Sociology and the Challenges of the 21 - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Sociology and the Challenges of the 21st Century

Slovenian Sociological Association

Ljubljana, 6 November 2015

Craig Calhoun

LSESlide2

Sociology has always been shaped by the world around itIt is specifically a modern invention

There has always been social thought, but not always a science of society based on

Systematic empirical observation

Methodical analysis

Theory-building

But sociology responded not just to intellectual change but material changeSlide3

The Rise of the Modern State

A complex organization

Increasingly self-consciously designed

With intensified capacity to intervene in social life

With new forms and extent of social participation

With increased reliance on “upward” legitimation

With projects to make it the people’s:

Democracy

CommunismSlide4

The Rise of Capitalism

Self-regulating markets of ever-larger scale

Economy oriented to continued self-transformation

Growth

Accumulation

Innovation

A new social organization of labor

The upheavals of industrialization

New inequalities

Massive externalitiesSlide5

Exploration, Empire, and ‘Globalization’

Source for comparative perspectives

Denaturalizing views of society

Bringing “culture” into the foreground

Development of sociological (and anthropological) knowledge in the administrative projects of empire

Challenge of pluralism and cross-cultural relations

Contrast to earlier ‘segmental’ empiresSlide6

Urbanization and Transformations of Scale

Cities as realms of political freedom

Extended into social freedom (pace

Simmel

)

Cities as realms of sociability

Including in new mixtures

The building of infrastructures

Making urbanization a design and investment project

Communications

Transportation

Anxiety over the loss of communitySlide7

Transformation of Everyday Life

Family

Gender

Childhood

Education

Migration

Rural to urban as well as international

Reconstruction of community

Consumption

Including increasing cultural goods

Valuing ordinary happinessSlide8

Individualism

Not just possessive individualism or illusions of self-sufficiency

Deepening the idea and experience of the person

From Protestantism through Romanticism to “the Care of the Self”

Inwardness

Value

Crucial to the “

verstehende

” perspective on social relations:

Created, chosen, meaningfully interpreted

“Self and society are twinborn” (C.H. Cooley)

Both a universal truism and historically specificSlide9

Secularism

Not in the sense of irreligion nor of a “subtraction story”

But as the growing capacity of this-worldly institutions to organize social life

From states to business corporations to universities

This-worldly explanations of social life

As in science

Related transformations of religion

By pluralism

Structured as choice rather than tradition

As sources for contending positions on the organization of social lifeSlide10

Nationalism

The mobilization of cultural commonality at the level of the state

Whether ethnic or republican

The claim of a pre-political basis for citizenship

The model for the discrete society

A world-system of nation-states

A framework for attempts to defend society

Usually through identification with older forms of societySlide11

The Rise of Social Movements

With the Protestant Reformation in the foreground

Resistance to capitalist transformations

Extending through social revolutions

Not simply replacements of governments but projects of social transformation and constitution

Proliferating projects and mobilizations

Addressing states

Pursuing direct actionSlide12

New Problems of Social Cohesion

Differentiation

Of “value spheres”

Of sectors

Of institutions

Of fields

Of cultures and subcultures

Need for articulation and integration

Mirrored in differentiation of sciences

Comte on the need for a queen

Initially understood as national

But also increasingly globalSlide13

Science

A material factor in the world and its transformations

Crucial to completing the transformation of social thought to science

Though sociology is always shaped by both (and torn between):

natural science (objectivism)

human science (cultural interpretation)

Grounded in new institutions

Universities

Academies

Professional societies

But never contained entirely by those institutions and now spread more and more

widelySlide14

All these social sources and foci for sociology remain important

The modern package of basic structuring conditions hasn’t simply vanished, though it is stressed.

Some modern transformations continue

Dramatic new scales of urbanization

Continued technological revolutions in communications

Migration and new challenges to cohesion

Renewal of public religion

But there are also epochal changes

Not least in relations of “the West” to the rest of the World

But also in the nature of capitalism

In the prominence of transnational organization

In the tacit social contracts shaping citizenshipSlide15

The dog that didn’t bark

Since 2008 much of the world has experienced massive economic crisis without any major, anti-systemic social movement

First European crisis since the early 19

th

Century in which socialism didn’t pose a challenging alternative

There were many movements, but they didn’t offer a scalable, systemic alternative

Yet, there is massive disillusionment with governments

And often populist responses.

And there are major problems throughout the west in developing effective policies

Take the current refugee crisis.Slide16

The Need for Sociology

Bring the social back in.

After neoliberalism

After

compartmentalisation

of the political, economic, and social

After celebrations of markets and individuals

Ask the question again: what makes society?

Crucial if society is be

ing remade

Recover macrosociology and relations across levels and throughout systems

Be part of addressing basic public issuesSlide17

21st Century Challenges

Shifting issues will drive drive sociology’s development.

To start with, sociology has often been national in focus and needs to develop ways of being more effectively global

Comparison

But also study of global social

organisation

There are lots of challenges to list:

Aging populations

Urban transformation

Refugees and migration

Transformations of work and employment

National and religious conflicts Slide18

Institutions

State

Church

Universities

And the rest of education and knowledge

Medicine and health care

Corporations

Challenged

By costs – and government limits

By ‘consumer’ dissatisfaction

By disputed authority or legitimacy

By bureaucratic dysfunctionsSlide19

SolidarityWhat accomplishes social cohesion? What makes society?

Forms:

Identity categories

Networks

Direct

Indirect

Functional integration

Power

Public communication

Reinforcement or tension?Slide20

SecurityPublic order

In re crime, war, etc.

Public health and safety

In re risks from food or pollution

Protection

In re unemployment, old age, hunger

Or new risks like cyber-securitySlide21

MetamorphosesWe need not just a list but an understanding of what drives and connects changes and shapes possible solutions. E.g.,

Capitalism

Infrastructure

Geopolitics

Cultural creativitySlide22

Capitalism

Not just markets

Drive to expansion

Drive to accumulation

Massive externalities

Polanyi’s double movement

One approach to problem-solving

Based in social institutions like corporations

And reliance on states

Possibly being transformed by ‘state capitalist’ alternativesSlide23

Cultural creativityScience and technology

Renewal of religion

Media

And the proliferation of new ‘apps’

Nationalism renewed

An enormous economy, but also a basic question about the

organisation

of social participation.Slide24

Infrastructure

The most important factor in social

organisation

that sociology tends to forget

Transport, communications, water, waste

The computers behind automation and global finance

Facilitating

Connection

Concentration

Movement

Massive investments

With financial impact

Government impact

Also impact on social relationsSlide25

The Return of Geopolitics

The weakness of global institutions

The growing importance of regional structures – and conflicts

Changing relations of local to national

Crossroads, frontiers, and the footprints of old empires

Central Asia

Ukraine

Middle East

New security challenges

Small wars

Terrorism

The geographies of social solidarity

Will the modern world system be renewed?

Chinese hegemony?

Multilateral leadership?Slide26

How are these connected?Polanyi’s double movement

The search for responses to achieve social goods:

The social (welfare) state

Or socialist transformation

Capitalism with inequality and distribution problems mitigated

PhilanthropySlide27

Sociology is needed to understand a changing world

- but sociology also needs to change

Sociology must be at once national and global

And this involves changing questions, changing relations and learning processes

Sociology needs better integration across some of its own internal divisions

Methodological (esp. qualitative and quantitative)

Theoretical (redefining objectivity as the maximization of perspectives – Nietzsche)

Subfields

Sociology needs to inform problem-oriented interdisciplinary fields and professions

Sociology needs to engage broad publics and movements