A Criminology of Moral Order

Boutellier, Hans, Hans Boutellier

• Publisher: Bristol University Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781529203875
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Moral order is disturbed by criminal events. However, in a secularized and networked society a common moral ground is increasingly hard to find.

People feel confused about the bigger issues of our time such as crime, anti-social behaviour, Islamist radicalism, sexual harassment and populism. Traditionally, issues around morality have been neglected by criminologists.

Through theory, case studies and discussion, this book sheds a new and topical light on these concerns. Using the moral perspective, Boutellier bridges the gap between people's emotional opinions on crime, and criminologists' rationalized answers to questions of crime and security.

PART I

Complexity without direction

TWO

Social order in a network society

Several years ago, I attended a lecture by an expert in governance who had researched the systems and processes in a large city.1 He discussed the city’s multi-level governance structure, the collaboration between public and private agencies, and the hopeless tangle of projects and initiatives. There was no end to his descriptions of what was going on. We waited for the conclusion, which finally appeared on the last slide of his PowerPoint presentation. His diagnosis was splashed across the screen in capital letters: COMPLEXITY! The expert looked triumphantly around the hall after unveiling his ultimate finding, while the audience stared back at him somewhat dumbfounded. The simple truth is not always intrinsically convincing.

Cynicism is not appropriate here. Due to technological revolutions and globalized economic success, Western societies are so complex that many politicians and officials in government and public institutions often seem to just muddle through. As Lindblom noted in 1959, there is an enormous amount of improvisation going on.2

This managerial impotence does not develop in a vacuum. It has its counterpart in a much wider area of social uncertainty. Many organizations have difficulty in defining their function, while their professional staff members are looking for normative guidance in their work. There are great aspirations and good intentions, but these are matched by insecurity and uncertainty. The question is: how does such a world without boundaries organize itself socially?

Dynamics and institutions

This book is not just about order, but actually more about ordering. The process itself is important. The relatively coherent ideological order of a great deal of the 20th century – although ranging from extreme right to extreme left – has been replaced by less collective forms. How are we to understand these new forms, which are characterized by great complexity and a plethora of moral forms? A community of people cannot do without social ordering, in terms of organization and normative direction. In the past decades, the existing order has been seriously shaken up. Not many social structures are left standing. But that is not to say that there have been no replacements. Social reality is renewing itself. The question of social order needs to be understood using different vocabularies.

In a world without boundaries, social order develops through a multitude of practices, relations and mentalities, and is characterized by the speed and vitality of the ordering processes. It is paired with strong emotions and social strife – both constructive and destructive. Social order is giving permanent form to relationships among people in ‘liquid’ conditions (Zygmunt Bauman’s term – Bauman, 2000). Yet a liquid society is not simply liquid. There are relatively solid institutions, such as law, business, education, the medical industry and the physical infrastructure. Schuyt (2009) speaks of ‘buttresses of the society’. These institutions are not inviolable, and even they are under pressure from the maelstrom of individualization, technological change and globalization. Yet they are still standing, sometimes because they have braced themselves, and sometimes because they go with the flow.

The new ordering of society, in other words, develops around solid yet adaptive institutions. The popular image of a horizontal, non-hierarchical world needs to be expanded by those moments of ordering that call on power, authority or institutional gravitas. The image of a liquid society should be amended, by noting that the solidity of institutions has not disappeared, but has found new patterns in which to function.3 This is all about the ordering of nodes in a broader environment. Nodes (identities of different weights) point to other nodes (people, organizations, institutions), and together they form a three-dimensional fabric with centres of gravity that pull and give direction: a network society.

New conditions require new forms of ordering. After the community, with its mechanical order, and society, with its organic order, we speak of a network, which realizes its social order via improvisation. A new form of society is developing within networked structures – a social ordering by nodes and the relations in between them. These can take on any imaginable shape, depending on the movements of the adjoining (horizontal and vertical) connections. Networks can be seen not as the cause, but as the solution to complexity, provided they are given normative direction from explicit identities.

But what are the formal characteristics of this nodal universe? There are new global relations, new forms of production and consumption, and new social conditions, all of which are based on a new resource – information (after Castells, 2000a: 500). All these innovations, sociologically speaking, fall within the concept of the network society. Nodes and links are the seemingly intangible components of current society. The observation that we live in a network society is not particularly new; it could even be viewed as somewhat old-fashioned. ‘Network’ (the noun) has become a basic concept in the natural and social sciences, economics and politics. It is also playing an increasingly larger role in everyday life. ‘Networking’ (the verb) has morphed into a social skill.

No matter how (un)fashionable ‘networking’ might seem, it points to a social reality that reaches far beyond cocktail parties and golf courses. Every internet user understands intuitively what it means. Social organizations understand the need to expand their ‘links’ to other ‘nodes’. Social ordering has now entered the era of the nodal universe. Complexity contains more order than we are inclined to think, but it requires a different sort of vocabulary. To that end, I call on network science and chaos theory, along with the science of complex systems. First, I look at the information age and its networking mindset, then I examine three tenets from the study of complex systems: structure, synchrony and stability.

The information age

For an enlightening description of the ‘world without boundaries’, I begin with the work of the Catalan sociologist Manuel Castells. In the 1990s, he wrote three massive volumes on The information age (revised edns 2000a, 2000b, 2004), which are a major landmark in sociology. Castells analyzed the changes in the economy, politics, culture, and the relations between states, organizations and citizens, and he placed them convincingly within the Information Technology Paradigm. Castells was the author who analyzed in detail the comprehensive term ‘information age’. His analysis is still most relevant, because it informs us about the conditions of network society.

A different space

Information technology facilitates a process of increasing globalization and individualization. The importance of this process cannot be overestimated: ‘a third revolution’ after that of the steam engine and electricity (Castells, 1996/2000a). The information age opens up a new space; Castells calls this the ‘space of flows’. This space arises between nodal points that are connected to each other. This ‘space of flows’ differs from the ‘space of places’, which is constructed and experienced physically. Societies are increasingly organizing themselves in the flows between the nodes – flows of capital, information, technology, interaction among organizations, of images, sounds and symbols, and of people (Castells, 2000a: 442).

The new modes of being that arise from this ‘virtual reality’ have major consequences for social bonds. In fact, they form a threat to traditional communities, cultures, neighbourhoods and families. Together these form the ‘space of places’ that offers people peace, security and shelter. There is a direct link between these bonds and physical places. These physical institutions have not disappeared, but are now part of a new world of (social) media, mobility and flexibility (see also Sennett, 1998). Identity formation, based on functions and community, has been replaced with more fluid forms of identity production. Networks organize themselves around the individual and his or her physical body. Consider, for example, the culture of the ‘designer body’ and the dominant role of sports – and its total opposite, the body-concealing burqa and niqab.

The dismantling of old social structures does not happen without a struggle – the network society creates discontent and resistance. In The power of identity, Castells (1997/2004) describes the counter-movements called forth by the network society. Many have organized themselves around ‘primary identities’, such as religion, ethnicity and nationality. This explains the fundamentalism among Christians in the United States, and among Muslims both in the West and in the Muslim world. It explains today’s identity politics in general. There are also new collective identities, such as the environmental movement. ‘Our societies are constituted by the interaction between the “net” and “the self”’ (Castells, 1998/2000b: 383) – and by the collective institutions that arise from that, I would like to add.

The most dramatic development, according to Castells (2004: 133ff.), is that which takes place around the nation state. Networks create forms of power outside the state – international networks of capital, production, communication, organized crime, multinational institutions, supranational military powers, non-governmental organizations, transnational religions, international opinion groups, terrorist groups, and other social movements. At the national level, we see a similar shift to local powers, introverted communities, new tribal bonds, cults and gangs. The state is ‘too small to handle global forces, yet too big to manage people’s lives’ (Castells, 2004: 337).

No matter how, the modern state must relate to the complexity of global and local networks. A networked state, which can only survive when connected to other nodes, is emerging (Castells, 2004: 130). This impacts and changes the state’s legitimacy for intervention – from representation of the will of the people to the capacity to bring forth order out of complexity. Governments are only partially successful in these endeavours, and this undermines their political credibility. This can be seen daily in social media. The electorate is becoming increasingly unpredictable, there is more room for single-issue parties, and there is increasing scrutiny of politicians’ integrity.

This does not, in my view, mean that government has become irrelevant; perhaps the opposite is the case. Although the state has lost its central position, it remains one of the last beacons in the storm of globalization. This fundamental contradiction defines the current state of politics – it must navigate between being impotent and enforcing, between giving space and creating order. We can see this happen in euroscepticism and the resulting Brexit.

Saskia Sassen (2006), the globalization specialist, regards the state not as a victim of, but rather as a prerequisite for, globalization. Territory, legislation, economy, security, authority and membership are all national constructs on which the process of globalization takes place. Sassen (2006: 343) thinks that Castells’ macro-perspective has caused him to overlook the fact that globalization is a form of ‘denationalization’. This can be highly selective – it might, for example, affect only the financial sector – while there is also a policy of renationalization as related to the immigration issue. The national level has not been eliminated, but rather has acquired a different meaning. Sassen’s (2006: 379ff.) detailed analysis shows that the digital era offers the potential to act both globally and locally. The nation state continues to perform a key role but, simultaneously, that role is changing profoundly. Brexit can be judged as the result of the longing for a vital and protecting nation state.

Other authors also emphasize the continuing importance of the state. It represents symbolic power and cultural authority. The state has the law as the source of its legitimacy; the government can coordinate and inform. If it comes to it, the state also has the power of the sword – the monopoly of violence in the police, the judicial system and the military (as argued by Crawford, 2006; Loader and Walker, 2006). We could say that, along with Sassen and others, Castells should not exaggerate. Developments flow from the neighbourhood to the world and then back again. It is here that we encounter the grotesque word ‘glocalization’ (Robertson, 1992), in which nation states continue to play a complicated intermediary role between local and global interests.

Living together in networks

In his three-volume work, Castells sketches a radically changing world, but also one of local deterioration. He portrays impotent states and alienated citizens. The information age fragments, the network society is disordered, and the ensuing reactions are rigid and intolerant. Globalized individualization leads ultimately to chaos, which only the most cheerful of intellectuals regard as an inviting prospect. One might even ask if the world without boundaries can be understood in anything other than negative terms.

Yet information technology, globalization and individualization create a different world, but not necessarily a chaotic society. What we have to do is learn how to perceive it and how to understand the new order. Let me explore this further, with the help of Jan van Dijk (2006), who criticized the ’one-dimensional’ character of Castells’ analyses, because it suggested that the network carriers – individuals, groups, organizations – are no longer important, almost as if they ceased to exist.

An all-engulfing ‘space of flows’ is not a realistic representation, in van Dijk’s opinion. The essence of a network is connection; more specifically, connecting creates an opening. van Dijk regards this as ‘the secret of networking as an organizing principle’ (2006: 30). ‘Opening’ offers enormous potential for the organization of independent units. It creates possibilities for units to adapt to their environment, and this – which is important here – leads to the production of order. van Dijk chose an approach that begins with the elements or units (individuals, households, organizations), which are then connected. The network society is ‘a social formation with an infrastructure of social and media networks enabling its prime mode of organization at all levels’ (van Dijk, 2006: 20).

In today’s culture, networks of individuals form the basis for societal organization. This is in contrast to ‘mass societies’, in which the collective organizes the individual. The historical uniqueness of this form of organization can possibly be contested – there have always been networks (see Ferguson, 2018). But the scale and size of cooperation have grown enormously (van Dijk, 2006: 21-3). Mass society was characterized by a high degree of internal connectedness and limited openness to the outside world. The pillarization (that is the juxtaposed grouping of the people by denomination or ideology: catholic, protestant, socialist and so on) of Dutch society in the 20th century is a good example, like the class-based society in Great Britain. In contrast, the structure of the network society is less intensely collectivized; it is polycentric, not centralized.

van Dijk rejects too radical ideas about the network society. It is not the ideal democratic society, but neither is it a world without social cohesion. He gives his view of the network society in a list of ten points (2006: 37ff.), which I synthesize later in this chapter. In the network society, relations between elements or units are increasingly important, but the elements themselves remain important too, even as they remain linked to their physical environment. The number of direct relations increases via both social and media networks. This creates a new social infrastructure, in which the media and the internet start to function as an independent entity.

Interactions in the network society are multilateral and intensive, with new forms of or...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Author’s Preface
• Introduction
• PART I: Complexity without direction
• PART II: Security politics
• PART III: Sex and identity
• Conclusion
• Epilogue
• References