Blackwood Project 2001. Geoff Boucher
Session on General Social Processes
Report by Geoff Boucher, Sunday 3 June, 2001

Reflexive Modernity, “Risk Society” and the New Politics

My allocated task was to look at “social complexity, information technology and the new social movements”. In Giddens’ work, these appear under slightly different banners:

• Reflexive modernity and the “risk society” are effectively related to social complexity.
• For Giddens, “globalisation is really about the transformation of space and time” — effectively by shrinking them - and information technology is central to - but not the only cause of — this process.
• The globalisation of production and the importance of abstract systems such as electronically mediated symbolic networks mean that the workforce in the advanced industrialised countries has been transformed: (percentage of technological workers). These employees and youth expecting to be employed in this field are the driving force behind the “new political culture,” which Giddens describes as lifestyle politics centred upon questions of identity, rather than conventional politics focused on government.
• The new social movements (NSM) are the bearers of the “social revolutions of our time,” since they are the leading consequence of, and main instrument in deepening the processes of, “reflexive modernity”.

I believe that it is important to grasp the meaning and implications of some of the concepts at work here, before proceeding to any conclusive survey or oppositional response. This will prevent some potential misunderstandings that have characterised a lot of the Left replies to the Third Way. For instance, one thing that Giddens is not doing is replacing the working class as the leading agent of social change with a new (perhaps more diffuse) agency, an alliance built from the new social movements. Giddens denies that there is only one major dynamic in modernity, and therefore disputes the effectiveness of any one social agent (regardless of how broad) in producing change. Yet one way of thinking about Giddens in relation to contemporary social theory and political strategies is to consider him as actually to the left of postmarxism (as exemplified by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe): for Giddens, the new social movements appear as an adjunct to the class struggle, which remains the major dynamic of capitalism; for Laclau and Mouffe, the working class is (at best) an appendage to the new social movements.

Reflexive Modernity

• Giddens theory is a theory of the uniqueness of modernity. The main difference between modernity and traditional social formations is the dynamism of the modern. A second feature is the existence of modern institutions: the nation state, modern political systems, mechanised and technological production, wage labour, commodification and urbanisation. Three processes generate the dynamism of modernity: the separation of time and space (“space-time distanciation”); the “disembedding” mechanism of modern culture (abstract symbolic tokens and expert systems); modernity’s self-reflexive character. The organisational forms of modernity are conditioned by a four dimensional process (already seen in the analysis of the nation state): surveillance potential, military power, capitalism and industrialisation. These dimensions are independently dynamic but mutually interrelated. Giddens’ theory of modernity is a polycausal or multifactoral theory (explanatory pluralism). The diagram below represents the institutional dimensions of modernity:

• “Postmodernism,” “post-industrial society,” the globalisation of communications technology and the “new world order” are, for Giddens, really indices of a “second modernity” or “reflexive modernity”. This means the advent of a global, post-traditional society, where the reflexivity characteristic of modernity (the regular and constant deployment of knowledge as a condition of agency) systematically liquidates the non-reflexive bonds of tradition. Economic globalisation, the international division of labour, international political relations and military alliances are driving forces leading to an intensification of modernity. From 1600 to 1960, European modernity was globalised and coexisted with the remnants of tradition (for instance, the family as a remainder of tradition within modern society). Now that European modernity is global, a second phase of modernity is beginning where (1) the dialectic between metropolitan and peripheral countries now flows both ways (multiculturalism, polycentric world order) and (2) the reflexive processes characteristic of modern subjectivity invade all traditional forms with corrosive impact.

Post-Traditional Society

• Globalisation, time-space compression and distanciation, the disembedding of local communities and lifeworlds by abstract symbols and expert systems, and the increase in social reflexivity, are taking society beyond modernism and into a post-traditional society. The post-traditional society is a part of modernity but no longer defined by the dialectics of modernism (the modernisation of tradition). Giddens opposes the term “post-modern,” believing that we are still within modernity, and regards the formulation “post-traditional” as more precise than his earlier term, “late modernity”. Despite the Enlightenment’s efforts to extirpate tradition, Giddens argues that tradition and modernity coexisted in a special symbiosis for nearly four hundred years, until the 1960s.
• It is crucial to contemporary society that tradition has been interrogated, problematised and undermined to the extent that no social actions can today be carried through solely under the guidance of tradition. Detraditionalisation does not entail the disappearance of tradition, but its reflexive incorporation within modernity, or its emergence as a fundamentalism, in opposition to modernity. Giddens proposes that the “second modernity” brings an increase in social reflexivity - that is, a society of “clever people” in possession of more information. Social reflexivity means the interrogation and undermining of tradition, and consequently, tradition can no longer provide a firm set of norms and beliefs that can be used to create trust. All social relations are negotiable and norms are subject to social practices of scrutiny and reflexive justification. We negotiate about the norms and ethics which form the basis for business, social, and personal relationships. In interpersonal relations, an opening towards the other is necessary, and as a consequence, new forms of social solidarity can be created. In line with the theory of structuration, Giddens believes that the second modernity or post-traditional society is created and reproduced in social practice - that is, in reciprocal interactions between individuals’ actions and social institutions. Society’s institutions and structures are the means and outcomes of the agent’s actions. In recent works, Giddens has surveyed the shift in the nature and dynamics of selfhood, in Modernity and Self-Identity (1991) and the changes to sexual and romantic relationships, in The Transformation of Intimacy (1992).

Risk Society and the Concept of Trust

• Trust and ontological security link the agency of the individual to the existence of social institutions. Recall that the social is conceptualised by Giddens as social practices with spatial extension and temporal duration. The many actions and interactions constitutive of social existence are bound together by relations of trust. Giddens makes a distinction between two basic types of trust relation: “facework” - or face-to-face interactions where the co-presence of actors is a necessity - and “faceless commitments” - manifested in our trust in the abstract systems that constitute the specific institutional dimensions of modernity. Confidence in a person’s love or integrity, or trust in the adherence of an institution to certain abstract principles, creates the context for trust relations. This means that the nature of trust has changed in the transition form traditional society to modernity. In traditional societies, kinship, local communities, religion and tradition create and maintain trust relations. The essence of modern institutions is connected to trust in abstract tokens and expert systems. The modern human beings lives with the duality whereby we both respect and trust systems while at the same time experiencing a generalised scepticism towards institutions and abstractions. The modern worldview, Giddens suggests, is fundamentally pragmatic, and instead of totally rejecting a system, prefers to elect a different system representative. The new social movements are instances of a sustained optimism, necessary, Giddens argues, for political action. This radical doubt has great significance for the concepts of trust and risk elaborated by Giddens. Relations of trust are therefore absolutely critical for a person’s developmental potential and political effectiveness. The concept of trust is therefore central to Giddens’ social theory and political strategy.
• The concept of trust is related closely to the concept of the “risk society” of second modernity elaborated by German social theorists, Niklas Luhmann and Ulrich Beck. Modernity, with its increasing institutional complexity and framework of the proliferation of decisions, creates risk. The second modernity is a risk society in which modern systems force us into a permanent state of risk. The difference between modern and pre-modern societies is not exposure to risk as a consequence of action, but the risk profile associated with the social formation. Where in traditional societies, risks are associated with the vagaries of nature, in modern society risks are created by humanity. Given the reflexive character of modernity, we can possess knowledge of the inherent risks in certain categories of actions.

Social Complexity

• The concept of “risk society” as a consequence of the “setting free” of the agent to make decisions on undecidable terrain is related to the concept of “social complexity” elaborated by Niklas Luhmann and Ulrich Beck. Complexity is a concept from systems theory that describes an open structure, which cannot be described by a single dynamic. Briefly, a system is complex when (1) it involves between 3 and 4.699 bifurcations per system process (2) the sub-systems of the system are intertwined - that is, interdependent but relatively autonomous, and (3) the system is not a closed structure but an open structure embedded within a more complex environment, and characterised by a boundary which reduces environmental complexity to manageable proportions for the system.
• Describing society as “complex” implies that (1) social theory must be polycausal (2) society is not a closed entity with a rational substrate but an open system operating with insufficient information (3) therefore the dream of a transparent society and social mastery is finished.

The Self as a Reflexive Project

• The “setting free” or disembedding of the agent - with the consequent proliferation of decisions taken without guarantees or traditional norms - creates massive anxiety for the person, since this involves an escalation of risk. Agents manage this situation by building social networks to provide the “ontological security” necessary for trust - and trust reduces the number of undecidable decisions by making the response of the other (agent or institution) relatively predictable. Ontological security constitutes the foundation of identity and confidence in the social and material world which appears before us. Trust in abstract expert systems creates trust in everyday life, but it cannot replace the mutuality and intimacy of personal and private relations. Giddens argues that “the self is not a passive entity, determined by external influences; in forging their self-identities ... individuals contribute to and directly promote social influences that are global in their consequences and implications”. The foundation of this “forging” of self-identity is ontological security. A strong ontological security equips the agent with the capacity to create a self-identity able to recognise the existence and identities of other persons and objects. The precondition for making decisions is a self-identity. Self-identity is not given but a process. Self-identity arises when the person, in relation to their biography, is able to view the self as a reflexive project constructed by means of a narrative of identity-formation. Stable self-identity, besides this ability to “chain onto” the ongoing life narrative, requires aspects of ontological security - especially in relation to the mutual recognition of persons and the existence of material objects external to the self. Self-identity is therefore a reflexive project, in that the reflexivity characteristic of modernity invades the core of the self. For traditional agents, external conditions and traditional determinations constitutive the self inflexibly as the result of social location. With modernity, self-identity becomes the task of the individual, who carries through this task as a reflexive project. The body is integrated within this sense of self-identity as part of the self’s reflexive considerations.

Identity Choices and Lifestyle Politics

• Giddens understands lifestyle to be broader than consumption patterns, and determines “lifestyle” to mean: “a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces, not only because such practices fulfil utilitarian needs, but because they give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity ... Lifestyles are routinised practices, the routines are incorporated into habits of dress, eating, modes of acting and favoured milieux for encountering others; but the routines followed are reflexively open to change in the light of the mobile nature of self-identity”.
• Giddens’ claim is that with the advent of modernity, the agent is forced to choose a lifestyle as part of one’s self-identity. The appearance of a post-traditional society means that tradition is no longer the referent for lifestyle choices and self-identity. The disappearance of tradition, and its normative component, means the pluralisation of social norms. Additionally, the second modernity and globalisation means that the individual confronts an immense array of potential contexts for their decisions regarding lifestyles, and therefore both the complexity of modern identity and its immensely pluralised possibilities. The selection of a lifestyle implies trust in one abstract system instead of another. For Giddens, this latter area of intimacy is being transformed by the second modernity.
• Abstract systems cannot replace the ontological security generated within the sphere of personal relations, beginning with the family. With the collapse of traditional family and personal relations, the burden of the creation of a sphere of ontological security in personal relations falls onto the individual. This sphere is described by Giddens and the sphere of “pure relations”. Close relations of trust with “significant others” which generate ontological security evolve in contexts where the pure relation is the prototype. Pre-modern relations of this kind were subordinated to the fixed rules of tradition. Giddens argues that marriage has become effectively a contractual relation. In traditional society, “friend” referred to all non-strangers. Intimacy, Giddens argues, is subordinated to the reflexive project of the self. This includes sexuality - for Giddens, sexual needs is effectively regulated by romantic desire and therefore integrated within the reflexive project of the self.

The New Social Movements and “Identity Politics”

• The standard differentiation between “new” and “old” social movements involves four parameters: (1) a protest in the name of new universal (“postmaterialist”) values aimed not at instrumental political transformations but at value renewal (2) oriented towards civil society rather than the state and therefore concerned with culture, lifestyle and symbolic social forms more than political representation and economic reforms (3) employing non-party forms of organisation and suspicious of bureaucracy in all forms (4) highly dependent on contemporary informational media, including mass media and electronic communications. For Beck, this is a “sub-politics”; for Giddens, the representative of a new political culture centred on lifestyle politics, post-material values and non-totalising politics.
• Yet the balance of debate in the literature on the new social movements indicates that this distinction is empirically untenable. This suggests that the expression “new social movements” effects a paradigm shift in social theory of social transformation, where (1) a wider array of phenomena are covered by the theory (2) the entire field is redescribed from the perspective not of universality and the ontological centrality of a single agent, but of difference and the multiplicity of agencies and politics (3) that the “self-limiting reforms” characteristic of the “new” social movements have an inherent political appeal for contemporary theory.

 

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