Self and Social Change

Matthew Adams

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781412907118, 9781412907101
• eBook ISBN: 9781446236260
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

?This is a superb book; beautifully written, lucid, and engaging, with illuminating critical discussions of the concept of reflexivity, psychoanalytic perspectives, and Foucaultian analysis, locating these theories in up-to-date research and discussions about class and gender. This book will be indispensable as an aid to students looking for an introduction to concepts of the self set in contemporary everyday contexts that they can relate to. But it will also be useful to teachers and researchers looking for orientation in a complex and burgeoning field of literature and research? - Ian Burkitt, University of Bradford

?Matthew Adams provides a clearly written and concise summary of key theoretical accounts of the meaning of social change for psychic life and the experience of self... Self and Social Change is a terrific book. If looking for an accessible introductory text, look no further? - British Journal of Sociology

How does social change influence selfhood? What are the fundamental positions in social theories of the self? How are social changes interwoven with our ability to choose our identities and lifestyles? This accessible and assured book gives readers a new take on the fundamental question of the relation between the individual and society.

By offering a thorough, informed and critical guide to the field, Adams demonstrates how global economic and employment structures, neo-liberal discourse, the role of emotion, irrationality and ambiguity are factors that impact upon the shape and resilience of the self. Anyone interested in the question of identity and its relation to cultural, social, economic and political contexts will find this book a God-send, making it ideal for students and lecturers in cultural studies, sociology, social psychology and communications.

1

Self and Social Change

The story of social change in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is a complex and contested one. It is worth stating at the outset that attempting to separate out social changes is an analytic process. As soon as we pull them apart they snap back into a complex inter-related whole. ‘Social change is both a specific and a multifaceted phenomenon’ states one commentator (Jordan, 2002: 300). It might be fruitful to consider the elements of social change described below in a way similar to Donna Haraway (1997). Although she categorizes change slightly differently, the main areas are described as multiple ‘horns’ of a ‘wormhole’. Haraway’s language is characteristically vivid here; the metaphor of a wormhole is taken to indicate how aspects of each area of social change appear and disappear in the fabric of one another (Jordan, 2002: 292). Thus it is impossible to conceive of social change in its totality, but inaccurate to consider it as made up of discreet and compatible units.

Take one example of a relatively mundane development in social communication, video conferencing, which is still an emerging technology at the time of writing. We might want to place this in a social change category of ‘communication’. However, its central function might yet be in transforming the workplace, making travel less necessary and home-based employment more of a possibility. So we are tempted to put it in the ‘work’ category. However, the fact that people can communicate in the same physical ‘space’ whilst being in different spaces and time zones may suggest a profound change in our experience of time/space. So maybe video conferencing should go in a ‘time/space’ category? The same applies to many examples. Thus it is worth remembering that what are discussed as separate social changes and categories of social change relate closely to each other and co-exist in complex ways.

Despite complexities and controversies, social transformations have repeatedly been flagged up using the following terms and ideas to indicate (or contest) the general shift to post-traditional society: globalization, technology, the body, reflexivity, time and space, homogenization, transnational corporations, individualization, polarization and gender.

Globalization

There has been a ‘globalisation’ of economic, social and political relationships which have undermined the coherence, wholeness and unity of individual societies.

(John Urry, 1989: 97)

The globe as an organizing principle entered the popular imagination in the early 1960s with Mcluhan’s vivid portrayal of a ‘global village’ (McLuhan, 1964). Globalization has since become the chosen term of many social theorists to capture the multiple, dialectical dynamics and outcomes of recent social change. At its most basic, globalization refers to ‘the multiplicity of linkages and interconnections that transcend the nation-state (and by implication the societies) which make up the modern world system’ (McGrew, 1992: 65). The movement of people, finance, ideas, goods, pollution, services and so on beyond the boundaries of the nation-state has supposedly exposed the inherent fragility of those boundaries, creating frenetic, voluminous networks of interdependency that criss-cross the globe. Many of the changes we are about to discuss could easily be argued to move in the explanatory orbit of globalization. The term has been incorporated into accounts of modernism and post-modernism, both optimistic (creative hybridity, global dialogue) and pessimistic (Americanism, imperialism), and is commonly argued to have political, cultural, economic and personal dimensions (Albrow, 1996; Giddens, 1999; Held, 1995; Robertson, 1992).

Why then, is this book not called ‘Self and Globalization’? Globalization may often be a handy and illustrative heuristic for a multitude of interrelated changes. Furthermore, most, if not all, of the accounts summarized in subsequent chapters accept globalizing tendencies as the implicit markers of change which underpin accounts of transformations in self-identity. However, it is one of those terms where their meaning becomes assumed through popular assimilation, taken-for-granted to the point where it suggests and supports any number of claims. There is a danger of becoming blinded by the apparent descriptive power of ‘globalization’ as a theory of everything. Many have argued that what we call globalization is in fact the continuation of base structures of capitalism or the power of nation-states (Gilpin, 1987; Golding, 2000; Jamieson, 1991). It can also obscure the localized, differentiated and divisive ways in which multiple changes combine and are experienced. Thus the term ‘social change’ is preferred. That said it is informative to critically consider many of the following changes in relation to a broad process of globalization.

Technological change

If there were no railway to overcome distances, my child would never have left his home town and I should not need the telephone in order to hear his voice.

(Sigmund Freud, 2002 [1930]: 26)

Developments in communication technology are seen to be a key element in radical social upheaval, and are central to most assertions of the reality of globalization. The development of the printing press, maritime technology allowing well-tread shipping routes and the development of the mechanical clock, are amongst the innovations often claimed to be neglected technologies of communication and information in earlier historical periods. Much later, from the 1850s in the West, the telegraph network expanded rapidly to cover thousands of miles and carry millions of messages, many of them across the Atlantic between the United States and Europe, heralding an oft-forgotten era of ‘globalization’ (Mackay, 2002; Standage, 1990; Thrift, 1990). The steam powered rail network transformed transportation and with it our sense of distance in the same era.

As modernity developed, particularly with the expansion of industrialization and capitalism, techniques of production were revolutionized, bringing enormous interlocking changes to the nature of work, communication, public administration, surveillance, domestic life and transportation. The early- to mid-twentieth century saw rapid growth in the use of communication and information technology alongside production techniques, ushering in an era of mass-production and consumption. Key products have included the car and other motor transport, the telephone, the proliferation of radio and television reception and usage amounting to ‘mass communication’ (Thompson, 1995). More recent ‘high-tech’ developments in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, though by no means accessible to all, include an increase in home computer ownership, internet and email, mass air travel, expanded use of mobile phones and portable computers (Gergen, 1991), bio-technological innovation affecting numerous aspects of life from appearance, physical and mental health and reproduction, to advanced surveillance, security and global positioning technologies. An effective means of producing and distributing goods, and of informing a mass audience of their availability, desirability and necessity are all argued to be vital components leading to a radicalization of social change currently showing no signs of flagging. There is much common ground in acknowledging the actuality of these developments, but significant differences in interpreting their social impact. Arguments abound, for example, about the extent to which technological change overcomes or maintains social inequalities, and critics of technological determinism have made a strong case for considering technology as embedded in social, cultural and political changes rather than simply driving them (e.g. Pile, 2002). Relatedly, the extent to which technologies are utilized as forces of subjection and/or reflexive self-production informs arguments made in all subsequent chapters.

The body

Technological change is not just something which happens ‘out there’. Developments in technology have been central to shifts in our understanding of what it is to be human, and particularly corporeality, and the boundaries between body, nature and environment. Few would disagree that changes in technology reach into and transform our understanding of the body. In recent years, for example, body-building and fitness technologies have been developed parallel to increases in gym membership and equipment ownership. Such socio-technological developments have been argued to have a profound impact on embodied experience in early twenty-first century cultures (Dutton, 1995). The social proliferation of plastic surgery is another example of the ways in which the body has been opened up (sometimes literally) to technological change, transforming our notion of the body, and the boundaries between natural and artificial, human and non-human.

More generally, the body has taken a more central role in social theory after a history of neglect stemming back to an entrenched, masculinist, mind-body dualism in which the body tended to be viewed as the inferior, encumbering partner (Burkitt, 1991). A rejection of dualism and more ‘embodied’ accounts of human activity have led to an interest in the ‘social body’ (Crossley, 2001; Turner, 1984; Schilling, 1993): how the body is regulated, inscribed, empowered, produced by, and productive of social convention (e.g. Bourdieu, 1977; Butler, 1990; Foucault, 1979; Elias, 1978), particularly in relation to the intersections between technology, media, gender identity and embodiment (Haraway, 1997; Henwood et al., 2001; Kirkup et al., 2000; Zylinska, 2002). Theorizing the relationship between change and the body is a challenging and contested field of social theory which takes us well beyond a narrow focus on technology. Although there is not the scope in this book to encompass anything like the range of arguments in this field, theorizations of the body will be relevant to the discussions in the chapters that follow.

Time-space relations

Alongside the changes already outlined, it is commonly claimed that there is also a reconfiguration of two of the most fundamental dimensions of human existence: time and space (e.g. Castells, 1999; Giddens, 1991; Haraway, 1997; Harvey, 1989; Thompson, 1995). The way this reconfiguration is expressed varies. Giddens argues that social relations begin to transcend the contexts of time and space which were previously bound to locale, for example, whilst Harvey claims that ‘we have been experiencing…an intense phase of time-space compression’ (Harvey, 1989: 284; emphasis added). Despite their differences, both authors see changes in the time-space relationship allowing for a ‘complex co-ordination’ of social relations ‘across large tracts of time-space’ (Giddens, 1990: 19). Contexts for action may no longer be defined by a sense of time and space which is inseparable from the physicalities of that context. Physical presence, for example, becomes an unnecessary element in social interaction:

The advent of modernity increasingly tears space away from place by fostering relations between ‘absent’ others, locationally distant from any given situation of face-to-face interaction. In conditions of modernity place becomes increasingly phantasmagoric: that is to say, locales are thoroughly penetrated by and shaped in terms of social influences quite distant from them. (1990: 19)

Social interaction ordered by localized, relatively self-contained structures of time, space and place, is now potentially disrupted. Thus time-space distanciation, to use Giddens’s term, further breaks the hold of tradition over social relations and the formation of identity. It is the foundation for ‘the articulation of social relations across wide spans of time-space’ (Giddens, 1991: 20). In this sense it is the essential cause and consequence of the other dynamics which propel modern society into a post-traditional era. The reconfiguration of time and space is central to many portrayals of social change and their impact upon subjectivity, whether couched in the terminology of psychosocial fragmentation, post-modernism or social regulation, and is a central tenet in the extended reflexivity thesis, discussed in chapter three.

Homogenization, difference and hybridity

The notion of globalization conveys what appear to be contradictory images of homogeneity, difference and hybridity. Homogenization is sometimes claimed to be an outcome of the dissolution of tradition, developments in communication and the continuation of capitalist relations. The ‘timeless time…and the space of flows’ (Castells, 1999: 405) opened up by such changes encourages dialogue that results in an increased sameness:

The living conditions of various nations, classes and individuals are becoming increasingly similar. In the past, different continents, cultures, ranks, trades and professions inhabited different worlds, but now they more and more live in one world. People today hear similar things, see similar things, travel back and forth between similar places for the daily grind. (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002: 174)

Other ‘big’ theorists, such as Bauman, also appeal to sameness as a potential form of universal humanism with a global reach, though are cautiously optimistic at best that it will be realized:

for the first time in human history everybody’s self-interest and ethical principles of mutual respect and care point in the same direction and demand the same strategy. From a curse, globalization may yet turn into a blessing: ‘humanity’ never had a better chance. (Bauman, 2004: 88)

A different but similarly positive line of argument claims that out of a basic liberal uniformity, such as the free-exchange of information allowed by the internet, new and creative forms of difference and distinction can readily emerge (Wiley, 1999; Lupton, 2000). Building on proliferating communication and information structures, increased contact with others leads us to a kind of constant cultural summit, where differences are acknowledged, explored, and melded into innovative hybrids. Despite the apparent contrast, hopes for the increased recognition of difference rest upon similar ideals of acceptance, open communication and flexibility to the more optimistic theories of homogeneity. Such ideas are directly challenged by accounts of psychosocial fragmentation (chapter two) and cultural narcissism (chapter five), which envisage the dissolution of tradition as a disintegration of self, ripe for colonization by the forces of capital and state. Such forces, it is argued, if not involved in more explicitly divisive practices, appropriate humanism, multiculturalism and the ‘acceptance of difference’ as individualized commodities, further reinforcing a sense of alienation. Foucaultian analyses, discussed in chapter four, take a similarly critical approach, deconstructing what are claimed to be the fallacies of neo-liberal individualization, which rest on the optimistic proclamations of globalization. Such analyses are wary of arguing that a ‘true’ or core selfhood is at stake however. The extended reflexivity thesis (chapter three), on the other hand, offers qualified support for the psychological benefits inherent in the inter-relating processes of homogenization, difference and hybridity.

Transnational corporations

The corporation’s dramatic rise to dominance is one of the remarkable events of modern history.

(Joel Bakan, 2004: 5)

Homogeneity is interpreted by more pessimistic commentators as an appropriation of the channels of information, products and ideas by powerful corporations and nations in new forms of imperialism (e.g. Schiller, 1976). Amongst such arguments the spread of transnational or multinational corporations (TNCs or MNCs) is commonly emphasized as a form of social change (e.g. Ritzer, 1993). Joel Bakan’s recent account of corporate history and power opens with the following:

Today, corporations govern our life. They determine what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work, and what we do. We are inescapably surrounded by their culture, iconography, and ideology. And, like the church and monarchy in other times, they posture as infallible and omnipotent, glorifying themselves in imposing buildings and elaborate displays. (Bakan, 2004: 5)

Bakan’s description allows us to stand back from what has undoubtedly become one of the most pervasive institutions in a relatively short historical period. In neo-liberal defences of the benefits of globalization, and in critical theories of globalization and anti-globalization, TNCs are never far from the conceptual frontline. They are seen to be integral to all the social changes discussed so far. In neo-liberal accounts, TNCs bring the liberating message of the market to every dark alley in the global network, ushering in freedom, opportunity, enterprise and democracy (e.g. Leadbeater, 2004). For critics, they impose the might of the wealthy, maintain a growing global underclass of poverty and hopelessness, and wreck the environment in an unholy pact with the modern state (e.g Klein, 2001). Either way TNCs facilitate, and are constituted by, global flows of communication, transportation, finance and labour. Thus in the constant localized, experiential reconfiguration of these interacting processes, the corporation is a forceful presence in the dynamics of social change.

The role of the corporation has warranted varied attention in accounts of social change and selfhood. For accounts of psychosocial fragmentation and cultural pathology, capitalist social relations and their institutions are seen to be primarily responsible for the ills of the age (Laing, 1967; Lasch, 1979; Marcuse, 1968). For accounts of extended reflexivity, capitalism and corporatism is subsumed under more general societal definitions, such as post-traditional, risk or network society, liquid, high or late modernity (Bauman, 2000; Beck, 1992; Castells, 1996; Giddens, 1990, 1994); some arguments have suggested that the power of contemporary formations of capitalism to stratify human relations and life chances is underplayed as a result (e.g. Bradley, 1996). In Foucaultian analyses and the more general turn to language/culture, capitalism is also in danger of being marginalized according to some critics (Rojek and Turner, 2000); the final chapter of this book is largely an attempt to reconcile suitably complex accounts of embodied, reflexive social identity formation with an appreciation of social structure substantially marked by divisions of class and gender which define the stubbornly capitalist organization of social existence.

Individualization

For Beck, Bauman and others, globalization develops hand-in-hand with individualization (Beck, 2004; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Bauman, 2001) and the term has gone on to have reasonable explanatory reach in explaining contemporary processes at work in forming self-iden...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Self and Social Change
• 2 The Diminished Self
• 3 The Reflexive Self
• 4 The Regulated Self
• 5 The Narcissistic Self
• 6 Repositioning Reflexivity
• Bibliography
• Index