Modern Social Theory

Key Debates And New Directions

Dr Derek Layder, Derek Layder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781135365974
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is intended for undergraduate courses in social theory for second and third year sociology students, as well as postgraduate and academic researchers. Secondary markets include social psychology, social geography, social anthopology, cultural studies.

1

Outline of the theory of social domains

Introduction

My central concern in this book is to give an account of face-to-face encounters by showing how they are formed out of the combined effects of social and psychological factors. Face-to-face encounters are also known by other names such as “focused gatherings”, “co-present encounters” and “everyday interaction”. I shall use these terms interchangeably throughout the book. These are all examples of what I otherwise speak of as “situated activity” and I use this as an alternative. These terms refer to the situations that arise when two or more people share each other’s company in the pursuit of a variety of purposes, for example, love, business, sport, law enforcement, selling and buying drugs, passing the time, eating food, doing work. Furthermore, these pursuits are undertaken in an equally dazzling array of settings and circumstances such as bedrooms, courtrooms, breakfast tables, bars and coffee shops, restaurants, theatres, prisons, hospitals, factories and so on. Much of everyday social life is conducted at this face-to-face level in which participants formulate their conduct in the light of the behaviour and intentions of the others present.

Although the central focus of the book is to provide an explanatory account of face-to-face encounters, my argument suggests that this is possible only by understanding how this domain of social life intersects and is interdependent with other social domains. Thus, to understand the domain of situated activity we have to place it in the broader context of social organization as a whole as well as the psychological (subjective) propensities of individuals. To this end I argue that we must view society and social life as comprising a number of important dimensions that have varying and distinctive characteristics and that these differing “social domains” are interlocking and mutually dependent on each other. Although this might seem uncontroversial to those unfamiliar with social theory and the procedures of sociological analysis, this view of society is far from settled or agreed upon by the sociological community. The detailed ramifications that follow from this apparently simple starting point will be the subject matter of the book as a whole. In order to inject variation into the stylistics of the exposition I refer to “dimensions”, “domains” or “orders” almost interchangeably although I shall have occasion to distinguish between them. Similarly, I often speak of different “layerings” of society that give some sense of vertical depth to social life. This image emphasizes the faceted nature of society while at the same time drawing attention to its ontological depth.

First, let me indicate in a provisional and necessarily simplified manner what I am referring to when I speak of the “domains” of social life in the context of a “theory of social domains”. There are four principal domains and I refer to them in the following terms: psychobiography, situated activity, social settings and contextual resources. The elements that bind these domains together are social relations and positions, power, discourses and practices. At this point I shall not attempt to describe any of these in detail since this can be properly done only in terms of a lengthy ongoing discussion. However, it is important to point out that the domains are related to each other not only as “layers” of social life within the same time unit, but also as stretched-out over time and space. Before the discussion becomes too abstract and complicated I shall sketch in a fairly down-to-earth way the kinds of events, situations and circumstances that are indicative of these social domains. In this respect consider the following scenarios and descriptions of various facets of social life.

(a) A woman is sitting at home in her flat reflecting on her life so far. She contemplates her recent divorce, its emotional aftermath and her future promotion prospects at work (she is a teacher). She remembers the kind of social life and friendships she had before her marital split and then envisages how she would like these things to be in the immediate future. This scenario accentuates the domain of psychobiography that focuses on the personal feelings, attitudes and predispositions of individuals. In this respect we can grasp a person’s unique individuality only by understanding their identity and behaviour as it has unfolded over the course of their lives, and is currently embedded in their daily routines and experiences. These in turn have to be considered in relation to the broader context of other social domains – see below.

(b) Consider the following scenarios: two friends in a coffee bar spending their work lunch-hour chatting about work friends and family; a typical scene in a suburban household as family members prepare for their daily round of activity; an argument between two homeless itinerants; a crowded restaurant; the audience at a concert, a theatre or sporting event; the massed demonstrations that accompanied the demise of communism in many east European countries. These examples accentuate the domain of situated activity that is characterized by face-to-face transactions between people. The communicative interchanges that take place between the participants are crucial in determining the flow and outcome of the encounter as a whole. As with psychobiography, situated activity is interdependent with the other domains and while it has its own distinctive characteristics it is not entirely separate from them.

(c) With the above examples of situated activity it is clear that they all occur in particular settings that have a specific location and social organization. Such settings vary considerably in terms of their organizational features. Consider, for example, the working conditions and social status associated with certain jobs and occupational careers such as clerical work, truck driving, nursing or management. Many work settings such as hospitals, universities, trade unions and managerial hierarchies are highly organized and operate through the rules and regulations that govern working practices and authority relations within them. They often have promotional procedures, reward systems and pay scales that shape the lives of those who perform the work tasks in these settings.

Other social settings are much less formally organized, particularly family or domestic circumstances, or the private sphere of personal relations in general. Yet other settings that represent “in transit” areas of social existence such as street life, public spaces such as lifts, shops and modes of transportation like trains, planes, ships and ferries, seem even more nebulous in terms of their organizational form. None the less, the behaviour and practices that occur within them are underpinned by an elaborate social fabric of rules, understandings, obligations and expectations. These examples highlight the domain of social settings that is characterized by a concern with (reproduced) social positions, practices and discourses as well as forms of power and control. Social settings cannot be understood entirely independently of the situated activities that take place within them (or the self-identities of those involved), nor can they be separated from the wider context of resource allocation, social inequalities and the forms of signification and legitimation that underpin them.

(d) Consider the society-wide distribution and ownership of resources (goods, money, status, credit facilities, mortgages, occupations, health care and insurance, standards of accommodation, quality of life and lifestyle) along gender, racialized and class lines. Consider also the wide variety of cultural (and subcultural) resources, products and commodities that are available in society at large, including newspapers, magazines, television, video as well as the specialist or esoteric forms of knowledge and expertise that are also distributed unevenly throughout modern societies. The range of discourses and practices that surround these cultural practices is wide and encompasses phenomena such as imagery and signification as forms of communication and status (as in advertising or fashion, reading habits or other lifestyle indicators), to the signalling and transmission of social conventions and mores as well as the ideological legitimation of wealth and status.

These examples highlight the domain of contextual resources that is characterized by its focus on power and domination and the discourses and practices that undergird various forms of hierarchy and inequality on a society-wide basis. In this sense we are dealing primarily with a group or collective level of analysis in terms of the possession, distribution or ownership of cultural, material and authoritative resources throughout the whole social system. Such systemic factors directly enter into the constitution of social settings and the social encounters that take place within them. They also play a significant role in the structuring of self-identities through individual psychobiographies. However such systemic factors do not determine the psychologies or subjectivities of individuals nor do they “determine” the nature of interpersonal encounters or the settings in which they occur. Likewise, psychobiography and interpersonal encounters do not cause or determine the nature and functioning of social settings or the contextual resources that provide their environment. Each domain, although deeply interwoven and interdependent with the others, also has its own distinct characteristics and a certain measure of independence from the others.

Apart from the characteristics I have just mentioned we can analytically distinguish between these scenarios and descriptions in other ways. For example, they refer to quite distinct kinds of activity involving rather different things ranging from solo activity (including reflecting on one’s own life and career) through intimate or routine conversations to large gatherings of people and right up to the group or collective level of resource distribution. In this sense the scenarios vary considerably in terms of “personalization”. That is, some events and circumstances involve a high degree of intimacy between specific people (the coffee-bar encounter) while others are much more impersonal or at a greater remove from specific individuals (such as the description of labour market inequalities).

As I have said the domains are interconnected and in the scenarios we can see how this involves interrelated aspects of social life. This is reflected in the biographies and the trajectories traced by the routine daily lives of particular people. For instance the woman in the flat is connected with the labour market through her teaching job. She may spend many of her lunch-breaks socializing with a work colleague. In her spare time she may play basketball and enjoy going to the opera. However, these things are also related in other socially defined ways. In terms of power, culture and institutions, different forms of activities and the different settings in which they occur are connected and thus they intermesh with each other. For example, routine daily encounters between people are profoundly affected by the organizational setting in which they take place and the political and economic circumstances that provide the wider institutional backdrop.

A final point worth considering at this juncture is the manner in which the perspective on the event or scenario in question varies as we shift the point of view of the analysis or description. This is related to the question of the degree of personalization but is in fact a slightly different point concerning the standpoint of the observer and the very real differences in the way in which society and social life are constituted. In relation to the scenarios we can see the shift from the point of view of the individual woman in her flat reflecting on her biography or life-career, through to a concern with the point of view of the two conversants in the coffee-bar. The focus on the collective activities of crowds, audiences and demonstrators again moves the central focus of the analysis further from individuals as such. When we reach the description of the distribution of cultural, material or authoritative resources in society as a whole or of the labour market for various kinds of occupational skills, we are at the furthest remove from the point of view of participants in particular encounters. In this sense we are adopting the standpoint of an “independent observer” (Habermas 1987) in that as sociologists we are viewing social arrangements from a position “external” to that aspect of society or that slice of social life which is the focus of analysis. It follows from this that the adoption of the independent observer’s point of view does not imply that this reflects the “objective” truth of the matter as opposed to the “subjectively biased” views of actual participants. It simply means that the analytic focus or standpoint varies significantly from different vantage points.

In very general terms the theory of social domains has much in common with other approaches to social analysis. On the one hand, it rejects the view that individuals are isolated self-sufficient “units” who remain untouched by social processes, and on the other, it eschews the view that society as a whole should be the relevant unit of social analysis. In this sense the theory of social domains insists that people are not simply automata, unthinkingly moved and moulded by social forces. In this respect it shares a lot with many other sociological approaches. However, it is on the question of the exact nature of this “middle-ground” that domain theory parts company from established approaches and in particular those that reject the notion of society as a series of distinct but interdependent layers or domains. In that domain theory attempts to account for 2situated activity by understanding it as one of four interdependent but partly autonomous social domains, this immediately distinguishes it from many other approaches that tend to concentrate on one or two domains or dimensions of social analysis.

Traditionally, approaches to social analysis have tended to split into two broad camps: those concerned with what Giddens calls “interpretative analysis”, and those concerned with “institutional analysis” (Giddens 1984). Interpretative analysis is associated with schools of thought such as symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and phenomenology and has defended a view of social activity as an intersubjective phenomenon that is largely dependent on the creative and productive capacities of human agents. Those in the institutional camp (functionalism and structuralism) have tended towards the opposite extreme, viewing social interaction mainly as an effect of the workings of structural or systemic features of society. Both groups therefore tend to reduce the analysis of social phenomena either to the realm of human agency and interaction or to the macro-realm of social structures and systems. There have been broadly two kinds of responses to this situation. One has been to suggest that while action and systems approaches should be brought together, this must be undertaken in the context of a recognition that they represent different orders or domains of social reality. A number of authors have adopted this latter view, among them Habermas and Goffman who figure prominently in this book. Although I have great sympathy with this approach (Layder 1990, 1993, 1994) the theory of social domains goes further by suggesting that we deconstruct the two domains of action and systems into four and view social activity itself as an outcome of the complex interplay of them all So although I believe this attempt to connect action and systems theories is viable up to a point, I do not think it goes far enough towards recognizing the complexity of social life.

Domain theory is most sharply distinguished from those approaches that have responded to the action (or agency)-structure (or system) divide by conceiving of society and social life as an “essential process” or “unit of analysis” that is taken to be the basic and unifying feature of social existence. Such unifying principles go under a number of different descriptive labels depending on the author and the theory in question. In this respect the term “social practices” often conveys a common theme of bringing various strands of social life together to form a synthetic unity by identifying the core features or topics of social analysis. For instance ethnomethodologists speak of “local practices” (through which people create a sense of social order), as the essential subject matter of social analysis (Hilbert 1990). Foucault (1977, 1980) speaks of the influence of “discursive practices” and their close links with power. Giddens speaks of “social practices ordered across time and space” (1984: 2), although he also uses terms like the “duality of structure” that in like manner represent the focal analytic concerns of sociology. Similarly, Bourdieu (1977) points to the central role of the “habitus” (the socially generated attitudes that dispose people to act in particular ways) in the context of his “theory of practice”. Other writers do not use the term practice – Elias (1978) for instance refers to “figuration” (which indicates the ever-changing networks of relations between people), and which he and his followers believe are the basic elements of social life. On the other hand, Blumer (1969) uses the notion of “joint activity” to express the interweaving nature of various aspects of social existence.

Such terms, then, indicate the manner in which different authors and schools of social theory have sought to express the synthetic nature of society and social activity. What is at stake here is of fundamental importance to sociology. These and other authors have offered up new concepts and terms that depict what they take to be the seamlessly interrelated nature of social processes. That is, they oppose the idea of the social world as a layered series of distinct but interdependent domains. I do not want to say that I reject outright these alternatives to a layered or stratified view of the social world because I believe that each of them has something to offer in terms of a fully rounded understanding of the social world. I have to add that I do think that some have more to offer in this respect than others, although this, for the moment, is a separate issue. However, I do not believe that any of these alternative frameworks, in and of themselves, supply us with anything like a full account of the nature of social existence.

The claims that have been forwarded on behalf of the notion of social practices is a good example of the dangers of this kind of strategy and is reflected in Giddens’s insistence that the “basic domain of study for the social sciences … is social practices ordered across time and space” (1984: 2). Now while I consider social practices to be one importance focus for social study, I think it unwise to allow it to monopolize our view of social analysis in the manner that Giddens suggests. Such a myopic channelling of analytic attention drags the focus away from equally important aspects of the social world. One effect is to concentrate our attention on practices themselves so fixedly that we fail to ask questions about the varying conditions and principles under which practices are ordered. That is, by centralizing our analytic target we lose the opportunity of examining and understanding the influence of different social conditions, settings and contexts in our attempts to explain features of the social world. Although Giddens’s employment of the term is very different from Foucault’s (and to a lesser extent from Bourdieu’s) the overall effect is the same – to occupy the centre of analytic attention to the neglect or even exclusion of other equally essential features of social life.

The same is true for the other “synthetic alternatives”, although I shall stick with the example of social practices for the moment. The advantage that the theory of social domains has in this respect is that it allows us to understand other crucially important aspects of social reality. Let us be absolutely clear about the implications of this. The primary effect of holding a synthetic view that centralizes the notion of practice (or some essential process or unit of analysis) is that it imposes a flattened-out view of the social terrain. By emphasizing this vision of society it becomes very difficult to understand the different processes that work to produce the wide spectrum of practices (and their variant natures) across society as a whole. Furthermore it raises difficulties for grasping why it is that some practices become stabilized and more widespread than others. In this sense the theory of social domains possesses the further advantage of greater flexibility, for while there are many things of value in the synthetic alternatives, I think it remains true to claim that they can be incorporated into the wider terms of reference allowed for in the theory of social domains.

Having sketched out in rather elementary terms the manner in which domain theory differs from a number of current sociological approaches, let me now indicate some of the sources it draws upon and complements. First and foremost, domain theory is related to the classical projects of Marx and Durkheim, who sought to open up the study of social phenomena to the rigours of scientific analysis. Now while the models of science upon which their projects were based are not subtle enough to support the insights of contemporary social theory, there are other associated features of their work that bear a close relation to the theory of social domains. The first of these is a conviction that many social phenomena have “objective” characteristics (as well as subjective ones). This particularly applies to collective phenomena like culture, institutions and organizations, but can in principle be extended...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Outline of the theory of social domains
• 2 The contours of everyday life
• 3 The social fabric examined
• 4 Power and control in modernity
• 5 Creativity and constraint in social life
• 6 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index