Bauman, Elias and Latour on Modernity and Its Alternatives: Three Contemporary Sociological Theorists on Modernity and Other Options

By Sandro Segre

‘Bauman, Elias and Latour on Modernity and Its Alternatives’ provides a comparison between the conceptions of modernity and its alternatives in the works of Bauman, Elias and Latour. Their work and research are linked to their distinct views on modernity and its alternatives. For Bauman, the rationality, effectiveness and impersonality that characterize present-day bureaucratic apparatuses are the distinguishing features of modernity. Its post-modern or ‘liquid’ alternative has none of these traits. For Elias, modernity has two different and contrasting faces, that of civilization and barbarity. Elias conceives of civilization as a process connoted by self-control and pacification, which prevail as a consequence of the restraint which honor and morality exert on individuals. By contrast, the breakdown of civilization involves barbarity. For Latour, modernity if defined by a separation between society and nature, or humans and non-humans, has never existed. By virtue of their intimate association, humans and non-humans have formed hybrids, whose proliferation is the hallmark of our age. Modernity, therefore, has never prevailed. Alternatives to hybrids are, in the current age, failed hybrids. The set of alternatives is then as follows: modernity vs. post-modernity (Bauman); civilization vs. barbarity (Elias); and successful vs. unsuccessful hybrids (Latour).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Mar 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781785273063

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Bauman, Elias and Latour on Modernity and Its Alternatives

Bauman, Elias and Latour on Modernity and Its Alternatives

Three Contemporary Sociological Theorists on Modernity and Other Options

Sandro Segre

Anthem Press

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Copyright © Sandro Segre 2020

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ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-304-9 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78527-304-3 (Hbk)

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CONTENTS

Preface

1 Bauman (1925–2017)

2 Elias (1897–1990)

3 Latour (1947–)

Conclusion

Index

PREFACE

This book will reconstruct and compare the thought of three contemporary sociologists: Bauman, Elias and Latour. All these three sociologists enjoy great consideration. They have also been subject to critical scrutiny, however, as the substantial secondary literature on them indicates. Their sociological theories and conceptual apparatuses are quite different, but they all deal in one way or another with the themes of modernity and its alternatives. A juxtaposition of these texts may point to distinct definitions of modernity and its alternatives in contemporary sociological theory. The notions of modernity and other related notions such as postmodernity and late modernity are ambiguous, and hence difficult to define. They have been in fact differently interpreted and intended, and the inception of modernity has been inconsistently indicated (cf. Sica 2005). This holds not only for all the major representatives of classical sociology, but also for the most reputed contemporary sociologists.

Bauman, Elias and Latour have been selected here as they have contributed—each of them in his own way—to a redefinition and a new appraisal of modernity, and have pointed to its ambivalent consequences. Other major social theorists have also explored this subject, which may be accordingly considered a central sociological theme. While this work certainly deals with sociological theory, it focuses only on this particular theme as discussed by these three authors. For comparative purposes, however, the contributions of Giddens and Foucault should be also presented here, albeit briefly. For Giddens, the main problem with the concept of modernity is that it is overgeneralized (Giddens and Sutton 2014: 12). His definition of this concept lays stress on the manufactured uncertainty of modernity (Giddens 1996). By contrast, the discursive formations specific to the modern age are Foucault’s central theme. All these authors have then grappled with the theme of modernity, but they have significantly differed in how they have conceived of this notion, and how they have envisaged some of its possible alternatives.

References

Giddens A. 1996. In Defence of Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Giddens A., and Sutton Ph. W. 2014. Essential Concepts in Sociology. Cambridge: Polity.

Sica A. 2005. Modernity. In G. Ritzer (ed.), pp. 505–511. Encyclopedia of Social Theory. London: Sage.

Chapter 1

BAUMAN (1925–2017)

Introductory Observations

Zygmunt Bauman was an influential philosopher and sociologist who lived in England since 1971, after having left his native Poland in 1968 and taught at the University of Tel Aviv for the subsequent three years. Bauman was Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds between 1992 and 2000. Few would probably dispute that Bauman is one of the most influential contemporary sociologists (Ray 2007: 63; see also Elliott 2007: 51). He was a prolific writer even before his retirement and remained prolific thereafter, as indicated by the great number of books he subsequently published. Bauman was the single author in most of them, but he authored a few works in the form of interviews and conversations, which he has held with fellow sociologists or journalists. Bauman dealt with a variety of sociological subjects related to the themes of modernity and postmodernity. Here, attention will be paid first to his vision of sociology, namely, to its subject matter and epistemology, to the ethical reasons for his concern with this discipline, and to what sociology can and ought to achieve in his judgment. Some substantive themes, on which Bauman also focused, will be then dealt with. They are democracy and freedom; globalization and its ethos; liquid sociology and liquid life; modernity and postmodernity, the related themes of ambivalence, identity, consumerist culture, the holocaust, the social and moral consequences of inequality, and the role of education in the contemporary age. In the final section, some secondary literature on Bauman’s oeuvre will be briefly presented.

Bauman’s Vision of Sociology

Bauman has endeavored to clarify his conception of the subject matter and task of sociology in a series of conversations he held between 2012 and 2013 with the sociologists Hviid Jacobsen and Tester. Some of these conversations were subsequently published as a book titled What Use Is Sociology (Bauman et al. 2014). According to Bauman, sociology’s central concern has to do with human experience, which in our multi-vocal and multi-centered society promotes a tendency for a constantly widening spectrum of life pursuits to be spread all over the social body (Bauman et al. 2014: 13); in other words, it has to do with humans’ struggle with their own life problems (Bauman et al. 2014: 105). This central concern involves blurring the boundaries that separate sociology from different genres, such as art, film and literature.

Bauman mentions in this regard several prominent writers who can help readers of sociological texts find the truth of their own way of being-in-the world, and he is not therefore overly concerned with conventional research methods when he practices sociology. Bauman recommends what he calls a respectful attitude to the novelists’ work; for this attitude only makes it possible to oppose a tendency, which he deplores, to a partial and impoverished understanding of human reality by focusing on the objective and impersonal character of events rather than on their subjective, spiritual and emotional character (Jacobsen 2013a: 23–24; Bauman et al. 2014: 8–14). Though their techniques and modes of proceeding differ, sociology shares with all these different genres the calling to lift the curtain of prejudgments, and thus be able to investigate the human-made and human-making world. Conventional or (as Bauman calls it) orthodox sociology in all its current tendencies, whether represented by Parsons or Lazarsfeld or Anselm and Strauss, belongs to a past phase of modernity. This phase is dubbed by Bauman as solid modernity, in contrast to current liquid modernity, on which we shall dwell presently. Conventional sociology is rejected because of (in Bauman’s judgment) its trained incapacity to grasp humans in their mind-boggling complex entirety (Bauman et al. 2014: 17–19).

It concerned itself with the conditions of human obedience and conformity. As a consequence, the subject matter of conventional sociology concerns humans stripped of their subjectivity of people having an identity, and who can therefore make choices. By doing so, conventional sociology presupposes that a neat separation can and should be made between the subject and the sociological research object. Bauman’s own conception of sociology’s task is quite different. Sociology is, in his view, a critical activity. It pursues a perpetually unfinished critique of taken-for-granted knowledge and common sense. This activity is conducted in conjunction with self-criticism and the task of de-objectifying the social world and the mind or perceptions of its inhabitants. Bauman’s ultimate goal is a kind of sociology that endeavors to re-establish itself as cultural politics in the service of human freedom. This kind of sociology requires unconventional research methods, of which the systematic use of literary sources is an example (Bauman 2012: 213. See also Jacobsen 2013a: 15–16).

Another example is the great relevance Bauman imputes to metaphors as sociological tools. As he has stated in an interview, metaphors are the indispensable scaffoldings for imagination and perhaps the most effective tools of comprehension. They suggest similarity, not identity, and have the crucial advantage of opening new sights while simultaneously exposing their limitations, their incurable non-comprehensiveness and non-finality (Jacobsen 2013a: 17–18). Bauman has authored several metaphors, of which he makes frequent use in his own works (cf. Bauman et al. 2014: 83–84; Jacobsen and Marshman 2008; see also Bauman 2012: 213), and to which we shall return later.

These metaphors designate and counterpose types of societies (liquid vs. solid modern), of actors (vagabonds vs. tourists), and of social utopias (gamekeeping vs. gardening). Sociological hermeneutics means that Bauman’s sociology endeavors to provide ongoing interpretations of other peoples’ interpretations, through which a common and shared lived world is constructed and preserved. This world, as Bauman sees it, is fragmented and ambivalent. Academic sociology, whose members have been trained in conventional research methods, is doomed to irrelevance. It is no coincidence, as Bauman observes, that Marx and Simmel never held an established academic position, while Weber spent most of his academic life on leaves of absence (Bauman et al. 2014: 38). This conception of sociology does not possess a preestablished model of an ideal society or truth of its own, which would turn sociologists into moral preachers seeking to impose their value choices on others. It does not renounce, however, either the search for truth, or the hope for a better world. In this respect, it is close to Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s critical social theory (Bauman et al. 2014: 25–26, 47–48, 74–75).

Sociology involves understanding social phenomena, that is, to grasp the meaning with which the actor’s intention invested it (Bauman 1978: 12), their intentions and purposes, which set them apart from natural phenomena. It therefore involves what Bauman calls sociological hermeneutics. This calls for using sociological tools, such as metaphors, in order to accomplish a number of different tasks, such as understanding human realities; providing orientations in an admittedly changing world, thus making individuals able to assert themselves; to choose the kind of life they wish to lead in the predicament in which they find themselves; and finally, engaging in a continuous dialogue with the daily experience of the men and women of our times (Bauman et al. 2014: 54, 98, 110). The subjective aspect of sociology and the social sciences in general involves their effort, therefore, to penetrate and to capture the meaning of human deeds (Bauman 1978: 17).

This effort raises the twofold question of how to obtain a consensus on their conclusions, and what are the standards of truth for the interpretation of meaning (Bauman 1978: 14). Briefly stated, this is the problem of how to reach true understanding of other people’s experiences and private mental states. This is possible, as Bauman maintains with reference to Wittgenstein, Lévi-Strauss, Giddens and Habermas, by enlarging both the alien and one’s own experience so as to construct a larger system in which each ‘makes sense’ of the other (Bauman 1978: 214). To this end, it is necessary to generalize the social scientists’ own experiences in such a way that the smallest common denominator is found between the experience of the era whose meaning they want to capture and their own (Bauman 1978: 221). An intense interest is also necessary in the conditions which underlie the attainment of consensus in society at large. Therefore, Bauman’s epistemological recommendation is for a sociology that actively engages itself with the task of promotion of equal opportunity and democracy (Baumann 1978: 246).

It may be convenient at this point to dwell on Bauman’s reception of sociologists, such as Giddens and Habermas, who have dealt with the themes of understanding and meaning within their own theoretical frameworks; for this reception may shed light on Bauman’s own vision of sociology. As we shall see, in both cases his reception has been ambivalent. As for Giddens, Bauman’s appreciation is clearly and emphatically stated. He states that Giddens’ power of synthesis has few equals (Bauman 1989a: 34) and points to the richness and complexity of Giddens’ manifold concerns. His project—Bauman adds—lies at the very heart of contemporary sociological discourse (Bauman 1989a: 35). Bauman, nonetheless, has a few objections to Giddens’s theoretical construction.

Like Parsons, as Bauman contends, Giddens needs some sort of an outer force in order to account for the non-randomness of action; to account, in other words, for how the structure comes into being and how it operates (Bauman 1989a: 43). What is more, Giddens fails to confront the question of who is to judge the ‘accuracy’ of understanding (Bauman 1989a: 47). If the social scientists are such persons, whence do they draw their authority to adjudicate? Moreover, how is the social scientist able to attain understanding, if this is interpreted as the reconstruction (or construction) of actors’ motives and orientations? (Bauman 1989a: 49). Weber gives pride of place to understanding goal-oriented action, according to Bauman: the structure of instrumental-rational action emerges as the only framework in which sociological study as an activity aimed at the objective understanding of human behaviour can take place (Bauman 1978: 82).

Sociological understanding does not differ from common sense, as Giddens has maintained with his notion of double hermeneutics. However, a changing world has resulted in a crisis of the authority of sociology as a legitimate interpreter and theorist of social reality" (Bauman 1989a: 53). This fact impacts negatively on Giddens’ sociology.