Peter Wagner: Sociology of modernity Basic concepts overview SOC757 Contemporary Sociological Theory Pavel Pospěch Basic concepts Phases of modernity 1. Restricted liberal modernity 2. First crisis (break of the 19th/20th century) 3. Organized modernity 4. Second crisis (beginning in 1970s) 5. Extended liberal modernity (?) Principles of modernity • The discourse of liberation • Historical correlates • Rights • Movement towards freedom vs. containment • Individualization • The discourse of disciplinization • State as restrictive container of modernity • Critiques: Marx, Weber, Frankfurt school, Foucault • „self-cancellation of modernity“ • Postmodernism: pluralization as fragmentation, subject vanishing • Project of modernity vs. institutions/practices of modernity Basic problem of restricted liberal modernity • How to link the normative idea of liberty, as a procedurally unlimitable right and obligation to self-rule and self-realization, to a notion of collective good? (human nature, reason, common good) 3 types of practices 3 types of institutions, 3 types of technologies/means 1. Practices of material allocation 2. Practices of authoritative power 3. Practices of signification Modernization offensives • Imaginary significations of modernity (C.Castoriadis) • Modernization offensives from above and from below Restricted liberal modernity Modernity and the Other • Modernity vs. Other (in time = tradition, in space = barbarism) • Borderless autonomy and humanity vs. Restriction • Working classes, women and the mad • „dangerous classes“ • Rationality vs. Non-rationality Modern identity • Sovereignty, autonomy, control over one‘s fate = „cold universe“ (Weber, Lévi-Strauss); attempts at creating new ties („brotherhood“) • Society/civilization vs. Nature • Development • Ascriptive assumptions (restricted liberal modernity) • Socially acquired and quasi-natural (organised modernity) • Chosen and socially agreed (extended liberal modernity) Restricted liberal modernity • Nation • „national self-determination“ as an attempt to merge the territorial monopoly of the nation-state and the discourse of freedom • New cohesion • French vs. German nationalism • Solidarity • „social question“ • New collective identities • Working class as a „class for itself“, „imagined communities“ The first crisis of modernity The crisis • Promotion of individualism, rationality vs. awareness of the impossibility of self-sustained individual liberalism • Liberal theory claimed to have resolved the questions of political expression, economic interest and scientific validity by leaving them to open contest and competition • „automatic harmonization of society“ did not work out • In its place: new restrictions • Legitimacy crisis Social change in the 19th century • Urbanisation, industrialisation, structural transformation, market emerging as the single most important organising principle • Rise of the nation state 4 Critiques of liberal modernity 1. Critique of political economy 2. Critique of large-scale organization and bureaucracy 3. Critique of the modern rationality, philosophy and science 4. Critique of morality The closure of modernity: organised modernity I. Allocative practices • The building of technical-organizational systems • Conventionalization of work • Normalization of consumption II. Authoritative practices • Polity • Political citizenship • Homogeneity vs. Exclusion (minorities, stateless persons) • Politics • Representation • „Organised democracy“ • Policy • Welfare state, insurance, public vs. private • Disciplinization III. Signification practices • Modern science • Social sciences, statistics • Survey and the „Discovery of the average man“ • Human being as a „consumer, voter and a subject“ • Cognitive mastery of society • „covering areas“ in all three kinds of practices Organized modernity: key topics • Conventionalization • Naturalization of conventionalized social order • Classifications, boudaries, exclusion • Aiming for a predictable, controllable world The crisis of organised modernity and the path towards extended liberal modernity I. Restructuring allocative practices • Breaking of the national-level agreement on industrial relations • Decline of a (Keynesian) nation-based consumption economy • Organisational changes, loosening of hierarchies • Mass production replaced by flexible specialization II. Restructuring authoritative practices • Polity • Internationalization, power delegation, legitimacy crisis • Politics • Decreased activity in established parties • Increase in civic/protest involvement • Policy • Demands for deregulation • Bureaucratic crisis & interpretation crisis of the welfare state • Public vs. Private (Legitimacy and Sovereignty) III. Signification: Sociology and contingency • Critique • 1968: protest against organized modernity, attempt to rebuild a collective subject • From the 1960s: critique of the constraining effects of the boundaries and conventions of OM • Decline of grand paradigms, reflexivity • The postmodernist challenge and responses to it 1. Zero reaction 2. Hyper-scientization 3. Theoretical readings of theory vs. Practice 4. Postmodernism (end of… social science, modernity, subject) Modernity and self-identity • Identity in OM society • Social roles (Mead, Parsons, Merton) • Mass society • Political identities (rejection of OM political identites) • Economic identities (enterprise culture/enterprise self) • Identity rooted in consumption Extended liberal modernity? • Intelligibility and shapeability threatened • Globalisation and individualisation • Civil society • Social movements (Touraine) vs. Tribes (Maffesoli)