Thinking Sociologically

Zygmunt Bauman, Tim May

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781118959978
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

Widely acclaimed insight on the human condition, updated to view modern issues through a sociological lens Now in its third edition, Thinking Sociologically continues to offer a stimulating exploration of the underlying assumptions and tacit expectations which structure our view of the world. This best-seller has been translated into 12 languages to bring key sociological concepts to students and general readers around the globe. The authors review recent developments in society and examine the applicability of sociology to everyday life. The world has changed a great deal since the second edition's publication. Issues of climate change, sustainability, inequality, social justice, inclusion and the role of social media have risen to prominence, and we are collectively challenging our ways of thinking about intimacy, community, consumption, ethics, social identity, and more. This new third edition has been revised to reflect these and other transformations in our lives, helping us to think sociologically about the consequences of these burgeoning issues, how we organize our societies, understand ourselves and lead our lives. This dynamic book:

• Applies sociology to everyday life in the context of current issues
• Contains contributions from major theorists that introduce central sociological concepts with modern relevance
• Features a highly engaging and stimulating style that promotes critical thought and independent study

Written for undergraduates, postgraduates, practicing sociologists and social scientists, this book also holds a broad appeal to a general audience. The third edition of Thinking Sociologically offers a compelling survey of sociological issues, recent changes in society and their influence on our day-to-day lives and identities. Learn more about Thinking Sociologically in co-author Tim May's recent piece for the British Sociological Association.

Part I
Action and Understanding in Everyday Life

1
Understanding Ourselves with and through Others

We can feel isolated, alone and seemingly unable to reach out. Yet we do not stand in simple isolation from one another. We can resent being constrained by circumstances over which we feel we have no control and also assert our freedom by refusing to conform to the expectations of others. We may express frustration at the absence of instantaneous entertainment on our mobile devices, or use time to read, digest, discuss, and reflect. We need the recognition of others, but if not forthcoming or offered in a manner expected, disappointment and resentment may result. Possessing conflicting feelings or exhibiting different actions depending on the circumstances is a common part of our experiences. The human condition appears to give rise to confusing states that lead to frustration, as well as imagination and creativity.

How our actions are seen, by us and others, are constituted in these relations. Actions, self, and social identities and understandings are intimately related. These factors are informed by prevailing ideas on what it is to be human. We are, for example, free to choose and act on those choices in order to reach our goals. You can get up now and make a cup of coffee, or get a glass of water, before continuing to read this chapter. You can also choose to abandon the project of thinking sociologically and embark upon another course of study, or abandon the idea of study altogether. For you to continue to read on is a choice among the alternative courses of action that are currently available to you. Your ability to make conscious decisions in this way is said to be an exercise of your freedom.

Freedom in Living with Others

We are surrounded by particular ideas of individuals and, from there, their actions, choices, and degrees of responsibility. Adverts of all types are targeted at aspirations linked to what one wants to be in the world linked to the possession of goods. Surrounded by these techniques of persuasion into which are poured enormous resources, can we say our choices are the product of conscious decisions that we formulate in a clear, rational manner, prior to the determination of any action? Many of our actions are habitual and not subject to deliberate and open choice. Despite that, we may be reminded that our decisions leave us responsible for their consequences. You can hear it now: “No one forced you to do so, you have only yourself to blame!” If we break rules that are meant to guide people's conduct we may be punished and those punishments can range from informal to formal sanctions: for example, breaking the norms of a group may lead to us being ridiculed or temporarily excluded, to having our liberty removed through incarceration in prison due to law‐breaking. The act of punishment is one confirmation that we are held responsible for our actions. Rules, in this sense, orientate not only our actions, but coordinate interactions with others enabling an anticipation of how we and they are likely to act. Without this orientation in place, communication and understanding in everyday life would seem inconceivable.

If we are the authors of our destinies we have the power to act in controlling our lives. We have both the ability to monitor our actions and the capability to determine their outcomes. Nevertheless, is this really how life works for most people? It might be claimed, for example, that being unemployed is entirely the fault of the individual concerned who, if they tried hard enough and acquired suitable knowledge and skills, could earn a living. People might retrain themselves and look for work, but the area in which they live has high unemployment and they cannot afford to move, or have relatives and friends for whom they care and so, despite actively seeking employment, there is none on offer or they have limited mobility due to dependents. There are many circumstances in which our freedom to act is limited by circumstances over which we have little or no control. It is one thing to have the ability to change or modify our skills and quite another to possess the capability to reach our goals. Let us consider this in more detail.

Take conditions of scarcity. These, as well as how we are judged by others, limit our capabilities. People might seek the same goals, but not all reach them because access to what they seek is limited. In this case we might compete with each other and the outcome may be only partially dependent on our efforts. We might seek a college place, only to find out that there are 20 candidates for every place available and that most of them have the qualifications required. In addition, the college may tend to favor candidates from certain social backgrounds and those with connections to those who have attended before. Our actions are dependent upon the judgments of others over whom we may exercise limited control, but also related to our social networks and how those enable and constrain our aspirations. Others set the rules of the game and act as the referees. They are positioned by their institutions to exercise discretion and, in so doing, draw a boundary around the freedoms of others. Factors such as these heavily influence the outcome of our efforts. In this case we become dependent on others because they evaluate whether our efforts are good enough and consider whether we exhibit the right characteristics and background to justify our admission.

Material factors inform our capability to reach our goals. Whilst self‐determination is important, what if we lack the means? We might be able to move to seek work in places where more jobs are available, only to discover that the cost of houses or of rents is far beyond our means. Similarly, we might wish to escape overcrowded and polluted conditions in order to move to a healthier location. However, we find those with more money have already done so and therefore it is not affordable, or they have created enclosures or live in high‐rise buildings to secure environments separate from their surroundings. In the process house prices increase, rents go up, and the job does not pay enough to obtain somewhere to live. We can say the same thing about education and health. Some areas have better equipped schools and hospitals, yet are too far away, whilst our society does not have a public, universal health‐care system and private health insurance is beyond our income. Thus, freedom of choice does not guarantee freedom to act on those choices, nor does it secure the freedom to attain our desired ends. To be able to act freely, we need more than an idea of free will.

Most commonly we think of being limited by the amount of money at our disposal, but we have also mentioned symbolic resources. In this case our freedom may not depend on what we do, but on who we are in terms of how others view and value us. We have used the example of a college, but we may also be refused entry to a club, or employment, because of the manner in which our qualities are judged: for example, on the grounds of class, race, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, or disability. Alternatively, access to the club may depend on past achievements – acquired skills, qualifications, length of service, the people who we know and will sponsor us, or the manner in which we have been brought up to speak and address people. These are the lasting consequences of past choices which, when they become sedimented in more durable social structures over time, have an effect on individual actions. Freedom to act in the present is thus informed by past circumstances, accumulated experiences, and the value accorded to those by others.

How we are positioned in these ways interacts with how we feel about and act in the social situations into which we enter. Let us return to our college example. We may find that a mode of speaking and particular accent is expected during the interview, but it is one with which we are unfamiliar. Coming from a working‐class background, we may feel uneasy among middle‐class students, or our sexual orientation is not judged to be “normal” and so we experience a sense of isolation and an absence of others seeing our choices as valid. Perhaps, being a Catholic who follows orthodoxy, we cannot accept divorce and abortion as the choices that others have a right to make.

Here we come to a possibility: those groups with whom we feel most at ease may actually limit our freedom by restricting the range of opinions we can hold. Informal and formal groups are often constituted by the expectations that they place upon their members and in so doing exclude those who are presumed not to live up to those requirements or ways of life. When these gaps in understanding occur between groups, they are frequently filled by stereotypical assumptions which are prejudicial and inaccurate, but enable a separation between “us” and “them.” The very fact that we may be adjusted to the conditions of action inside our group circumscribes our freedom by preventing us from engaging with experiences beyond the confines of that group. Having been trained in the ways of our groups, we practice a freedom whose price is to limit engagement with other ideas and practices.

We are both enabled and constrained in the everyday practices of freedom. At one level we are taught that there are types of desires that are acceptable and achievable within a group. Appropriate ways to act, talk, dress, and conduct ourselves provide an orientation to get us through life within the groups to which we belong. We judge ourselves according to those expectations and our self‐esteem is directly informed in these ways. Groups enable boundaries that orientate us through common interests and/or by proximity and these advantages may become problems as we traverse from one group to another and find ourselves in environments where different ways of being and forms of evaluation are promoted. Alternative ways of conducting ourselves may be seen as appropriate and the connections between other people's conduct and their intentions are not familiar to us and appear alien. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu referred to this gap as the “Don Quixote” effect: that is, between our dispositions and the social contexts in which we find ourselves.

One way in which we can gain a sense of the appropriateness of conduct is through our physical presence with others and hearing what they say and seeing how they act. However, if one is exposed to the reactions of online communities, there may be no way to see the actions of others over time and their utterances may be anonymous. As a result, their actions are not constrained by the consequences of being judged by those who are in physical proximity. As we move from one setting to another, whether in virtual or real space, the background understanding that allowed us to navigate and belong in one group can appear as a limitation. Where a disjuncture occurs between our expectations, experiences, and actions, it may be because of the unintended consequences of intentional actions. In other words, despite intentionally seeking one outcome, another arises because circumstances unfolded in a way we did not anticipate, or there were factors we did not know about and over which we had no control.

When it comes to the factors that inform our dispositions, or ways of being in the world, the reference groups to which we belong are not ones we have opted for out of free choice. Quite simply, we can be members of a group because we are born into it. The group that defines us and orients our actions may not be one that we have consciously chosen. When we first joined it or were seen by others to be a part of it, it was not an act of freedom, but a manifestation of dependence. We do not decide to be French, Caribbean, white, or working or middle class. Such apparent fate can be accepted with equanimity or resignation, or it can be transformed into our destiny through an enthusiastic embrace with the identity of the group and what it stands for – being proud of what we are and the expectations placed upon us as a result. If we want to transform ourselves, however, it will require a great deal of effort against the taken‐for‐granted expectations of those who surround us. Self‐sacrifice, determination, and endurance will take the place of conformity to the values and norms of the group. The contrast is one between swimming with the tide, or against the current. This is how, despite not always being conscious of it, we are dependent upon others: even though we may swim against the current, we still do so in a direction that is oriented or informed by the expectations or actions of those who lie both inside and outside of the familiar group. How we act and see ourselves is informed by the expectations of the groups to which we belong. This is manifested in several ways.

First, there are the ends or goals that we assign with particular significance and so consider worth pursuing. These vary according to such factors as class, ethnicity, age, and gender. The work of caring for others is often, but not exclusively, provided by women and so there is a clear tendency to gravitate to particular occupations in which caring for others is rewarded: for example, teaching, nursing, and social work. This is based on assumptions about divisions of labor in terms of the types of characteristics that men and women are expected to exhibit. These are tendencies, not simple determinations, which have cultural variations. Yet they are ones that circumscribe not only what is seen to be acceptable, but the recognition and rewards offered to different occupations and to those within them.

Second, how we are expected to achieve these ends is influenced by another manifestation of group expectations: the accepted means employed in the pursuit of ends. We are concerned here with the forms of conduct that are taken to be appropriate in everyday life. How we dress, use our bodies, our forms of talk, display our enthusiasm and even how we eat, are just part of the ways in which groups inform our conduct in the pursuit of ends. What are acceptable and unacceptable means for the attainment of ends may saturate individual concerns with the consequences of actions in situations where people wish to belong or fear the consequences of acting against the prevailing order. Indeed, persons deploying unacceptable means may not be positively sanctioned, but ignored as long as they are succeeding in the attainment of ends. These forms of justification can normalize actions and were certainly believed to be apparent in the culture of the banking sector that led to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008.

Third, groups also seek to identify themselves through acts that distinguish them from those outside of their formal and informal networks of relations. The resulting phenomenon is called the criteria of relevance. Here we are taught to distinguish between those objects or people who are relevant and irrelevant to the life‐projects we embark upon. Inscriptions on objects may have different meanings between groups depending upon how those objects are accorded significance and relevance in a culture. Identifying allies, enemies, rivals, what to wear, who to listen to and who to disregard is part of this process. Thus, we owe the ends which we pursue, the means employed in their pursuit, and how to distinguish between those who may and may not assist us in the process to the groups to which we belong.

Sociological Lenses: Viewing Ourselves with Others

An enormous amount of practical knowledge is gained through our belonging to groups without which we would be unable to conduct our daily activities and orient ourselves and impute significance and value to our actions. In most cases this knowledge is “tacit”: that is, knowledge that orients our conduct by establishing meaning and connections between things, persons, and places without us being able to express it, or how and why it operates in particular ways. If asked, for example, the form of codes we use to communicate with others, how we decipher the actions of others and attribute meaning to objects, we may not even understand the question. How do we explain the rules of speech that enable communication, when we necessarily take them for granted in our communicative competency? Yet that knowledge is required to perform our tasks and practical skills. A branch of sociology – ethnomethodology – is concerned with studying the minutiae of everyday interactions and provides for fascinating insights into those things that we take for granted: for example, taking turns in conversations, how we begin and end sentences and attribute characteristics to people on the basis of their mode of dress and bodily deportment in everyday, routine gestures.

We may begin sociological understanding of the relations between the individual and society with the background knowledge that informs practical reasoning and actions. The resulting studies become those areas of social life where we might feel secure in our actions and which inform the reproduction of the social order whose routines we rely upon for navigating our way through the world. That very reproduction can rely upon our forgetting, or simply taking for granted, the origins of the ways that can exert a powerful grip upon us. It comes in the form of a natural attitude that micro‐sociologists turn into the objects of their investigation. Resulting studies on social knowledge and everyday life enable us to know mor...