The Sickness of an Information Society

R. H. Tawney is frequently cited as one of the most distinguished social theorists of the twentieth century, and his position in the British school of ethical, democratic socialism is assured. This paper revisits that contribution for the so-called post- industrial age. It emphasizes Tawney's roots in philosophical idealism and Christian socialism, demonstrating how these systems underpinned his famous critiques of inequality and the acquisitive society. His deontological morality anticipates key ideas of John Rawls, leading similarly to a robust social egalitarianism. The moral basis of Tawney's left-liberal politics explains its durability and thus its relevance for the Great Information Society Debate. Tawney would have rejected many of the propositions associated with the information society thesis, including the allegedly axial role of information itself. While recognizing the importance of information and knowledge in democracy, he would not have supported transformationist rhetoric on behalf of an electronic information polity. Tawney's essentialist socialism may be vulnerable to some of the better documented post-industrial trends, notably the move from goods to services. However, his work supplies useful resources for critical perspectives on the technocratic social structure and on the exaggerated economic role of teleworkers, inter alia. As regards the last in Daniel Bell's triad of polity, social structure and culture, some might lament the anchorage of Tawney's progressive politics in a particularist metaphysics, specifically Christianity. Yet the return of religious modes seems now as certain as the rise of new modes of information and communication. The Christian socialist values that inspired Tawney's ideal of social democracy, especially an expansive vision of brotherhood or 'fellowship', could therefore be appropriated for a modern normative theory of the information society.     

The Origin and Course of Fabian Colonialism in Africa

Abstract This article shows why and how the practices of Fabians in colonial Africa rested upon a socialist version of the doctrine of trusteeship. With its roots in nineteenth-century Comtean positivism, Fabian colonialism originated in an attempt to transcend the limits of Chamberlainite development as part of the radical-liberal reaction against the doctrine of development. The Labour Government's abortive colonial offensive of 1947 was unwittingly drawn out of Joseph Chamberlain's failed project to develop the 'imperial estates' of Africa through large-scale capitalist enterprise to meet British industrial need. In 1906, the Liberal Party's electoral programme for free trade defeated Chamberlain's imperial and industrial project. The Liberal victory was followed by the success of radicals and liberals in making land nationalisation and peasant production the cornerstone of colonial policy for Africa. This policy confirmed a colonial formula of the early Fabians, such as Sydney Olivier, and marked out the contours for an imperial socialism that were later straightened out by, for instance, Leonard Woolf. As an African surplus population emerged most obviously in the 1930s, the key word of 'development' entered official language and did so in much the same way that it had earlier done in Britain at the turn of the century. Development came to mean state intervention for developing agriculture, and not industry, in an attempt to deal with the problem of urban unemployment and poverty. The agrarian bias of development, notwithstanding the failure of the large schemes of 1947 and the experience of white settlement in Kenya, marks the continuity of Fabian policy to the post-colonial present.     

OUT OF UTOPIA:

An important segment of writings on postindustrialization is distinctly utopian in stressing the greater mastery and control made possible by recent innovations in information technology. The utopian theme underscores the technical outcomes of innovations and highlights their benefits for ameliorating social problems. By contrast, our work suggests that many of the social problems in contemporary society are a consequence of recent innovations in information technology. We argue that postindustrial theorists are correct in stressing mastery over certain technical problems but incorrect in slighting the destabilizing effect innovations have on organizations and the markets in which these organizations participate. These destabilizing effects complicate organizational strategies by increasing market risk and uncertainty. Since most organizations are risk aversive, social problems are created as organizations externalize their costs and pass along risk to other, more dependent actors. Illustrations from two institutions, politics and the economy, indicate that many postindustrial innovations are associated with heightened competition as well as greater risk and uncertainty across the institutional order. We conclude that postindustrial technology introduces no net gain in man aging the complexities of the social world. Risk and control are both integral to technological innovation and constitute the paradox of postindustrialization.     

The Importance of Authenticity for Self and Society

The transition from industrial to postindustrial society and from modern to postmodern culture has led to increased interest in authenticity. Such interest is widespread not only among those studying changes in social structure and culture but also among those who adhere to the social psychological tenet that self reflects society, and society, the self. In this article, I specify how issues of authenticity have become a pervasive part of our culture, our institutions, and our individual selves. Building on both Rosenberg and Turner, I conceptualize authenticity in terms of a commitment to self-values. The relevance of this conceptualization is illustrated, first by demonstrating its implications for identity theory and second through its implicit use by others writing about the contemporary experience of being oneself. I conclude with a discussion of how this approach to authenticity may be used by social scientists to better conceptualize self in a way that explicitly incorporates the cultural implications of today's postindustrial society.     

ESS presidential address, 1995—invisible differences: On the management of children in postindustrial society

Drawing on data gathered through qualitative techniques, I suggest that the management of problems faced by children with a specific invisible neurological difference, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, teaches us about problematic areas of postindustrial society. I pay particular attention to how members of the children's and parents' separate moral universes assign stigma and to such behavioral-management techniques as patterned scheduling and “super-momming.” The problematic areas of contemporary life that I identify include the call for social conformity in the face of an ostensible demand for flexible social arrangements. Presidential Address delivered to Eastern Sociological Society, Philadelphia, PA, April 1, 1995.     

The great antagonism that never was: unexpected affinities between religion and education in post-secular society

A persistent sociological thesis posits that the spread of formal education causes an inevitable decline in religion as a social institution and diminishes adherence to religious beliefs in postindustrial society. Now that worldwide advanced education is a central agent in developing and disseminating Western rationality emphasizing science as the ultimate truth claim about a humanly constructed society and the natural world this seems an ever more relevant thesis. Yet in the face of a robust “education revolution,” religion and spirituality endure, and in certain respects thrive, thus creating a sociological paradox: How can both expanding education and mass religion coexist? The solution proposed here is that instead of educational development setting the conditions for the decline and eventual death of religion, the two institutions have been, and continue to be, more compatible and even surprisingly symbiotic than is often assumed. This contributes to a culture of mass education and mass religion that is unique in the history of human society, exemplified by the heavily educated and churched United States. After a brief review of the empirical trends behind the paradox, a new confluence of streams of research on compatible worldviews, overlapping ideologies, and their enactments in educational and religious social movements illustrates the plausibility of an affinity argument and its impact on theory about post-secular society.

     

Toward a Policy for Lifelong Career Development: A Transatlantic Perspective

A revolution in the structures of work is taking place in most advanced industrialized countries. This article suggests that giving new meanings to the concept of “career” is one of the keys to economic success and social harmony in the new postindustrial society. It argues that a number of new social ligatures are needed to make the new concept of career accessible to all. One of these ligatures is lifelong access to career counseling. This article outlines a strategy developed in the United Kingdom for achieving such access and analyzes its cautious application of market and quasi-market principles to career counseling provision.     

Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare,Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity1

In Punishing the Poor, I show that the ascent of the penal state in the United States and other advanced societies over the past quarter‐century is a response to rising social insecurity, not criminal insecurity; that changes in welfare and justice policies are interlinked, as restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” are coupled into a single organizational contraption to discipline the precarious fractions of the postindustrial working class; and that a diligent carceral system is not a deviation from, but a constituent component of, the neoliberal Leviathan. In this article, I draw out the theoretical implications of this diagnosis of the emerging government of social insecurity. I deploy Bourdieu’s concept of “bureaucratic field” to revise Piven and Cloward’s classic thesis on the regulation of poverty via public assistance, and contrast the model of penalization as technique for the management of urban marginality to Michel Foucault’s vision of the “disciplinary society,” David Garland’s account of the “culture of control,” and David Harvey’s characterization of neoliberal politics. Against the thin economic conception of neoliberalism as market rule, I propose a thick sociological specification entailing supervisory workfare, a proactive penal state, and the cultural trope of “individual responsibility.” This suggests that we must theorize the prison not as a technical implement for law enforcement, but as a core political capacity whose selective and aggressive deployment in the lower regions of social space violates the ideals of democratic citizenship.     

Social Conservatism, New Republicans, and the 1980 Election

Using data from the 1980 National Election Study, we examinethe claims (1) that those voters who shifted to Ronald Reaganin 1980 ("New Republicans") were drawn disproportionately fromthe lower to middle strata of the population: (2) that theywere social conservatives motivated by issues like abortionand ERA: and (3) that they were more religious and alienatedfrom the federal government than average. Our results stronglysuggest that all of these assertions are false and thus questionthe emergence of a "neopopulist" or "Middle American Radical"political constituency on the right wing of American politics.Our findings also have implications for prominent theories aboutconservative political movements and about the changing natureof party politics in a postindustrial society.     

GLOBALIZATION: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE WITHIN THE SPACE ECONOMY OF LATE CAPITALISM

This article analyses the process of globalization from the perspective of a 'political economy of space' where the interactions of the processes of capitalist accumulation within contexts of geographic and social space has profound shaping effects upon the nature of politics, economics and society more generally. The argument will show that contemporary globalization has two dimensions: outward into geographic space, and inward into culture and society. The focus then moves to culture and information technology within the space economy of late capitalism and argues that a crisis of finite geographic space has led to the deepening of the commodificationary processes of capitalist accumulation into the 'identity-spaces' of culture and society. For hugely popular 'cyber-gurus' such as Howard Rheingold and Myron W . Krueger, the development of information technologies such as the Internet-derived 'virtual communities' are spaces where new forms of democracy and 'being' can emerge. This article argues that 'cyberspace' and 'virtual communities' are deeply dystopic and alienated spaces, and cyber-Utopian dreams of other, possible worlds made virtual through information technology are at best naive, when it is realised that the information revolution that evolved from the processes of a particular type of globalization, has conceived and developed technologies with primarily profit, productivity, surveillance labour-saving and escapism in mind.     

Conceptualizing Cultural Politics in Subcultural and Social Movement Studies

In this article it is argued that combining theories of social movements and subcultures provides a way of 'conceptualizing cultural politics'. The focus is on debates that have taken place over the conceptualization of subcultures and social movements as well as the status and viability of cultural politics. Contemporary subcultural theorists are critical of the rigid concepts used by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) but, it is argued, they provide few feasible alternatives. They also have little to say about the supposed contemporary significance of cultural politics. New social movement (NSM) theorists, on the other hand, have generated conceptual frameworks that recognize the complexity of collective phenomena and have developed an approach which enables us to engage with the controversy over cultural politics. However, they concentrate too narrowly on struggles waged at the level of lifestyle, culture and civil society. The article shows how, like the CCCS, critics of NSM theory rightly question the potency of symbolic challenges and stress the persistent role of material issues and the continued part that conventional political actors, such as the state, play in contemporary social conflicts. Finally, the case of New Age Travellers is used to illuminate these debates in subcultural and social movement studies and to show how elements of each approach can be employed fruitfully in empirical research.     

Socio-pathologie et paradoxes de la société moderne

Society builds itself up across representations, interactions and elaborations of the subjects invested in it. Their experience is symptomatic of that society. Their sufferings reflect its paradoxes and conflicts, the gaps between imaginary and reality which can lead to the crisis. Experience has no more meaning and the social link comes undone. Economy, technology and democracy itself lock the hypermodern society in contradictions, in front of which politics reveals itself helpless. The psychic suffering of the subject expresses then itself in the social field, through the disinvestment or the violence, amplifying the crisis effect and showing the interdependence between psychic and social.     

Language and social ontology

This article is concerned with the ontology of a certain class of social entities and the role of language in the creation and maintenance of such entities. The social entities I have in mind are such objects as the $20 bill in my hand, The University of California, and the President of the United States. I also include such facts as the fact that George Bush is President of the United States; that the piece of paper I hold in my hand is a $20 bill; and that I am a citizen of the United States. I call such facts “institutional facts,” and it will emerge that the facts are logically prior to the objects. Under the concept of social entity, I also mean to include such institutions as money, property, government, and marriage. I briefly examine the nature of language and its relation to society. One point I make is that once we have a language, we have a social contract. The discussion shows why language is the fundamental social institution and why it is not like other institutions.

---

The Impact of the Return of Religion on Theoretical Approaches to Democracy and Governance in the Social and Political Sciences

The survey article analyses the impact of the return of religion on theoretical approaches to democracy and governance in the social and political sciences and spells out the normative and practical implications of a post-secular research programme on politics and religion. Reviewing the recent theoretical literature in the field, the author argues that there is a post-secular revision underway in the social and political sciences. This revision leads to a re-conceptualization of key assumptions about religion in sociology and political sciences: on the grounds of a historical and sociological criticism of the secularization thesis, secularity as condition and secularism as ideology acquire analytical significance. In a second step and drawing chiefly on works of Habermas, Rawls, Bader and Shachar, the author proposes that as a consequence of this re-conceptualization, the relationship between politics and religion in democratic theory is best interpreted in terms of a post-secular, deliberative public sphere in which religion has its place and that an appropriate research programme on religion and politics might consist in a normatively informed comparative governance approach to religion.     

Global Civil Society: Royal Road or Slippery Path?

Global civil society has become an important paradigm for progressive social change at a planetary level. It posits a bold new ethical project for global democratization. For its critics, though, it is just the social wing of neoliberal globalization diverting social movements from their tasks. It is also seen as irredeemably Eurocentric in its assumptions and orientation. A third option, proposed here, is to understand global civil society as a complex social and spatial terrain. By bringing politics back in, a progressive option can be presented to contest the dominant co-optive or reformist conception of global civil society.     

Transforming the social order: The role of the university in social change

The contemporary multicultural and secular university in the United States is experiencing an array of value transitions as well as ideological contradictions. The present dilemmas and challenges confronting the academy appear to emanate from the preoccupation with new schools of explanation and interpretation and from arbitrarily defined appropriate speech. In the social sciences and in the humanities, value neutrality and traditional constructs are viewed as strategies for concealing and promoting anachronistic standards of conduct. Faculty interviewed express concern and skepticism about the direction and future of the American university in a postindustrial and a postmodernistic era. Many perceive the university as not assuming a leading role in constructive social change. This results from its absorption with political symbols and selectively perceived meanings of varied cultural interests. Some faculty sense a major transformation in the way the university and its culture are produced and arranged. The social sciences and humanities have the potential for coping with the current paradoxes.This paper is a revision of the presidential address delivered in Boston at the 1993 annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society.     

Virtual Shop Fronts: The Internet,Social Media,and Caribbean Civil Society Organisations

The Internet and, more recently, social media seem to promise the ability for non-state actors to more easily participate in domestic and international politics. ‘Global civil society’ can become ever more global with the help of these ‘new media’. This article uses the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) case to question the capacity of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to contribute positively to the insertion of developing country civil society organisations (CSOs) in a global civil society. Notwithstanding the possibilities that ICTs may open, Caribbean CSOs are not yet able to tap into these potentials effectively. Caribbean CSOs face resource constraints that ICTs alone may be unable to solve. However, the most significant hurdle that Caribbean CSOs face to elevating their work within global civil society is their relative powerlessness within global civil society. The article contends that this limited ability to be of influence is historically contingent and illustrates that hierarchies exist within global civil society that mirror asymmetries of power inherent in the state system.     

Production as social change: Policy sociology as a public good

ABSTRACT

Burawoy described two ways sociology can aid the public, through: (1) instrumental (policy) sociology and (2) reflexive (public) sociology. This article elaborates the different assumptions of how social change occurs according to policy and public sociology (and how sociology effects social change). Policy sociology assumes social change occurs through the scientific elaboration of the best means to achieve goals. However, policy sociology largely takes the public as an object of power rather than subjects who can utilize scientific knowledge. Public sociology assumes that social change occurs through the exposure of contradictions in goals, which elaborates better goals. However, the elaboration of contradictions assumes that there is a fundamental thesis/antithesis in society. If there are multiple goals/theses, public sociology fails in at least three ways. Policy sociology, when reflexively selecting its public, provides the best way sociology can aid the public.     

Religiosität und politische Orientierung – Radikalisierung,Traditionalisierung oder Entkopplung?

In Germany as in other European countries the share of religious and churched persons is shrinking. The process of secularization is progressing gradually but inexorably and affects both Christian churches alike. In this contribution we examine if and how the numerical shrinkage of religious core segments affects the relation between religiosity and political attitudes. From secularization theory one can derive three partly opposing expectations. The radicalization thesis—particularly popular in the USA—assumes religious groups feel threatened by an increasingly secular society and this ties them together, radicalizes and mobilizes them. A second expectation rests on the assumption that in particular younger, economically well-off and highly educated people leave the churches. Through this process the social composition of the remaining church members changes leading not to radicalization but to traditionalization and withdrawal from politics. Finally, according to a third view it can be expected that the secularization process affects the entire society leading to a disintegration of tight religious milieus which in turn leads to a dissolution of social control and a decoupling of religiosity and political orientations. The central finding of our analyses is that—in support of our third hypothesis—religion loses its function for political attitudes and behaviors. In the German context the effect of religiosity on politics has been nearly exclusively studied with respect to voting behavior. By extending the focus to a wide range of other attitudes and behaviors and by taking a dynamic perspective this contribution thus closes an important research gap.     

Constructing a Modern Society Through “Depillarization”. Understanding Post‐War History as Gradual Change

The term “depillarization” (“ontzuiling”) emerged in the Netherlands during the 1970s to proclaim the end of a society dominated by “pillarization” (“verzuiling”). In breaking away from the past, a groundbreaking renewal of religious and civic life through secularization and individualization was proclaimed or deplored. As hopes of an emancipation from the past subsided in the face of a considerable continuity, depillarization became a narrative of loss and frustration. This article shows how metaphors of disaggregation such as depillarization have produced an inability to conceptualize contemporary society, accompanied by a distortion of the past as the “other” of the present. It demonstrates how such metaphors may become dominant through their ability to incorporate competing visions of social order and the integration of scholarly and popular discourse. In conclusion, this article proposes to overcome the narratives of disaggregation by interpreting post‐war history as a gradual transformation from the ideals and practices of heavy communities to those of light communities in the domains of politics, civil society and religion.