriptions; in each case the individual may also 'calculate the risks' involved in a particular act in terms of the probability of escaping sanction. It is an elementary mistake to suppose that the enactment of a moral obligation necessarily implies a moral commitment to it Since the sanctions which follow the transgression of moral claims do not operate with the mechanical inevitability of events in nature, but involve the reactions of others, there is typically some 'free space' for the transgressor, if identified as such, to negotiate the character of the sanction which is to follow. Inis is one way in which the production of a normative order exists in close relation to the production of meaning: what the transgression is is potentially negotiable, and the manner in which it is characterized or identified affects the sanctions to which it may be subject. This is familiar, and formalized, m courts of law, but also pervades the whole arena of moral constitution as it operates in day-to-day life. Sanctions are easily classified, on an abstract level, in terms ot whether the resources which are mobilized to produce the sanction are 'internal': that is, involve elements of the actor's personality, or 'external': that is, draw upon features of the context of 116 Production and Reproduction of Social Life action. Each of these may be further categorized in terms of whether the resources which the sanctioning ageni q{ mobilize are 'positive' or 'negative; with regard t^ n q{ the actor who is the target of sanction. 1 nus me * comm[t. 'internal' sanctions may draw upon a positive ^ ^ ^e ment of the actor, or negatively upon anxiety, tear of actualization of 'external' sanctions may draw up ^ ^ force reward or on the other hand may hold out the tnreal of these Obviously, in actual situations of interaction sfv^ernal' sanc-influences may operate simultaneously; and no e ^ a tion can be effective unless it brings into play an 1 reward is only such if it impinges upon a person s w ■ an The 'interpretation' of norms, and their capability connected 'interpretation' count by participants in interaction paijure to in subtle ways with their compliance to moral claims^ Up see this, or at any rate to spell out its implications, i parsonian with some characteristic defects of both Durkheimian-^ functionalism and post-Wittgensteinian philosophy- ^ ndent co-ordination of interaction is asymmetrically intefregSi0n of with its production as meaningful and with its eXp 0iosely relations of power. This has two aspects, themseJ|v hes 0f associated with one another: (1) the possibility ot g of different 'world-views' or, less macroscopically, de under-what is; (2) the possibility of clashes between diverging standings of 'common' norms. Relations of power in interaction The notion of 'action', I wish to claim, is logically who power. This is in a certain sense recognized by PniloS°P ueorV of talk of 'can', 'is able to' or 'powers', in relation to the me y^ action. But such discussions are rarely if ever related oy ^ authors to the concept of power in sociology. The connectio 'action' to 'power' can be simply stated. Action intn"S* nt involves the application of 'means' to achieve outcomes, or g about through the direct intervention of an actor in a course^ of events, 'intended action' being a sub-class of the actor's doingent refraining from doing; power represents the capacity of the age Production and Reproduction of Social Life 117 to mobilize resources to constitute those 'means'. In this most general sense, 'power' refers to the transformative capacity of human action, and I shall henceforth for the sake of clarity employ this second term, reserving the former one for a more restricted, relational use of 'power', to be further explicated below. The transformative capacity of human action is placed in the forefront in Marx, and is the key element in the notion of Praxis. All systems of social theory have had to deal, in some way, with this - with the transformation of nature and the restlessly selfmodifying character of human society. But in many schools of social thought the transformative capacity of action is conceived of as a dualism, an abstract contrast between the neutral world of nature on the one hand, and the 'value-laden' world of human society on the other. In such schools, particularly those associated with functionalism, with its emphasis upon social 'adaptation' to an 'environment', a grasp of historicity is easily relinquished. Only in the linked traditions of Hegelian philosophy and (certain versions of) Marxism has the transformative capacity of action, as the self-mediating process of labour, been made the centre-point of social analysis. Labour is, as Lowith says, 'a movement of mediation... a fashioning or "forming" and therefore positive destruction of the world which is present in nature'.ll> There seems little doubt that this broad emphasis remained basic to Marx's mature thought, although not significantly elaborated in it; in the Grundrisse we find affirmed, in language that closely echoes his early immersion in the 'brook of fire', that 'labour is the living, shaping fire; it represents the impermanence of things, their temporality, in other words their formation in the course of living time'.20 However, Marx became increasingly preoccupied, not with labour as the transformative capacity of agency, but with its deformation as 'occupation' within the capitalist-industrial division of labour; and power as involved in social intercourse between people, as I have indicated in a preliminary way earlier, is analysed as a specific property of class relations rather than as a feature of social interaction in general. 'Power' in the sense of the transformative capacity of human agency is the capability of the actor to intervene in a series of 118 Production and Reproduction of Social Life events so as to alter their course; as such it is the 'can' which mediates between intentions or wants and the actual realization of the outcomes sought after. Tower' in the narrower, relational sense is a property of interaction, and may be defined as the capability to secure outcomes where the realization of these outcomes depends upon the agency of others. It is in this sense that some have power 'over' others: this is power as domination. Several basic points have to be made here. 1 Power, in either the broad or restricted sense, refers to capabilities. Unlike the communication of meaning, power does not come into being only when being 'exercised', even if ultimately there is no other criterion whereby one can demonstrate what power actors possess. This is important, because we can talk of power being 'stored up' for future occasions of use. 2 The relation between power and conflict is a contingent one: as 1 have formulated it, the concept of power, in either sense, does not logically imply the existence of conflict. This stands against some uses, or misuses, of what is perhaps the most famous formulation of 'power' in the sociological literature, that of Max Weber, according to whom power is 'the capacity of an individual to realize his will, even against the opposition ot others'. The omission of the 'even' in some renderings of this definition is significant; then it becomes the case that power presupposes conflict, since power only exists when the resistance of others has to be overcome, their will subdued.22 " " tn^.c«ncept of 'interest', rather than that of power as such, which relates directly to conflict and solidarity. If power and conflict frequently go together, it is not because the one logically implies the other, but because power is linked to the pursuance of interests, and people's interests may fail to coincide. All I mean to say by this is that, while power is a feature of every form of human interaction, division of interest is not. 4 This does not imply that divisions of interest can be transcended in any empirical society; and it is certainly necessary to resist the linkage of 'interest' to hypothetical 'states of nature'. T, Pr°duction and Reproduction of Social Life 119 1 ne use of n resources or facT^ interaction can be understood in terms of elements of its 1 UlCS Wmcn participants bring to and mobilize as thus include the*1"0!?1101*011, thereDV directing its course. These as 'meaningful' Ch ls wnereby the interaction is constituted abstractly here - alS° ~ and these need only to be stated capable of bri "* otner resources which a participant is conduct of other"18 l° bear S° as t0 influence or contro1 the the possession 7 3re Part*es to that interaction, including would be quite 4authority' and the threat or use of 'force'. It typology of De °Ut °f place to attempt to set out an elaborate this point is tresources in this study. My only concern at integrates the ° °^er a generalized conceptual scheme which °Ped in the n n°tl0n of P°wer into the theoretical account devel-is to relate t£[CSent chapter. What it is necessary to do, however, ing in interaction13^818 °f p°wer back to tne Production of rnean-This can best u 'action fram acc°mplished by reverting briefly to Parsons's voiced abo \ ' reference', or more specifically to criticism some of those influenced by ethnometh-Parsons's th critlcism has taken roughly the following form. In result of v {^l^ is arSued> the actor is programmed to act as a (in coniu ^ lnternalized' as need-dispositions of personality Actors ;TnCtl0n with non-normative 'conditions' of action), their in/6 P°rtrayed as unthinking dupes of their culture, and disposit" eraCtl°n With others as the enactment of such need-forma rather than as> as it truly is, a series of skilled person of ^think tms is riSht; but those who have expressed this Th . Vlew have failed to pursue its consequences far enough, onl ^ t0< Say' following Garfinkel, they have been interested y m 'accountability', in the cognitive management of communication and communication settings. This is treated as ne result of mutual 'labour' on the part of actors, but as if it were always the collaborative endeavour of peers, each contri- lng equally to the production of interaction, whose only interests are in sustaining an appearance of 'ontological security' whereby meaningfulness is constituted. In this one can trace the strong residual influence of Parsons's problem of order, but denuded of its volitional content, and reduced to a disembodied dialogue. 120 Production and Reproduction of Social Life As against this, we must emphasize that the creation of frames of meaning occurs as the mediation of practical activities, and in terms of differentials of power which actors are able to bring to bear. The significance of this is crucial in social theory, which must find as one of its chief tasks the mutual accommodation of power and norms in social interaction. The reflexive elaboration of frames of meaning is characteristically imbalanced in relation to the possession of power, whether this be a result of the superior linguistic or dialectical skills of one person in conversation with another; the possession of relevant types of 'technical knowledge'; the mobilization of authority or 'force', etc. 'What passes for social reality' stands in immediate relation to the distribution of power - not only on the most mundane levels of everyday interaction, but also on the level of global cultures and ideologies, whose influence indeed may be felt in every corner of everyday social life itself.23 Rationalization and reflexivity I have already pointed out that in most traditional schools of social thought reflexivity is treated as merely a nuisance, the consequences of which either can be ignored or are to be ~v I ' aS P°SSib,e- This is true both in respect of meth-mntr frv Z *ntrosPection' is swingeingly condemned as Sf of h SCienCe' in resPect of the conceptual represen-InTdist nhrranrCTdUCt itSelt- But nothing is more central to behave f hUman Ufe th™ the reflexive monitoring o Ldelv^'Jw ? eXpeCted ^ a» 'competent' members of 2not acknnT,In the Wdtin8s of those social thinkers who o en noinlT f Centra1' there is an °dd tlCd yutheiF Critics: for recognition of their very TcounK thev ff aUth,°rS lnVO,Ves J'ust what is obliterated in the *nH whin1 I a* t0 m°nitor the flow of action exhaustively, and when asked to explain why she did what she did at a particular time and ,n a particular place, may choose to reply 'for no reason without in any way compromising others' acceptance or her as competent'. But this only applies to those aspects of Production and Reproduction of Social Life 121 day-to-day interaction which are accepted as trivial, not to anything deemed important in an agent's conduct, for which the actor is always expected to be able to supply reasons if they are asked for (I shall not consider here how far this observation might apply outside the realm of Western culture). Since the giving of reasons involves the actor in providing a verbal account of what may only implicitly guide her or his behaviour, there is a thin line between 'rationalization' as I have used the term, and 'rationalization' meaning the giving of false reasons after the event. The giving of reasons is embroiled in the assessment of moral responsibility for acts, and hence easily lends itself to dissimulation or deceit. To recognize this, however, is not the same as holding that all reasons are merely 'principled explanations' offered by actors about what they do, in the light of accepted canons of responsibility, regardless of whether these were in some sense incorporated into their doings. There are two senses in which reasons may be held by actors to be 'valid', and the interlocking of these is of no small consequence in social life. One is how far an agent's stated reasons in fact express the person's monitoring of what he or she did; the other is how far his or her explanation conforms to what is generally acknowledged, in that individual's social milieu, as 'reasonable' conduct. The latter, in turn, depends upon more or less diffusely integrated patterns of belief which actors refer to in order to derive principled explanations of each other's conduct. What Schutz calls the 'stock of knowledge' which actors possess, and apply in the production of interaction, actually covers two analytically separable elements. There is what I have called generically 'mutual knowledge', which refers to the interpretative schemes whereby actors constitute and understand social life as meaningful; this can be distinguished from what I shall call 'common sense', which can be seen as comprising a more-or-less articulated body of theoretical knowledge, drawn upon to explain why things are as they are, or happen as they do, in the natural and social worlds. Common-sense beliefs typically underpin the mutual knowledge which is brought to any encounter by participants; the latter depends in a basic way upon a framework of 'ontological security' supplied by common sense. 122 Production and Reproduction of Social Life Common sense is by no means solely practical in character - 'cookery-book knowledge'. It is normally in some substantial degree derived from, and responsive to, the activities of 'experts', who make the most direct contribution to the explicit rationalization of culture. 'Experts' include all those who have the authority of privileged entrée to realms of specialized knowledge - priests, magicians, scientists, philosophers. Common sense is certainly in part the accumulated wisdom of laypeople; but common-sense beliefs just as certainly reflect and embody the perspectives developed by experts. As Evans-Pritchard remarks, the individual in European culture regards rain as the result of 'natural causes' which could be set out by a meteorologist, but is unlikely to be able to offer anything more than a rudimentary explanation of this sort- a Zande characterizes the origins of rain within a different cosmology.24 Ihe rationalization of action via common sense is a phenomenon of far-reaching importance to sociology, since social scientists themselves lay claim to be experts who are purveyors of authoritative 'knowledge'. This therefore raises the crucial question: m what sense are the 'stocks of knowledge', which fhSfc TP I t0 Constitute or make happen that very society Si^^ °uanalysis' corrisibie in the ,ight of sociol°; tifr; or 1 hf e°ry? Without prejudicing later discussion of mm X fCUeVe1' We must first <* all consider two aspects AMc^W1* C°nduct ™y be opaque to themselves: first, o^S^f and' —d' of L structural properties The motivation of action It would be wrong to suppose that the kinds of explanation that actors look for, and accept, regarding the behaviour of others are limited to the rationalization of conduct, that is, to where the actor is presumed to understand adequately what she or he is doing and why she or he is doing it In ordinary English usage, as I have previously mentioned, 'reasons' are not clearly distinguished from motives: one might ask 'What was his reason Production and Reproduction of Social Life 123 for doing Y?' as an equivalent to 'What was his motive for doing Y?' Nevertheless, it is recognized that to enquire into someone's motives for acting as he does is potentially to seek elements in his conduct of which the actor might not fully be aware himself or herself. This is why, 1 think, the term 'unconscious motives' does no particular violence to ordinary English usage, whereas 'unconscious reasons' seems rather less easy to accept. My use of 'motivation', therefore, as referring to wants of which an actor may or may not be conscious, or may only become aware after he or she has carried out the act to which a particular motive refers, in fact conforms quite closely to lay usage. Human motivation may be aptly conceived of as hierarchically ordered, both in a developmental sense and in terms of the distribution of wants at any given time in the life of the person. An infant is not a being capable of reflexivity: the capacity for the monitoring of one's own activities is predicated firmly and fundamentally upon the mastery of language, although this does not preclude the possible validity of Mead's thesis that reflexivity is on its most primitive level grounded in the reciprocity of social relations in the interaction of the infant with other members of the family group. Now although the very young infant may know a few words, which serve as signs in interaction with others, a child does not attain a broad command of linguistic skills, or a mastery of the intricacies of the deictic terminology of T, 'me' and 'you', until somewhere between two and three years of age. Only as this occurs is she or he able, or expected, to attain the rudiments of the ability to monitor her or his own conduct in a manner akin to that of an adult. But while a child is not born a reflexive being, it is born one with wants, a set of organic needs for the provision of which it is dependent upon others, and which mediate its expanding involvement in a definite social world. The earliest period of 'socialization', therefore, can be presumed to involve the development of the capacity for 'tension management' on the part of the infant, whereby it is able actively to accommodate its wants to the demands or expectations of others. Given that the modes of management of organic wants represent the first, and in an important sense the most all-embracing, 124 Production and Reproduction of Social Life accommodation which the child makes to the world, it seems legitimate to suppose that a 'basic security system' - that is, a primitive level of management of tensions rooted in organic needs - remains central to later personality development; and given that these processes occur first of all before the child acquires the linguistic skills necessary to monitor its learning consciously, it also seems reasonable to hold that they lie 'below' the threshold of those aspects of conduct that, learned later and in conjunction with the reflexive monitoring of such learning, are easily verbalized - thus 'made conscious' - by the older child or adult. Even the earliest learning of the infant is understood in a misleading sense, however, if conceived of as mere 'adaptation' to a pre-given external world; the infant is from the first days of its life a being that actively shapes the settings of its interaction with others and, having wants that may in some part clash with those of others, can become involved in interest-conflict with them. That human wants are hierarchically ordered, involving a core basic security system' largely inaccessible to the consciousness Of the actor, is of course not an uncontroversial assertion, and is one which shares a great deal with the general emphasis of psychoanalytic theory; but it does not imply a commitment to the more detailed elements of Freud's theoretical or therapeutic scheme. The maintenance of a framework of 'ontological security' is ike all other aspects of social life, an ongoing accomplishment of I T°JS' Within the Production of modes of interaction in wnicn the mutual knowledge required to sustain that interaction is unproblematic', and hence can be largely 'taken for granted', ontological security is routinely grounded. 'Critical situations' exist where such routine grounding is radically dislocated, and where consequently the accustomed constituting skills of actors no longer mesh in with the motivational components of their action. The security of being' which is largely taken without question in most day-to-day forms of social life is thus of two connected kinds: the sustaining of a cognitively ordered world of sell and other, and the maintenance of an 'effective' order of want management. Tensions and ambivalences in motivation can derive from either of these sources, and as such can be analysed Production and Reproduction of Social Life 125 as conflicts within and between 'layers' in the stratification of wants. The production and reproduction of structure The true locus of Weber's distinction between 'action' and 'social action' is in the differentiation of action from acts carried out with some kind of communicative intent, the second of these being the necessary condition of interaction. Mutuality of orientation in this respect may be regarded as a defining characteristic of interaction, anything else - for example, a man's adoration of a film star who is unconscious of his existence - being a limiting case of action. Two points need to be made here that will have to be more fully developed later. 1 Communicative intent, that is, the production of 'meaning' in this sense, is only one element of interaction; it is equally important, as I have indicated, that every interaction is also a moral and a power relation. 2 Collectivities 'consist of interactions between members but structures do not; any system of interaction, however, from a casual encounter up to a complex social organization, may be analysed structurally. An approach to the analysis of structure in sociology can be made by comparing what I will now simply call 'speech' (action and interaction) with 'language' (structure), the latter being an abstract 'property' of a community of speakers. This is not an analogy: I am definitely not claiming that 'society is like a language'. (1) Speech is 'situated', that is, spatially and temporally located, whereas language is, as Ricoeur puts it, 'virtual and outside of time'.25 (2) Speech presupposes a subject, whereas language is specifically subject-less - even if it does not 'exist' except in so far as it is 'known' to, and produced by, its speakers. (3) Speech always potentially acknowledges the presence of another. Its relevance as facilitating communicative intent is fundamental, but it is also the intended medium, as Austin makes clear, of a whole host of other 'illocutionary effects'; (natural) language as a structure, on the other hand, 126 Production and Reproduction of Social Life is neither an intended product of any one subject, nor oriente^ towards another. In sum, generalizing this, practices are the situated doings of a subject, can be examined with regard to intended outcomes, and may involve an orientation toward^ securing a response or range of responses from another or others; structure, on the other hand, has no specific socio, temporal location, is characterized by the 'absence of a subject', and cannot be framed in terms of a subject-object dialectic. In most versions of what has come to be called 'structuralism', and particularly in the writings of Levi-Strauss, 'structure' is not regarded as a descriptive concept: a structure is discerned in myth through applying rules of transformation which penetrate the level of appearances. The parentage of this standpoint in Saussurian linguistics is well known, and however brilliant its achievements in the formal dissection of mythologies, it bears the limitations of its origins in its inability to confront issues of the genesis and temporality of meaning. Levi-Strauss was apparently prepared, at one time at least to accept Ricoeur's representation of his views as 'Kantianism without a transcendental subject', disavowing this as a criticism. He has subsequently recoiled from this position, but still seems unconcerned about bracketing out the acting subject'26 In 'functionalism', from Spencer and Dürkheim through Radchffe-Brown and Malinowski to Parsons and his followers, on the other hand, 'structure' is used in descriptive, and largely unexamined ways; it is 'function' which is called upon to play the explanatory role. The introduction of the notion of function as an explanatory element in Dürkheim's sociology excluded temporality from major areas of social analysis, in so far as history (and causation) was severed from function. I have argued elsewhere that Dürkheim was far more of an historical thinker than is generally recognized today.27 One reason this is not often acknowledged is that, once he had methodologically separated history - happenings in time - and function, he was unable to recombine them. One looks in vain for any systematic account of social change in Dürkheim that is connected theoretically to his functional analyses of moral integration; change appears only as an abstract scheme of types of society in an evolutionary hieararchy. Production and Reproduction of Social Life 127 It is surely true that these emphases reappear also in Parsons's writings, and it is as well to consider the inadequacies of functionalism at source in Dürkheim, who, in a way characteristic of much nineteenth-century social thought, drew upon 'organic analogies'. I shall make no attempt to trace through the career of the concept of function at the hands of Merton, etc., since I propose to abandon the notion completely. The separation of function (relations between 'parts' of a 'whole') from seriality (happenings in time) that Dürkheim sought to draw cannot be sustained; a functional relation cannot even be stated without implied reference to temporality. In the analogy from physiology upon which Durkheim's account is based, we may say that the heart stands in a functional relation to the rest of the body, contributing to the overall perpetuation of the life of the organism; but what such a statement conceals is reference to a series of events in time: the heart's pumping of the blood through the arteries conveys oxygen to other parts of the body, etc. A structure can be described 'out of time', but its 'functioning' cannot. In physiology, statements couched in terms of functional relations can always in principle be transcribed into statements of causal connections without residue: the causal properties of blood flow, etc. The chief interest of 'functional analysis' is not really anything to do with 'wholes' and 'parts' at all, but is in the population of homeostasis. This, however, is readily reconceptuahzed as a problem of the reproduction of structure: as in the constant replacement of the cells of the skin in a physiognomy which -through this very process - maintains its structural identity. It has to be made clear that use of 'structure' in social theory is not necessarily implicated in the failings of either structurahsm or functionalism in spite of its terminological association with them: neither Tchool of thought is able to with the constitution of social life as the subjects. This I shall seek to do through introducing the notion of Lcturation as the true explanatory locus of structural analysis. To study structuration is to attempt to determine the conditions which govern the continuity and dissolution of structures or types of structure. Put in another way: to enquire into the process of reproduction is to specify the connections between 'structuration' and 'structure'. The characteristic error of 128 Production and Reproduction of Social Life ^ ^ the philosophy of action is to treat the ^^^^l only, thus not developing any concept of sttuc ^ ^ all; the limitation of both structuralism and ^ction^ other hand, is to regard 'reproduction as <\™eC lisned by, rather than as an active constituting process, ac and consisting in, the doings of f^^S or organization': A structure is not a 'group , ^ollcCtl7oyllectivities, etc., can these have structural properties. Groups, ce there seems and should be studied as systems of interaction, a ^ applied little doubt that systems-theoretical concepts ^ ^ fruitfully within the social sciences. Systems ^ and it is superficially penetrated the vocabulary of social s ^ tr'aditional essential to make clear the difference between lcharacteristjcally notions of homeostatic systems as, for instance, tQ me employed in functionalism. Reciprocal effects mech. establishment of equilibrium, such as may be invo ^ pr0per. anical or organic systems, are not examples ot au op The differences are actually threefold. ^ ^ 1 Equilibrium tendencies working through reclp^°Cm^ns of operate 'blindly', not through control centres y ^ ^ which input and output are mutually assess ordinated- a static inter- 2 The notion of homeostasis presupposes * in the dependence of parts, and is able to conceive ot cn & system only in terms of a strain to equilibriu ^ ^ a strain toward disintegration (function v^^1 ,g hrase), 'net balance of functional consequences in Men r r m not in terms of the internal self-transformation ot i jr ^ 3 In homeostatic systems of 'functional interdepen ^ functional relation is usually regarded as equivalen other: in social systems, however, it is vital to nd_ degrees of interdependence, since relations ot in ence are always and everywhere also relations ot po I have already indicated that structure is 'subject-less . action is constituted by and in the conduct of SUDjec , ^ titration, as the reproduction of practices, refers abs y the dynamic process whereby structures come into D the duality of structure 1 mean that social structure Production and Reproduction of Social Life 129 constituted by human agency and yet is at the same time the very medium of this constitution. In sorting out the threads of how this happens, we can again profit initially by considering the case of language. Language exists as a 'structure', syntactical and semantic, only in so far as there are some kinds of traceable consistency in what people say, in the speech acts which they perform. From this aspect to refer to rules of syntax, for example, is to refer to the reproduction of 'like elements'; on the other hand, such rules also generate the totality of speech-acts which is the spoken language. It is this dual aspect of structure, as both inferred from observations of human doings and yet also operating as a medium whereby those doings are made possible, that has to be grasped through the notions of structuration and reproduction. The duality of structure in social interaction can be represented as follows: INTERACTION (MODALITY) STRUCTURE Communication Power Morality Interpretative scheme Facility Norm Signification Domination Legitimation What I call 'modalities' refer to the mediation of interaction and structure in processes of social reproduction; the concepts on the first line refer to properties of interaction, while those on the third line are characterizations of structure. The communication of meaning in interaction involves the use of interpretative schemes by means of which sense is made by participants of what each says and does. The application of such cognitive schemes, within a framework of mutual knowledge, depends upon and draws from a 'cognitive order' which is shared by a community; but while drawing upon such a cognitive order the application of interpretative schemes at the same time reconstitutes that order. The use of power in interaction involves the application of facilities whereby participants are able to generate outcomes through affecting the conduct of others; the facilities both are drawn from an order of domination and at the same time, as they are applied, reproduce that order of domination. Finally, the moral constitution of interaction involves the application of norms which 130 Production and Reproduction of Social Life draw from a legitimate order, and yet by that very application reconstitute it. Just as communication, power and morality are integral elements of interaction, so signification, domination and legitimation are only analytically separable properties of structure. Structures of signification can be analysed as systems of semantic rules (or conventions); those of domination as systems of resources; those of legitimation as systems of moral rules. In any concrete situation of interaction, members of society draw upon these as modalities of production and reproduction, although as an integrated set rather than three discrete components. When related to a totality of collectivities, as an integrated system of semantic and moral rules, we can speak of the existence of a common culture. The modes in which actors draw upon semantic and moral rules in the constitution of interaction can be generally treated in the manner of Wittgenstein's analysis of rule-following. That is to say, to know a rule is not to be able to provide an abstract formulation of it but to know how to apply it to novel circumstances, which includes knowing about the contexts of its application. However we have to be careful to acknowledge the limits of the game-analogies which are used to express the fusion of language-games and forms of life in the Philosophical Investigations, and which have been employed so often by philosophers of action subsequently. The rules of games are usually of a distinctive sort. The boundaries within which they apply - the 'play-sphere' - are typically clearly delimited and unquestioned. Moreover, they constitute a unified whole in that they are more or less rationally co-ordinated with one another. There are a few other social practices, namely rituals and ceremonials, which also tend to have a 'closed' character (Huizinga Caillois and others have pointed out that the sacred displays close similarities to play), and do not generate much change from within themselves just because they are set apart from the ordinary interests of day-to-day life. But most rule-systems must not be assumed to be like this. They are less unified; subject to chronic ambiguities of 'interpretation', so that their application or use is contested, a matter of struggle; and constantly in process, subject to continual transformation in the course of the production and reproduction of social life. Hence Production and Reproduction of Social Life 131 the importance of examining the organization of resources which, on the level of interaction, actors are capable of drawing upon as sanctions; and which, on the level of structural integration, support divergent ideologies. Processes of structuration tie the structural integration or transformation of collectivities or organizations as systems to the social integration or transformation of interaction on the level of the life-world. But it is important to recognize that forms of the integration of interaction do not necessarily directly parallel the systems which they serve to reproduce. Hence there is a need to differentiate conflict from contradiction. The notion of conflict is closely tied to that of 'interest' (although not necessarily so, since actors may mistake where their interests lie), which logically presupposes that of the 'wants' which actors bring to interaction. Conflict, in the sense of active struggle pursued in the context of clashes of interest, is a property of interaction. Contradiction, on the other hand, may be understood as a structural quality of the collectivity, and as standing in contingent relation to conflict. Contradiction can be conceptualized as the opposition between structural 'principles': for example, between the fixed allocation of labour characteristic of feudalism and the free mobility of labour stimulated by emergent capitalist markets at a certain period in European history. Now in order to avoid treating contradiction as equivalent to 'functional incompatibility', it is essential to recognize that such 'principles' always entail an implicitly or explicitly acknowledged distribution of interests on the level of social integration - for example, that a certain category of actors (entrepreneurs) have interests in promoting the mobility of labour, while others (feudal landowners) have opposing interests. But the occurrence of conflict on the level of social integration does not necessarily produce system contradiction; and the existence of contradiction is not inevitably expressed as overt struggle. To speak of 'structure' and 'structuration', in sociological analysis, is not equivalent to speaking in the reified mode, which has to be treated as a phenomenon of the life-world of lay actors. In the reified mode, collectivities figure in the language of their members as entities that are produced, not by people themselves , but as alien objects in nature and are thus dislocated 132 Production and Reproduction of Social life from their character as human products. The terminology of structure and structuration acknowledges a distinction between objectification (Vergegenstandlichung) and reification. Failure to observe such a distinction is the characteristic mark of idealism in social theory. The dissolution of reification is evidently tied to the possibility of the (cognitive) realization by actors that structures are their own products; and to the (practical) recovery of their control over them. These two implications of the transcendence of reined modes of thought are easily confused, however. Just such a confusion lends credence to rationalistic social criticism: the thesis that awareness of the conditions of human social life leads ipso facto to the achievement of control. Summary A few summary comments on the themes of this chapter might be useful. I began by suggesting several respects in which Durk-heim's sociology and Parsons's 'action frame of reference', although directed towards many of the issues which are covered in this study, are unsatisfactory. Although Parsons employs the term, his scheme in fact fails to develop a theory of action, as I have defined the notion; it allows for division of interest in social life only in terms of an opposition of the 'individual' and 'society', seen as a moral community; and the origins of social conflict are correspondingly traced to imperfections in the moral commitments which tie the motivation of individual actors to the 'central values' upon which social stability depends. Marx's writings appear to offer a very different framework of analysis, in which power, division of interest and struggle appear as the leading features; but because of his concentration upon the critique of the political economy of capitalism, to which he gave over his life's work, Marx never managed to return to the more general problems of ontology that preoccupied him in the early part of his intellectual career. Consequently Marx's works offer only a broad preliminary orientation, in respect of the notions of Praxis and the transformative capacity of human labour, to the specific concerns with which I wish to deal. Production and Reproduction of Social Life 133 The production of society, I have argued, is always and everywhere a skilled accomplishment of its members. While this is recognized by each of the schools of interpretative sociology that I have discussed in the first part of this study, they have not managed successfully to reconcile such an emphasis with the equally essential thesis, dominant in most deterministic schools of social thought, that if human beings make society, they do not do so merely under conditions of their own choosing. In other words, it is fundamental to complement the idea of the production of social life with that of social reproduction. Speech and language provide us with a series of useful clues as to how to conceptualize processes of social production and reproduction -not because society is like a language, but on the contrary because language as a practical activity is so central to social life that in some basic respects it can be treated as exemplifying social processes in general. Speech (action) presupposes a subject (actor), and speech acts are situated contextually - as is dialogue between speakers (interaction). Speech and dialogue are each complex accomplishments of their producers: knowing how to produce them, on the other hand, is very definitely not the same as being able to specify either the conditions which make possible their production or the unintended consequences which they might be instrumental in bringing about. Considered in terms of its structural properties - and this is crucial - (natural) language is a condition of the generation of speech acts and the achievement of dialogue, but also the unintended consequence of the production of speech and the accomplishment of dialogue. This duality of structure is the most integral feature of processes of social reproduction, which in turn can always be analysed in principle as a dynamic process of structuration. Analytically, three elements of the production of forms of interaction can be distinguished: all interaction involves (attempted) communication, the operation of power, and moral relations. The modalities whereby these are 'brought off in interaction by participating actors can also be treated as the means whereby structures are reconstituted. By the term 'structure' I do not refer, as is conventional in functionalism, to the descriptive analysis of the relations of interaction which 'compose' organizations or collectivities, but to 134 Production and Reproduction of Social Life systems of generative rules and resources. Structures exist 'out of time and space', and have to be treated for purposes of analysis as specifically impersonal'; but while there is no reason why the sorts of theoretical apparatus which have been developed to analyse the behaviour of open systems should not be applied to me structure of collectivities, it is essential to recognize that structures only exist as the reproduced conduct of situated actors iľintifi Tíentions and interests. Thus, for example, the aentilcation of contradiction' on the level of system integration opcosltion8^ ľCCaUSe h implicitIy Presupposes recognition of Son ľt\ 1 erCSt °n the Ievel of situated forms of inter-íraZ*ion Lľľ^ thÍS Which sePara*s the notion of con-IľÄated l ľ"1 n°ti0n °f 'functi™al incompatibility' ^ÄÍaX^ P°ÍntS Sh°U,d ^ 1 1°cZVtJT^ eXÍStS 'out of and space' is only concrete ub ' t "T* ** as the situa*d d°ÍngS ° confuted Jn0't I f * b^ serves to constitute and is 2 The concept of reoroľ?6'that * haS no internal tion to the studv of ľ" n° more has a sPecial C°nn6C; social 'change L thlaI 'Stability' tha« * has t0 ? division between st-ite .T?** « helPs to cut aCf°SS ' f functionalism fJ and dynamics' so characteristic of which contributes tn tK UntiI modern times- Every ** act of production , * ,repr°duction of structure is also an change by altering tW efnterprise> a"d as such may initiate reproduces it - as tu StructUre at the same time as it through their use. ' meamngs of words change in and The three ways. First motivaľin" f important to social theory in acknowledged causal condV e,ernents may operate as un-scious impulsions unavailahi ľ" °f action - that is> as unCO"' rationalization of conduct r ^ reflexive monitoring of the such elements, and an -lctor' PnnciPle> the relation between her behaviour, must be r °.n80In8 rationalization of his or possibility of the revelatory í . 38 p,astic' as offering the Second, motives generate * "eve,°Pment of self-understanding. * erate definite interests. While the notion of Production and Reproduction of Social Life 135 Interest' has to be understood very broadly, as referring to any course of action that facilitates the achievement of wants, the more significant sense in social analysis is that of 'social interest', where a response of others serves as a means to the pursuance of particular interests. Third, the theory of motivation is immediately relevant to that of the reproduction of structure. As I tried to show at the beginning of this chapter, however, the thesis of the correspondence of motives and the 'internalization' of consensual values, as set out by Parsons, is an inadequate version of such a theory. This is so for two reasons. 1 It is derived from the 'Hobbesian problem of order', which, predicating a state of nature in which every person's hand is set against every other, is only able to cope with division of interest in society in so far as this is represented as a division between the interests of individual actors and those of the social community as a whole. 2 Motivational commitment to a given 'order' is made equivalent to moral commitment to that 'order', thus pushing to the margins a concern with accommodation to it as a system of domination which both expresses, and is reproduced by, asymmetries of power in social interaction.