Diversity, Standardization and Social Transformation

Gender, Ethnicity and Inequality in Europe

Lesley McMillan, Max Koch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409411253
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317149101
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Arranged around the themes of theorizing and policy-making, race, ethnicity and religion, gender, and class, inequality and welfare, this book addresses the question of whether the European Union tends towards diversification or standardization. It engages with issues of identity, citizenship and social justice, changes throughout the life course, social movements, the reconciliation of work and life, the increasing diversity of cultural values, and integration and immigration, whilst also examining questions of social inclusion and exclusion. Presenting a general theoretical framework for the simultaneous analysis of standardization and diversification processes, alongside detailed case studies at EU and national levels, Diversity, Standardization and Social Transformation explores the interactions between national, European and regional regulatory spaces.

PART I
Theoretical and Policy Approaches

Chapter 1
Diversity and Standardization: Concepts, Issues and Approaches

Mark Elchardus

From Théophile Gautier’s Andalucía to George Ritzer’s McDonald’s

Learning to Long for Diversity

When diversity and standardization are viewed as the opposite extremes of a continuum, most contemporary people will express a preference for diversity. Diversity seems colourful, while the standardized appears as monochrome or sadly grey. Such a preference for the diverse (the exotic, surprising and unexpected), is truly romantic. It was promoted by Romanticism, an intellectual and artistic movement that originated at the end of the eighteenth century (Berlin 2000). When, in 1840, the French dandy and romantic author, Théophile Gautier, undertook a trip to the then quite exotic, ‘eastern’ and even dangerous Andalucía, the contrast between his hazardous voyage and the growing standardization of tourist travel inspired him to write the following lines:

Obstacles, fatigue and peril constitute the pleasure of the traveller. What pleasure could be derived from an excursion which we are sure will end well, during which we always find the horses ready and are always assured of a comfortable bed and an excellent meal and of all the amenities and comforts we enjoy in our own home? One of the major misfortunes of modern life is the lack of the unpredictable, the lack of adventure. Everything is so well taken care of nowadays, so well organized, labelled, with no room left for chance occurrences; another century of this kind of progress and everybody will be able to predict from the day he is born what will happen to him until the day he dies … It will become impossible to distinguish a Russian from a Spaniard, an Englishman from a Chinaman, a Frenchman from an American … The universe will be overcome by boredom and suicide will decimate the populations of the globe …1

The hyperbole of Gautier’s prediction is dandyesque, yet fear of standardization and its consequences was widespread at the time he wrote. Eighteen years after Gautier’s Andalusian trip, John Stuart Mill (1975) expressed very similar misgivings in his famous essay On Liberty, which was to play an important role in defining modern liberalism and is considered a classic text on individual freedom. Mill was convinced that his own time witnessed a steep decline in ‘individuality’ as he calls it, individualization or diversity as we would call it today. He saw his own age as one of far-reaching and swiftly advancing standardization, in which diversity and particularly individual diversity or individuality were actively opposed. ‘It is individuality that we war against; we should think we had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike’ (Mill 1975: 67). Therefore he thought that special efforts had to be made to save individuality. ‘In this age the mere example of non-conformity … is itself a service … Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric’ (Mill 1975: 63).

According to Mill standardization and the decline of individuality were promoted by the expansion of education, the development of the means of communication, the expansion of consumption (the increase of commerce and manufacture), and the more important role of public opinion. Mill even feared that in his time standardization had already advanced so far that people had lost even the capacity to conceive of diversity.

Mill’s pamphlet on liberty is important since it signals the confluence of the more classically liberal approach to individual freedom, based on the belief that such freedom will contribute to happiness and economic wealth, and the romantic longing for personal autonomy. Several sociologists have commented on the presence of those two strands of individualism, often called instrumental and expressive (Bell 1976, Bellah et al. 1985). Bell, for instance, considered them as antagonistic and saw the romantic, more ‘artistic’, expressive strand of individualism as threatening the performance of the capitalist economy which, according to him, requires an instrumental individualism able to combine independence with thrift and self-restraint. More recently Boltanski and Chiapello (1999) have argued that contemporary capitalism uses the artistic or romantic longing for autonomy as a legitimating device for its new ways of operation. For middle and top management and many workers, the new or contemporary capitalist mode of management eschews bureaucracy, hierarchy, authority and rigidity and emphasizes the importance of the performing, upgraded, responsible individual which is extremely adaptable and flexible, besides being a perfect team player. The romantic longing for authenticity, which Boltanski and Chiapello call the ‘artistic critique of capitalism’, provides the legitimation for such an attitude and creates meanings and motivation that make people experience self fulfilment when being flexible, adaptable and performing within the context of an enterprise. This sophisticated argument suggests that the romantic longing for personal autonomy has in fact become a new standardizing device of contemporary capitalism: a way to make individuals fit the mould required for productive involvement in the new forms of management.

Learning to Eat the Fruits of Standardization

Théophile Gautier’s trip from Malaga to Cordoba, cities separated by a mere 160 km, lasted four and a half days. It takes about 90 minutes by car nowadays, and has certainly become much more predictable than in Gautier’s time. Many other aspects of life in Europe and in large parts of the world have become more predictable, largely due to standardization.

Sociologist George Ritzer (1993) uses the McDonald’s restaurants as an example, in fact as a metaphor, of advanced standardization. Wherever in the world you enter a McDonald’s outlet you know in advance exactly how your burger, fries and coke will be served and how they will taste. That astounding degree of predictability is realized through the far-reaching standardization of the way in which a limited number of fast food items are prepared. The predictability of McDonald’s has obviously contributed to the chain’s success, while at the same time the efficiency of the food’s preparation and the possibility to use low skilled and cheap labour for that process – both of which were made possible by standardization – have greatly contributed to the profitability of the enterprise. Ritzer sees in McDonald’s a perfection of the form of organization described by Max Weber as bureaucratization. For Weber this was a specific form of organization characterized by a degree of effectiveness and efficiency superior to the forms of organization that preceded it. It is characterized by the standardization of procedures and products. Under the form of Fordism and the so called ‘scientific management’, it spread to industry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and has greatly contributed to the increases in productivity that have been realized since.

Ritzer believes that more and more spheres of life will become standardized in the extreme way McDonald’s standardized the preparation and the serving of food, and the experience of eating, hence the title The McDonaldization of Society. Ritzer’s is a clear example of a thesis predicting changes in standardization, and basing that prediction on the alleged advantages of standardization in terms of predictability and efficiency.

Not everybody agrees with Ritzer’s prediction. Many authors point for instance towards the end of the era of Fordist production and its extreme forms of standardization symbolized by the conveyer belt and by one of it’s early products, the legendary Ford T car, which was only available in black and in one uniform model without any options. A trend towards other, less standardized forms of production – such as quality-circles – has been noted. Yet, several automakers have in the mean time returned to a Fordist organization of production, after experimenting with other forms (Pruyt 2003). Technological developments seem however to have severed the link between the standardization of consumption and the standardization of production. In the archetypical case of Fordism – to which Ritzer’s McDonalization refers – the standardization of production resulted in a standardized product or, put differently and causally more correctly: the elimination of diversity in the end product made the standardization of production possible. New technologies seems to be changing that because they make it possible to standardize a much wider range of products, to diversify production in a standardized way, and produce seeming diversity in a standardized way. Products that show so many variations that they almost look tailor-made, can now be produced in a standardized way. The example of contemporary car manufacturing suggests that it might be far too simple to conceive of standardization and diversity as opposite ends of a continuum.

Torn between Diversity and Standardization, between Autonomy and Predictability

I deliberately used Ritzer’s McDonaldization thesis as an example, because much of the romantic ire with the modern, increasingly standardized world is today directed at its impact on everyday life and consumption. For many people McDonald’s stands as a symbol of standardization’s evils.2 Even if they are not ready to bomb a McDonald’s outlet, many people would, in the way of a contemporary Gautier, prefer the small and less predictable restaurants along French, Italian and Spanish secondary roads, to the standardized restaurants along the highway. Yet, when travelling, many people do eat at the outlets of the extremely standardized, McDonaldized highway restaurants and even more people prefer the predictable hotel chains that offer similar, predictable bedrooms, with identical colour schemes, identical bedcovers, identical bathrooms, identical soap bars, identical towels and identical breakfast buffets, the world over. As a matter of fact, and quite paradoxically, many people pay intense and romantic lip service to diversity, adventure and the unpredictable, while they show a pronounced preference for the standardized and the predictable.

One solution to this paradox is suggested by the famous German sociologist Luhmann (1982). Complexity plays a central role in his work. Luhmann’s theories are formulated in the once very popular vocabulary of system theory. His focus is on ‘social systems’. Stripped of the technical meaning of this concept within the context of systems theory, one can picture social systems as collectivities of people (class rooms, friendship groups, factories, universities, countries, societies, civilizations, etc.) that are internally connected, can be distinguished from an environment, and interact with that environment. A central thesis of Luhmann is that social systems have to reduce complexity in order to survive and to be able to deal with their environment. A group of friends cannot allow for all possible kinds of conduct if it wants to reduce the risk of conflict and disruption. Therefore groups of friends will be governed by some norms, such as respect for each other, readiness to help each other, some similarity of taste … Luhmann considers these norms as devices to reduce complexity, that is to reduce the diversity of forms of conduct that could be disruptive and wreck the friendship group or make it undistinguishable from the environment of non friends. Rules and norms, ethics and legislation, all standardizing devices, are means to achieve the reduction of complexity.

For Luhmann the reduction of complexity should moreover not only be seen as a reduction of the possible ways in which people can act or behave. The reduction of complexity also creates new possibilities. While, for instance, universal law reduces complexity it also creates new possibilities for acting and living together. While norms reduce the number of actions likely to occur in a friendship group – in fact standardize the behaviour in the group – the continued existence of that friendship group, thanks to the reduction of complexity, also creates possibilities for having a good time, doing things together, confiding in friends, counting on their support in difficult times, etc. Standardization is of course only one way to reduce complexity, but clearly a very important one.

While we commonly view diversity and standardization as opposites, allowing for a choice between them, it seems much more fruitful to regard them as the alternatives of a dilemma. They are alternatives between which we cannot really chose, between which we oscillate, frequently discovering that what looks like diversity hides in fact standardization, while what appears like standardization stimulates diversity. As sociologists we should indeed not fall victim to the popular but misguided view that standardization and diversity can be regarded as opposites. We should rather be attuned to the complex interplay between them. In the next section I elaborate on this proposition by considering the three pitfalls in thinking about diversity and standardization that hide the often tension laden but creative interplay between them.

Pitfalls in Thinking about Diversity and Standardization

We have already encountered three possible explanations for standardization: the search for a reduction of complexity, for predictability and for efficiency. We have done so, without having defined diversity and standardization in a rigorous way. I will proceed without really defining these terms, for I believe with Kant that one does not learn much if anything by offering definitions. One should study things, looking at them from different angles, so that in the end an understanding emerges. Yet, for clarity’s sake I shall briefly recall the common sense understanding of those terms as you would find in a dictionary.

Standardization means to conform to a standard. Products, procedures, practices, behaviours can be made to conform to a specific standard, such as a required level of quality, a certain level of output, a norm or law regulating behaviour, a script or procedure to be followed, etc. For people familiar with the standard, standardized phenomena become not only predictable, but also understandable. When we know that in a given community the standard meal consists of an entrée, a main course and a dessert, we know what to expect when invited to dinner. If we moreover know the standards governing those various dishes – e.g. dessert should be sweet and should not contain meat – we can even to some extent predict what kind of food will be served next or we will know in what order to help ourselves when all the food is at once displayed at a buffet. We will also be able to recognize originality, as when a chef serves meat under the form of foams or ice cream with the taste of vegetables and spices.

When we are familiar with standard English grammar and pronunciation, we can understand someone who respects that standard and will often, in mid sentence, be able to predict how the speaker will complete the sentence. Of course standardization presupposes a community or collectivity of people that knows and to some extent respects the standard.

The smaller such communities become, the more diversity there is. One can imagine a hypothetical situation in which each individual has his or her own standards for everything, different from the standards of all other individuals. If we try to imagine such a situation we realize that it would be quite uncomfortable: life would be unpredictable, dangerous even, for the standard of the person we meet might well be to try to kill whoever he encounters. The basic script of horror movies consists in deviating from our standard expectations, that is from our conceptions of how the behaviour of other people and beings should be standardized. The idea of a radical form of individual freedom or diversity has therefore given rise to the development of beliefs particularly designed to placate the ensuing fear. The emergence of those beliefs has been masterfully described by Elie Halévy in his influential volumes on the emergence of philosophical radicalism. In the work of Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith he uncovers what he calls ‘the theory of the natural identity of interests’ (Halévy 1995: 25). That doctrine states that even when human beings stubbornly pursue their self interest and do so under conditions of great or radical freedom, this will contribute to the welfare of the collectivity. The egoisms of individual organisms always combine to produce the welfare of the species. This should be regarded as one of the great modern myths solving the otherwise insurmountable dilemma of diversity and standardization. Other devices have played a role, not in solving the dilemma through myth, but in hiding it from view. I now turn to some of these.

Naturalizing Standardization

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has repeatedly poked fun at people who protest when the French language is officially revised. Most languages are regularly revised and many countries have institutions or agencies that are mandated do so. These can propose changes in orthography, vocabulary or grammar. Very often when such changes are proposed, vehement protest arises and people denounce the fact that mundane institution like governments ‘rape’ the language, use law and mere convention to change what appears to them as a natural phenomenon, the national language.

Language, as Bourdieu (2001) clearly illustrates, is not at all natural in that sense, but rather highly conventional, the result of past efforts to create a standardized language with uniform rules of grammar, orthography and phonetics. Unless they study linguistics or sociology, native speakers will rarely become aware of the fact that their language is the product of a long-term process of standardization, in which political decisions and legislation, and hence political interests and conflicts, have played an important role.

One could make similar remarks about time and the discussions about whether winter or summer time is the more natural, or whether clock time or the time of a sundial is closer to nature. Our systems of time reckoning are a very important standardizing device, developed with the aim of facilitating the coordination of activities. The Gregorian calendar was introduced to correct some deficiencies of the Julian calendar and in order to standardize time in the Christian world. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII (hence the name) and remained for a long time restricted to Catholic countries. It was only adopted by Protestant counties in the eighteenth century, and by Orthodox Russia, after the Revolution, in 1917. Another important advance in the standardization ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface: On the Dialectical Relationship between Standardization and Diversity
• Introduction: Contextualizing, Researching and Debating Patterns of Standardization and Diversity
• PART I: THEORETICAL AND POLICY APPROACHES
• PART II: GENDER
• PART III: ETHNICITY AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY
• PART IV: INEQUALITY AND WELFARE
• Index