In
various parts of my writings I have emphasized that notions of time and space
have to be brought into the core concerns of social theory today. This is important
in a two-fold sense. On a general plane, the framework of structuration theory
depends upon grasping the recursive nature of social systems: the flow of
action, which occurs in time-space contexts, instantiates rules and resources
which have no time-space existence (save as memory traces). On a somewhat more
concrete level, deep-lying changes in the co-ordination of human activities
across time-space are characteristic of major periods of social transition, and
of the expansion of modernity in particular.
1.
It is true, as Saunders remarks in his paper, that I came to a concern with space
first of all through grappling with the problem of time. Temporality, it seemed
- and seems - to me, is philosophically enigmatic. Which philosopher has
managed to resolve St Augustine's problem - that time is banal and familiar as
we live it in the course of our day-to-day lives, yet appears thoroughly
impenetrable once we begin to inquire seriously into its nature? I think it is
up to those working in social theory to be alert to the philosophical dilemmas
of temporality - although it would be hopeless to suppose that all these
dilemmas could be resolved before we decide how time should be understood in
social theory.
In
my views on this issue, I have been most influenced by Heidegger. Although in the
period of modernity time - like space - is most often thought of as empty
extension, in social theory we should accept the force of Heidegger's point
that time is constitutive of objects and events. One way of putting this, if it
does not sound too paradoxical, is to say that time does not exist. Temporality
is expressed in the nature of how things are, their persistence and change.
(Our nature, as human beings, by contrast, as Heidegger emphasizes, involves a specific
understanding of temporality because of our finitude and our awareness of that
finitude.)
As
Saunders says, in New Rules of Sociological Method I did not have a
great deal to say about spatiality in an explicit way. But this was not because
a concern with space was simply added on later as 'an appendage to the theory [of
structuration] rather than an essential component of it' (p. 216). On the contrary,
the approach to time I derived from Heidegger already presumes a notion of
space, as well as a critique of the equation of space with empty extension.
Although we sometimes like to speak of 'empty space', like time space does not
exist save as a property of objects and events, expressing their nearness or
distance. For me, therefore, time and space refer to the contextualities of
social interaction, or if one prefers to express it this way, the intermingling
of presences and absences in social life. For many purposes of social analysis,
it is useful to think of time-space as conjoined.
I
still think it true - as I held when I originally developed the conception of structuration
theory- that, in most traditions of thought, time and space have not formed as
fundamental a part of social theorizing as they should. Saunders points out
that empirical researchers have always been sensitive to the particularities of
time and space. But how could this be otherwise? Research has to be done
somewhere, and at some time, and can hardly ignore context. However, this has
nothing much to do with how far a sophisticated treatment of time and space is
built into theoretical thinking about the nature of social life and social systems.
Saunders seems to misunderstand my standpoint when he quotes Castells, Urry and
Sayer to the effect that there cannot be a coherent overall account of the
nature of the spatial. I agree with this, and consider it to be precisely the
starting-point of my analysis. I should be entirely happy to endorse the
statement which Saunders quotes from Urry: 'it is impossible and incorrect to
develop a general science of the spatial... this is because space per se has no
general effects. The significance of spatial relations depends on the particular
character of the social objects in question' (p. 231). 2. Let me now move on to
some other issues raised by Saunders, which converge to some degree with those
emphasized by Gregory in his contribution. In a way which is more consistent
with my own emphases, Gregory concentrates
his discussion upon time as well as space. As he quite rightly says, in
interpreting structuration I place a great deal of importance upon the repetitive
nature of day-to-day activities, as these are organized in time—space contexts.
This is one prime aspect of recursiveness and is closely bound up with the
influence of routinization. Gregory poses various questions about routinization,
but his main query is: does an emphasis upon the importance of the routine
minimize the influence of'strategic intentionality' and fail to allow adequately
for the dislocated or uneven character of social reproduction? Put another way:
is an account accentuating the importance of routine a theory which accords
undue importance to social stability rather than change? I do not think it is,
but this question cannot be responded to on an entirely general level. To
address it, we have to analyse some of the differences between different types
of society. For the balance between stability and change varies in a basic way
between forms of social system, particularly when we compare non-modern with
modern societies. All social life, of course - even in the most radical phases
of social change, like revolutions - involves continuities. The routines of
social activity - for instance, those involved in everyday talk - in all circumstances
have a strong 'as usual' quality about them. In all types of society, however,
routines are to some extent disjunctive across time and space. Social
reproduction is uneven even in the smallest oral cultures. However, in such
cultures, and even in class-divided societies, tradition exerts a considerable
grip upon what is considered as routine. Tradition should be understood as a
mode of routinization by means of which practices are ordered across time and
space. Although always open to 'reinterpretation', tradition is marked by the
highest degree of stability when it is not understood by its practitioners to be
tradition, but is simply 'how things are always done'. With the advent of
agrarian civilizations, and the influence of writing, 'tradition' becomes
understood as one possible form of regularizing time and space. At this point,
the traditional becomes open to contestation and active reinterpretation, generating
social struggles and clashes.
A characteristic of modernity is not so much that
tradition disappears completely as that it comes to be grounded more thoroughly
in 'rationally defensible' purposes. In modernity, to repeat what was said
earlier, social institutions are always in principle revisable and are in
practice subject to that reflexive probing which is in some part constitutive
of what modernity is.
The importance of science, technology and the
diffusion of innovations, to which Gregory refers, is only one part of this
co-ordinating of routinization and reflexivity, albeit a highly important one.
Innovations are built into the very character of the routine, in circumstances
of modernity, and these are never completely controlled by reflexive monitoring
which operates on a discursive level. The modern world is characterized both by
a great acceleration in the use of discursive information to seek to control
social processes and by the proliferation of divergent trajectories of social
development. Modernity simultaneously has a controlled and disjointed
character. It is against this general ized backdrop, as I
have emphasized previously, that social movements come into being, and act as
levers of change.
3.
Saunders and Gregory each devote part of their chapters to discussing, and
criticizing, the connections I draw between routinization and ontological security.
Saunders in particular is sceptical of what I take to be the fragile character
of ontological security in the created environment of modern social life. 'Why5,
he asks, 'should people feel a deep sense of desperation, fatalism, meaninglessness
or whatever when they go to work every morning on the same train, but not when
in the past they walked to the fields every morning along the same footpath?'
(p. 225). Saunders is justified, I think, in pointing to inadequacies in my
various discussions of this issue hitherto. It sounds as though I was proposing
a romantic view of the past, in which people lived in harmony with one another
in the local community and in harmony with nature. I have never wished to
advocate such a standpoint, but the comments I have made in various sources
upon this issue need further elaboration. I have provided such elaboration in a
forthcoming study, and will summarize its content very briefly here.
In all forms of society, I hold, individuals
have psychological needs for ontological security. Ontological security is
founded psychologically upon the formation of trust relationships, focusing
initially upon the parental figures, especially the mother. Erikson says trust
in the developing infant is based upon toleration of absence - acceptance that
the mother still exists, and cares for the child, even when she is not
physically in his or her presence. Trust, to use my terminology, even on a
psychological level, is intrinsically a medium of time-space distanciation. That
is to say, a feeling of security and self-identity is acquired through
developing a sense of security in responses of others removed in time and
space.
While
ontological security rests upon very general psychological needs, its relation
to day-to-day routines differs systematically between the non-modern and modern
worlds. We can analyse this contrast in terms of an opposition between trust
and security, on the one hand, and risk and danger on the other.
In
traditional communities, even within class-divided civilizations, the kinship
system and the locality provided a fairly systematic grounding for the maintenance
of routines; On the other hand, social life in traditional communities was
often a fraught and dangerous affair. The sources of danger or risk included
above all the threat of epidemic illnesses and plagues, together with
environmental disasters such as droughts, floods and earthquakes. In circumstances
of modernity, the balance between trust and risk, security and danger, becomes
radically altered. Although there are considerable variations in this, by and
large day-to-day activities are not structured substantially through kinship
relations. The locality no longer has the same significance as a 'boundary' of
routinized activities and is enmeshed in a thoroughgoing way in much more
extensive social processes. The acceleration in time-space distanciation characteristic
of modernity is itself brought about by trust mechanisms. These are means of
transcending time-space through confidence in transactions removed from
immediate contexts in which individuals find themselves. Two such types of
trust mechanism can be distinguished. One consists of abstract tokens (such as
money) making possible exchanges across indefinite spans of time-space. The
second consists of'expert systems' which bracket time and space by means of
trust in professional expertise. (An example is the technical knowledge fed
into the operation of air travel.) Trust mechanisms of these two types create
large arenas of confidence in routinized time—space organization. For example,
if I wish to travel from London to Edinburgh, I can do so not only quickly by
the standards of previous generations, but safely.
Confidence
in such mechanisms, however, is not for the most part psychologically satisfying
and is to do with technical effectiveness rather than moral worth. Ontological
security in such circumstances has a tenuous nature, and has to be 'actively
regrounded' in personal ties with others. In the modern world we have actively
to build trust by 'opening ourselves out' to others, which helps explain
our obsession with 'relationships' between friends, lovers and spouses. The
achievement of a continuously validated self is for us a project, which
has to be worked out and achieved. Risk and danger in the modern world do not for
the most part have the forms they used to assume; they derive not from natural
hazard but from socially created risk - such as psychological danger or the
risk of nuclear war. A 'phenomenology of modernity' has to probe the experience
of living in a created environment in which pre-existing ties between trust,
security, risk and danger have become substantially transmuted.
It is in these terms that I would now analyse
the fragile character of ontological security in conditions of modernity. Many
of the routines we follow in day-to-day life in modern societies are materially
secure or safe, but psychologically and morally unrewarding.
4.
Saunders and Gregory develop a further general objection against my view. I
have argued in various books that, for some purposes of analysis at least, the
concept of'locale' is more sensitive and useful than the geographers' more
usual notion of'place'. Saunders and Gregory find this thesis less than compelling.
In Gregory's eyes, I talk far too much about locales as settings of interaction,
neglecting to give sufficient attention to how the different characteristics of
localities are produced. Saunders's criticisms are even sharper. My notion of
locale, he says, and the associated concept of region (in the sense in which I
employ that term) are unilluminating. 'I can understand', he observes, 'how
people may invest meanings in places . . . but surely these meanings do not
inhere in the spaces we occupy but in the social relations which are realized
within them?' I do not in fact think it is true, as Gregory claims, that I have
neglected the production of locales and forms of regionalization. There cannot
be a coherent theoretical account of the production of locales in general. We
have to examine how different socio-physical properties of environments are
brought into being in conjunction with specific forms of social development.
The ideas I have tried to provide in this respect may or may not be satisfactory,
but do address the issue. Consider the instance of territoriality. In
contrasting traditional and modern states, I have argued that we must not treat
territory merely as the area which a state occupies, or to which it happens to
lay claim. The fact that traditional states have 'frontiers', whereas
nationstates 'have borders', expresses distinctive contrasts in their social
make-up. In The Nation-State and Violence I tried to demonstrate how and
why this is so. Another example is my discussion of the created environment.
The settings of interaction typical of modern societies, I claim, differ in a
fundamental way from the city/countryside relation characteristic of
traditional civilizations. The created environment is a manufactured series of
settings, in which even the countryside is largely ordered in terms of social
influences, rather than being a 'given' world of nature.
In
commenting upon Saunders's remarks about location and urban analysis it is
important to emphasize that space is not the same as place. We cannot speak
about space without talking of the spatial attributes of a substantive phenomenon.
In the case of locales, we are speaking of the intersection of the social,
spatial and physical. Saunders's discussion, it seems to me, moves between the
spatial and the physical without distinguishing these. His argument that space
cannot become invested with meaning is a truism once we agree that space as
such is contentless.
Saunders
asks, if locales and regions 'are more than a backdrop to action, then how
exactly do they enter into the reflexive constitution of action?' (p. 230).
This question seems to me easily answered, although there are various levels on
which a response can focus. Locales are first of all basic to the contextual
character of interaction - and thus certainly not irrelevant to structuration
theory, as Saunders claims. Language use and the communication of meaning, for
example, depend in an essential way upon the regularized monitoring of aspects
of physical contexts. This much has been demonstrated both in the writings of
ordinary language philosophers and in the more empirical studies of
ethnomethodology. Locales do not 'determine' meanings, but features of them are
routinely incorporated into how meanings are generated and sustained. On
another level, as was discussed in the preceding paragraph, locales and regions
have to be understood in terms of their reflexive involvement with social
organization and social transformations. The example of the territorial
character of states is a case in point. As nations, states enter reflexively
into how citizens organize their lives and how governments act. This is the
reason, in fact, why it makes some sense to treat modern states as 'actors', as
authors in the field of international relations often do.
In
arguing that the notion of locale is without much value in social analysis, Saunders
takes an example I mention in The Constitution of Society, in which I discuss
the regionalization of the home as a locale. I point out there that the home is
internally regionalized. We do different things in the various rooms, at different
parts of the day - there is an interaction between the architecture of the
dwelling and social life. Saunders agrees, but asks, so what? Surely this observation
is at best a trivial commonplace?
I
do not think that is the case at all. Consider in this respect, for example,
the work of historians on the emergence of privacy in the post-medieval era.
Forms of privacy are clearly connected both to psychological dimensions of
personality, and to major aspects of social life, such as the relation between
the 'domestic' and the 'public'. This work shows how mutations in privacy shaped,
and were shaped by, the changing architectural form of dwellings, whereby
certain types of activities are regularly hidden from view. We might take as
another illustration the work of historical sociologists on the development of
the 'home' as such. The concept of the 'home' is distinctively associated with
modernity, and expresses significant alterations in the social layout of
dwellings.
5.
These observations have a bearing upon the nature of urban sociology. Consistent
with the theme that locales are of little interest for social theory, Saunders
objects to aspects of my various discussions of urbanism. 'The city' cannot be
a coherent object for social analysis, because it is a type of physical/ spatial
setting. He detects an ambiguity in my view here. I have quite often argued
that the study of the city is of basic importance to social theory. Yet I also
claim that in the modern era the city has disappeared as a distinct social form
with the advent of the 'created environment'. Surely this is inconsistent? I do
not think there is an inconsistency here, in fact. Study of the city is of fundamental
importance in social theory because it is pivotal in connecting the analysis of
tribal, class-divided and modern societies. The emergence of distinct urban
locales is closely associated with the consolidation of classdivided civilizations,
separating them both from smaller, non-state systems on the one side and from
modern societies on the other. With the development of modern institutions, 'the
city' in the traditional sense does disappear, being supplanted by the created
environment of modern urbanism. Yet the underlying theoretical standpoint
remains the same. Modern urbanism - the built environment as an aspect of the
created environment more generally - has to be understood in terms of the
interrelation of locales and modes of regionalization with other properties of
social systems. The 'city' no longer has clear boundaries which separate it
from the 'countryside', and the dynamics of the built environment are
transformed; but they become of even greater importance for the overall
organization of the system than was the case before.
SOURCE : Social
theory of modern societies: Anthony Giddens and his critics (1994) / edited by
David Held and John Thompson. © Cambridge University Press 1989
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