Explaining Social Processes: Jiří Šubrt Alemayehu Kumsa Massimiliano Ruzzeddu

Jiří
Šubrt
Alemayehu Kumsa
Massimiliano Ruzzeddu
Explaining
Social
Processes
Perspectives from Current Social Theory
and Historical Sociology
Explaining Social Processes
Jiří Šubrt • Alemayehu Kumsa •
Explaining Social Processes

Perspectives from Current Social Theory
and Historical Sociology
Jiří Šubrt Alemayehu Kumsa
Department of Historical Sociology Department of Human Resources Management
Charles University Škoda auto, Vysoká škola, Mladá Boleslav
Prague, Czech Republic Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic
Settore Scientifico disciplinare
Sociologia generale
Università degli studi Niccolò Cusano
Rome, Roma, Italy
ISBN 978-3-030-52182-0 ISBN 978-3-030-52183-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7
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Acknowledgments
The authors of this book feel obliged to thank those who have connected them,
initiated their cooperation, and supported it in its development. First of all, the World
Complexity Science Academy (WCSA) deserves our gratitude, for it was its third
conference in 2012 in Vienna which provided our opening opportunities for net-
working. The subsequent regular WCSA conferences—mainly thanks to the stimu-
lating leadership of Prof. Andrea Pitasi—led to a deepening of these relationships of
professional cooperation, which then took place at the events of the International
Sociological Society (ISA) and the European Sociological Society (ESA). An
important role was played by the Department of Historical Sociology in Prague at
the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University, which offered space for mutual
cooperation at the pedagogical level. Last but not least, we thank our language
advisor Ed Everett, whose assistance was crucial for the finalization of this book.
We must express special thanks to all four reviewers for their inspiring comments
on the manuscript. Two of these reviewers are known: Prof. Dr. Francesca Ieracitano
from Libera Università Maria Ss. Assunta in Italy, and Prof. Dr. Andrea Pitasi from
Gabriele d’Annunzio University, also in Italy. The other two reviewers rated the
manuscript for Springer anonymously, and their names remain unknown to the
authors.
v
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The Society of Individuals and Figurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Individualism Versus Holism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Elias’s Concept of Figuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Rethinking the Theory of Structuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Homo Duplex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
The Problem of Structure from the Duplex Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Actor or Homo Sociologicus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Basic Approaches and Thematic Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Role Playing: A Concept to Aid in Resolving the Relationship Between
Individualism and Holism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
The Systems Theory and Functionally Differentiated Society . . . . . . . . . 37
Media and Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Resonance and Filtration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Problematic Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Time as a Sociological Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Social Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Qualitative Discontinuous Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Confusing Number of Social Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Weaknesses and Questionable Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Temporalized Sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
vii
viii Contents
Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

The Antinomies of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Individual Memory and Collective Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Memory Spontaneous and Purposeful . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Rationality and Irrationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Spirit and Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
The Past Irrevocable and Revocable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Saving and Deleting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
History, Myth and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
History, Memory and Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Historical Consciousness as the Focus of Sociological Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Components Shaping Historical Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Identity Building: A Complex Phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Identity in Turbulent Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Historical Sociology as a Processual Sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
The Civilising Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
How to Understand Elias Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Elias’s Conception of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
What Elias Did Not Deal with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
What Else Is Not Reflected in Elias’s Work? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Social Power from the Perspective of Historical Sociology . . . . . . . . . . . 109
The Concept of Power as Central to Any Understanding of Society . . . . . . . 109
Forms of Social Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
The Elitist School of Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
The Pluralist School of Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
One Dimensional Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Sources of Social Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Power in the Globalized World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Current Societal Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Modern Risks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Problem of Interdisciplinary Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Multicentric World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
The Question of Supervision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
The Risky Liberties of Flexible Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Searching for Social Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
The End of Ideologies: Why Did It Not Occur? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Contents ix
A Hypothesis for a Sociology of Ignorance in the Twenty-First

Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Sociology of Ignorance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Science and Social Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Ignorance and Ignorance Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Ignorance and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Final Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
The Dimensions of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Major Social Factors in the Development of Globalized Sociology . . . . . . . 159
What Is Globalization? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
The Dimension and Forms of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Different Schools and Theories of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
World-System Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Theories of Global Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
The Network Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Theories of Space, Place and Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Theories of Transnationality and Transnationalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Modernity, Post-modernity and Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Global Age: An Alternative Theory of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Theories of Global Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Major Historical Waves of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Final Remark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
A Few Notes About the Open Future (in Place of a Conclusion) . . . . . . . 187
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
About the Authors
Jiří Šubrt is associate professor of sociology at Charles University. In 2009, he

founded, in collaboration with Johann P. Arnason, the Department of Historical
Sociology at the Faculty of Humanities, of which he is still head. His professional
interest lies in the field of sociological theory, social processes, time, and memory.
He has published studies in Czech, in English, and in Russian and summarized his
views on the subject of historical sociology in the book The Perspective of Historical
Sociology: The Individual as Homo-Sociologicus Through Society and History
(Emerald 2017). He engaged with sociological theory in the book Individualism,
Holism and the Central Dilemma of Sociological Theory (Emerald 2019) and is
currently returning to the issue of time, which is due to be the subject of his new
theoretical research.
Alemayehu Kumsa is senior lecturer in the sociology of organization management at

Škoda Auto University in Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic. He received his M.A. and
Ph.D. from Charles University, Faculty of Philosophy, Prague. He taught for many
years, first at the Institute of Middle East and African Studies and later at the Institute of
Ethnology of Charles University. His interest areas include theories of nationalism,
African society and culture, the sociology of development and transformation, the
sociology of terrorism, the sociology of globalization, and organization management.
He has published several dozen chapters of books, articles in impact and peer-reviewed
journals, and conference papers and contributed entries to encyclopedia.
Massimiliano Ruzzeddu is Tenured Researcher in Sociology at Niccolò Cusano

University, Roma, Italy. He is Vice-President of the World Complexity Science
Academy. He is also co-director of WCSA Book Series, Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, and co-director of the journal System Research and Behavioral Science
(Wiley). He has authored several scientific works in Epistemology of Social Science
and Social Theory. Among his most recent works was the editing, together with
Prof. Andrea Millefiorini, of the book Between Rationality and Irrationality,
L’Harmattan Paris.
xi
Introduction
This book on social processes is of a theoretical nature. The word theory is used
today in both scientific and everyday language. In layman’s terms, theory is usually
contrasted to practice. As such, it is associated with an effort to rationalize phenom-
ena in a certain area (nature, society, human being) which relies on very general,
abstract forms of thinking, such as concepts, judgments, hypotheses and laws.
Internally logically linked systems of interpretation are thereby created, which can
be described as theories in their own right. The important thing is that theory is not a
direct, immediate description of actually occurring phenomena, but an attempt to
identify basic features and interpret them into idealized abstracts. Because each
scientific study is selective (never taking into account all aspects that affect a certain
reality), no theory can capture the studied phenomena in all their complexity, but
must reduce this complexity.
The Austrian sociologist Max Haller characterizes sociological theory as “a
system of general statements with a systematic link to empirically observable social
phenomena” (Haller 1999: 39). According to the British sociologist Anthony
Giddens, social theory functions as a bank from which individual social sciences
receive funding with which they work, to achieve results that are deposited in ‘the
bank’ to increase overall capital. Social theories and empirically oriented social
sciences are thus in a state of constant exchange: orientated by empirical research
which, in return, they may inspire to further development (Giddens 1997 [1984]
227 ff.). Jeffrey Alexander (1987: 3) states that in science the theory of “crucial”
matter is the core. Although theories always arise from the reality of facts, in
practice, for social sciences, theories themselves structure reality, determine which
facts scientists will examine and which methods are to be used. The development of
sociology from its beginnings to the present day has never been driven by only one
thought stream, school or theory, but has always had significant ideological plurality.
For this reason, sociology is referred to as a multi-paradigmatic science.
The common denominator which can be identified in each chapter of this book is
the assumption—frequently rather implicitly expressed—that sociology is a science
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to 1
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
J. Šubrt et al., Explaining Social Processes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_1
2 Introduction
for which the playing out of dimensions of time, space and social movement are
important. This assumption corresponds best with a theory of sociology which
considers social movement and distinguishes it by means of the term ‘social pro-
cess’. Put briefly, in our theory sociology is above all a science of social processes.
These processes can be characterised as a course of events with specific social
content of direction, as gradually developing sequences of continual reproduction,
or alteration, that we can observe in the short or long term duration of social
phenomena and entities, that can be identified at various levels of social reality.
The duration of these processes varies in length and can be time-limited or open-
ended in nature.
Another typical distinctive of our approach is that we wish not to formulate a
wholly new theory of sociology, but rather at base we attempt to link to the notable
achievements of this discipline in previous decades. Elsewhere our approach has
recently been termed ‘critical eclecticism’ (Šubrt 2019: 16). This is another way of
saying that specific conceptual elements and themes are part of our reflections and
interpretations only following subjection to detailed critical analysis and assessment.
If then in the course of further theoretical analysis our considerations diverge from
dominant concepts and approaches towards a certain revision, rethinking and delim-
itation, our theory may be connected with another term, ‘critical reconfigurationism’
(Šubrt 2019: 16).
What is fundamental is that, through the use of processual perspectives, we
attempt to overcome the dualism that in sociological thinking for many decades
has oscillated between sociological approaches which have considered in their
viewpoints on the one hand the individual and their individual actions (atomism,
individualism), and on the other hand, society as a whole and its expressions of
holistic character (collectivism, holism). We judge that this processual focus can
help to overcome such dualism thanks to what forms (as stated by Norbert Elias) a
certain figuration in social processes, in which individual directions and goals are
connected with the structural demands and functional imperatives of social entities,
which interact and integrate into a whole of a figurative character, given its energy
and dynamism by this dualistic conflictual character, and making a social process.
A further aspect must be mentioned, which is that social processes can and do
have various dimensions, from the perspective of the number and scale of the
participation of individual and collective actors, as also from the perspective of
time and space. We can speak about processes on micro-, meso- and macro-social
levels, which can be affected by the short courses of human lives as well as the long-
term processes of enduring human collectives, cultures and civilisations. What
interests us in this book are above all processes of a long-term character, playing
out on a whole-society level.
What we attempt to bring to attention is above all those processes which distin-
guish those long-term development dynamics important for our lives, which will
unfold further in the future. At the same time, this is not mainly about description of
processes, but about the question of how they can be approached through the
framework of sociological theoretical research. We will show how sociological
thinking reflects the contradiction between its individualistic and holistic origins,
References 3
and focus on attempts to overcome this dualism in sociology by Norbert Elias and
Anthony Giddens. We will demonstrate why it is good—even today—to return to
the concept of social roles, and we will outline the basic principles of the theory of
social systems by Niklas Luhmann, and last but not least, we focus on the problem of
ignorance. Particular attention is paid to the problems of time, memory, historical
consciousness, and the complexity of identity-building. The final part of the book
includes matters of continuity and discontinuity, paying attention both to the issues
of long-term historical processes and to current social processes in contemporary
societies. We will discuss the questions of social power and dimensions of global-
ization processes.1
Many of the statements encompassed in this book have an open and discursive
character, and the authors have no other wish than that their text should find attentive
readers, willing to enter into inspiring dialogue, and able to formulate ideas and
comments that will give impulse to further develop and enrich the themes addressed.
We will be delighted if the publication of this book inspires readers to new thinking
and new viewpoints on more and less well-known things.
References
Alexander, J. C. (1987). Sociological theory since 1945. London: Hutchinson.

Giddens, A. 1997 (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Haller, M. (1999). Soziologische Theorie in systematisch-kritischen Vergleich (Sociological theory
in systematic-critical comparison). Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Šubrt, J. (2019). Individualism, holism and the central dilemma of sociological theory. Bingley:
Emerald.
1
The chapters “The Society of Individuals and Figurations”; “Rethinking the Theory of Structur-
ation”; “Actor or Homo Sociologicus”, and “Functionally Differentiated Society from the Systemic
Perspective”, were written by Jiří Šubrt. The chapter, The topics of “Time as a Sociological
Problem” and “Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness” are reflected on by Jiří Šubrt,
while the problem of “Identity Building: A Complex Phenomenon” is considered by Massimiliano
Ruzzeddu. “Historical Sociology as a Processual Sociology” is introduced by Jiří Šubrt, while the
author of the treatise “Social Power from the Perspective of Historical Sociology” is Alemayehu
Kumsa. “Current Societal Processes” are described by Jiří Šubrt. “A Hypothesis for a Sociology of
Ignorance in the Twenty-First Century”, was contributed by Massimiliano Ruzzeddu, and “The
Dimensions of Globalization” are characterised by Alemayehu Kumsa; “A Few Notes About the
Open Future”, meanwhile, were added “In Place of a Conclusion” by Jiří Šubrt.
The Society of Individuals and Figurations
Norbert Elias’s book, The Society of Individuals, constantly revisits a problem he

characterizes as a difficult to bridge gap in Western thinking which has opened up
between the individual and society (Elias 1991b: 3–20). There are two opposing
groups of opinion: one claims that “Everything depends on the individual”; the other
believes that “Everything depends on society.” The former argue that there are
always particular individuals who decide what will and will not be done. The latter
argue that what individuals do is always socially conditioned.
All our thinking is thus affected by antinomies. We have an idea of what we are as
human individuals, and some idea of what society is, but these two images are not a
very good fit. Nevertheless it is beyond doubt that individuals make up society and
every society is a society of individuals (Elias 1991b). Although we suppose that the
“gap” between the individual and society does not really exist, our way of thinking is
influenced by this polarity, with constant fissuring. One of the issues that Elias
focused on is how to bridge the long-standing metaphorical gap.
The antinomies Elias referred to are associated with various terminological
references in current theoretical literature. Jeffrey C. Alexander (1987) distinguishes
between individualistic and collectivist theories. Brian Fay, in The Contemporary
Philosophy of Social Sciences, places in opposition the conceptual pair atomism and
holism. According to atomism, each individual represents a distinct unit of social life
endowed with the ability to “control their own action on the basis of their beliefs and
desires” (Fay 1996: 30). Atomists understand society as a collection of individuals
and consider that social units are transferable to the activities of the individuals who
create them. Fay connects atomism with the strong belief in the “fundamental
singularity of individuals”, considered “as if what they are, were independent of
their relations to other people” (Fay 1996: 31). He considers Thomas Hobbes the
philosophical founder of atomism, while in twentieth century social sciences this
position is strongly represented by Friedrich von Hayek, who argues that social
phenomena cannot be understood other than through understanding the individual
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_2
6 The Society of Individuals and Figurations
acts of individuals. In sociology the origins of such methodological individualism

are associated with Max Weber.
The opposite of atomism is holism, which Fay describes as the doctrine,
“according to which the properties of individuals are solely a function of their
place in society or some broad system of meanings” (Fay 1996: 50). According to
holism, social units must be taken as the basis of social theory, not individuals.
Holism does not allow for theories of social units to be reduced or transferred to
theories of individuals. The key personality of holism in social sciences is Émile
Durkheim; Fay considers the modern version of holism to include structuralism
(Lévi-Strauss, Foucault and others).
The opposition that Fay describes has a number of aspects that can be expressed
as related dualisms. Derek Layder mentions three in Understanding Social Theory
(1994: 3): individual–social, micro–macro and action–structure. The distinction
individual–social, which he considers to be the oldest and most persistent dilemma
of sociological thought, corresponds in principle with the opposition atomism–
holism, addressed by Fay. Layder points out that the problem of this dualism is
that individuals cannot be placed in sharp opposition to society because many of
their needs and motivations are produced by the social environment of the society in
which they live. Put simply, there is no society without individuals, but no individ-
uals beyond the influence of society (Layder 1994: 3).
Individualism Versus Holism
The individualistic (atomistic) interpretation presumes that in all social action the
individual, often referred to as the actor, and their meaningful action, is the starting
point. Individualistic opinion assumes that social phenomena consist of the many
and varied interconnected actions of individuals, and such complex phenomena can
be attributed to actors. The principles of individualistic sociology are attributed to
Max Weber.
For Weber, Sociology is the science of social action. In his 1913 essay Über
einige Kategorien der verstehenden Soziologie he notes that the subject of sociology
is the social action of individuals1 and its aim is to understand and explain the course
of this action through the meaning individuals attribute to it (Weber 1988: 432–438).
Later, in Basic Sociological Terms, Weber characterizes sociology as a science to
understand social action and thereby causally explain its course and its effects
(Weber 1988: 432 ff.). A key element is the German term Verstehen—understand-
ing—from which derives the designation of Weber’s sociology as die verstehende
Soziologie—understanding sociology.
1
Note that some contemporary researchers are somewhat questioning what the literature refers to as
methodological individualism in Weber, especially with respect to Weber’s studies on religion and
culture.
Individualism Versus Holism 7
In terms of Weber’s sociology, all social phenomena, formations—the entire

social order—are human creations consisting of social relationships between acting
individuals pursuing their own goals and value orientations; they are series, or
complexes, of the interconnected actions of human individuals.
Generally speaking, individualistic opinion attributes primacy to the subjective,
sovereign, individual free will, applied in the actions of individuals. The individu-
alistic perspective brings a ‘view from below’ that sees the individual as an actor
creating social reality with their activities, on the basis of how they understand world
affairs around them, and what meaning they attribute to their actions. Society, social
institutions, structures and systems are built from below, as a result of the
interconnected actions of individuals, and thus the result of interpersonal
interactions.
Holism on the other hand is based on the philosophical assumption that the whole
is more than the sum of its parts, so that social reality cannot be explained by
reference to individuals and their actions, but on the basis of its own principles.
Émile Durkheim claims that the subjects of sociology are so-called social facts,
whose primary feature is that they are supra-individual, external to the individual,
and enter consciousness independent of the will. The second essential characteristic
is that they are endowed with coercive power and exercise social pressure on the
individual to conform (Durkheim 1982: 128).
Examples of social facts for Durkheim are such phenomena as religion, language,
law or morality. In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, he says: we speak a
language which we have not ourselves created, we use tools which we have not
ourselves invented, and claim rights which we have not ourselves established. Each
successive generation inherits a sum of knowledge which it did not collect itself and
which it owes to society. The environment in which we live seems to us to be
populated by forces that control us, but are also helpful to us. And these forces
influence us by pressure which we conform to (Durkheim 1995 [1912]: 2014).
Durkheim sees society as a special reality which cannot simply be identified with
its individual parts, having its own specific qualities that cannot be transferred to
individuals. In relation to the individual the social or collective is determinate and the
individual must submit. Society has primacy over the individual as it existed long
beforehand and will be there long afterwards. It is the whole that can force individ-
uals to live and act in a certain way, and individual actions are seen not as a result of
the sovereign decision of the individual, but as a consequence of social (functional
pressures) that society imposes.
The history of twentieth century sociology shows that both lines of understand-
ing—individualistic and holistic—presented viable exploratory strategies that trans-
lated into a series of sociological schools and specializations. Through the
individualistic approach, we encounter utilitarian theories based on the concept of
homo economicus (exchange theory, rational choice theory), but also interpretive
sociology (in particular, phenomenological sociology). From holism arose first and
foremost structuralism, then functionalism and systems theory. However, alongside
this, several exploratory approaches emerged in the twentieth century viewing both
tendencies as one-sided and limited, and attempted to overcome them by bridging
them. Within this movement we find the contribution to sociological theory of

Norbert Elias.
Elias seeks quite systematically to overcome the contradiction between Weberian
and Durkheimian sociology. Both approaches, according to him, make the same
mistake—an artificial, analytical separation of the individual and society to empha-
size divergent perspectives. Our thinking moves between the two extremes which
permeate sociological theory; the first understands the individual as outside society,
and the second understands society as in opposition to the individual. The problem
of the relationship between the individual and society was, according to Elias,
unresolved in sociology.
Both individualism and holism tend to take their starting points as something
distinctive, with a privileged position in both ontological and epistemological
senses. Both likewise face certain problems, limits and restrictions; in both cases
there is a danger of reductionism and simplification. Individualism is strong in the
interpretation of phenomena taking place at the micro social level, but has trouble
capturing what goes beyond the level of individuals and their interpersonal relation-
ships. It lacks the theoretical tools for the explanation of such macro-social phe-
nomena as culture, civilization, modernization, industrialism, globalization or the
social functioning of societal subsystems, having a problem with grasping what goes
beyond the level of interaction. Representatives of individualism are not commonly
willing to admit that some processes are systemic, i.e. their driving force is the
system and its structures, and that some processes launch a systemic logic indepen-
dent of the individual will.
Even when they emphasize individualism—in terms of individual voluntarism
and free will—holistic approaches tend to credit supra-individual influences, pres-
sures and systemic processes independent of the will of individuals. Behind every-
thing, holism sees manifestations of supra-individual entities or the functioning of
the social structures, systems or subsystems which individuals must endure. The
exclusion of individuals from its theoretical thinking leads holism to attribute vital
functions to social wholes—meaning systems. Supporters of holism tend to consider
the macro level of social reality, ignoring subjectivity and individual initiative, and
instead emphasizing conformity and subordination. Elias (1991b) subjected both
tendencies to criticism. He believed that neither leads to true understanding of
society. One recognizes only an aggregate of individuals, the other a living entity
outside individuals and independent of them.
Supporters of individualism, according to Elias (1991b: 2–30), tend to base
themselves on the atoms, the smallest particles of society. Individuals represent the
linking posts between the strings of interpersonal relationships. For those used to
thinking in an individualistic way, it is difficult to understand that social relation-
ships may have their own structure and natural development. Elias by contrast
emphasizes that each individual human being lives nestled into a network (entan-
glement) of interpersonal relations and mutual interdependency. These relationships
are at least partially reflected in personal character. Although the structure of these
relationships differs with societies, no individual, whatever personal qualities and
dispositions, can break out of period-given facts and social frameworks, nor
Individualism Versus Holism 9
transform them. Moreover, each society has its own history and can change in ways
that none of the individuals who jointly formed it anticipated or intended. Thus we
must wonder at how the coexistence and interaction of many human individuals
leads to the creation of something new, which no one strove for or planned.
As for holism, the supporters of this school, according to Elias, usually proceed
from a model based on the biological way of thinking, imagining society as
something supra-individual—a supra-individual organic substance that exists
beyond individuals. As a holder of social principles, it is labelled the collective
spirit, the collective organism, or—in analogy with the forces of nature—supra-
individual spiritual or material forces (Elias 1991b). In this there is no place for
individuals.
According to Elias, neither adequately grasps social reality, and thus the
unbridgeable gap emerges between social and individual phenomena. To understand
these correctly, we need to change our way of thinking, to abandon thinking of
separate substances, and focus on relationships and functions. The structures of the
human psyche, society and history, do not exist as separately as they appear to in
today’s research. They are inseparable, complementary phenomena that can be
explored only in their mutual relations.
During the twentieth century other theorists attempted to overcome the antinomy
of individualism and holism. First, there was Talcott Parsons, who, in The Structure
of Social Action, tried to interconnect the ideas of Weber and Durkheim (Parsons
1966 [1937]). Later, there were Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1989
[1966]), Jürgen Habermas (1981), Pierre Bourdieu (1998), Anthony Giddens
(1984), Roy Bhaskar (1978), Margaret Archer (1995), Bruno Latour (2005), Luc
Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot (2007), and many others. In principle these efforts
had two basic strategies. The first was postulating some “third” placed as a
connecting bolt between the individual and society. The second, involving the effort
to bring together the individual and the collective, put them into a single explanatory
framework, so alternating these perspectives in the explanation of social events.
The origins of the first strategy can be traced to Georg Simmel, responding to the
dispute between sociological nominalism and realism (Keller 2004: 357). Extreme
nominalism is the claim that only human individuals really exist, not society.
Realism, by contrast, not only ascribes objective existence to society and other
social wholes, but has a tendency to put society above the individual. Simmel’s
definition of sociology tries to take a path that avoids the extremes. Simmel stands
apart from nominalism, emphasizing the primacy of sociability over individuality,
and admits that interactions between individuals result in specific social qualities not
original to the acting persons. However, he distances himself from realism, from the
substantialist concept of social reality, and emphasizes its processual character.
Society, according to Simmel, does not exist as a substance, but as an interaction
between individuals (Simmel 1970: 27). Simmel believes that society exists only
because moment by moment re-created by interaction, in which various forms of
interpersonal association are lastingly formed, reproduced, but also cancelled.
Simmel highlights this as the third and most important social phenomenon, referring
to it as Wechselwirkung.
A typical example of the second approach is Anthony Giddens and his theory of
structuration, where the individual pole is represented by the term action, and the
social pole by the term structure (Giddens 1984). Giddens’s theory is based on a dual
theorem of action and structure, which states that structures are the product of human
action, but, once formed, they represent a tool for other human actions; on the one
hand allowing such action, but also directing and limiting it. Giddens essentially
shifts his standpoint throughout to explain the observed issues by alternating indi-
vidualistic and holistic positions, saying: the first step is to adopt an individualistic
position because it is individuals whose actions create structures; the second step is
to adopt a holistic perspective, as these already-formed structures affect subsequent
individual actions. The third step is a return to the individualistic point of view as
individuals in their actions enable existing structures not only to reproduce but to
modify and transform.
The above-outlined strategies in fact are not so different; they are complementary,
with various points of contact. Regarding Elias, his solution to the question of
relations between the individual and society is closest to Simmel’s, whose work he
freely develops and deepens, and whose concept Wechselwirkung he replaces with
the expression “meshing” (Verflechtung) of relations, and then particularly with the
concept of figuration. But Elias’s effort is in any case associated with the effort to
bring the two poles of the relationship—the individual and society—together as
closely as possible and to see ongoing social processes from both perspectives.
Elias’s Concept of Figuration
Elias tried to overcome the extremes of individualism and holism—the two poles of
social science—in particular by working out the concept of figuration, on which he
focused especially in the book Was ist Soziologie? (1978), and in his other works
(for example Die höfische Gessellchaft (Elias 1983), The Established and the Out-
siders (Elias and Scotson 1965). The introduction of the concept of figuration was a
theoretical innovation, through which he was trying to overcome the traditional
ideological polarization which pits subject against object, the individual against their
surroundings (represented by various social groups), people as individuals against
people as society. Figuration may be represented by family, school class, rural
community or state. At first glance, it might seem that this term is close to the
sociological term, a social group, but this is misleading. The concept of figuration
draws attention to interdependence, which means to what mutually connects people.
It can be related both to small groups and big societies. Elias (1991b) introduced the
concept to express more clearly and unambiguously the fact that what we call society
is neither an abstraction of the characteristics of existing individuals without society,
nor the system or the whole excluding individuals, but rather a tangle of
interdependencies.
Simpler and transparent figurations are for instance teacher and pupils in the
classroom, doctor and patients, and regulars in the pub. More complex figurations
Elias’s Concept of Figuration 11
are the residents of a village, city or nation. Chains of dependencies binding such
people together are not directly perceptible but extensive and differentiated. The
features of such figurations can be understood in more detail through the analysis of
interdependency chains.
To illustrate the concept of figuration Elias used the example of social dances
(Elias 1991a: 19), because he believed that the image of moving figurations of
interdependent people dancing helps understand figurations such as family, city,
state, or social formation. Let us imagine a group of dancers performing court
dances, such as the française or quadrille, or a country round dance. The steps
and bows, gestures and movements made by the individual dancer fully mesh and
synchronize with others. If any dancing individual were contemplated in isolation,
the functions of his or her movements could not be understood. Behaviour in this
situation is determined by the relations between the dancers.
The expressions and movements of individuals may in one way or another be
individually coloured, but they are always focused on others. We can of course talk
about dance and its rules in general, but hardly as something outside human
individuals. Like other social figurations, it is relatively independent of specific
individuals, but cannot do without individuals.
Another analogy is that of a game (Elias 1978: 1130–131). If four people play
cards, they form a figuration, their actions are interdependent. Although it is possible
to talk about the game as something autonomous (and to say, for example: “the game
is taking a long time”), it is essential, however, that the course of the game comes
from the mutual entanglement of the four individuals involved. Figuration thus
means the “changing pattern” that players mutually make with their actions, in
which they engage not only with their intellect, but their whole personality. This
figuration is formed by a structure of interdependent tension, where participating
individuals can stand both as allies and opponents. The structural features of
figuration streams therefore include the “fluctuating balance of power” (Elias
1978: 131), which is at least bipolar, but mostly multi-polar and integral to all
human relationships.
People and figurations change, though these changes are inseparable and
interdependent, on different levels and of different kinds. In contemporary, abun-
dantly differentiated society, the actions of individuals interweave to form long
chains of functional relationships. Each human individual is thus involved in many
such chains, though the functions performed are dependent on many other individ-
uals. Instead of the human being as something closed (homo clausus), Elias empha-
sized the image of man as an “open personality”, essentially autonomous in relation
to other people, though never absolutely autonomous, because each through their
own life is grounded, oriented and dependent on others. The chains of these
dependencies—not as visible and tangible as iron chains—are strong enough, but
also elastic and changeable, and may be expressed by the term social structures. In
their framework there is a—greater or lesser—space for individual decision making;
there are crossroads where people must make up their minds, and choices on which
may the fate may rest not only of themselves but of others.
Elias’s sociology of figuration was widely discussed in the 1980s, when it was
considered very promising, and hopes were placed in it. With hindsight, we can say
that these expectations were not fully met, since Elias defined the concept of
figuration very generally and roughly and did not elaborate it as unequivocally
understandable and applicable research tool in the field of theory and research.
Although today there is a considerable amount of special literature using the term
figuration (e.g. Gabriel and Mennell 2011), users often have to specify what they
mean (and some researchers endow it with distinctive, subjectively framed ideas,
leading to problematic content shifts—notably Gerard Noiriel (2012), who had little
compunction in renaming Elias’s figuration “configuration”). What is missing in
particular in Elias’s text is the resolution of the various structural levels at which
figurations occur, and specifics on the differences between these individual levels,
because there is after all a difference between those of whist players, mazurka
dancers, or the citizens of a modern state.
The issue of how a particular individual can affect their society and ongoing
social processes was the topic of Elias’s last work, a small book about Mozart (Elias
1991a). There he focused attention on the issue of brilliant talent in the history of art,
in doing so, trying to avoid two commonly encountered extremes. One was the
approach to the the history of art as a succession of great personalities; the second, its
reduction to the mere transformation of structures and styles. Elias’s approach can be
suggested by the metaphor of the coin and stamp. Everyone within society may be
compared to a coin shaped by a stamp representing social pressures. But at the same
moment, everyone is a stamp that, by its action in society and on others, leaves its
own mark (Elias 1991a). These are two interdependent functions which mutually
determine their existences. Even Mozart’s genius corresponds to this idea. Even he
represents both coin and stamp. Mozart’s musical personality was formed by
contemporary influences and musical practices that he mastered in a perfect way,
and there are many stories of his native abilities engaging with traditions in his
youth. In his case, however, he had the talent to improve these procedures, innova-
tively transforming and developing new forms of musical expression. The role of
genius thus lies in outperforming contemporaries, not only a coin but also a stamp,
leaving an imprint on structures of a given area (or areas) of human activity, and
affecting its further development.
Elias’s little work on Mozart is often overlooked but is important because it
shows how to approach the problém—so far generally paid very little attention in
sociology—of the role played by specific figures in the framework of social devel-
opment and the historical process, through the sociology of figuration. Elias argues
rather generally but nevertheless provides inspiration for further thought. Without
this, the problem of a “society of individuals” will never reach a satisfactorily
conclusion.
References 13
References
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Rethinking the Theory of Structuration
Anthony Giddens is the author of large, ambitious, and widely discussed sociolog-
ical works. We shall not look at the whole of Giddens’ work, but only one aspect;
what Giddens himself describes as an effort to reconstruct social theory.
Giddens, like Parsons previously, sought to lay the theoretical foundations of
social science. Parsons’ endeavour, based on the “voluntaristic” theory of action
(representing individual freedom) and structurally functional theory (representing
social order), Giddens considered less than successful. On the contrary he saw it as
marred by an unbridged gap between behaviour and structure (e.g. between the “unit
act” and AGIL-schema).
This led Giddens to formulate a theory of structuration to provide the answer—
long discussed—to the problem of how to connect action and structure. The Theory
of Structuration in Giddens’ work crystallized gradually during the 1970s and first
half of the 1980s, mainly articulated through the books New Rules of Sociological
Method (1976) and Central Problems in Social Theory (1979), which Giddens
subsequently elaborated in his work The Constitution of Society (1984), whose
construction and intent is sometimes compared to Habermas Theorie des
kommunikativen Handelns (1981). In like manner both Giddens and Habermas
aimed to reformulate social theory and overcome restrictive traditions. The Consti-
tution of Society, as one of the key works of theoretical sociology from the latter half
of the twentieth century, still provokes much debate on the question of action and
structure. Giddens traced out certain ways of resolving such questions which he
himself left unexploited,1 and engaged with a broad range of ideas and inspirations.
What follows is an account of the most important.
Giddens locates his starting point in dissent with what he described as the
“orthodox consensus”—the dominant trend in American sociology from the early
1950s to the early 1970s—whose central characteristics were functionalism and
1
In his later studies in the course of the last two decades he has moved on without returning to them.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_3
16 Rethinking the Theory of Structuration
evolutionism. The dominant representative of this was of course Parsons. Giddens’

theoretical thinking is founded on criticism of Parsons. Giddens views Parsons as
obsolete, but at the same time admits that the issues raised by functionalists cannot
be forgotten. Giddens considers that the conception of function is not applicable in
sociology, but admits that many who criticized functionalism have fallen into
subjectivism; for instance, in phenomenology. In its analysis of institutions and a
range of social processes, functionalism, according to Giddens, is stronger than
phenomenological sociology. Therefore, he concludes that to withdraw from func-
tionalism we must handle the issue differently than phenomenological sociology.
Giddens emphatically regarded his approach as non-functionalist and
non-evolutionary. His objections to functionalism led him to the theory of structur-
ation, based on the concept of duality of action and structure or simply the duality of
structure. Giddens believed that this approach could overcome both the traditional
dualism of action and structure, and the dualism of micro and macro-theory. Giddens
tried to think out the problem of the dualism of individual action and structure in
such a way that both aspects come as near to each other as possible, i.e., so that
dualism would convert into duality. This approach may contain a certain unsolved
problem, to which we will return.
Before getting to the principles of structuration, let us recall Giddens’ conception
of action and structure. Giddens criticizes functionalism for failing to appreciate the
importance of human action in the constitution of the social world. Social theory,
according to Giddens, must deal primarily with human actors, their consciousness
and actions, and yet simultaneously with the structural conditions for and conse-
quences of these actions.
Giddens’ concept of action posits a competent, conscious actor, associated with
two characteristics, knowledgeability and capability (clearly reflecting the influence
of interpretive sociology). The concept of knowledgeability is related to practical
consciousness, arising from reflection on the stock of knowledge and experiences of
individual actors. Actors, according to Giddens, are usually aware, and can possess
effective information on their own initiative. Giddens combines the capability of
actors to act with the concept of power (the actor who acts has a certain power per
se). Power is an integral element of social life. Giddens does not examine actions as
discrete creative acts, but as repetitive practices involved in the continuous events of
the social world, as a “continuous flow of conduct” (1979: 55).
Giddens sees structures as a set of rules and resources. Rules can be divided into
(a) normative, corresponding to legitimization processes, specific rights and obliga-
tions, and on the level of the social system, sanctions; and (b) interpretative,
corresponding to significations, interpretative schemes (as part of the available
knowledge) and, on the level of the social system, the system of communication.
Resources are divided into (a) allocative, establishing dominance arising from
manipulating the results of human control of nature, (b) authoritative, allowing the
exercise, based on power, of non-material resources, especially through controlling
the activities of other people. It is worth noting that Giddens understands structure
not as a priori given, but as existing only because constantly produced, reproduced
and modified by the conduct of human subjects. Structure has a hidden virtual
Rethinking the Theory of Structuration 17
pattern that on the one hand enables this conduct and at the same time sets limits and
boundaries to it.
The stated objective of Giddens’ theory is to relate action and structure. His
strategy lies in rapprochement between these two poles. Having founded his theory
of structuration on the transformation of dualism into constitutive “duality”, he
translated the dichotomy of action and structure into the duality of action and
structure (also the duality of structure).
Fundamental to the idea of structuration is the theorem of duality of structure,
according to which “the structural properties of social systems are both the medium
and the outcome of social action” (Giddens 1981: 92).2 The concepts structure and
action signify analytically different moments of the reality of structured systems of
actions. Structures exist not as independent phenomena of space and time, but only
through the actions and practices of human individuals. Giddens develops the
principle of duality of structures on three levels: (1) communication of meaning,
(2) the use of power, (3) the use of norms and sanctions. From this it is clear that
interaction in social life consists of three components—communication, power and
sanctions related at the structural level with the processes of significance, dominance
and legitimation. Various aspects of interaction—communication of meaning and
the use of power, moral relations and sanctions—have their correlates in structure:
interpretative rules, resources, and normative rules. At the level of individual action,
conforming to the rules and resources brings concepts of capability and
knowledgeability.
However, while it solves many issues, Giddens’ theory generates problems too.3
As mentioned, previous efforts to overcome the dualism of individualism and holism
are based on approaches where the authors change their standpoints during theoret-
ical explanations and try to explain theoretical issues by alternating perspectives
from individualistic and holistic positions.
In Giddens’ case, in the first step the individualistic perspective stands for
individuals whose actions create structures. In the second step the holistic perspec-
tive stands for structures affecting individual action.4 Following this, we return to the
2
Human language is an example of a medium, and also an outcome, of social action, according to
Giddens. Individual speech acts can occur only within the frame of an abstract set of rules of
language, while speech acts repeatedly reproduce language as an abstract set of rules. If I pronounce
a sentence, it is a manifestation of my action, which at the same time as an unintended consequence
reproduces the system of language.
3
One of the problems is Giddens’ anti-functionalism. At the theoretical level, Giddens rejects
functionalism and emphasizes the role of active individuals. However, in his later books, which
deal with problems on a macro-sociological level in a holistic perspective, he forgets his reserva-
tions and formulates arguments that are functionalist in nature and do not differ much from Parsons’
approach.
Another problem is that Giddens’ theory generally emphasizes the aspect of the repetitiveness of
the action and largely ignores the matter of creativity, which is raised, among others, by Hans Joas.
4
Giddens, however, weakens this holistic stand-point by stating that structures and systems do not
exist as separate autonomous entities (as e.g. in Luhmann), but in so far as they are repeatedly
formed by human action.
individualistic perspective and say that individuals can modify or reshape the
existing structures.
It is at this point that the solution offered by the theory of structuration does not
appear very satisfactory, and it is necessary to consider alternatives. The solution
may be inspired by Émile Durkheim and his concept of “homo duplex” (Durkheim
1913, 1914, 1995). This strategy is not the transfer of dualism of activity and
structure to duality, as in the case of Giddens, but an approach where all basic
concepts—actor, activity and structure—are grasped via the Durkheimian concept of
duplex. In other words, that it is not only necessary for both perspectives to approach
each other maximally, but, so to speak, to “blend” in a theoretical interpretation that
demonstrates that the terms with which we work in sociological theory—actor,
activity and structure—are by nature dualistic, which means “duplex”.
Homo Duplex
Émile Durkheim notes that the human being is divided, and what’s more in an
internally contradictory manner. Durkheim variously characterizes this division as
sustained. Durkheim refers to traditional dualism, which opposes the body to the
soul. He speaks of the “constitutional duality of human nature” (Durkheim 1995:
17), the decoupling of man into physical being and social being. He says that in each
of us there are two consciousnesses, two aspects of mental life: personal and
impersonal. Our physical body, on the one hand, is the source of our endless
needs and desires, or egoism. Our socialized being is the construct of society, living
and acting through us, controlling and diminishing the symptoms of our egoism
through internalized moral principles. A similar conclusion had been or would be
reached by many other thinkers. The tradition of dualistic thinking in philosophy can
be observed from antiquity, via Descartes, to the present day. The disunity of human
nature was pointed out by Auguste Comte, who spoke of the opposition of egoism
and altruism. According to Comte, egoism inspires human behaviour and gives it
energy; altruism disciplines and directs it in socially desirable ways (Keller 2004:
75). According to Georg Simmel, man is an ambivalent human being with a notably
ambivalent nature (Mahlmann 1983). In the essay “Brücke und Tür” he characterizes
the situation of a human being, one part directed outside itself, externally, attracted
by society and association with others, the other a world to itself, longing for
autonomy, independence and distance from others (Simmel 1957: 1–7). George
Herbert Mead (1977: 209–246) gives the characteristics of the human “I”—“Self”
as a contradictory unity of two components, the “I” and the “Me”. The “I” is an
individual, subjective component, active and creative. The “Me” is an objective,
passive component, based primarily on internalized positions in the social group or
society to which the individual belongs.
Durkheim raises the question of the cause of this and concludes that this antinomy
“corresponds essentially with the dual existences that we simultaneously lead.” One
part of our existence is individual and rooted in our corporeality. The second part of
Homo Duplex 19
our existence is social and in it we represent “just an extension of society” (Durk-

heim 1995: 30). Society retains its “own nature, and thus also demands quite
different from those that are included in our individual nature. The interests of the
whole are not necessarily identical with the interests of its parts. Therefore, society
can neither form nor maintain its shape without requiring permanent sacrifices,
which are difficult for us. Only by being superior to us does it force us to transcend
ourselves. And to overcome ourselves means for each being to strip off some
element from their nature, which is not possible without greater or lesser degrees
of tension.” (Durkheim 1995: 31).
In his view of man Durkheim integrated two perspectives usually applied sepa-
rately. In one, the individual is seen as a unique being equipped with its own “ego”,
individual dispositions and will—this often serves the humanities and philosophy.
The other perspective sees the individual as fundamentally socialized—this is
utilised within sociological thinking. Durkheim himself, and all his work, are
characterised by this latter mode of thinking. Although the author speaks of two
components of human nature, the first is systematically ignored and almost excluded
from his theoretical and methodological considerations. Since Durkheim, general
sociology has developed a wide range of concepts to capture the social qualities of
individuals, but it is terminologically ill-equipped for the theoretical grasp of their
individual characteristics. When speaking on the sociology of individuals we usually
use such expressions as status, role or habitus,5 all terms referring only to the
secondary—social or socialized side of human being.
In trying to follow up Durkheim and be inspired by his concept of “homo
duplex”, we would consider what Durkheim himself set aside—the consistent
projection of a dualistic view onto the concept of the actor in all key concepts of
sociological theory. Durkheim frequently expresses terms and ideas which are to a
degree anachronistic, and it’s not necessary to defend all his partial claims, but we
should make efforts to utilise the most powerful, still-relevant elements, which in
particular means the inner ambiguity of “homo duplex”. We would take and enhance
this idea, but not strictly in the context and conceptual form in which the French
sociologist uses it, retaining it as a loose inspiration in exploring issues which
Durkheim did not deal with.6 In accepting this idea we can consistently derive
considerations on the nature of action, interaction, and structure, all of which may
be looked at through the perspective of “duplex”.
In individualistic conceptions, actions tend to be seen as one-way acts from the
individual oriented outwards to impress something or someone in the outside world.
However, from the dialectical perspective the whole thing is more complicated. In
5
Let us recall that the term habitus was popularized by Pierre Bourdieu, in whom we find the related
term “taste”. Neither term represents—as it might seem at first glance—some individual character-
istics, but on the contrary, collective characteristics that express the characteristics of certain social
groups and classes.
6
For this reason, we do not engage in the specific context of religion and morality, in which the
concept of “homo duplex” by Durkheim is set, or with the secondary literature that deals with this
subject.
the very act, alongside the actor there is the other side, the world in which certain
elements are striving to operate. One’s action confirms the relevance of the rest of the
world (regardless of approving or disapproving). Every act intended to achieve
something in this world is at the same time confirmation of its importance. Providing
an individual acts—in the words of Max Weber—in a purposeful-rational (goal-
rational) way, they acknowledge the relevance of the purpose which the world
contains for themselves, even if only as an option. If an individual acts with respect
to value, rationally or traditionally, they affirm the values and traditions of a given
social environment; feeling the effect of these, while at the same time reproducing
them. Society has some effect on the individual through their own actions (because
action recognizes the money, power, social institutions or values it relates to), and at
the same time through this practice they affect themselves, both in reproduction of
and changes to the self.
A person driven by individual will monitors the actions of their personal (egois-
tic) interests and intentions. However, this activity is simultaneously social: first, it is
oriented towards individuals and it must therefore reckon with the surrounding social
reality, its rules and expectations; such action—to one degree or another—repro-
duces some general role and respective structural formulas, which, as structuration
theory says, are supportive but also limiting. The acting individual could not be an
actor without going through the process of socializing and learning certain societal
demands, but the individual must also make certain decisions and choices, often
dependent not only on the social situation, but on purely individual skills, interests
and preferences. Both components in human action—individual and social—inter-
relate, condition and support each other.
In terms of work we can use two dimensions of actions, distinguished by
the terms ‘voluntarism’ and ‘sociality’. Voluntarism means that activities express
the individual will or interests of the acting persons who are its driving force. The
components interact in the sense that one limits the other in the extent and degree of
expression in a specific activity.7 In existing theoretical conceptions voluntarism is
often associated with motivation and choice; sociality is viewed as a problem for the
anticipated action, mainly associated with the concept of its social role. While
analytically it is possible to distinguish two components, it is extremely difficult
because they may be multiply-linked. As human actions relate to other individuals,
there arises a mutual influence; that is to say, interaction, which may take different
forms and intensities, ranging from ephemeral encounters to fixed steady relation-
ships. Specific interests and goals conjoin interacting individuals in certain interac-
tional configurations, in which are found—despite their variety of specific features
and differences—generally applicable principles that allow us to consider the typical
forms of such interaction, such as cooperation, competition, opposition, conflict, etc.
7
From the historical and cultural point of view, it can be assumed that the proportions between
voluntarism and sociality can differ in individual types of societies and social groups. As an
example, the choice of a life partner can help. In traditional societies, parents or relatives determine
life partners, and often they have to respect a variety of strict social rules; in modern society the
individual usually selects this themselves, often based on very subjective choices and feelings.
The Problem of Structure from the Duplex Perspective 21
Most sociologists, dealing with issues of interaction, develop concepts character-

ized by a common feature which might loosely be described as typical: the assump-
tion that individuals exist as individuals with distinctive characteristics only until
they start to act socially and interact with others. From the perspective of sociology,
the moment they enter into social interaction it is as if they are internally changed,
losing their specific individual characteristics and transforming into abstract, inter-
changeable representatives of social types, roles and institutions, free of all subjec-
tive features. To generalise, the sociologically perceived world of social interaction
loses its vividness and individuality. It is peculiarly sociology which manifests a sort
of methodological “blindness”—seeing individual aspects as accidental and
unimportant, and preferring general social validity. Sociology’s perspective on
interaction and structure tends to see human individuals as interchangeable “parts”
of a social “machine set”.
In light of this, there remains the question of what the perspective of “duplex” can
offer. Interaction, theoretically described, appears as reciprocal relationships
between two or more individuals, each with individual and social components.
Their individual actions are also dual; in each there is a share of voluntarism and
likewise sociality. In simplified model form it can be said that individuals A and B
regard each other’s alter ego, each seeing that the other has characteristics and
dispositions, following personal interests and goals, but meanwhile acting as some
form of representative of roles or institutions, conforming in one way or another to
general structural rules, regulations and behavioural patterns. At the individual level
this represents the mutual confrontation of two personalities; at the social level it is a
matter of the reproduction of role patterns and institutional rules. Both the individual
and social components of personalities and actions represent factors both facilitating
and inhibiting to nature, appearing interactively in many different combinations.
The Problem of Structure from the Duplex Perspective
The flaw in current considerations of this topic in sociological thinking—in Giddens

as well as other authors—appears to lie mainly in the fact that structures are seen as a
single-level in relation to activities, whereas a more adequate picture of how social
structures operate emerges if we imagine them as multi-level and multi layer, where
the layers fit into each other and interact. In contrast to that established idea we shall
now consider how the perspective of “duplex structures” could be applied.
First, we should recall Giddens’ example of the relationship between “langue”
and “parole”, borrowed from linguistics. “Langue” represents the structure, “parole”
practice. Giddens suggests that practice (“parole”) relies on structure (“langue”),
which is its mainstay and also limitation. Meanwhile he claims that structure
(“langue”) can exist only when reproduced in repeated acts of practice (“parole”).
It can be noted that the relationship of “langue” to “parole” could also be derived in
other ways; it simply exemplifies the existence of two structural levels. On the first
level, we can see the structure of the language (“langue”); on the second we find the
structure of utterances (“parole”). Sociological thinking concerning structures usu-

ally records social reality stripped of all individual features and reduced to general
and collective concepts, formulas and rules. In terms of efforts to achieve general-
ized scientific knowledge this strategy is perfectly understandable, but nevertheless
cannot be applied in its pure form in all humanistic and social science-oriented
disciplines. A typical example is in history, which cannot be satisfied with general
historical trends, but must incorporate the activities of specific historical figures, with
their intentions and influence. Looking at the issue of structures through the per-
spective of “duplex” can help solve this problem. Social structures can be under-
stood as two levels of structural rules. On the first level there are general rules
defining basic social institutions and setting basic role positions and role activities.
On the second level there are specific rules in the context of specific human groups,
in which expectations are derived or enforced on the basis of the individual dispo-
sitions of members; these are rules somehow negotiated within these groups, or
which are imposed by force. Taking the simple example of the nuclear family, we
give attention to the general rules that define the content of basic roles (mother,
father, child), or—if we accept the functionalist approach—that determine the
content of the basic functions (reproductive, protective, emotional, economic, edu-
cational) carried out by this structural unit. However, if we focus on a particular
family as a small social group, we should turn our attention to another level, formed
or imposed by the specific characteristics, requirements and capacities of individual
family members (e.g. who is to pick the toddler up from kindergarten, who assem-
bles the furniture, or who walks the dog). We note that institutional rules exist as if
dictated by society, while operating rules of specific human groups emerge from
individual characteristics. In practice, the two inter-connect in such a complementary
way that it is hard to maintain any separation. Many similar examples show the
multilevel character of social structures. A sporting event occurs in accordance with
rules, but further structure itself by the strategies and capabilities of teams and
players (some football teams rely on corners—others specialise in penalties; some
habitually defend while others habitually attack; and these roles may shift with
regard to the corresponding characteristics of opponents). The functioning of various
types of social groups, organizations and social systems can be considered in a
similar way (e.g. in the policy area, democratic system systems may differ in the
specific form of expression, due to different procedural rules but also how the
representatives of the leading political parties effect their power). Essentially all
social reality should be seen in the unity of these two aspects simultaneously. A
theory should be constructed to reflect the idea that the individual phenomena of
social life can always be viewed simultaneously from the individual and social
perspectives, which are not only complementary, but internally mutually condi-
tional—and any interpretation conducted only one way is necessarily one-sided
and incomplete. Therefore, our approach to the formulation of theoretical concepts
should reflect this ambiguity, showing that each surveyed problem can be
approached from two sides. Accepting this presumption, individual (unique) activity
does not stand in opposition to supra-individual (general) social structures and
systems, but they are so aligned that each has individual and its supra-individual
References 23
(general, collective) components, and these are in correspondence with other cate-
gories specified in a similar way. The advantage of this approach is that it can quite
satisfactorily sort out the traditional conflict between the individual and society,
which Giddens transposed into the form of duality of action and structure. Looked at
through the prism of “duplex”, the individual will is not opposed to the transpersonal
structure of society and societal processes, but the two exist in mutual correspon-
dence, each with individual and its social components, even though each to a
different extent and degree.
References
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problem and the duality of human nature). Bulletin de la Société Francaise de la Philosophie
(Bulletin of the French Society of Philosophy), XIII, 63–113.
Durkheim, E. (1914). La dualisme de la nature humaine et ses conditions sociales (The dualism of
human nature and its social conditions). Scientia, XV, 206–222.
Durkheim, E. (1995). Dualismus lidské přirozenosti a její společenské podmínky (The dualism of
human nature and its social conditions). Antropologie, sociologie, historie. Cahiers du
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Giddens, A. (1976). New rules of sociological method. London: Hutchinson.
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Giddens, A. (1981). Time and space in social theory. In J. Matthes (Ed.), Lebenswelt und soziale
Probleme (pp. 88–97). Frankfurt/Main: Campus.
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Stuttgart: K.F. Koehler.
Actor or Homo Sociologicus
Contemporary conceptions of social processes often come across the notion that
these concern individuals only as an external impersonal force. On the other hand,
there is also the belief that the real subhect of human history is the human individual.
Therefore, it is appropriate here to revisit the question of the relationship of human
beings to social reality and the processes taking place within it.
Norbert Elias, in his book The Society of Individuals, claimed that Western
thought was divided into two camps (Elias 1991) around two opposing intellectual
convictions that were difficult to harmonize. The representatives of individualism
consider the starting point of sociological thinking to be human individuals
(a position originating in Max Weber), while the supporters of holism claim that
the starting point must be the collective entity of society itself (the position of Emile
Durkheim). Elias’s crucial question asked how this gap could be bridged to over-
come the contradiction. Elias’ solution to this problem was the concept of
“figurations”.
We should recall that in the late 1950s, Ralf Dahrendorf wrote a study entitled
Homo sociologicus. Although many decades old, this work presents ideas that still
have resonance. Dahrendorf argues that the foundations of several different social
sciences rest upon the unspoken assumption of a simplified human subject. In
economics, there is the idea of homo oeconomisus, according to which the human
being always acts to achieve the maximum profit at minimum cost. In political
science, there is the idea of homo politicus, presenting the individual subject
exclusively as a voter who prefers the political party which best represents the
interests of society. In sociology, the unspoken assumption is the human being as
an entity that plays (enacts, embodies) social roles, which Dahrendorf dubbed homo
sociologicus (Dahrendorf 1964).
The topic of social roles became popular in the 1960s and 1970s through a range
of conceptions from a variety of theoretical backgrounds. The question which
remains is what about social roles can be considered vital and fruitful even from
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_4
26 Actor or Homo Sociologicus
the current point of view. Could a return to the theme of social roles be sensible, and
is it feasible?
Basic Approaches and Thematic Areas
The textbook definition of social role was formulated by Ralph Linton (1964 (1936):
113–114) as a set of “expectations” related to individual behaviour which occupies a
certain “status” (position) in society. “Expectations” defines not only the role but its
status. Status, in turn, is what a person in a certain position in society can expect from
others, who in return can lay claims and impose demands. The term “expectation”
also has a significant connection to the concept of structures, understood as the
principles and rules that arrange and formulate social reality.
As an anthropologist, Linton was interested specifically in communities where
these “expectations”, and thus structures, had not yet acquired definitively codified
form. In contemporary societies, by contrast, many roles, especially in a variety of
organizational systems, have long been defined by organizational regulations,
implicit norms, and even state-imposed laws.
An important contribution to the formulation of the idea of the social roles was
offered by George Herbert Mead (1977: 209–246) and his theory of the human
“Self” uniting two components, “I” and “Me”. “I” is an individual, subjective
component, active and creative. “Me” is an objective, passive component, based
primarily on the attitudes of the social group or society. In Mead’s concept, ulti-
mately part of the theory of symbolic interactionism, and later even of social
constructionism (Berger and Luckmann 1989 [1966]), the learning of social roles
is a major part of the socialization process.
Psychologist and psychiatrist Jacob Levy Moreno helped popularize the concept
of the role in human sciences. Nonetheless, he devoted relatively little attention to
sociological aspects, as his main theme was spontaneous role-playing as a therapeu-
tic tool in psychodrama, i.e. a method of group therapy inspired by theatrical
improvisation (his first major work on this topic was published in 1946 (Moreno
1977)). In sociology, Erving Goffman has been associated with the adjective “dra-
maturgical”, because for Goffman, in both the theatre and in society we are presented
with a series of performed encounters with individuals who engage in enactments to
make an impression. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman 1959)
focuses on dramaturgical aspects in the behaviour of social (explicitly distinguished
from stage) actors using metaphorical concepts like “performance”, “role”, “drama-
tization”, “staging”, “stage set” and “backstage”. The relationship between theatrical
environment and social realities was later addressed by other authors (see e.g. Langer
1980; Eisermann 1991: 19–40).
The textbook interpretation of the issue of roles usually overlooks the elaborated
concept of roles put forth in a joint study by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills,
Character and Social Structure, published in 1953 (Gerth and Mills 1970). Com-
bining influences from Marx, Weber, Freud and Mead, their approach is oriented
Basic Approaches and Thematic Areas 27
towards social psychology. However, the contemporary mainstream of American

sociology was then considerably different as it was dominated by the structural
functionalist concept which endowed reflections on roles with a macro-
sociological view.
If we consider this functionalist perspective, while the term ‘function’ expresses
the contribution of different social components (organizations and subsystems) to
the maintenance of society, the concept of ‘role’ expresses how individuals contrib-
ute to the same task. Essentially, the social role is a conceptual bridge between the
human subject’s individual and social functions. Put more radically—“through roles
the social system empowers individuals and their activities and uses them for its
effective functioning” (Urbánek 1979: 104). A similar perspective can be seen in
Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore, who explain from functionalist positions why
social inequality is everywhere (Davis and Moore 1945). To ensure reproduction and
perpetuation, society must ensure the implementation of certain necessary functions.
This task, however, lies in the hands of individuals operating through organizations
and subsystems to perform the social roles endorsed by them. According to Davis
and Moore, to ensure that the most important social functions are carried out by the
most qualified individuals, society but have an unequal system of remuneration,
wherein individuals who perform the most important tasks receive the highest
payments.
Setting aside the numerous polemical voices justifiably raised against Davis’ and
Moore’s conclusion, the functionalist approach does draw attention to issues of
social distribution and the allocation of roles. Functionalist interpretative models
are associated with the evolutionary concept of functional differentiation, which
analyzes how social entities, institutions, and respective social roles, provide differ-
entiation based on Durkheim’s classical division of labour toward ever greater
complexity and higher specialization. Simultaneously, they deal with how function-
ally differentiated complexes reproduce over time, hold together, and may end in
disintegration, or even explicitly pathological phenomena. Of great importance to
this are the concepts of dysfunction and anomie elaborated by Robert K. Merton
(1968: 193–211). In Lundberg et al. (1963) we see how the concept of “roles” can
relate to dysfunctional and anomic phenomena, an insight used in criminology to
assess patterns of behaviour among thieves, fraudsters or prostitutes. Merton con-
tributed further to the legacy of thought in this field with his concept of “role-set”, a
term interpreted variously by later textbooks. Merton himself laid the groundwork
for these interpretations through claiming that each status in society is bound up with
multiple roles (Merton 1977: 68) and identifying the complements of role relation-
ships attained by a person in certain social positions. Essentially, different people
expect different things from one and the same role. A professional role may be
represented differently by senior executives in relation to subordinates than to the
general public, thus associating the role of “professional” with a range of expecta-
tions that may sometimes diverge significantly. Increasingly, in current sociological
literature the term “repertoire” is used. Among the functionalist social thinkers,
meanwhile, it was predominantly Talcott Parsons for whom the concept of role
emerged as a major category behind social structure, with the application of a
structuralist perspective and the understanding of structure as a network of relation-

ships between actors, via interactive processes that establish formulas of relationship
between acting persons (Parsons 1968: 54). This network is formed by roles,
institutionalized norms and values, where roles are the essential structural units.
In The Social System, Parsons speaks of the system of differentiated roles as a
structure in the strict sense (Parsons 1966 (1951): 114). Sets of roles are created by
institutions, which form higher-order structural units. As the institutions represent
complementary sets of regulations, the norms and roles they produce are important
for the operation of a given system, and hence required and expected of individual
actors. The structure also addresses the question of allocation, i.e. the allocation of
limited supplies among structural units. As roles are critical, some of them vitally so,
the first aspect of allocation is the issue of occupation of roles, i.e. the delegation of
individuals into their necessary roles, along with their share of facilities and rewards.
At the centre of this stands the imperative of consensus, i.e. the functional
integration and stability of the social system ensured by the compliance of individual
actors with established patterns of behaviour (role-expectations) and value orienta-
tions. Achieving equilibrium and stability is ensured by built-in mechanisms of
adaptation and control. Parsons emphasized the conformity of individuals to roles
and the social system, and stressed the need to eliminate deviant phenomena and
conflicts from society.
If Parsons was a key representative of consensus theory in sociology in the 1950s
and 1960s, key to the opposing group, represented by theories of conflict, was the
German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, whose major achievements included the cre-
ation of a typology of social conflicts, with one type situated at the level of social
roles (Dahrendorf 1963: 206). Since Dahrendorf’s list of possible types of conflicts
associated with social roles has become a standard part of various textbooks, this
topic requires only brief mention. The most common instances include the
following:
– Conflicts among roles, stemming from the need for every individual to play
several roles. These diverse roles place significant demands in terms of time
and performance, and may be associated with conflicting expectations
(Dahrendorf 1964: 59).
– Conflicts can arise from inconsistent expectations associated with a particular role
in at least two cases. The first arises from contradictory expectations among
various actors who play differing complementary roles (e.g. the requirements of
senior executives versus subordinates’ ideas (Lundberg et al. 1963)). In the
second, mutually incompatible expectations are issued to a single actor in a single
role (e.g. a woman in a romantic relationship expected to be both voracious and
chaste).
– Finally, conflicts can concern the role and personality of the actor who is to play
it, in the event that the role of the individual does not suit them, or goes against
their conscience (see e.g. Dreitzel 1980; Junker 1971). The reasons for this may
be psychological (the individual feels inadequately equipped for the performance
of the role) or ethical (the role is unacceptable).
Basic Approaches and Thematic Areas 29
Social roles are often associated with the distribution of power: i.e., the ability to
force someone to play some kind of role, assign them a subordinate position, or
alternatively a superior position. The relationship of role and power has become a
subject of specialized studies (Claessens 1970; Schulte-Altedorneburg 1977;
Wiswede 1977: 57–77) usually focussed on three interrelated themes:
– Sanctions. The system of roles is accompanied by a system of punitive sanctions
among the primary mechanisms of social control. These sanctions affect those
who fail to meet expectations, thus demonstrating the power that society has
insofar as other individuals in a society judge individual role performance as
appropriate.
– Hierarchy. The differentiation of roles is related to a stratified hierarchy in which
the holders of different roles are caught in power relations of superiority and
inferiority.
– Power conflicts. Some roles are in short supply and not available to all. Occupa-
tions then become the focus of power struggles, disputes over legitimacy, and
even conflict.
Social roles can provide a sense of identity (in particular if one plays a role that
one likes); yet equally they can be distasteful to the individual, who is led to keep
some distance from their role. Goffman’s concept of “distance from the role”
(Goffman 1961: 106–109; Urbánek 1979: 118–125; Junker 1971: 21–30) does not
mean open rejection, but behaviour that not only indicates to others that the
individual’s personality and identity are not reducible to their role, but helps them
transcend their role. Goffman understands such a distance as explaining how dignity
may survive in conditions where we are forced to play a certain role by necessity.
The German sociologist Uta Gerhardt understood the concept of role in terms of
typification and placed it alongside Alfred Schütz’s phenomenological sociology
(Gerhardt 1971: 155–166). Typification is found mainly in the form of standards,
i.e. typical names for certain manifestations of human behaviour. In this context, the
social role (e.g. the role of shop assistant, conductor, teacher or clerk) can be defined
as a social type and the typical behaviour associated with it. A significant typifying
tool is language, allowing users to incorporate into their personal experience things
and events that they will never come across. As much as typifying schemes make
orientation easier, they may equally be burdened with simplifications, prejudices and
stereotypes, where the names of typical roles become a kind of “label” to describe
not only institutionalized but also deviant behaviour. Lundberg et al. (1963) in this
context added that giving such labels may lead eventually to people starting to act
according to expectations associated with them, i.e. that deviant behaviour could
follow expectations of behaving deviantly (rock stars and artists, for instance).
American sociologist Anselm L. Strauss, in Mirrors and Masks: The Search for
Identity (Strauss 1974 (1959)), raised the question of why people put on “masks” in
contact with others, and what these masks hide. A mask can cover the true face of the
person: it can disguise one’s identity while providing concealment and protection.
Through the metaphor of the mask, it was possible to view the social role as a means
for hiding the individual’s true identity. Czech sociologist Eduard Urbánek (1979:
94–96) in Masks, roles, characters showed that this may be a way to avoid personal
responsibility for behaviour. Noteworthy examples include the minions of
organised-crime systems or dictatorships, where many people do not want to
admit personal guilt for what they have done, and pass on all responsibility to higher
social interests, official duties and superiors, claiming that they only fulfilled orders.
In other words, the responsibility is transferred to those institutions that laid down
the rules for their roles. A special position in the issue of roles is occupied by Ralf
Dahrendorf’s concept of Homo sociologicus, expressed first in his journal article in
1958 (Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Socialpsychologie, Vol. 10., No. 2, 3),
later as a book (Dahrendorf 1964), and subsequently re-published, translated into
many languages, and persistently read and reflected on (e.g. Nixdorf 2011;
Kneidinger 2013).
Dahrendorf’s core issue was that human individuals mostly play social roles
associated with social determination, constraint and pressure to conformity. If they
play these roles in the required manner they are accepted and rewarded. If not, they
are punished, excluded, and may be subject even to penal sanctions (Dahrendorf
1964: 28 ff.). In such a world, where is human freedom, autonomy and creativity?—
a question, it must be said, he left unanswered.
A response to Dahrendorf’s question came from American sociologist Peter
L. Berger in Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Berger reflected
that the world of social roles evoked a kind of enormous prison in which human
behaviour is hampered by socially mandatory roles, intimately linked with all sorts
of mechanisms of social control. Indeed, we are even trapped by our own efforts,
(Berger 1963: 121) as usually our playing a role is not even consciously realized, and
not only do we accept them willingly, but even with enthusiasm, for this is advan-
tageous and rewarding (Urbánek 1979: 114).
Inspired by Helmuth Plessner, Berger nonetheless found ways, even within such
a world, in which the external coercive power of society is not all-powerful, and
people are not powerless enactors of forced roles. Having stated that the world of
roles resembles a prison, Berger immediately reverses his terms with the claim that
human individuals paradoxically cannot demonstrate their freedom outside such a
world. According to Berger (1963), human individuals can demonstrate their free-
dom by manipulating the roles they are to play, or even transforming them
(i.e. modifying the roles’ content and the expectations associated with them). They
can also—as shown by E. Goffman—hold themselves at a distance from their role,
and ultimately reject certain roles, though this tough stance can have serious
ramifications.
In Berger’s approach, freedom is understood primarily as the opportunity for
personal choice and innovative action within the world of roles—a matter under-
standably not only for theoretical speculation, but empirical observation. Louis
A. Zurcher (1983), for instance, tried to analyze the processes through which people
familiarize themselves with roles and alter their content (assimilation, modification,
transformation and dealing with unacceptable roles etc.).
From Berger’s considerations, one can conclude that the problem as posed by
Dahrendorf is rather artificial, in the sense of a deliberate emphasis and
Role Playing: A Concept to Aid in Resolving the Relationship Between. . . 31
absolutization of one aspect: namely, the role’s exertion of pressure on the individ-
ual. Omitted is any sense that this pressure is limited, and that within rules and
requirements there is “space” for individual self-definition. Man is not a simple
machine or automaton to play roles like a gramophone record on a record-player;
there is much more to role-enactment than the simple transcription of role regula-
tions into lived practice. The concept of “playing a social role” reflects a much richer
content, depending not only on the types of expectations associated with the role, but
also on the seriousness of those expectations, the personality of the actor, their
counterparts, and the situation in which it plays out. In the course of playing a
specific social role, in most cases the actor must interconnect and “balance out” a
number of conditions and influences, many of which exceed the content by which
the role is defined.
Role Playing: A Concept to Aid in Resolving the Relationship

Between Individualism and Holism
Though the concept of social role continues to be encountered in sociological

literature today, its most fervent discussions largely petered out during the 1970s
(Haug 1972; Jackson 1972; Joas 1973; Griese et al. 1977; Wiswede 1977; Biddle
1979), because other approaches and topics pushed interest in it to the sidelines. This
change was not merely a temporary shift in the tides of sociological fashion but
reflected a deeper change, namely the rejection of holistic, structural functionalist
ideas of the human individual as a more or less passive and conformist performer of
structural requirements and functional imperatives, and a re-orientation toward the
concept of the human actor as an autonomous, separate and independent being,
thinking and acting on the basis of knowledge, preferences and rationality, following
interests, aims and objectives. Turning away from the human subject as purely
Dahrendorf’s Homo sociologicus, the image of the individual for sociology assumed
a different form: the socially determined and controlled performer of roles was
replaced by a sovereign, independent, thinking and acting actor, gifted with will,
knowledge and creativity.
Anthony Giddens criticized the “orthodox consensus” in Parsons’ work in the
1970s and 1980s, opining that social theory must deal primarily with the issue of
human actors. Judging from Giddens’s discussion of human individuals in his theory
of structuration, we can assume the idea of a competent, knowing and self-confident
actor (Giddens’ “agent”) as an active and relatively autonomous, qualified and
competent executor of social activities. In other words, the sociological subject is
gifted with reflection and self-reflection and the capacity to understand what is done
while doing it (Giddens 1997: 36).
Another approach was presented by the emergence of rational choice theory,
which—as earlier mentioned—propounded the picture of a social individual who
expresses individual preferences and rationally decides to minimize costs and
maximize profits. In this case, individual behaviour is associated with rationality via
economic and mathematical methods. Rational-choice theory mainly featured in the
interdisciplinary approach in American sociology through James S. Coleman (1994),
in France through Raymond Boudon (1980), and in Germany through Hartmut
Esser (1993).
Pierre Bourdieu’s elaboration of this approach has gained and retained great
popularity. According to Bourdieu, social agents are equipped with systematically
structured dispositions for their practice and their thinking about it. This set of
dispositions (inclinations) to seeing, thinking and behaving in society Bourdieu
(1998) calls habitus. Habitus are the schemes of perception, thought and action
common to all members of the same group or class.
Interest within the professional community was also stimulated by Bruno Latour
(1996), who in his Actor-Network Theory (ANT) showed that networks of interac-
tions can activate not only people but also certain non-human, non-living objects.
Another very hotly discussed topic is personal identity, constituted through narrative
approaches assuming that a major formative factor of identity is the means through
which people become the subject of their own story (Ricoeur 1991). A further
notable contribution is the theory of the creative action by Hans Joas (1992),
which addresses human creative abilities enabling human agents to create and
change social reality, and in addition there is the theory of performativity by Jeffrey
Alexander (2006), which—inspired by the theatre—lays emphasis on publicly
staged action while distancing itself from earlier theories of social roles. Finally,
emphasis is increasingly placed on human emotions in sociological research (Turner
and Stets 2005), and ambitious demands for the interpretation of human behaviour
have led to increased intellectual contact with disciplines outside sociology, building
on natural-scientific bases such as ethology, socio-biology and evolutionary
psychology.
As this extensive list of issues makes clear, the theme of roles was significantly
pushed away from the centre of attention: now, the question is whether it is
worthwhile coming back to, and if so, how. It is our contention that specific reasons
exist for re-considering it, mainly because the playing of social roles could be useful
from a theoretical standpoint as it allows us to link the two poles of sociological
thinking, individualism and holism.
In the current theoretical efforts toward overcoming this conflict, two basic
strategies have been identified (Šubrt 2015: 13–14). The first is based on postulating
a third aspect between the individual and society as a lynchpin to connect both poles.
The second strategy is the effort to bring the two poles—individual and collective—
as near together as possible and put them into a single explanatory framework so that
they are alternated in the explanation of social actions.
The first approach can be found in Georg Simmel, for whom the intermediary
“linkage” was the concept of Wechselwirkung (Simmel 1970: 27), i.e. interaction, or
in Norbert Elias with his concept figuration, understood as a mesh of interpersonal
relationships (Elias 1992). A typical example of taking the second approach is
Anthony Giddens (1997 [1984]) and his theory of structuration. These two strategies
References 33
are not as different from each other as they might appear; on the contrary, their
various points of overlap are complementary.
Returning to the issue of roles brings into focus their major explanatory potential,
in moving individualism and holism as close as possible to each other and
interconnecting them in a convincing way, for overcoming the gulf between two
essential directions of sociological thinking.
To achieve this, we must first distinguish the concept of “social role” from
“playing a social role”, which (as already mentioned) is a concept more complex
than social role itself. As an action, role playing encompasses a very complex reality,
which may involve combining Parsons’ AGIL-scheme with Durkheim’s concept of
‘homo duplex’. Role-playing relates to a number of factors, including the individual
mastery of a role; the personal qualities and abilities brought to it; self-centred
interests achieved through playing; how fellows react and play their roles, and
finally the context in which the role unfolds. Consequently, role-playing is signifi-
cantly greater than the sets of rules, regulations and standards characterizing the role
itself. The actor of a social role faces varying requirements and expectations and
must act to bring them into correspondence
In conclusion, we can therefore assume that “social role playing” reflects the
sought-after “third” element to connect the individual and society, and in conjunc-
tion with this, human behaviour and social structure. Likewise, it is the element that
brings the opposing poles of holistic / individualistic theory maximally towards each
other, because in playing the role we see both individuality and the interests of the
community. Role playing aligns individual goals, wishes and preferences with the
societal demands, structural pressures and functional imperatives of ongoing social
processes. And in addition, role playing figuratively expresses a “transmission”
between the theoretical oppositions of the individual and society. It seems that the
sociological theme of roles contains untapped potential. and merits our attention.
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The Systems Theory and Functionally
Differentiated Society
The theory of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann represents a particular

approach to the issue of social evolution, social development, and its ongoing
processes. The author avoids the issue of human actors by not considering human
individuals as parts of social systems, but as their environment. The processes which
he focuses on from his systemic perspective, are the processes of reproduction and
the evolutionary change of social systems. Since in later chapters we will encounter
Luhmann’s idea of the consequences of modernisation processes, we will now
devote some attention to this author.
For the Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998), modern society is a society functionally
differentiated. This means besides other things that it is made up of
non-homogeneous but equivalent parts with relatively separate characters, referred
to as societal subsystems (Teilsysteme, sub-systems, systems within systems).
Luhmann nowhere gave any comprehensive list of these subsystems, although it is
clear that their number exceeds at least a dozen. These include, in particular,
economy, politics, law, army, science, art, religion, mass media, education, health,
sports, family and intimate relationships. Societal systems are self-referential, which
means that while consisting s elements, operations and structures they refer to
themselves. A prerequisite for this “self-reference” is the ability of the system to
observe and describe itself, to provide self-evidence. In contradiction to Parsons’
concept of systems, which are open (in the form of Input / Output) to their
surroundings, Luhmann (1984: 254; 1997: 92) emphasizes the self-reference of
social systems, their self-referentiality and operative closure (selbstreferentiele
Geschlossenheit, operative Geschlossenheit); he moves the focus of his reflections
from open to operationally closed systems. Self-referential closure, however, cannot
be considered a form of solipsism or autism. Even though systems in their construc-
tion and reproduction are closed, it does not mean that they cannot and do not create
contact with their environment; on the contrary, without these contacts, the dynamics
of operationally closed systems would come to an end. For instance, the university as
a system can exist only against a background of a functioning economy, political and
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_5
38 The Systems Theory and Functionally Differentiated Society
legal system, etc. The outside world then is certainly not an insignificant residual
category, but on the contrary: for systems, the relation to their surroundings is
constitutive and they can continue in their existence only in distinction from it.
First of all, it is important that each system belongs only to its own functional
specialization in a specific area of action that takes place in it (economic behaviour is
something other than religion or intimate relations, etc.; to each of these types of
behaviour an distinctive significance is attributed and each has a separate goal). Each
subsystem contributes, due to its functional specialization, in a different way. All are
necessary for societal reproduction and it can be said even irreplaceable if society is
to retain its character.
The mutual unity of these subsystems is formed by relationships based on a
combination of their functional closure, and at the same time their openness towards
the environment. This means that modern society represents a differentiated unity,
i.e. a whole consisting of functionally dependent (i.e. on the functions of other
dependent systems) and at the same time autonomous partial systems. Autonomy
and dependence are here in a mutually potentiated, graduated ratio; even though
partial systems have relative independence, the collapse of one can have fatal
consequences for the societal system as a whole.
Media and Communication
The condition of the existence of social systems is communication. For this reason,
systems create mechanisms to stabilize communication processes. Luhmann in this
context (inspired by Parsons) uses the concept of symbolically generalized commu-
nication media, which, however, cannot be narrowed down to commonly understood
means of mass communication, as they concern such media such as power, money,
law, faith, or knowledge. Luhmann considers the differentiation of individual com-
munication areas, such as politics, economy, law, religion, science, but also educa-
tion, art, or intimate relationships, as one of the main features of the social evolution,
along with the appropriate communication media.
The communication mediated by these media within the individual subsystems
always takes place in the framework of a certain binary code (e.g. in the political
system: to have power–not to have power, in the economic system: payment–non-
payment, in the legal system: law–injustice, in science: truth–untruth, in religion:
immanence–transcendence). The sense that is communicated within the scope of the
system is thus defined by two poles of binary code, which create boundaries and
determine its horizon, i.e. they predetermine for actors what shall occur (the boxer
knows that his job is to knock down the opponent and not to sign a contract for
delivery with him).
Thanks to these binary codes, which express a certain type of leading difference,
sub-system-specific semantics are created, in which the autonomy of individual
sub-systems is based on the application of its systematic leading difference. For
example, the differentiation of the economy as an autonomous societal sub-system
Resonance and Filtration 39
begins with the establishment of a symbolically generalized communication

medium—money (Luhmann 1988). Unit acts are payments, the binary code is
payment / non-payment, language is represented by prices, which are conditioned
and reconditioned by payments.
As a whole, the operational logic of individual systems is narrowed and
one-sided, based on the highly specialized binary code that controls the operations
in the respective system. The problem lies in the fact that each sub-system, on the
basis of its own observations, creates a picture of society itself (what the legal system
observes, for example, is nothing other than society, but society seen through the
application of the distinction law–lawlessness). As a result of accepted binary
schematisations, therefore, individual systems can only see what their
schematisations allow them to see. The unified picture of society fragments into
these partial observations and, instead of a centrally conceived world, a multi-centric
world emerges (Luhmann 1984: 284).
Resonance and Filtration
From the perspective of Luhmann’s systems theory, nature can be viewed as

physical, chemical and biological systems and connections, the existence of which
is a precondition for the functioning of the social system. As is well known, this does
not prevent society not only from interfering in nature but disrupting it. What is
today described as an ecological problem is, from the systems theory point of view,
examined as a problem of the relation of the societal system to its natural environ-
ment, for which it is characteristic that many societal sub-systems operate in the
natural environment with indifference to the consequences of their activities. This
leads to the endangering of the reproductive capabilities of modern society not just
through accidents, but via fundamental structural flaws in system structures.
The ways individual social sub-systems are able to perceive ecological threats
and risks are linked with the expression “resonance”. He concludes that the problem
of contemporary functional differentiation is too little resonance to what is taking
place in the surrounding systems. If in the economic system the processing of
information is bound to prices, everything is “filtered” by this language; the econ-
omy cannot react to breakdowns that cannot be expressed in its language. However,
this limitation is not necessarily just a disadvantage, for it guarantees that if a
problem is expressed in prices, then it will be processed (Luhmann 1986: 122 ff.).
Very much like the economic subsystem, other sub-systems perceive the world
around them selectively, through their respective codes and programmes. As a result,
there may be a variety of interacting effects between the individual subsystems that
can soften the resonance, but they can also disproportionately increase it and thus
cause a variety of social breakdowns. Within the societal system, therefore paradox-
ically not only too little resonance can be created, but even too much.
Luhmann shows that it can certainly not be taken for granted that conditions and
changes in the environment find adequate resonance in society. On the contrary,
socio-cultural evolution was clearly based on the fact that society as a relatively
closed system did not react to its environment too much (Luhmann 1986: 42). The
threat or the destruction of nature, as Luhmann points out, is socially relevant only if
communicated, which means if it is the subject of a communication event. Animals
can die, people can suffer from illness, life conditions may get worse, but it does not
have “any social effects” as long as it becomes the subject of communication
(Luhmann 1986: 63). It also follows from the nature of modern society that such
communication is increasingly problematic due to the proliferation of media and
codes.
Of course, it can be considered that the effects of negative environmental impacts
may be latent, “behind the back” of the communication process, and that in certain
cases they may even acquire the apocalyptic form of devastating environmental
disasters. However, Luhmann insists that the social impacts of environmental
problems (externalities of social operation) can only be monitored and processed
according to the relevant binary codes of individual societal sub-systems (Luhmann
1986: 218). Appeals to morality and moral sentiments, which are often formulated in
discussions about environmental problems, Luhmann considered to be pointless
fraudulence. The widespread tendency to enforce moral responsibility for the situ-
ation was, from his point of view, merely a “gesture of despair” (Luhmann 1986:
133), usually ending with the limits what the economic system is capable of
perceiving and safeguarding.
Problematic Order
Despite the self-referential communication closure of individual social sub-systems,

it cannot be said that these sub-systems operate only in their own world, independent
of each other, but on the contrary, there are various structural links between them
(strukturelle Kopplungen). At the same time, however, self-referential closure means
that the modern society can no longer represent a substantially graspable unity; it is
no longer possible to consider sub-system functions from the perspective of the
whole (as, for example, it was for Parsons).
The structural links between individual systems are contingent products of
sub-system co-evolution; for example, the connection of policy and economy is
through the financing of policy from tax revenue; the link of the economy to
scientific research is represented, for example, by the financing of certain research
projects. In the second of these two examples it can be documented how such an
evolutionary adaptation of two systems might look: The economic area realises that
technology-based investment arising from the latest scientific knowledge is valuable,
and therefore provides science with the resources for such targeted research
programmes. In this way in the field of the scientific research certain themes are
preferred and get a special chance for communication (coded in this area through the
binary oppositions true–false). Finally, linked economic interests have a short-term
impact even on the choice of scientific areas studied, and both sub-systems come into
References 41
permanent synchronization by means of scientific financing. This mode ensures that

both areas of communication—no matter how self-referentially closed—mutually
supply stimulus that aims at the longer-range rather than just episodic taking into
consideration of the interests of the respective sub-systems (Schimank 2000: 130).
According to Luhmann, the character of contemporary society is quite simply
created by the existence next to each other of many different sub-systems, among
which arise various structural links; however, to think of some (whole) system
integration in in terms of the coordination or management of this complex network
from a control centre is pointless and unjustified.
One problem seems especially that the operations of one system can land other
systems with difficult-to-solve or even unsolvable problems. This is particularly true
if one sub-system cannot produce results—in terms of quantity or quality—on which
a second sub-system is dependent (e.g. the education system does not provide
sufficient numbers of qualified individuals for the economy or science). A second
case is where one system creates externalities with a negative impact on others (for
example, the military system can drain financial resources that are then lacking in
education, culture, or health). Both types of problem are in principle chronic
weaknesses of self-reference based on binary coding, and contemporary society
can consider it a success if none of the two mentioned cases exceeds tolerable limits.
However, a mechanism to prevent such things happening in the future, according to
Luhmann, does not exist. While recent development may have been quite positive,
no guarantees for the future can be made. Generally speaking, systemic differenti-
ation represents a successful strategy of modern life that has brought many commu-
nication benefits, but it has problematic consequences as well. These include not
only very limited options for controlling the individual (mutually dependent) func-
tional subsystems in their interaction with each other, or the question of the relation
of these systems to their environment, but above all the absence of integration
mechanisms. Society, in attempting to respond “as a society” to these problems, is
hindered by the principles of functional differentiation; it can respond, but only in a
partial, system-specific way. The logical consequence of this argumentation leads to
the question: is the functionally differentiated system able to start solving its
problems by itself? Luhmann himself does not explicitly formulate such a question,
let alone look for a systematic answer. In his view the future remains in principle
open to all sorts of possibilities, and there are no natural relations for evolutionary
development to aim at.
References
Luhmann, N. (1984). Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie (Social systems:
Outline of a general theory). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Luhmann, N. (1986). Ökologische Kommunikation: Kann die moderne Gesellschaft sich auf
ökologische Gefährdungen einstellen? (Ecological communication: Can modern society
adapt to ecological threats?). Opladen: Westdeutscher.
Luhmann, N. (1988). Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft (The economy of society). Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp.
Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Theory of society). Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp.
Schimank, U. (2000). Ökologische Gefährdungen, Anspruchsinflationen und
Exklusionsverkettungen—Niklas Luhmanns Beobachtung der Folgeprogleme funktionaler
Differenzierung (Ecological hazards, claims inflation and thechaining of exclusion—Niklas
Luhmann’s observation on the subsequent problems of functional differentiation). In
U. Schimank & U. Volkmann (Eds.), Soziologische Gegenwartsdiagnosen I (Contemporary
sociological diagnoses) (pp. 141). Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Time as a Sociological Problem
Social processes occur over time and are related to the problems of memory and
identity, the topics dealt with in the next section of this book. The topic of time was
overlooked in sociology for a long time, although hardly completely. The issue was
considered by a number of the great figures of sociological thinking (Weber,
Durkheim, among others.). Philosophical conceptions (H. Bergson, E. Husserl,
M. Heidegger, and A. N. Whitehead) and discoveries in physics (notably Einstein’s
special and general theory of relativity) and other sciences also had their influence.
However, for many decades the question of time was marginal as a theme, outside
the mainstream of sociological research. The situation changed only in the
mid-1970s, when interest in it grew, and this interest continued over the next two
decades. Research in this area shows that the problem of time is “transversal”,
relating to various levels and areas of theoretical thinking and empirical sociological
research. Therein lies the problem: very often time is present only as a hidden, poorly
conceived, assumption. Approaches to the investigation of time in sociology are so
diverse that some commentators talk about a ‘conceptual labyrinth’. This confusion
over theoretical approaches can be illustrated by means of a short review of the
significant personalities of sociological thinking to have been involved in discus-
sions on time.
In his work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–1905) Max
Weber focused attention on the impact that the rational use of time and working time
organization had on the development of capitalism. Weber gave detailed consider-
ation to English Puritanism, particularly to the views of Richard Baxter, for whom
wasted time was the first and in principle deepest of all sins. In Protestant asceticism
time was seen as too short and precious to be wasted in fun, idle talk, luxury, or even
lengthy sleep; this was all perceived as morally deplorable (Weber 2002
(1904–1905)). For Weber, such a historically new attitude to time was one of the
major heralds of what he brands “the Spirit of Capitalism”.
Weber’s contemporary, Emile Durkheim, notes that time, similar to space, cause
or complex, is one of the categories that lie at the base of human thinking and
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_6
44 Time as a Sociological Problem
dominate our intellectual life. Such categories, according to Durkheim, have a social
origin, abstracted from specific forms of human coexistence. Society, says Durk-
heim, assumes conscious organization, or “classification”. Cooperation in achieving
common goals is possible only when participants are in relationships whose essence
can be expressed by basic categories, which are deduced from the collective life of
people and exhibit different social forms or social aspects. Durkheim specifically
characterizes time as a “reflection of the rhythms of collective life” (Durkheim 1995
(1912)).
George Herbert Mead originated a conception of time in which emergence and
new events (respectively novelty) play an important role. Mead, leaning on the
philosopher A.N. Whitehead, talks about events not as components of time flow,
but what time directly creates, so that every emerging event constitutes a new
present, from which not only is all the past reorganized but the future course of
events anticipated (Mead and Morris 1967: 232). Alfred Schütz, with phenomeno-
logical sociology, followed Edmund Husserl, particularly in his analysis of internal
time consciousness (Schütz 1960: 8). For Schütz, the whole approach to human
behaviour, its meaning and the whole constitution of social reality itself, is based on
assumptions related to time.
Pitirim A. Sorokin with R.K. Merton (1937), published in the American Journal
of Sociology an essay called Social Time: A Methodological and Functional Anal-
ysis (Sorokin and Merton 1937). To the present day this is one of the most frequently
quoted texts about time in sociology. The authors conclude that most social scientists
silently share the assumption that the astronomical concept of time can be used for
research in the social sector. This astronomical time is purely quantitative, uniform,
continuous and arbitrarily divisible. Sorokin and Merton by contrast try to usher in a
new analytical tool which they call social time (Sorokin later speaks of socio-cultural
time (Sorokin 1964b (1943): 171, 172)). Social time is qualitative, does not flow
evenly, and is not divisible at will. Georges Gurvitch, the author of the book La
multiplicité des temps sociaux (1963 (Gurvitch 1964)), not only asserts Sorokin’s
view that there exists a specific social time alongside time physical, economic,
biological or psychological, but in addition advocates the view that there is not
one social time but a plurality—a large number of varying social times.
Claude Lévi-Strauss is known for his typology of “hot” and “cold” societies
(Lévi-Strauss 1971: 322). The criterion here is that time, reflected in both types of
societies differently, also has different meanings. Hot societies are those with a
conception of historical time that may be compared to a huge binder, in which
historical events are filed in order never to be deleted (i.e. societies that internalize
their historicity). Cold societies are those whose basic cognitive systems try to
remain static and indifferent towards changes; these are societies that aspire not to
take into account historicity, but to ignore it deliberately and externalize it as
something that is foreign to them.
Social Time 45
Social Time
As mentioned, the concept of social time emerged when Pitirim A. Sorokin and
Robert K. Merton published an essay entitled Social Time: A Methodological and
Functional Analysis (Sorokin and Merton 1937).
P. A. Sorokin saw several reasons to postulate social (or sociocultural) time. He
had previously pointed out that there is a difference between space in the geograph-
ical sense, and social space. In his work the System of sociology he observes that as a
geographical map of the country is not the same as a socio-political map, so a
natural-geographic space is not the same as a social space (Sorokin 1993 (1920)).
Afterwards in Social mobility he elaborated the idea, in the context of social
stratification and mobility, of defining social space as a space in which social
positions are found, among which are spatial distances (Sorokin 1964a (1927)).
The movement of an individual, while maintaining the same status, is referred to as
horizontal mobility; movement accompanied with a change of status is called
vertical mobility.
Another stimulus for Sorokin was Émile Durkheim. Durkheim (1995 [1912])
speaks of time as a category, and in this respect develops via a certain philosophical
tradition. He was influenced by Aristotle and Kant, by the philosophical concept of
categories and ideas about what role they play in our thinking. However, Durkheim
makes his concept of categories significantly more sociological. He believes that all
categories have a social origin, because their contents are of a social nature, and there
are various aspects of social existence. The author thus makes it clear that the basis of
the time category is the rhythm of collective life and the basis of the category ‘space’
is the space occupied by society. From this point of view, relationships expressed by
these categories can be realized only within society and through its existence
(Durkheim 1995 (1912): 488 ff).
In terms of the theory of knowledge therefore, time is one of the main categories
of thought, abstracted from the rhythms of collective life, its collective activities and
their repetition. From the ontological point of view the basis for the construction of
this category (and many other categories as well) is society itself (the rhythms that
take place within it, that is). The Durkheimian concept was freely followed by
Norbert Elias in the book Über die Zeit (Elias 1988) at the end of the 1980s. For
Elias, as well as for Durkheim, time is a social structure. According to Elias, what is
interesting above all is that humankind has the tendency to project specifically
human—socially constructed—concepts of time onto non-human reality, using a
by nature social tool as a measure and explanatory principle of natural or cosmic
events, and in so doing imposing on nature and the universe its own concept of time.
Another important inspiration for the development of the concept of social time
was the philosophy of Henri Bergson, who in his work Time and Free Will (Bergson
1994 (1889)) distinguished between “internal” qualitative time, called duration (la
durée), and “external” quantitative time, measurable on the clock. Durée indicates
emergence; it is not a question of time, but rather time forms by the constant influx of
the new. Durkheim’s pupils Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss were greatly influenced
by this idea, although there was a substantial shift in the meaning, because the
concept of durée is not utilised for the description of internal time experience, to
express the qualitative nature of the social flow of time. Hubert and Mauss, who dealt
with the problem of time in religion and magic (Hubert and Mauss 1929 (1905)),
note that it consists of non-identical elements. It is discontinuous, not flowing evenly
but with “stops” in its flow where critical data interrupt its continuity. The individual
elements of time are not indifferent to what takes place within them; on the contrary
there are active qualities whose presence or absence makes given periods similar or
different. The rhythm of sacred and secular periods, for instance, is very different
from any purely mathematical division of time.
In addition to this, other sciences had an influence. Sorokin and Merton in their
article point out that they took into account other sciences in their theory of multiple
times. The specific nature of time has been considered in terms of economic
development and economic theory (A. Marshall, Böhm-Bawerk) and in psychology
(W. James), and in addition there is the concept of physiological time which is not
uniform and slows down in biological organisms. Alexis Carrel dealt with the
problem of physiological time in the 1930s (Carrel 1948), following up the 1st
World War discovery of his colleague Pierre Lecomte du Noüy that young people
heal faster than older ones: a 20 cm2 wound in a 10 year old child will heal over
about 20 days, in persons aged 20 years over 31 days, in 30-year-olds over 41 days;
for a 40-year-old it takes 55 days, for a 50-year-old, 78 days, and at 60 years
100 days are required. On the basis of these findings a curve of biological time
was constructed which slows down through aging as physical time continues.
Sorokin and Merton believed that as a variety of times existed—astronomical
time, economic time, psychological time, biological time, etc.—it could be expected
that there was also a social time that differs from other types of time, and in terms of
sociology this would be the most important time.
Finally, there is without question inspiration from Einstein’s theory of relativity
which, although directly encountered in Sorokin and Merton, comes via the discus-
sions of other authors, in particular the dilation (stretching, deceleration) of time. In
the special theory of relativity, dilation is considered a physical phenomenon
observable in objects moving at high speed (between two moving observers dilation
is mutual, i.e. each sees the other’s clock as slower). Within the general theory of
relativity dilation is understood as a consequence of the gravitational field,
manifested so that the clock located closer to the centre of gravitation is slower
than clocks distant from the centre of gravitation. In the social sciences this leads
straightforwardly to the argument that if there is an uneven flow of time in physical
phenomena, something similar can be expected in social reality.
Qualitative Discontinuous Time 47
Qualitative Discontinuous Time
Sorokin and Merton distinguish between social time and astronomical time. Astro-
nomical time is uniform, homogeneous, purely quantitative and continuous. Social
time cannot be so characterized; there are days dedicated to specific functions (such
as market days), days off, time periods with specific qualities due to the activities,
meanings and associations attached to them, and critical data that interrupt time’s
passing. Social time is qualitative in nature, does not flow evenly and is not freely
divisible (Sorokin and Merton 1937: 621–623).
It has been suggested that this concept bears traces of the influence of Durkheim
(1995 [1912]). Sorokin and Merton contest the view that the division of time is
determined by astronomical phenomena. They document the independence of social
time from astronomical time, for instance by the fact that the week is not the result of
dividing lunar phases, as in various cultures it has had a different duration: four, five,
six, but also eight and ten; the 7-day week comes from the Hebrew tribes (Sorokin
and Merton 1937: 624–625). According to Sorokin and Merton, a common feature
majority of weeks is their association with a market. Time units have always been
associated with the periodic observation of social events, and not the observation of
“celestial bodies”. An example of this is the discrepancy between the lunar move-
ment and the length of calendar months. Sorokin and Merton note Mommsen’s
statement that the calendar system of the ancient Romans hardly took into account
lunar movements. This disregard for lunar movements in the determination of the
month remains. Unequal periods of astronomical time are socially balanced. The
sameness of months is a matter of convention, not an astronomical one. Social
duration is not identical with the astronomical duration.
Time data and measurements are different in different societies as a reflection of
the differing social and cultural context in which they are understood and applied.
The counting of time is significantly dependent on the organization and functions of
individual societies and groups. Systems of time-keeping, time data and measure-
ments are numerous and varied. Ways of life, customs, traditions, economic and
cultural activities, technology, knowledge and religion determine which phenomena
represent the turning of a season, month or other time unit. In traditional societies,
we meet with expressions referring to time derived from daily activities, such as in
Madagascar the “cooking of rice”, meaning about half an hour, and the “frying of
locusts” expressing a mere moment.
According to Sorokin and Merton, social time represents the change or movement
of social phenomenon in relation to other phenomena taken as reference points, a
habit reflected in our daily lives when we use expressions like “shortly after the war,”
“we will meet after the show,” “when XY became president.” Similarly, we give
names durations of time—“per semester”, “a working day”, “during Easter” without
making reference to astronomical phenomena (Sorokin and Merton 1937: 618, 619).
Time is thus not continuous. Its periods have specific qualities thanks to the
meanings and associations of the activities performed in them. Periods of social
time absent of significant social activity pass without a trace. Without social rele-
vance there is hiatus.
The discontinuity of social time is based on so-called critical data, which may
include various favourable and unfavourable days, as understood by various reli-
gious systems, and alongside this, the pars pro toto principle (Nilsson) (Sorokin and
Merton 1937: 624), an example of which is the word ‘day’, which originally meant
sunshine in contrast to night, and only later became applied to all twenty-four hours,
meaning day and night together. The concept of day was related to the whole,
because at nighttime nothing happened.
The social function of keeping and marking time is the necessary coordination of
social activities. Local time systems are many and various, depending on the
individual groups or communities. With the development of interaction among
groups, and especially through urbanization and social differentiation, such time
systems become inadequate as local specifics lapse and are overcome. Synchroni-
zation and coordination require a broadly valid reference phenomenon, which
through interaction becomes increasingly abstract, i.e. separated from actual social
events. Thus astronomical phenomena are reflected in conventionalised time con-
tinua. As a substitute for multidimensional social time there is time ‘Esperanto’—
one-dimensional astronomical time (Sorokin and Merton 1937: 628).
As one-dimensional astronomical time—as a social invention—had replaced the
multidimensional social time, in order to facilitate and enrich research in the area of
social dynamics Sorokin and Merton had to work to re-establish social time, at least
as an auxiliary concept to contribute to a better understanding of social periodicity.
Studies based on astronomical criteria can fail because social phenomena contain
“symbolic” rather than “empirical” uniformity or unevenness, so where we find a
lack of periodicity in astronomical time, we may find it in social time (Sorokin and
Merton 1937: 628).
In 1943, P. A. Sorokin followed up these ideas in the book Sociocultural
Causality, Space, Time, where he opposes “socio-cultural” time to the “metaphys-
ical” time corresponding with classical mechanics deriving from Newton. This
perspectival modification was influenced by Sorokin’s pivot towards cultural sys-
tems, but probably also to a certain extent by the critical response of ethnologist
Georges Devereux (1938) to Merton and Sorokin’s previous essay. Devereux
criticized both authors, among other things, for not confronting social time with
astronomical, or physical time, but with metaphysical time. Physical (as well as
social) time is operational because it is associated with certain events, while meta-
physical time in its strict version is independent of any incidents. From 1943,
Sorokin criticised the adoption of scientific methods in sociology and on the
inadequacy of mathematical time for describing socio-cultural phenomena. Simply
put, if society itself does not work with a fully quantitative system of time, related
social phenomena cannot be adequately scientifically grasped by the exclusive use of
the quantitative time concept.
Socio-cultural time, which Sorokin postulates, is distinguished by the following
features:
Confusing Number of Social Times 49
• Duration, synchronization, sequencing and changing of socio-cultural phenom-

ena are recorded and measured by reference to other socio-cultural phenomena
(e.g. “... it happened when XY entered the President’s Office”).
• It does not flow evenly.
• It has moments rich in events, while others are empty.
• It is not infinitely divisible (houses can be rented for a year or month, hardly for
an hour or less).
• It is “entirely” qualitative.
• It is not an empty flow, but effective; it is significant, creative, modifying and
transforming power (“time is money”).
• It is internally structured (Sorokin 1964b (1943): 171, 172).
The basic socio-cultural functions of time, according to Sorokin, are: (1) mutual
synchronization, coordination and timing of successions (sequential timing) of
socio-cultural phenomena, (2) the organization of the time system for socio-cultural
continuity and orientation in the endless flow of time, (3) reflection of the pulsations
of socio-cultural systems and at the same time facilitation of this pulsation or the
rhythm necessary for the life and functioning of the socio-cultural system (Sorokin
1964b (1943): 172).
In traditional societies, according to Sorokin, time is “social” in its nature; but
what about modern societies? Did mathematical time push out socio-cultural time?
Does our socio-cultural time now match the maths? Sorokin observes that through
historical development recording of time made increasing reference to the move-
ments of celestial bodies, then to the rotation of the Earth. In parallel, the measure-
ment of time became less qualitative and more quantitative: the “quantitization” and
“mathematization” of time. However, to deduce that in modern societies there is no
difference between socio-cultural and mathematical time, and that there is only one
all-purpose mathematical time would, according to Sorokin, be premature for several
reasons: (1) the mentioned trend has not been completely accomplished, (2) socio-
cultural time still exists next to mathematical time and is as lively as ever, (3) math-
ematical time itself is the result of the diversity of socio-cultural time broken down
by socio-cultural circumstances expanding the network of interacting societies
(Sorokin 1964b (1943): 187).
Confusing Number of Social Times
Another shift in the understanding of social time is presented by Georges Gurvitch in

La multiplicité des temps sociaux (Gurvitch 1964 (1963)). Gurvitch’s theories
emerged from the traditions of French thought but attempted to to supercede them.
At the time Durkheim and his successors had overwhelmingly held a unitary concept
of social time, corresponding to the time of society as a whole, which Durkheim
called “total time”. The diversity and heterogeneity of social times was pointed out
by M. Halbwachs (2009 [1950]), but he still assumed their unification on the basis of
“total time”. Gurvitch, however, definitively destroyed this consensus.
The name of his work, La multiplicité des temps sociaux, suggests the pluralism
or multiplicity of social times. Gurvitch, like Parsons or Sorokin, laboured to
construct a large theoretical system. Social reality in his concept is distinguished
by multidimensionality and structure associated with a number of ‘deep’ levels, and
by instability and volatility. He distinguished ten such levels, from the morpholog-
ical surface to collective mentalities, hence the designation of this sociology as
“deep”, Gurvitch’s multiple theory is grounded in the fact that social life in its
various forms flows at extremely different and frequently diverging rates, which
often conflict. Real existence belongs only to individual specific times, not to time in
the monistic sense. Every society, social class, individual group, micro social
phenomenon, every deep level of social reality, and any social activity (mythical,
religious, magical, economic, technical, legal, political, cognitive, moral or educa-
tional) tends to a time of its own (Gurvitch 1964 (1963)). Gurvitch’s concept of
social time falls into a confusing welter of social times, which can be broken down
into several general types. On the basis of criteria such as duration, method of
pulsation and rhythm, the author distinguished eight types of social time: (1) time
of long duration and slow decline, (2) misleading (deceptive) time, (3) irregular
(erratic) time, (4) cyclical time, (5) retardant time, (6) alternating time, (7) time
overtaking itself, (8) explosive time. Gurvitch thus shifted research in this area
towards the individual partial components of social reality, although his attempt
was questioned and criticized as speculative. To refine on the above headings:
1. Time of long duration and slow decline is characterized by a relatively distant but
dominating past reflected in the present and future. It is “the most continual”
social time, particularly evident at ecological, morphological and demographic
levels. At this level we find family relationship groups, farmers as a social class,
and patriarchal society as a type of unified society.
2. Misleading (deceptive) time gives rise to the appearance of long duration and
slow movement which conceals the potential for sudden and unexpected crises as
slow movement may be unexpectedly disturbed by a “flurry of discontinuity” in
the form of a sharp crisis or implosion. It is the social time of major cities, passive
communities, and public policy, also reflected in global societies which may be
considered charismatic theocracies, like ancient Egypt, China, or India.
3. Erratic time is based on irregular cycles and rhythms, characterized by uncer-
tainty and randomness. The present predominates over the past and future and has
difficulty blending with them. This time expresses itself on the micro-social level
in terms of roles and positions, and in global societies in phases of transition.
4. In cyclical time the past, present and future project into each other, and emphasis
on this continuous cyclic course weakens the sense of randomness. Prevailing in
mystical and ecstatic groups, churches, sects, and certain archaic societies,
mythology plays an important role, mixed with religion and magic.
Weaknesses and Questionable Assumptions 51
5. Retardant time is characterized by lags, found in such groups as nobility, closed

groups, exclusive corporate groupings and privileged professions. In terms of
global society this would be represented by feudal society.
6. In alternating time, progress and backwardness, past and future, enter into
competition, with uncertain outcome, although discontinuity is stronger than
continuity. It is a time of models, rules and characters such as were encountered
during early capitalism and Enlightened Absolutism. Time that overtakes itself
there is such an acceleration that the future becomes the present, which brings
innovation and decision, collective upheaval and the appearance of masses.
7. Explosive time means maximum discontinuity, associated with the vigorous
beginnings of new future—of collective acts and creative community (Gurvitch
1963: 175; 1964 (1963): 31–33).
According to Gurvitch, no society, social class or structured group (local, pro-
fessional, family, etc.) can escape trying to control its social times, but this may not
be achieved. Each social unit, class, group, micro social element, relationship,
activity, etc. has its own time tendency, while society aims to unify this plurality.
Efforts to establish cohesion and coordination lead to a gradation of social times, in
which individual social structures vie for domination in a flux of structuring,
destructuring and restructuring, leading to collisions, and ultimately even
“explosions”.
Weaknesses and Questionable Assumptions
The concept of social time still appears in specialized texts to the present day, though
somewhat less frequently. Sorokin and Merton, despite citation in many studies
concerning time in the context of social sciences (for example Lauer 1981; Sue
1994), failed to enable the significant shift in research relating to the concept of
social time that they advocated, i.e. as a theoretical and methodological tool assisting
a deeper understanding of social reality with regard to periodicity. Many studies do
examine the concept of time in pre-modern societies and cultures from an anthro-
pological or historical perspective (see Gell 1992), but these usually manage without
the concept of social time, assuming time “without attribute”.
So far, we have followed a reasoning about social time derived from Durkheim to
Sorokin, and on to Gurvitch. For completeness, it should be noted that there are other
conceptions of time in sociology, outside the concept of social time. The approach of
Alfred Schütz (1960), based on Husserl’s phenomenology, is notable, or that of
George Herbert Mead (Mead and Murphy 1959; Mead and Morris 1967), which
builds on Whitehead. In the mainstream of sociological thought today the concept of
social time is not encountered frequently, and most authors simply talk about “time”.
Generally, research in this field focuses on three areas: the formation of human
understandings of time (e.g. Elias 1988; Dux 1989); the functioning of temporal
structures at different levels of social systems (e.g. Zerubavel 1981; Rifkin 1987;
Young 1988); and the role of time in general sociological theory (e.g. Adam 1990;
Baert 1992; Nassehi 1993; Abbott 2001). There are also a number of specialized
studies that examine the different aspects of social processes and time (e.g. Moore
1963; Grossin 1974; Rinderspacher 1985; Nowotny 1989), and monographs with
wide-ranging topics (e.g. Gell 1992; Adam 1995). Preeminent among the theorists
relating to the problem of time in different contexts are Niklas Luhmann (1971,
1976, 1993, 1998) and Anthony Giddens (1981, 1990, 1995 [1981], 1997 [1984]),
though nowhere do we find the concept of social time as an important heuristic tool.
A certain favour with the ideas of social time can be found in Giddens, where
every moment of social reproduction includes three intersecting levels of time:
(1) durée of day-to-day experience (temporality of immediate experience of every-
day life), (2) dasein (temporality of human life and its cycles), (3) longue durée of
institutions (long duration associated with the development and reproduction of
social institutions) (Giddens 1981: 93). The most important affinity with the concept
of social time lies in Giddens’ postulation of reversible time, at the level of durée and
longue durée (Giddens 1997 [1984]), which, however, provoked harsh criticism
from other theorists. These argue that although events may repeat in seemingly
immutable form, they bear signs of irreversibility, which is a key characteristic of
time. Even between the most recurrent phenomena, such as the seasons, monthly
payments or yesterday and today’s lunch, the world has changed, we have grown
older and other people or objects are changed around us. What is repetitive are the
events and tasks, but not time; the flow of experience continues irreversibly in one
direction (Adam 1990: 27).
The problems associated with social time are multiple. From Gurvitch himself we
can infer that there is no single social time, but innumerable ones, each with its own
temporality. Gurvitch attempted to develop a typology of such times, but it is a
highly speculative approach, essentially uncontrollable and irreproducible, and its
application in research is unclear. It is therefore probably no coincidence that no one
successfully followed up Gurvitch’s effort in world sociology.
A more serious discussion point is the assertion that social time is qualitative
time. The terms “quantitative” and “qualitative” demarcate discussion so frequently
that they darken rather than enlighten. However, in these considerations there are
three rather uncertain but key principles:
(a) There is a difference between the rhythm of collective life (the temporality of the
social system) and the rhythm reported by tools of measurement of time (clock).
(b) There is a difference between archaic and modern ideas about time and its
measurement.
(c) Time may be identified with events (movement) taking place not only at the level
of archaic consciousness, but theoretical knowledge.
To which the response may be as follows:
• The fact that the frequency of social events mostly does not coincide with the
divisions on the clock face is an indisputable fact that applies not only in
traditional but also modern society. However, we still cannot automatically
Weaknesses and Questionable Assumptions 53
draw the conclusion that the time in which hands move on a clock face is
fundamentally different from the time in which people move in society.
• It is true that the findings of anthropologists and historians suggest that archaic
traditional societies created landmarks for orientation in time before their use in
modern society, and that people of different social types have quite different ideas
about time than those we have, and thus the person who does not know or use
clocks looks differently on time than a person for whom the wristwatch has
become essential. However, what is of qualitative character here is not time itself,
but only certain human ideas about its determination and measurement.
• A person without inclination to theorize has no reason to imagine time as an
emptied flow or duration. In their thinking, time is usually linked to the phenom-
ena taking place within it. Although this aspect is emphasized mainly by
researchers who deal with premodern societies, it cannot be limited to them. On
the contrary, it is found in modern society, and not only in unscientific,
non-professional thinking. Even some researchers tend to equate time with the
action taking place within it, and they call this “qualitative time”.
A major argument of supporters of the concept of social time is that it does not
flow evenly: it can slow down, speed up or even stop. Such a claim is difficult to
prove, and may consist, as already mentioned, in the confusion of time and move-
ment. What is even are the processes that take place in time, i.e. the movement of
things and events. The fact that this movement does not flow equally may not
automatically mean that time itself passes unevenly. We should recall the warning
not to mix up the relationship of time and motion found in Aristotle, for whom time
was “number (aritmos) of motion earlier and later” (Aristotelés 1996: 125). We
measure movement by time and conversely movement (e.g. the movement of sand in
an hourglass) serves to measure time; but it is necessary to distinguish between them,
because time is not motion (Aristotelés 1996: 122).
The concept of social time assumes that time is a human creation. This too is very
problematic premise. The products of social life (sometimes intended, sometimes
unintended) not only include various time (temporal) structures of social phenom-
ena, such as time plans, schedules and timetables, but also spontaneous and
unplanned cycles or rhythms. Humans also create instruments for measuring time,
and people set the units in which time is measured. However, what is definitely not a
human creation is the objective, inevitable flow in the direction of the time arrow.
Stephen W. Hawking talked about three arrows, all of which heading in the same
direction: (a) thermodynamic, leading to growing disorder (entropy),
(b) psychological, describing our perception that we remember the past and not
the future, (c) cosmological, defined by the direction in which the universe expands
(Hawking 1991: 141).
People give visible, indeed often tangible form, to the passing of time by their
actions, so some theorists have a tendency to attribute the power to create time to
human conduct. What they usually ignore is that such conduct can intervene in the
present and future and not the past (which can only be reinterpreted). As by action
people produce and reproduce social formations, institutions and social systems,
they construct the individual aspects of the social reality of their time (sometimes
associated with such terms as “internal” or “own” time); if the individual compo-
nents of social reality were not maintained like this for posterity, they would
disappear. However, it cannot be thanks to human conduct that duration unfolds in
one direction—the arrow of time i.e. from the past through the present to the future
(and not vice versa). The existence of this arrow of time is what enables us, despite
the morass of temporal structures, to think about time in a single (monistic) and
realistic way.
Temporalized Sociology
Putting to one side the diversity of opinions, we can summarise that in current
sociological research on time three main problem areas can be identified:
(a) The constitution of time as a social category. This deals with how people of
different periods and cultures develop their ideas about time and how these ideas
gradually change. It is a line of thought that began with Durkheim, continued
with Sorokin and was later developed by other authors, especially Norbert Elias.
(b) The functioning of temporal structures at different levels of social systems. This
is mainly associated with the idea of time as a valuable resource, which needs to
be rationally dealt with and apportioned according to rules of organization. This
includes for example the problems of the calendar and its reform (Zerubavel
1981), while a sub-set relates to the temporal structures of specific social systems
and subsystems, taking in, for example, research into the urban way of life and
its rhythms of time (Melbin 1987), and the time structures of different social
categories or groups: workers, farmers, employees (Grossin 1974).
(c) The place and role of time in general sociological theory. With this, the whole
discussion shifts to the metatheoretical level. It has become not so much about by
what scope or range of problems should be addressed in the sociology of time,
but rather about the shape of a general sociological theory in which time plays a
decisive role. This brings us to the concept of temporalized sociology. Patrick
Baert raises the prospect of inquiry focused on diachronic analysis and process,
in contrast to a structurally synchronous conception (Baert 1992: 4). Temporal-
ized sociology means that processuality and diachrony are recognised as the
ontological basis and methodological starting point for analysis of social systems
by emphasizing social dynamics, development, social change and processuality.
To understand temporalized sociology, it is necessary—together with Baert—to
distinguish in Western thinking four different ideas about the nature of the
principles that constitute reality (Baert 1992: 5).
The first approach assumes that the fundamental principles of ordering may be
considered unchangeable, which Baert calls the “eternal permutation of time.” This
asserts that changes observed at one time are only “permutations” (or combinations)
of unchangeable eternal principles which are invariant in time and space. The roots
Temporalized Sociology 55
of this approach date back to the Greek atemporal tradition established by Parmen-
ides and Plato. In the twentieth century they were reflected in the orthodox concep-
tion of structuralism.
The second approach—called the “closed historical conception”—is similar to
the previous one in considering the existence of unchangeable principles of order.
However, it differs in that these principles are revealed gradually over time, which
grants importance to the flow of time. At the same time the future to be reached is
closed (as if programmed in advance). Compared with the conception of “eternal
permutation”, time progressively gains in importance, while this importance is
diminished by the fact that no new principles are generated, so that the presence of
anything really new and unexpected may be discounted. This approach guided the
philosophy of history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for instance in
G. W. F. Hegel and Gottfried Herder. However, it also found expression in scientific
conceptions of the nineteenth century (2nd law of thermodynamics—Rudolf
Clausius).
The third approach is associated with the expression of “cognitive rational
control”, which can be de facto considered as a kind of special degree of the second
(“closed historical”) conception. In contrast the teleological view, human (scientif-
ically based) intervention as a necessary condition for achieving the desired future, a
principle which appealed to Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte, and even Karl Marx.
As for the fourth approach, that—like the second and third—is based on the idea
that the basic principles of order are revealed in time. Unlike these, however,
principles are not considered as unchangeable. Reality has an emergent nature;
new things gradually appear or emerge, and the principles that organize reality are
therefore amenable to change at any moment. This last approach thus postulates an
“open future”, which has become an integral part of Western thinking since the
nineteenth century. Considerable credit for it is owed to Darwinian theory, while
H. Bergson can be considered an additional pioneer with his ideas about cosmic
vitalism and time as an invention. In sociology, the representative of this movement
is G. H. Mead (Baert 1992: 8).
It is this fourth approach, with an open future, which offers the basis of what can
be termed “temporalized sociology.” According to Baert, examples of temporalized
sociology are the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann and Anthony Giddens’ struc-
turation theory (despite the fact that otherwise they differ in many ways). For both
authors the aspect of time is reflected in various elements of theoretical construction.
In Luhmann we find the evolutionary development of social system not in some
logical, predetermined or oriented way but always influenced by contingent
(i.e. random) actions and events (Luhmann 1993). Giddens, meanwhile, expresses
the issue of time mostly in relation to space. Time and space for him represent
fundamental dimensions of all social developments, even though he rejects evolu-
tionism and interprets history as a continuous series of large-scale episodes leading
to the transformation of space-time relations. Nevertheless, he disputes the idea that
it would be possible to understand history as a story of rise and progress (Giddens
1997 [1984]).
Examples of temporalized sociology can be drawn from the entire field of

contemporary historical sociology. One major representative is Norbert Elias, author
of a monumental work on the process of civilization (Elias 1994 [1939]), but there is
also Barrington Moore (1967), his students Charles Tilly (1995) and Theda Skocpol
(1979), and Michael Mann (1993 (1986); 2008 (1986)), who turned attention to the
comparative analysis of long-term processes of social change, especially social
revolutions and power struggles. Immanuel Wallerstein, meanwhile, is famous for
his analysis of the development of the world’s economic system, whose progress he
traced from the fifteenth century to the present (Wallerstein 1974, 1980, 1989, 2011),
and Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt paid attention to the problems of the axial age and the
axiality of elaboration in the conception of multiple modernities—which means
modernization diversity (Eisenstadt 2003). All these express sociological concep-
tions in which the emphasis is on a diachronic perspective, monitoring long-term
social changes, processes and trends of contingent process and no predetermined
outcome.
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Collective Memory and Historical
Consciousness
Here we deal with the terms collective memory and historical consciousness.
Although closely related, they are not interchangeable, at least not consistently.
Collective (or “social”) memory is the more discussed in literature, and in the second
part of this analysis we will pay suitably more attention to it. Our intention is to show
how both concepts can be interconnected and captured within the purview of
systems theory.
The Antinomies of Memory
Memory is reflected in the arts in a multitude of ways and has become part of
sciences and humanities. The term memory usually indicates the process of saving,
storing and recalling information received in the past. Memory is undoubtedly one of
the essential characteristics of humanity and the basis for the continuity of our
existence (Halbwachs 2009 [1950]: 50–92). Although a subject of study in the
humanities and social sciences for many decades, a significant increase of interest
was observable from the late 1970s. A welter of expert opinions and ideas relating to
memory can be found in literature, so the situation is not entirely clear, and such
considerations often move between extreme positions in the form of antinomies,
polarities, paradoxes and dilemmas. Here we talk about some of them.
Individual Memory and Collective Memory
Two opposing theoretical positions, individualism and holism, have existed in social
sciences for many years. In the individualistic explanation, the acting individual
(actor) is the starting point, while according to holism, social units must be taken as
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_7
60 Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness
the basis of social theory. This division is reflected in the issue of memory, as well.
Individualism is typical for philosophical consideration (Kant, Bergson, Whitehead,
Husserl), and also utilized by psychology and related disciplines. The holistic
approach, meanwhile, has been used in sociology, and also anthropology and
history, for many decades.
Psychology approaches the study of memory in terms of the individual psyche.
Memory can be defined as a complex set of mental processes including encoding
(transfer of information into forms for storage in memory), storage (retention of
coded information) and retrieval, applied in a certain way in all mental activity
(Sternberg 2002: 267; Atkinson 2003: 267). Within the psychological approach
different types of memory can be distinguished. According to the length of storage,
memory is divided into: (a) sensory, (b) short-term and long-term (Kassin 2007:
199–200). Within long-term memory, declarative memory and procedural memory
are differentiated (Kassin 2007: 211). In addition, there is a breakdown of memory
with respect to forms of storing, and sensory modality (semantic, emotional, kinetic,
visual, auditory, gustatory, and olfactory). There is also the distinction between
intentional and unintentional memory (Plháková 2003: 204). Meanwhile, in terms
of recalling, we may distinguish so-called mechanical memory (remembering with-
out knowing the meaning) and logical memory (remembering supported by logical
processing).
Psychology usually divides the process of memory into three phases. The first,
called encoding (or also instilling), brings information stored in the system of short-
term memory. In the second, known as retention (keeping), information is converted
into long-term memory. The last phase represents recalling, where information is
specifically called into the conscious mind. This may take the form of recall
(reconstruction) or recognition.
In contrast to psychology, sociological thinking about memory is dominated by
the holistic (collectivist) approach, rooted in the sociology of Emile Durkheim and
his concept of collective consciousness. Durkheim’s ideas were developed into the
concept of collective memory by the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, in
whose theoretical work an important role is played by the social conditionality of
memory. Memory, Halbwachs notes, constitutes itself, functions and reproduces
within certain social frameworks. Within these frameworks our memories are fixed
and drawn upon.
Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945) was the first in sociology to be systematically
engaged in the study of memory. He dealt with questions of memory in several
works, among them a book, Social frames of memory (1925), and a study, Legendary
Topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land (1942). Halbwachs’ final writing
devoted to the subject is Collective Memory, published from his manuscripts in
1950. Halbwachs, as a member of the resistance movement, had been arrested by the
Nazis during the Second World War and died in 1945 in Buchenwald. The concept
Individual Memory and Collective Memory 61
of collective memory, at the core of Halbwachs’ writings, contains clear traces of the
influence of his two most important teachers, Henri Bergson1 and Emile Durkheim.
Though Halbwachs (2009 [1950]: 50–92) differentiates between individual and
collective memory, individual memory is a social phenomenon. Individuals are,
strictly speaking, only perceptions. Memories (however personal) originate in the
group and the communication and interaction within it. The individual’s memory
allows participation in the content-wealth of collective memory, so that while we
remember as individuals, we do so in the reference frames of a given society. The
individual memory is a specific point of interconnection of the collective memories
of various social groups. On the other hand, in terms of the group, a key issue is
knowledge distribution among individual members. Anyone who participates in the
collective memory certifies their group affiliation.
In recent decades French scholars especially have set the tone of research on
collective memory, and some of it, by the historian Pierre Nora, known for his
project Les lieux de mémoire (1984–1992), also extends into sociology. Tzvetan
Todorov (1998a, b), known for his studies on people’s behaviour in extreme
situations during the Second World War, draws on oral history. In sociology, Gérard
Namer (1987, 2000) has been instrumental in finding contemporary applications for
the work of Maurice Halbwachs, emphasizing the plurality of collective group
memory and showing how it can be the subject of sociological research. Danièle
Hervieu-Léger, the author of La religion pour mémoire (1993), sets out from the
premise that every religion encompasses a specific activation of collective memory.
The philosopher Paul Ricœur, in his book La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli (2000),
examines the relationship between experience and historical memory, responsibility
for the past, questions of guilt, and space for forgiveness. In German-speaking
countries, the subject of social and cultural memory has been most notably addressed
in the work of Jan Assmann (2001, 2007) and Aleida Assmann (2006, 2009). In the
U.S., Jeffrey K. Olick (2007) is currently developing the topics of research and the
politics of memory.
1
In Bergson’s philosophy the central idea is “duration”—durée. A frequently mentioned example of
this is melody—or rather, tones which link together in melody. Bergson understands duration as a
continuous change in time, where memory plays a central role. Thanks to memory, separate tones
can link together and enable us to hear a melody. Each individual psychical ego reels up to itself—
according to Bergson—its past, like an avalanche gathering to itself more and more snow.
“Everywhere, where something lives,” says this philosopher, “there lies an open protocol book;
time writes in it.” Memory is a prerequisite to consciousness, duration and time. It is thus that we are
ourselves and that we understand things around us.
Memory Spontaneous and Purposeful
Some experiences and situations are captured spontaneously, so to speak automat-

ically; other information is recorded intentionally with a certain purpose. Psychology
differentiates: (a) the involuntary memory—spontaneous and unintentional—which
records what we can see or hear without effort; (b) the deliberate memory, which
means intentional and oriented by the aim to remember (Plháková 2003: 204). One
often has consciously to remember something important, which one would not
spontaneously recall, by learning by heart (memorizing).
The deliberate formation and use of memory, rationally and emotionally, is
encountered widely on the level of collective memory, mainly through religion,
nationalism, ideology and power. Manifestations of these efforts may be found in
textbooks, calendar dates, art, music, fiction, journalism, propaganda, museum
exhibitions, festivities, ceremonial speeches, memorials, statues and memorial
plaques. Experience with totalitarian and authoritarian regimes shows that collective
memory often becomes subject to the power of coercion and manipulation, to rewrite
what was spontaneously adopted, and to modify its contents, thereby controlling and
dominating it.
Rationality and Irrationality
Douwe Draaisma shows that the computer metaphor made a significant impact on
memory in scientific consideration in the period after World War II (Draaisma 2003:
169–173). This was associated with the idea that to find out the architecture of our
memory, we can turn for inspiration to computer systems and programs created to
work with data. Initial enthusiasm for this way of thinking in the 1970s, however,
was tempered by the knowledge that psychological processes are less direct and less
rational than was assumed. It had been discovered that in comparison with the
“perfect” computer memory, human memory is prone to distort and misrepresent
information.
Research shows that the operation of memory processes, in addition to a rational
level, has aspects of the irrational. The irrationality of memory is documented by
findings that through the storage of information in long-term memory it can be
re-filed and distorted in the process of reconstruction, even turned into fiction.
Psychiatry refers to ‘false memory syndrome’ (Koukolík 2000: 113), while mytho-
mania is defined as lying where the individual tells fictional stories of alleged
experience, ‘lies’ that in some cases they may be aware of, but in others convinced
of their veracity.
The Past Irrevocable and Revocable 63
Spirit and Matter
The humanities tend to see memory as a mainly spiritual affair; natural sciences, by
contrast, hold a view closer to materialism. Neurophysiology focuses attention on
the functioning of the brain and central nervous system. Memory is an integral part
of the nervous system, controlled by the brain.
In recent decades, French historian Pierre Nora’s concept of “places of memory”
(Nora 1984–1992) has gained considerable popularity. Nora finds that memory
needs external material support, manifested in certain sites of memory topographi-
cally but also symbolically where it is materialized. Sites of memory have a range of
symbolic meanings, and Nora focusses on the mapping and analysis of processes
around which national identity is assembled.
The attention of historians and sociologists has also been attracted recently by the
theme of the memory of landscape, notably in British historian Simon Schama’s
1995 book Landscape and Memory, in which the author examines the relationship
between landscape and culture (Schama 1995). While originally researchers con-
centrated on sites intentionally designed for the purpose of commemoration, their
attention has turned to where memory has been more spontaneously conserved, with
the aim of bringing these to light.
The Past Irrevocable and Revocable
Those who deal with the past face the problem of how something that irrevocably
happened is not considered fixed by future generations, but malleable. Maurice
Halbwachs attributes to collective memory the ability of continuous reconstruction,
so that social frameworks of memory are continually reactivated to accord with the
present (Halbwachs 1994: 279).
Collective memory does not retain the past as events really happened, but as
remembered in the present. If collective memory is functioning adequately, it must
match the current needs of society. Thus the images of the past are repeatedly
transcribed in the context of the requirements of the present, while memory may
include only segments of the past, not the past as a whole.
Memories are merely reconstructions based on gathered fragments. This issue
was taken on by the notable representative of symbolic interactionism, American
philosopher and sociologist George Herbert Mead, whose starting point was encap-
sulated in the title of one of his studies The Present as the Locus of Reality. Mead
associates reality only with the present, not the past or future (Mead 1959: 1–31).
People are limited to life in the present and, though they conceive things in the past
or the future, everything occurs in the present. The past and the future are only a
subject of thought with its locus in the mind. The true past and real future are
inaccessable, but can be accessed through the mind in the present, allowing us to
surpass the present moment.
Mead focuses attention on the reconstructive function of thinking in the sense

relevant to American pragmatic philosophy. In every new present, people repeatedly
change their ideas and understandings regarding the past and future. As new
circumstances put in a new light that which has happened, the individual returns to
the past, looks at it differently, and accordingly adjusts conduct and expectations.
Mead too understands history as irrevocable, and thus must explain how the past
can be at once irrevocable and revocable. The past is irreversible in the sense that we
cannot change or undo things that have occurred, but their importance, storage and
recall vary, and in this sense the past is revocable and as hypothetical as is the future.
It is transformed and re-framed as another past according to the viewpoint of the
present. G.H. Mead expresses this by saying that (Mead 1936: 416) we cannot know
what Caesar or Charlemagne will look like in the next century.
The American sociologist Peter L. Berger remarks that we reconstruct the past in
accordance with current views. Common sense might believe that the past is fixed,
permanent and unchanging, but this is not the case. We reconstruct the past in our
memories as consistent with the present and with our current views (Berger 1963).
Memory is characterized by the displacement of unpleasant experiences, and not
only by the elimination of topics, but by the rewriting of biographies, the creation of
myths, or the reviving of wounds and resentments.
It is in this context that we should see the phenomenon of historical revisionism,
which could be said—considering book production in recent years—to have become
almost a fad. It is difficult to determine the extent to which current historical
literature is focused on reinterpretation based on a real effort to bring a new and
better understanding of historical events reflecting new discoveries, to what degree it
is a response to “ideological” priorities, or alternatively how much it is motivated by
particular scholars’ efforts to draw attention to themselves, within the plethora of
literature, through provocative or shocking titles. Whatever the case, revisionist
approaches (especially so-called negationism) are assessed as socially so serious
and dangerous (above all, questioning the Holocaust), that it is considered necessary
to have legislative measures and criminal penalties against them.
Saving and Deleting
Psychology devotes considerable attention to the problems of remembering. Gener-

ally, it is considered that individual memory processes are influenced by: somatic
status (fatigue, old age, disease); mental condition and ongoing mental processes;
external circumstances (including social relationships); frequency of certain stimuli,
and finally, by the nature of the information remembered. At the same time forget-
ting (meaning loss or inaccessibility of once available information) has become of
special interest, having been explored since the late nineteenth century (Hermann
Ebbinghaus; see Kassin 2007: 223). Since ancient times people have wanted to
expand and improve the limited capacity of memory, both for individual (mnemon-
ics, memory strategies) and group memory (written records, libraries, archives,
Saving and Deleting 65
museums). Hundreds of years ago, special techniques were developed for better and
more efficient remembering.
While the memory is commonly associated with the storage, paradoxically the
key operations of memory are selection and memory deleting. Our sense organs
capture a large number of impulses. Most are not significant for us, but the brain is
capable of setting aside relevant data for memory. Subsequent retrieval is not
uniformly at once, but selective (Bergson 1982 [1896]), according to practicality
and usefulness; remembrance is updated if it suits current or future problems. Along
similar lines the French researcher Tzvetan Todorov points out that memory is by no
means the opposite of oblivion. Memory is always the interaction of two poles
forming “delete” (i.e. forgetting) and “storage”. Full restoration of the past is
impossible because memory is a specific “choice” (Todorov 1998a).
Systems theory, led by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, gives insight into
these mechanisms. According to Luhmann the basic life strategy of systems is
reduction of complexity (Luhmann 1984). In every social and psychological system
the world is extremely complex and systems can exist only by reducing this
“complexity”. From the perspective of systems theory, complexity means that
there are always more options than can be realized. Systems, however, cannot use
or process every possibility, and so, to maintain their existence, they must reduce the
number of options. Complexity is associated with selection that admits and excludes
at the same time. Likewise, memory cannot keep everything. On the contrary it must
act selectively to reduce complexity and stabilize what is selected. The systems
theory of social (or collective) memory applied in contemporary sociology states that
the relationship between forgetting and remembering is historically evolving and
corresponds to the development of society. The development of media extends the
range of communicated topics, and changes the structure of memory. Before the
invention of writing, the themes of communication were limited by natural memory.
The invention of writing and later the printing press required (but also triggered)
more discreteness and less contextually-bound themes. When reading a book, we are
in a different context than the author. Thus, we need more “redundancy” to under-
stand the content. At the same time, because we do not have to know details of
subjects (as we can find them in books), we can forget more. Writing therefore led to
the extension of the variety of topics (Esposito 2002: 32–35), and the greater the
capacity to save, the more could be forgotten. In a similar way we can see today
another milestone, with the development of computer memory, the internet, and the
so-called ‘cloud’. At the present time it is possible to trace anything, and so we are at
liberty to forget. Memory complexity is proportional to the extent of forgetting; the
computer can be considered a new form of memory (Esposito 2002: 30).
The relationship between media and memory was dealt with by Aleida and Jan
Assmann2 in the 1990s. For them, the evolution of media played a key role in the
development of social memory, going through phases of oral transmission, writing,
2
In terms of what Habwachs specified as the collective memory, Jan Assmann differentiates four
specific areas:
Table 1 Social memory in phases of media evolution

Oral Writing Electronic Media
Encoding Symbolic codes Alphabetic Codes Nonverbal codes, Artificial
languages
Storage Bounded by the human Transferred through the Boundless documentation
memory speech to text possibilities
Circulation Celebrations Books Audiovisual media
Adopted from Assmann and Assmann (1994: 139)
and audiovisual media. Phased transformations of social memory in terms of media

evolution are shown in Table 1, in which aspects of encoding, storing and circulation
are differentiated.
Elena Esposito identifies the development of four types of memory in connection
with the media. This is not so much based on the phenomenological aspects of the
problem but rather tries to look deeper into the transformation of memory from the
perspective of its internal functioning. The four types Esposito distinguishes are:
divinatoric, rhetorical, memory as culture and memory as network.
Divinatoric memory—prophetic memory—is strongly tied to the media of
non-alphabetic writing. The organization of archaic societies would not have been
possible without this, but nevertheless the development of non-alphabetic writing
was accelerated by the development of given methods of social organization. It does
not differentiate between subjects and symbols, which are seen as identical.
Non-alphabetic writing can express the known, but not new and unknown things.
Rhetorical memory developed in Ancient Greece but peaked in the late Middle
Ages. Its medium is alphabetic writing, offering the chance to learn previously
unknown information. Alphabetic writing can also express differences and nuances.
Its action in the memory is comparable to procedure in rhetoric, as it is associated
with a variety of techniques and rules for storage organized on the principle of
mnemonics. The mnemonic method is usually based on the concept of the localiza-
tion of information in imaginary spaces of buildings. In the rooms of these buildings
Mimetic Memory relates to the field of social action and is connected with the fact that we learn
negotiation through imitation. Assmann states that despite the existence of written instructions and
prescriptions, negotiation is something which cannot be fully codified. There therefore still remain
extensive areas of negotiation which are based on customs, habits and so-called mimetic tradition.
Memory of Things is linked to those things with which people surround themselves and in which
they store their ideas of purposefulness, comfort and beauty: crockery, tools, clothes, furniture,
houses, means of transport etc. Assmann says that the world of things contains a time index, which
points to various layers of the past.
Communicative Memory is passed on by means of speech in interpersonal communication.
Cultural Memory is linked with the fact that the communication system creates external fields
(kinds of external storage spaces), in which information and communications are stored in coded
form. The existence of cultural memory is conditioned by the existence of certain institutional
frameworks and requires specialists who keep records in the accepted code. Cultural memory also
represents a field which the three previously mentioned types of memory penetrate and operate
in. For cultural memory the remembered past is significant but not factual. In this sense also a myth
is real at the level at which it is recalled and glorified.
History, Myth and Science 67
whole memories are not stored, but just images. In the mnemonic culture books
serve not as memory, but as a mnemonic support. To find the appropriate memory,
we have to find its room. From this perspective, memory holds all the images, but
they are sometimes misplaced (Esposito 2002: 156–159). Something that is not
remembered has not been forgotten; there has merely been a ‘saving error’.
Culture memory, according to Esposito, relates to the next phase in the develop-
ment of memory, with the development of the printing press. Printed books became
widely available and were used as a secondary memory. What is not immediately
needed can be forgotten. The printing press also changed communication. It intro-
duced a certain asymmetry: a source was not available to one person that was
available to another. However, there was also a standardization of communication,
the same for all recipients, which was also intended to standardize the recipients. The
recipient then becomes an increasingly more actively participant in the text, due to
the capacity to interpret standardized text (Esposito 2002: 191–194). The idea of
memory moved from ancient repository to archive, differing from repository in that
material is stored to be found later, through principles of organization and accessi-
bility (books are no longer arranged mnemonically, not corresponding to the prin-
ciples of memory, but are arranged for instance alphabetically). This carries an
paradoxical and interesting side effect: a higher risk of oblivion—as we can trace
anything through books, we do not have to keep everything in our head; what is not
recorded in books therefore we can be oblivious to.
Network memory is related to postmodernism, as memory abandons the idea of an
archive, and likewise the idea of the document as an information carrier, by
implication making great changes to communication media. While the mass media
presented itself anonymously, in new media re-personalization emerges, and infor-
mation can be tuned to our needs. One can talk about ‘mass customization’, where a
mass production medium can be adapted to the customer (Esposito 2002: 300–301).
It is also a time of virtual information, memory as a network, a non-hierarchical
model that holds individual nodes together. In such a procedural memory, connec-
tions mean more than content (Esposito 2002: 339–342), which allows forgetting to
be absolute. Memory is rather a performative model; a virtual memory in which it is
not information that is stored, but decisions, embodied in the so-called ‘search
engine’, such as Yahoo or Google, which creates a search and memory structure
according to their user’s commands.
History, Myth and Science
In addition to those for memory, systems theory has other implications: for instance,
it makes problematic the traditional assumption that history is life’s teacher. After
all, history has lost its character as a model (Luhmann 1988: 107). History can serve
this way only if the past and future are ultimately the same (Bergmann 1983: 474),
and contemporary society is dynamic, escaping and increasingly differentiating itself
from the past. Thus, the common saw that we should learn from the past becomes
questionable; while certain lessons undoubtedly have some durability, others

become outdated sooner rather than later.
Historian Miroslav Hroch (2010: 44) points out that the past can be a source of
wisdom only if historical changes have rationally analysable causal links. He points
out that our relationship to the past transforms along with the social context. In the
nineteenth century, dominated by “historicism”, the idea prevailed that history has a
legitimate direction; today, in post-modernity, trust in the sense of history is lacking.
In relation to the collective memory of historical events—according to some
researchers—handed-down opinion is more important than interpretation from the
historical scientific point of view. We may recall the well-known Thomas theorem
from symbolic interactionism and interpretive sociology that if people define a
situation as real, it is real in its consequences (Thomas 1965: 114). Interpretive
sociology emphasizes how people perceive the world around them, focussing not on
reality itself, but how actors see and understand it, as they act accordingly, with real
consequences. In summary, the image of the past that people hold—no matter
however false—can be a major motivating force in the present. This is also
highlighted by Jan Assmann (2001: 50), who claims that it is not factual but
remembered history which counts for cultural memory. Even a myth is real to the
extent that it is remembered and celebrated, and has normative and formative power.
In the national memory, myths created during the rise of nationalism played and
still to some extent play an important role, having been a significant mobilizing force
for nations and groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, sometimes with
apparently lethal consequences. Many such myths survive in the collective memory
to the present day.
Opposing historical myths used to be the role of historical science. As the highest
form of cognitive and theoretical work, based on a systematic and rational way of
understanding reality, science not only defines myths critically but tries to explore
them scientifically, clarifying the reasons for their existence and operations. Many
contemporary scholars, however, point out that maintaining efforts in the spirit of
Enlightenment Rationalism to define the demarcation between logos and myth is not
enough, as in history there are no discrete phenomena. Even historical science is not
immune from myths, especially when part of state ideology or political parties aims
at influencing the educational and scientific milieu.
History, Memory and Identity
During developments in Europe following the fall of the communist regimes,

conflicting interpretations of the past were to the fore; ways of reckoning the past
were needed for new regimes to build legitimacy, including dealing with a ‘hidden’
history and its incorporation into understandings of the present (Maurel 2008: 11).
European integration too has piqued the interest of researchers and politicians
concerning the divergent historical memories of peoples who must learn to live
together, in spite of past conflicts. It turns out that reminiscing can have two
History, Memory and Identity 69
contradictory consequences: it can lead people either to narrow into group particu-
larism, or to open up to cultural and moral universalism. Neither state of mind can be
comfortable with the other.
Social memory in this sense is ambivalent. Needless to say, in no complex society
is there a single collective memory, but always a plurality of collective memories.
Collective memories are the basis of group identity. But what brings people together
can, placed in a different context and other relations, be divisive.3 This happens, for
instance, when “old wounds” of injustice, injuries and sufferings are remembered
and revived. Such historical revival often has a deep moral justification and rationale,
but can also be purposefully instigated. Let us recall that conflictualistic theory
(Coser 1965) points out that many groups or societies, to ensure their integrity,
create an image of an enemy (external but sometimes even internal). In any case,
memory is never just a thing of the past, but a very important co-author of the
present, and represents a major political issue.
According to some theorists, historical science should play an important role in
addressing the problems outlined above. Paul Ricoeur for example, considers that
history, distanced from the past, without personal involvement, seeking objectivity
on past events, removes the memory-exclusivity of individual groups, opening the
way for dialogue. Its corrective function can revise, criticize or contradict the
memory of a community closed in on its own suffering to the extent that it is blind
and deaf to the sufferings of other communities (Ricoeur 2000: 650).
Another theme ascribed great significance today is the problem of identity—
personal and collective. Two fundamental questions arise: ‘who are we?’ and ‘where
do we belong?’, which can be related to two basic dimensions: time and space,
respectively. Memory in both cases is key, and acts as a kind of “reinforcement” for
identity. Preserving memories is a prerequisite not only for the identity of individuals
but also for groups; forgetting, on the other hand, is synonymous with loss. The
recapturing of memory in this context represents an act of social emancipation or
shift in power dominance (Kvasničková 2005: 34).
Memory, which represents an essential, life-giving anticipation shaping our
identity, is paradoxically shown by Todorov (Todorov 1998b) to be fragile, vulner-
able and open to misuse. Criticism of the power-manipulation of memory is there-
fore associated with the liberating return of memory free from censorship,
manipulation and erasure. However, this liberation of memory adds another, mem-
ory arousing pain.
In short, memories may be not only supportive, but unpleasant and traumatising.
Attention is drawn to the concept of cultural trauma by Jeffrey C. Alexander et al.
(2004) and Bernhard Giesen (2002). The sociological approach to collective trauma
is inspired by medicine and psychiatry, and is associated with events with long-term
destructive effects on the patient’s body or mind, or correspondingly on the
3
Miroslav Hroch (2010: 41) in this respect recalls the importance of historical arguments in conflicts
that broke out on the ruins of Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union, highlighting the importance which
these arguments hold in various separatist movements.
consciousness of society. In sociological terms, such events include wars, occupa-

tion, genocide, violent outbreaks, economic and social crises, natural disasters,
epidemics and forced emigration.
The basis of collective trauma is a trigger-event, a traumatic experience shared
and reproduced which penetrates the collective memory to transform its identity. As
a result, phenomena occur such as disruptions to the value system and cultural-
symbolic frameworks, an erosion of confidence, a collapse in the universe of
meaning, and growing concerns for the future. Giesen (2004) characterizes cultural
trauma as a rupture in the network of shared meanings, resulting in a disruption to
order and end of its continuity. For theorists of cultural trauma, history loses its
character of retelling stories of heroic past deeds and famous battles. In its place,
collective memory stresses the mass suffering of thousands and millions, becoming a
source of recurring trauma as a warning to the future.
Historical Consciousness as the Focus of Sociological Inquiry
Today in post-communist countries the concept of historical consciousness seems

untrustworthy to many intellectuals, a status which lies in its associations with the
previous Marxist ideology, historical materialism, including theses on the dialectics
of being and consciousness, and the importance of class consciousness. Moreover,
this concept may specifically evoke memories of the theory of social consciousness
developed by Soviet theorists during the seventies and eighties (e.g. Uledov 1973)
and imported into other countries of the so-called socialist bloc (e.g. Vaněk 1980). It
is no wonder that most scholars in post-communist countries who study people’s
relationship to the past prefer the concept of social (collective, cultural or historical)
memory. In the past three decades this has enjoyed the overwhelming (even exclu-
sive) interest of researchers as the subject of innumerable studies and an instrument
of contemporary political and ideological discourse. Nevertheless, the concept of
historical consciousness, although often overlooked, cannot be completely ignored.4
4
When we started a few years ago to consider these matters in the research project ‘A Sociological
Study of the Historical Consciousness of the Population of the Czech Republic’, we approached the
issue of the two concepts largely intuitively. We specified as the subject of our research ‘historical
consciousness’ and not ‘collective memory’ for several reasons:
(a) We did not want to concentrate only on some selected historical events but to explore
people’s ideas about history as a whole. We were interested in whether people develop an overall
vision (one could perhaps say: lay theories) about history and its meaning and what these ideas are.
(b) We met with the existing theoretical approaches to collective memory and it seemed that the
current conceptualization represents a certain closed framework—metaphorically speaking a
“shield”—which does not provide much room for further theoretical development. We wanted to
look at some issues from another perspective.
(c) The studies of collective memory that we knew of were based on the use of qualitative
research methodology, especially methods of oral history. We wanted to use additional approaches.
In the field of qualitative methodology, we wanted to use focus groups. And most importantly, we
Historical Consciousness as the Focus of Sociological Inquiry 71
While the expressions ‘social memory’ and ‘historical consciousness’ overlap,

they are not interchangeable. Jürgen Straub’s outline can serve as our starting point.
He associates historical consciousness with historical narrative construction and
historical understandings in the mind (Straub 2005: 48–49). Peter Seixas, mean-
while, defines historical consciousness as individual and collective understandings
of history, influenced by cognitive and cultural factors (Seixas 2004: 10). What is
essential is that part of historical consciousness is a historical understanding of the
present and the future. Jörn Rüssen characterizes historical consciousness as an
orientation used in solving current situations (Rüssen 2004: 66). Thus we can see
historical consciousness not only as a complex of knowledge, perceptions and ideas
about the past, but as an awareness of certain specific contexts (continuities, discon-
tinuities and changes) between the past (in the collective memory), the present and
the future: as a consciousness which contributes to shaping attitudes towards the
present and the future.
The essential problem of historical consciousness becomes apparent when under-
stood comparatively. During the nineteenth century and early twentieth century,
there was a widespread sense that history had a certain meaning and direction,
dominated by what is often called “historicism”. At that time, past and future
horizons had a different shape than they have today. The past suggested epochal
trends directed to the fulfilment of a historical plan. The future appeared as a
mainland to which voyagers would apparently soon arrive. Faith in progress as
vast emancipatory “stories” heralding happy tomorrows was still very much alive,
although decadent moods of fin de siécle did evolve in counterpoint, foretelling
doom and ruin. With the incidents and accidents of the twentieth century, however,
this trust in “grand narratives” (Lyotard 1993) evaporated. By contrast, late (or post)
modernism concentrates on the present, and historical consciousness has relativisti-
cally “flattened”. For people living in the early twenty-first century the past is
another country; their historical consciousness is of a different stuff.
Today’s culture, following traumas in the twentieth century, is characterized by
the fundamental mistrust and scepticism towards “great narratives” of history (the-
ories of history and progress) and the future (emancipatory projects, ideology). As a
result, today’s people have difficulty—in comparison with their predecessors—in
seeing the origins of the present, or looking back to the past, or hopefully anticipat-
ing the future. Despite this, interest in history is no stranger to many people, and is
reflected in the popularity of historical literature and film. So, the question is, what
can history offer contemporary humanity? Historian Miroslav Hroch (2010: 37)
speaks of nine benefits:
History is a storehouse of stories for understanding, belief and enjoyment.
Detection of historical facts is an intellectual challenge.
Past events can be a source of enlightenment.
History provides personal role models, but also warning examples.
wanted to take advantage of opportunities offered by quantitative methodology, in particular

sociological questionnaires.
History is a sequence of events to be understood, to help understand the contempo-

rary world.
We may be affected by the general background and principles of history.
Past events can be a justification of current demands (gender, group or national).
The past helps us comprehend our value and the meaning of our existence (both for
individuals and groups).
History provides arguments and incentives for self-identification and group cohesion
(Hroch 2010: 37).
It should be clear that history’s relevance varies for different groups of people.
From a societal perspective, the final point may be regarded as particularly impor-
tant, in terms of our collective identity and two fundamental questions—who we are
and where we are going. History informs us of our shared descent, adds arguments
for our current status, and creates presumptions for a common future. It is important
to note that no comprehensive theory of historical consciousness yet exists. What is
available is a certain set of assumptions to formulate research questions and working
hypotheses. The first assumption is that historical consciousness can be understood
as a branch with a certain content that can be observed and measured in particular
parts of the population with the aid of sociological research instruments. Other
assumptions can also be formulated: (a) the character of historical consciousness is
dependent on the peoples’ interests in and knowledge of history; (b) part of historical
consciousness is certain ideas about the nature of the historical process (forces that
influence history) and the links between the past, the present, and the future; (c) a
sense of one’s nation or country forms an important part of historical consciousness;
(d) historical consciousness is not constant, but historically variable, and fundamen-
tally influenced by general socio-political circumstances.
This approach to historical consciousness is inspired by the concept of the
sociology of knowledge, specifically as formulated by Peter L. Berger and Thomas
Luckmann (1989 [1966]), according to which sociology should encompass every-
thing that a given society considers to be knowledge. This means not so much the
great bodies of knowledge of religion, ideologies, utopias, art and science, but rather
the general knowledge or historical knowledge possessed by ‘ordinary people’ as
actors in everyday social life, mainly how people view history and the significance
they ascribe to it. Thus understood, historical consciousness is more than a matter of
theoretical reflection, but a subject of empirical research.
Components Shaping Historical Consciousness
The concept of historical consciousness has been elaborated in a number of profes-

sional contexts. In German philosophy the concept Geschichtsbewußtsein appeared
in the nineteenth century philosophy of life of Wilhelm Dilthey (1981 (1910)),
followed in the twentieth century by Hans Georg Gadamer (1979) with his herme-
neutical philosophy. Geschichtsbewußtsein is the prerequisite for the understanding
Components Shaping Historical Consciousness 73
and interpretation of past events, as a consciousness able to judge the past according
to itself rather than the standards and prejudices of the present.
In the 1970s, some German experts in the teaching of history began to work with
Geschichtsbewußtsein (von Borries 1988, 1990, 1995; Jeismann 1988; Pandel 1987;
Rüssen 1994, 2001 and others), but in a somewhat different context than philosoph-
ical hermeneutics. For them, the term is associated primarily with the question of
educative activities and meaningful connections between idea of the past and
orientations towards present and future.
Other contributions were made in the 1980s from the area of narrative psychol-
ogy, particularly in the U.S. (Bruner 1990; Sarbin 1986), but also in Germany
(Straub 1998, 2005). This psychological direction, working with the concept of
Historical Consciousness (Historisches Bewußtsein),5 emphasizes that peoples’
lives are viewed as stories told to others to help deal with current life situations.
In the Czech environment, historical consciousness used to be characterized by
historians in two ways.6 While some perceive it as a vague general impression of
history, as a state of mind dependent on time and subject to variability, others reduce
it to a summary of the knowledge of history held by a certain group or community. In
this latter approach, historical consciousness based on the reception of professional
expertise is used to distinguish historical awareness as the summary of knowledge
that has non-historiographic, i.e. non-special character.
Tendencies in world literature correspond rather with the first of the two men-
tioned approaches. Historical consciousness is not just a set of knowledge, percep-
tions and ideas of the past, but especially knowing certain contexts (let us say
continuity, discontinuity and changes) between the past (stored in the collective
memory), the present and the future; it is consciousness that helps to create attitudes
towards the present and the future. This consciousness is structured in some way,
and these structures can be subjected to cross-disciplinary research (from the per-
spectives of history, sociology and psychology).
Historical consciousness is an “entity” shaped by the interplay of certain compo-
nents, such as lived historical experience (lived personally or transmitted through
interpersonal contact), ideology (particularly state ideology using interpretations of
history for legitimation) and knowledge produced by historiography and historical
science. A further component is what is called “collective memory”. In addition to
these there are the ways that culture, family, school, religion, art and media express
themselves. These effects, however, can be considered under the above-mentioned
four headings, related to lived-through historical experience, ideological or scientific
knowledge, and collective memory. Needless to say, these four essential components
5
The term Historisches Bewußtsein is gradually superceding the term Geschichtsbewußtsein even in
the German environment (see, e.g. Straub 1998; Georgi and Ohliger 2009).
6
In the Czech Republic these discussions have not yet found their way (apart from texts published
before 1989) into representative publication outputs, which could attempt to find a more elaborate
definition of historical consciousness. Traces of these discussions, however, can be found on
various websites. Czech historiographers that used term historical consciousness include J. Křen,
M. Hroch, Z. Beneš and many more.
are not completely separate. Boundaries between them are not clearly drawn, and
they overlap. Nevertheless, for clarity of thought it is useful to distinguish them.
Experience is a knowledge different from that acquired by learning, reading or
studying, and it can sometimes be in sharp contrast. Historical experience, unlike
other types of experience—often partial or specific—is a quite comprehensive
category close to what is regarded as life experience; they overlap, but are not
identical. Various individual experiences are frequently transferable and communi-
cable only with difficulty. By contrast, historical experience is logically related to
content of collective (group, generational, social or national) character in two senses:
firstly, because large groups of people have been exposed to certain historical events,
and secondly because lived-through events become the subject of collective reflec-
tion and interpersonal communication where experiences and lessons learned are
transferred to others, including members of subsequent generations, especially by
language.
Ideology represents a comprehensive set of views, ideas and values, based on the
formulation of the interests of a certain group, class or state. These are above all
associated with policy, but also affect other spheres of social life. In the social
sciences they are often considered double-edged: positively as a kind of social glue
integrating the collective body; negatively as part of a “false consciousness” (Marx),
imposed to legitimize certain forms of social organization, power manipulation or
oppression.
In dealing with historical consciousness, one must pay special attention to state
ideology. Among the most stimulating contributions on this subject are those of
Pierre Bourdieu, who speaks of “symbolic order” and “symbolic violence”, with the
education system and compulsory public education as their instruments. By these the
state instils common forms and categories of perception and thinking, understand-
ings of the social framework, cognitive structures and “state forms of classification”,
thereby creating the conditions for common habits (mental structures) which are
prerequisite for achieving a specific type of social consensus (Bourdieu 1998). This
represents the state’s contribution to forming what is called identity or national
character.
Historiography, as the systematic recording of events and processes occurring in
the past, is the predecessor of today’s historical science, which is the professional
methodology to obtain, analyze, systematize and explain findings related to history.
Contemporary historical science, with its sub-disciplines, focusses on exploring
world history, national history, territorial history, the history of human culture,
politics, economy and everyday life, among other things.
Collective memory can be composed of mythical conceptions, legends, memories
of historical events and personalities, traditions or customs. Halbwachs’s concept of
collective memory assumes that collective life is a source of both the memories
themselves and the terms which embody them. Communities of people as subjects of
collective memory constitute the social frameworks in which the specific contents of
this memory are located, while individual memory is where the collective memories
of various social groups interconnect. In terms of groups, the key issue is the
distribution of knowledge among its individual members, and those who participate
in the collective memory certify their group affiliation.
In today’s humanities, great attention is paid to the connection between historical
science and collective memory. Similarity and continuity in group standing is
emphasized by collective memory, according to Halbwachs, while history identifies
discontinuity and difference. Group memory has a tendency to emphasize its own
distinctness, which means what differentiates their history from those of other
groups. History, meanwhile, levels out such differences and reorganizes them into
a homogeneous historical space (Halbwachs 1950: 74, 75).
Pierre Nora focuses on the situation in Western countries. A separation between
collective memory and history, which may for a long period overlap, occurs when a
spontaneous national memory, transferred by memory from generation to genera-
tion, is replaced by a deliberate and tactical construction of national history within
the framework of history. Due to this separation, memory and history may contradict
each other, especially nowadays (Nora 1984: XIX).
Paul Ricoeur (2000), meanwhile, believes that while history primarily concerns
verification, the main ambition of memory—involved in the construction of identity
of individuals and groups—is maintaining loyalty to roots. In Ricoeur’s eyes both
goals are legitimate, but need to be balanced so that neither memory nor history is
unduly inhibited. History that views the past detachedly, seeking an objectivity on
past events, can help the memory of individual groups to lose its exclusivity, and
open the way to dialogue.
So far it is clear that lived historical experience, (state) ideology, the findings of
historians, as well as collective memory, represent mutually interacting components
of historical consciousness. A further development in such considerations may be
inspired by the American sociologist Talcott Parsons and his AGIL scheme, which
functions as a heuristic model. Parsons’ approach is informed by the idea that
historical consciousness can be regarded as a social system. Social systems consist
of meaningful communications; in this case meanings with historical content.
Any social system, according to Parsons, can endure only if it ensures the
implementation of four basic functions: adaptation (A), goals (G), integration
(I) and latency (L) (Parsons 1966: 28). In Parsons’ systematic models each is
associated with a functionally specialised sub-system.
In our case function (A) can be associated with lived historical experience,
(G) with the ideological interpretation of history, (I) with historical knowledge,
(L) with collective memory. Adaptation (A) we understand as “definition” of a
current situation resulting from a specific historical event. Goals (G) may be
associated with the selection of historical subjects as legitimization mechanisms.
Integration (I) is conceived by historians working on a coherent, internally integrated
and logically organized understanding. Latency in cultural patterns (L) is a matter for
collective memory, transferring the most important contents from the past to the
present.
A point to note is that Parsons’ considerations do not end with four basic
functions and subsystems; two other important systemic aspects are notable. The
first is that systemic differentiation occurs within the individual subsystems and
again takes the form of the AGIL scheme. The second is that, between these
functionally differentiated subsystems, mutual communication and interpenetration
take place.
Historical Consciousness
A G
Lived historical experience Ideological interpretation of

history
Collective memory Historiography
L I
Collective Memory
A G
Reproduction and Selection of the dominant

upgrading of memory elements of memory
Transfer of traditions Construction of the social

frames of memory
L I
The relationship between historical consciousness and collective memory may be

understood by analogy with the world of computers. Historical consciousness and
collective memory are interdependent in a way similar to computer programs and
databases. Computer programs are dependent on computer memory. Even though
programs can exist without data, to be valuable they need data stored in databases.
The same is true in reverse: data stored in the databases of computer memories may
also exist independently, but to work with it requires a program. We can identify four
types of operations in collective memory which correspond to the basic system
functions expressed in AGIL. The adaptation of collective memory (A) can be
looked upon as memory up-dates, configuring memories on the basis of present
requirements. The setting of the dominants of memory corresponds to the achieve-
ment of goals (G). The collective memory works selectively, moment by moment
based on memories useful for the legitimizing interpretation of the past and the
strengthening of collective identity. Integration (I) corresponds to what Maurice
Halbwachs calls “the social framework of the memory”, a kind of organization of
memories or structure of representations providing individuals with orientation
points in space and time to remember and localize evoked memories. Finally, the
maintenance of latent cultural patterns (L) is represented by the tradition, rules and
customs that have existed from—so to speak—time out of mind, and their transmis-
sion from generation to generation.
Maurice Halbwachs opines on the issue of the adaptation of the collective
memory to the present, attributing to collective memory the ability of constant
reconstruction and therefore the continual re-actualization of reference frames to
align with the present (Halbwachs 1994: 279). The past is not maintained as such in
memory, but in the form in which society captured it at any particular time and
specific social context, and for that memory to be kept alive, it must be conformed to
the needs of existing society, in accordance with its priorities, interests and require-
ments. How the dominants of memory are determined was addressed by Henri
Bergson (1982 [1896)], according to whom human life is associated with the
continuous creation of memories, give varied weight in our minds through selective
retrieval. He attributes this selectivity to the practical aspect of usefulness; the
memory is updated if—so to speak—it comes in handy. Reflections on dominant
memories are also found in Halbwachs (1994: 290), where the collective memory
selects those elements from the past which shape the identity of the given group
partly by emphasizing its uniqueness while arousing feelings of time’s passage. The
theme of selectivity is central too to Paul Ricoeur’s concept of “work of memory”
(Ricoeur 2000), according to which memory is a means of selecting what should not
be forgotten, and the intellectual construing of the past.
As for integration—memory, according to Halbwachs, is constituted, made
functional and reproduces in social frameworks created by living people in society,
within whose frameworks our memories are evoked and determined by a weighted
recollection. Such frameworks are not rigid but dynamic, formed by elements that
represent and organize recollection. They include orientation points in space and
time: historical, geographical, biographical and political concepts, as well as com-
mon experience and familiar perspectives (Kvasničková 2005: 35).
Tradition, meanwhile, ensures the maintenance of latent cultural patterns, taken to
mean the cultural heritage transmitted from generation to generation, such as cultural
patterns, religious beliefs, myths, rumours, legends, rules, instructions, recipes,
traditions, customs, manners and rituals. Social groups constitute themselves
through common recollection, protecting and guarding their traditions, creating

differentiation from the surrounding world, a consciousness of unique identity, and
the durability ensured by carefully memorised facts and their selection. Anthony
Giddens (2002: 52)—inspired by E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (1983)—points out
that many patterns thought of as traditional, and steeped in the mists of time, are in
fact products at most of the last couple of centuries, and often much more recent.
Some, he argues, have been “faked-up” or “artificially manufactured”. Since ancient
times there has been a tendency to modify and complement the past, evidenced, inter
alia, by a large number of historical forgeries.
The AGIL scheme theorizes that historical consciousness and collective memory
function as systems handling a particular type of human knowledge (in a way
inherent to individual subsystems and their mutual cooperation). But this scheme
is not exhaustive; other phenomena may act as vehicles of historical consciousness
and collective memory—for instance individuals, groups, classes, strata, generations
and, after all, society as a whole. Both systems have means of institutional support
and information, and ways to process information with regard to their time-space and
factual subject matter. This means that within historical consciousness and collective
memory at least six structures can be identified, mutually intersecting and influenc-
ing each other:
– Systemic Structure (described using the AGIL scheme);
– Institutional Structure (educational system, archives, institutes, museums, memo-
rials, holidays, memorial ceremonies);
– The information resources structure (literature, education, media);
– Stratification Structure (differentiation of classes, strata and social groups);
– Generational Structure;
– Content Structure (differentiation of information in time, space and substance).
The shaping principles of these structures produce different types of discourse7
which may mutually contradict. The essential thing is that individual systems
process history uniquely, which generates polycontextuality: one historical event
(e.g. the liberation of 1945) may be viewed in different ways, and looks different
from the perspective of lived-through experience, ideological interpretation, histor-
ical science or collective memory; in addition, this approach can be differentiated to
reflect social classes, groups and generations, and classified into different content
frames (temporal, spatial and substantive). As a result, disagreements arise, and
struggle to acquire the dominant position against other systems and discourses in the
fields of ideology or historical science. The prevalence of passionate polemics
indicates that the matter of historical consciousness and memory is not just an
academic problem, but a very serious political issue.
7
Discourse of historical experiences e.g. inter-individual communication; the discourse of ideolog-
ical interpretation in political argumentation; the discourse of historians on the pages of professional
books and magazines; the discourse of collective memory in imaginative literature, film, fine arts
and media.
References 79
Historia magistra vitae est—history is a life’s teacher—Latin scholars used to

say.8 Although this statement is still repeated, how does it retain relevance in the
present? It is generally held that from history one can draw lessons for today, to
avoid the deadly errors of the past. But on the other hand, it seems we are inapt to
learn, so have no choice but to reprise our mistakes. However, the problem is
generally more complicated and not dependent only on our willingness to be
influenced by historical experience and memory.
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Identity Building: A Complex Phenomenon
The current accent on the topic of memory and historical consciousness is connected
with the problem of identity. Simply put, identity is a question of who we are, our
place in the world, and where we are heading. Like many notions of social sciences,
the notion of identity is characterized by high levels of complexity and a number of
possible theoretical approaches. Brewer (2001: 116) considers the debate on the
identity issues so widespread that a “conceptual anarchy” exists. In principle, three
scientific approaches to identity-related phenomena are possible: philosophical,
psychological (see for example Leary and Tangney 2012) and sociological.
In order to provide a robust theoretical framework for a sociological approach to
identity, the philosophical approach is a good start point. The word identity stems
from the Latin term “identitas”, stemming from the pronoun idem, “the same”. From
a strictly linguistic point of view, identity stands for “sameness”, and the sameness of
an individual through time represents the earliest idea of social actors, based upon
differences among individuals (Sparti 1996: 15; Touraine 1992: 46).
Philosophical passages like the following from Augustine, in book Ten, chapter
VI-9, of his Confessions can be seen as the theoretical basis for the interest in
individuality of Western culture:
And I turned my thoughts into myself and said, “Who are you?” And I answered, “A man”.
For see, there is in me both a body and a soul; the one without, the other within. In which of
these should I have sought my God, whom I had already sought with my body from earth to
heaven, as far as I was able to send those messengers—the beams of my eyes? But the inner
part is the better part; for to it, as both ruler and judge, all these messengers of the senses
report the answers of heaven and earth and all the things therein, who said, “We are not God,
but he made us.” My inner man knew these things through the ministry of the outer man,
and I, the inner man, knew all this I, the soul, through the senses of my body. I asked the
whole frame of earth about my God, and it answered, “I am not he, but he made me” (Outler
1995).
The fact that the philosophical debate of the last thousand years has focused much
more on individual differences among human beings, rather than similarities,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_8
84 Identity Building: A Complex Phenomenon
highlights the main criterion of identity description: classification vs. individualization

(Sparti 1996: 21); according to this criterion, identity can be based on individual
similarities to a broader group, or individual differences from other members of a
group (see also Brewer 2001: 118; Rorty 1976: 1, 2; Sparti 1996: 30, 31; Vignoles
et al. 2011).
Nevertheless, these distinctions still consist of substantial statements whose
metaphysical nature put them beyond empirical or rational confirmation. Typical
examples are Decartes’ reflections that consider subjective identities as empirical
manifestations of a sort of spiritual substance called “res cogitans”. A number of
other Western thinkers have defined identity as a “real” substance based upon
metaphysical assessments.
This changed in the 1940s, when Wittgenstein and Analytical Philosophy
rejected metaphysical discourses as axiomatic premises of philosophical systems;
those systems become nothing more than “linguistic games” whose rules only work
within the game itself. The only way Wittgenstein thought it possible to overcome
this mental limit was to create a scientific language to match any word to one single
empirical object and to describe the relationships between those objects through
strict logical and syntactic rules (Wittgenstein and Ogden 2013 (1921): 2, 1).
Following this methodology, the easiest way to define identity is the situation
where an individual can refer to themselves as “I”. Individual representations,
however, need some kind of public acknowledgment (Sparti 1996: 69), which is
where the sociological approach begins. To take one example: I may consider myself
a leading artist, but only if the community treats me as such—buying my records,
asking for my autograph etc.—will this representation acquire continuity through
time and provide identity (McKinlay and McVittie 2011); in other words, I could
change arbitrarily my personal criteria of self-representation: tomorrow I might
represent myself as an astronaut, but no other individual would consider this a
reliable element to assess my actual identity. In other words, while philosophical
tradition has provided the instruments to assess what identity is, as we have seen
above, sociology has provided the instruments to assess how identity works. The fact
that identity is not “initially there, at birth, but arises in the process of social
experience and activity” (Mead 1955: 135), implies the need to seize and describe
the social mechanisms for social actors to start and somehow govern this process
(see also Cerulo 1997).
Actually, Mead’s theoretical system is widely viewed as the classic instrument to
master the social part of the identity building process, with the essential principle that
“the individual experiences himself as such, not directly, but only indirectly, from the
particular standpoints of other individual members of the same group, or from the
generalized standpoints of the social group as a whole to which he belongs” (Mead
1955: 138). In other words, “The self, as that which can be an object to itself, is
essentially a social structure, and it arises in the social experience” (Mead 1955:
140). Thus, Mead’s notion of identity relies on the reflexive idea of the human mind
that North-American sociology produced in the past century. This model assumes
that the mind’s contents are not innate, but rather the outcome of social processes and
interactions; as a consequence, even identity is the outcome of the individual’s social
Identity in Turbulent Times 85
interactions, enabling self-representation. According to this model, the mind is

reflexive: it can “split in two parts”, one of which is the subject to the other part’s
observation. This is the core of social identities: the capability of human beings—
only human beings—to be the object of their own thoughts.1
Corollary to this idea is the fact that at birth, every individual receives treatment
corresponding to the representations of the world and social space that are part of
their local culture. Thus, in their process of socialization, the individual will build a
self-representation corresponding to the social position in which they live. In Roman
society, for example, children would represent themselves differently according to
their positions in the family (free, slave) or their gender. Once an adult, belonging to
any gens or social class would be the key for assessing his identity, if male, or that of
the man she wedded, if female. Of course, this would be much different in an
American family of the 1950s. At that time, the identity factors were ethnicity and
job (or husband’s job).
Generally speaking, the criteria for building identities are obviously strictly
connected to the values—i.e., the culture (Weber 1969: 54, 55)—prevailing in a
given social environment; nevertheless, no direct causal relationship is given:
identity is a complex process of adaptation and reciprocal acknowledgement
among actors and the social environment, whose outcome is impossible to foresee
in advance. The realization of different identities is influenced by the demands of the
situation or social context, but the process is one of selecting from a repertory of
identities or self-representations that reside within the individual (Brewer
2001: 121).
To summarize, social identities are based upon a given number of cultural issues.
In some social contexts, especially in ancient times, social class or gender may have
been the only elements for an individual to build self-representation. In modern
societies, by contrast, the pace and the importance of changes—historical, social and
cultural—imply that the social-cultural inputs for social actors have increased in
number and intensity. The consequence is that building social identities has become
much more difficult in a single representation.
Identity in Turbulent Times
Building upon the definition of identity proposed in the introduction, the cultural
conditions of the modern era imply at least the possibility of effective description of
the process (Kellerhals et al. 2002), if not actual predictions. For example, while in
the pre-modern era the social stratum was the main identity factor, in the 1950s a
more complex social structure made it harder to find such a single reference.
Industrialization had made clear class distinctions: factory workers, employees and
entrepreneurs. Although it was quite easy to assess any individual’s position by their
1
On reflexivity see also Giddens (1991: 34, 35).
possession of production goods, the classes of the industrial era had always been
open; thus, a high degree of social mobility occurred, and in the political cultures of
Anglo-Saxon countries in particular, becoming richer was a source of pride and basic
part of the self-made-man’s identity. A basic factor of identity remained gender,
especially among the middle class—the roles of men and women were clearly
designed so that belonging to a given gender implied having well-defined and
differentiated roles.
In the 1950s, nation states were very powerful, and especially after the crisis of
1929 were supposed to rule over economic and social structures. The power of
central public authorities was so powerful at modeling citizens’ lives that being
American, French or Swedish implied very different life conditions amid reciprocal
expectations between citizens and institutions. Thus, although it required a quite
large amount of information and data processing, it was still possible to assess
individual identity. From the 1970s on, this task became harder and harder because
of structural changes that have affected the world and seem to have compromised the
certitudes that modernity offered.
Some scholars have defined this time as post-modernity (Bauman 1992; Castells
2010 (1997); Jencks 1977; Lyotard 1979; Lash 1990; Simon 2004), high modernity
(Giddens 1990, 1991), or have stressed the crisis of one single issue like the crisis of
Nation States (Beck 1999; Kinnvall 2004), or rationality (Touraine 1992). Essen-
tially, these changes that have affected the whole world for decades are cultural, and
the identity building process has turned tricky (Wagoner et al. 2017). In such an
environment, in contemporary societies, social and cultural structures are highly
sensitive to any external input, so that they cannot keep their shape for long (Bauman
2003: 60); one of the main consequences, besides the phenomena of identity
disorders (Ruzzeddu 2008), is that the traditional scientific categories to comprehend
identity building mechanisms are becoming less and less reliable. Attempts have
been made to yield new models (Cheek and Cheek 2018; Gaither 2018); however, a
complex approach to contemporary mechanisms of identity building shows that a
deep cognitive gap has arisen.
The reaction of several categories of social actors to post-modernity’s liquid and
weak identity building mechanism, seems to be grasping at simple and immediately
admitted features, especially ethnicity. Race, culture, ancestry and religion appear to
be the most frequent identification criteria in the current time, whereas political
orientations, life-styles and personal choices seem not to have the same appeal. In
other words, facing a world whose social structure is quickly changing toward a
globalized society characterized by international flows of trade, as well as the
growing importance of supranational institutions, important layers of Western soci-
eties reach for their cultural origins, traditional religions or nationalities. It is time to
consider how a complex approach (see also Pitasi 2010) can contribute to
interpreting contemporary identity phenomena.
Complexity 87
Complexity
Complexity theories emerged quite recently in the intellectual scenario (1970s) as

the synthesis of the experience of scientific disciplines that had arisen in the
preceding decades2: namely Systemic theory, Chaos theory and Cybernetics.
Although independent disciplines, these immediately demonstrated their interrela-
tion, as they could provide a common set of theoretical instruments to cope with a
range of epistemic problems affecting scientific communities experiencing a crisis in
the mechanical representation of the universe.
Very briefly, those problems concerned:
1. Causality: this is perhaps the Complexity Theories’ main difference from the
traditional visions of the world based upon a cause-effect model according to
which empirical phenomena have one given direct cause with intensity of effects
proportional to it; by controlling the cause it is possible to control the effect.
Complexity theories have mostly focused on phenomena that causal models
cannot comprehend, let alone foresee: non-linear dynamics and chaotic
phenomena et al. (Gleick 1988; Holland 1992, 1999; Suteanu 2005; Waldrop
1994).
2. Multi-disciplinarity: Complexity Theories have always highlighted the fact that
scientific domains can only grasp a small part of reality and support trans-
disciplinarity as the most viable form of investigation (Von Bertalanffy 1968;
Morin 1977).
3. The observer-object relationship: this is the question of whether chaotic phenom-
ena are actually chaotic or based upon organizational patterns which are too
complex for the human mind; on this subject, part of the literature considers that
incertitude is unavoidable (Bateson 1972, 1979; Maturana and Varela 1980,
1987; Prigogine 1977, 1997; Laszlo 1991, 2003, 2006a, b; Luhmann 1995);
others think that the incertitude can be overcome (Morin 1990; Urry 2005;
Gell-Mann 1994: 56 ff.).
Generally speaking, Complexity Theories evolved to cope with the uncertainty
that has challenged the modern idea of an ordered, knowable and foreseeable
universe, and to yield epistemic and communication strategies assisting us to
manage ignorance or uncertainty (Watzlawick et al. 1967: 44). In relation to identity,
it is worth noticing that Second-order Cybernetics provides a theoretical framework
through which to consider identity building itself as a reduction of complexity.
Based upon Second-order Cybernetics, Luhmann’s idea of system is quite different
2
Actually, the first examples of complex phenomena referred to in the literature are the studies of
Maxwell and Bolztmann on entropy in the 1860s. Entropy directly relates to the second principle of
thermodynamics—for objects consisting of large amounts of basic elements; those objects have the
property of dissipating their internal energy, ending up with a condition of the steadiness of those
basic elements, which lose, during this process, any structured reciprocal boundaries (Porter 2003:
493 ff.).
from preceding ones. A crucial notion of Luhmann’s theory is autopoiesis (Maturana

and Varela 1987), which means that systems create themselves by setting barriers to
the surrounding environment; inside the barriers, a process takes place of functional
structuration of system elements; in other words, a reduction of the complexity of the
environment (Luhmann 1995: 182, 183).3
The original theoretical core of Luhmann’s theory is that this process has a double
orientation: societies—i.e., social systems—are environments for human beings—
i.e. persons (Luhmann 1995: 109)—and humans are environments for societies
(Luhmann 1995: 179); “social systems come into being on the basis of the noise
that persons create in their attempts to communicate” (Luhmann 1995: 214). The
basic element of persons is consciousness (Luhmann 1995: 219), and the basic
elements of societies are communications (Luhmann 1995: 182); this implies that
persons set barriers from society by defining their identities through a process of
conscious self-reflection. In the meantime, societies set barriers from individuals by
defining the social boundaries to individual autonomy, through norms, culture,
sense-making etc.—all activities that depend on communication. In other words,
identity is a kind of complexity reduction through which people can interact. In
terms of identity processes, it is important to note that this interaction mainly consists
of expectations:
In their mutual recognition of alter egos, ego and alter reach the understanding that is basic to
communication. (. . .). The intended content of that utterance and alter’s reaction to it
constitute information for both ego and alter. Understanding, utterance, and information
constitute the essence of communication for Luhmann. Each of these elements is a meaning
selection event in the ongoing communications that constitute society. The underlying
understanding of mutual recognition, for example, is a contingent selection to treat alter as
alter ego. An utterance, such as a smile, is an expectation selectively put forward to express
tentative friendliness and to test alter’s friendliness. Alter’s return smile constitutes infor-
mation that is either selected or rejected by ego as a return offer of tentative friendliness
(Bausch 2015: 392, 393).
Although interaction always manifests a certain degree of uncertainty, in order for

the communications to turn into a social system they must achieve stability through
time (recursivity). Interaction patterns that are stable enough will set up a social
structure, organized into communication systems.
Within this framework, we may propose a scope for the identity crisis outlined
above. The main contribution that Luhmann’s systems theory offers to identity
studies is to consider identity as a process (Welz 2005: 17), rather than a mere
character, which individuals achieve during socialization. Identity is thus a
co-evolution process that involves persons and social systems: is a continuous
reciprocal adaptation between those different systems in term of reciprocal
boundaries.
Currently, the interaction between psychic and social systems shows a deep gap
between the social and the cultural structures. The former are evolving towards a
3
Luhmann also considers that the structuration of a system implies a reduction of complexity,
because the system can only set a limited number of linked elements among the many possible.
References 89
globalized society, while the latter are reacting to that change through ascriptive
characterization. In systemic terms, belonging to an ethnicity, a community, a nation
does not imply big expectations from other systems, no matter whether psychic or
social. An environment that focuses on ascriptive characters relies on representations
of persons ‘just the way they are’: no effort is necessary to change internal psychic
structure through inputs from the environment. This may permit saving lots of
(psychic) energy: but the point is that the gap with the globalized social structure
is real and, in spite of a few gestures by political subsystems to encourage self-
representations, the social systems’ evolutionary trends are to the contrary. We must
highlight the potentially disruptive consequences of this gap, which is deeply
asymmetric: if persons rely on simplified self-representations, it can lead to opera-
tional closure and inability to seize the complexity of the environment, especially
social systems. Therefore, the risks are high that in reducing the flow of information,
the energies and material resources that each system swaps with its environment
shrink or disappear, with potential dangers of systemic collapse.
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Historical Sociology as a Processual
Sociology
In the context of contemporary sociology, a processual approach is most often

encountered within historical sociology. In this respect, the subject of historical
sociology can be defined as a research programme focused on the issue of long-term
developmental processes. One of those to pay most attention to this area of research
in the twentieth century was Norbert Elias, who has already been mentioned and
discussed several times in this book. We now focus on the contribution of this
researcher in a comprehensive and at the same not uncritical way.
Norbert Elias (1897–1990) was a “sociological loner” for most of his life.
Graduating in 1924 in Breslau, in the years 1925–1930 he worked in Heidelberg
under Alfred Weber, where he made the acquaintance of Karl Mannheim, whom he
followed in 1930 to the university at Frankfurt am Main. In 1933 Elias was
prevented from gaining his habilitation in Frankfurt because of his Jewish origins
and went into exile, first to Paris and then to London in 1935. His work The
Civilising Process came out almost unnoticed in Switzerland in 1939, at the begin-
ning of the war, while after its end Elias worked as a teacher in London. In 1954 he
was appointed a lecturer and later reader at the University of Leicester. In the years
1962–1964 he worked in Ghana in West Africa, and from the 1970s he lived
alternately in Holland and Germany, dying in 1990 in Amsterdam.
The Civilising Process
In The Civilising Process, Elias formulated a theory of both the development of

human personality structures and modes of behaviour (psychogenetic investigation),
and the social structures of inequality, power and order (sociogenetic investigation),
showing them to be mutually dependent. Two related theories emerge from a
synthetic overview: the theory of civilisation (relating to the changes affecting
personality and behaviour) and the theory of state formation.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_9
94 Historical Sociology as a Processual Sociology
In studying the civilising process in western societies, Elias used what were, for
his time, relatively unusual research materials: medieval writings on polite behav-
iour, morals and customs, epic literature and contemporary pictorial evidence. He
focused on such matters as table manners, bodily functions like blowing one’s nose
or spitting, behaviour in the bedroom, relations between men and women, and the
life of knights.
In the early middle ages behaviour was less regulated (people ate with their
fingers, blew their noses into their hands, often spat etc.) and more determined by
spontaneous affects and urges (expressed, for example, in the aggressive behaviour
of knights). This altered little during the medieval period, and only the end of the
middle ages brought increasing refinement (e.g. the use of forks at table). A new
quality emerged during the Renaissance, when not only were habits previously
considered normal declared to be “uncivilised” and inappropriate, but the whole
question shifted. People began to monitor their own behaviour in a systematic way,
and self-regulate according to new prescriptions, observing others to assess their
motives and intentions. Thus people moulded themselves with greater self-
consciousness and a new relationship developed between man and man—a new
form of integration of manners which during the seventeenth century accelerated and
culminated in the etiquette of court society.
This was not, of course, just a matter of gradual refinement, but a process of the
modelling of personality, i.e. Psychogenesis, characterised by the continuous repres-
sion of urges and affections. Particular standards of shame and embarrassment form
an invisible barrier around individuals. The shift in the control of urges and affec-
tions is accomplished first by external restraint (Fremdzwang), but to become
permanent must be transformed into self-restraint (Selbstzwang), functioning auto-
matically and independent of situation. A psychic structure develops which, in
Freudian terminology, might be called the super-ego, and to which we give such
names as conscience, works as an apparatus of self-control internalised by individ-
uals through socialisation.
Elias demonstrates the mutual dependency of psychogenesis and sociogenesis in
relation to the problem of aggression. Historical sources present knights spending
their lives destroying, pillaging, killing and torturing others as an accepted element
in a society of warriors. Strong affections and aggression, dominated by spontaneous
emotion, were symptomatic of a society with a low level of order and integration,
where threats, assaults and robbery with murder were daily occurrences.
In a pacified society, by contrast, the individual has sufficient security to renounce
violence, as social regulation takes the form of a state monopoly on the exercise of
violence, thus creating the conditions for individual psychic regulation, the control
of affections and the blocking of aggressive impulses. Understanding social reality
as a process plays a key role in Elias’s sociological thought. Social processes take
place in continually created, unplanned figurations, characterised by either rise or
decline, and accompanied by a relocation of power. The fluctuating balance of power
is an integral element of human relations.
During his life, Elias developed the thought expressed in The Civilising Process
in a series of more intensive studies, such as The Society of Individuals (Die
How to Understand Elias Today 95
Gesellschaft der Individuen), his work on sport (Elias and Dunning 1986), the book
Time (Über die Zeit), Studies on the Germans (Studien über die Deutschen), or in the
short work The Loneliness of the Dying (Über die Einsamkeit der Sterbenden in
underen Tagen). Elias’s views on sociology are formulated explicitly mainly in his
later creative period, especially through What is Sociology? (Was ist Soziologie?
(2012 [1978])), Involvement and Detachment (Engagement und Distanzierung
(1987), and his article On the Foundations of the Theory of Social Processes (Zur
Grundlegung einer Theorie sozialer Prozesse (1977)). The problem of social
inequality is dealt with in The Established and the Outsiders (Etablierte und
Außenseiter (1965)) written with John L. Scotson.
The extensive discussion provoked by these works shows how Elias’s concep-
tions grew into a new social scientific paradigm. In contrast to postmodern irony and
scepticism in regard to meta-narration, this paradigm places the accent back on the
long-term historical perspective.
How to Understand Elias Today
A characteristic feature of Elias’s sociological thinking is processuality. His explor-

atory interest was attracted by processes of continuous, unintentional, long-term
change, whose defining characteristic is bipolarity conceptually expressed by paired
terms such as integration and disintegration, or rise and fall. Another special feature
is the persistent, constant direction these can take over centuries (although unlike
evolution they can even move in reverse). Elias speaks about the direction of social
processes (no matter whether “good” or “bad”) and about shifts and breakthroughs
from one processual grade to another (accompanied by the transfer of power). Shifts
of various kinds and intensities can occur simultaneously, while changes in one
direction can give way to the reverse; predominant processes of integration can be
accompanied by partial disintegration, or, conversely, dominant processes of disin-
tegration could lead to alternative reintegration.
It is often stated that mankind throughout history has made progress, evidenced
by all sorts of criteria. However, this idea of many-sided progress Elias considered a
myth. It was not that social development could not have a specific direction, but that
it did not do so necessarily and under all circumstances. When studying development
dynamics, we should talk not of necessity, but of possibilities and probabilities of
various degrees (Elias 2012 [1978]). The idea that the discernment of long-term
development in the past automatically implies that the same trend awaits us in the
future is false according to Elias. The constant clash of civilizing processes with
de-civilizing processes (entzivilisierende Gegenprozesse) (Elias 1992: 383) is con-
sidered by Elias as characteristic of recent development (from the Stone Age to the
present days). Civilizing and de-civilizing processes have their directions. The
civilizing process is due to shifts in the balance of internal and external regulators
of behaviour in favour of self-control, while de-civilization implies a movement
characterized by shrinking of self-identification and sympathy with others. In spite of
repeated manifestations of de-civilization, according to Elias the civilizing process

predominates. However, there is no reason to believe that this is inevitable. An
especial caution in this respect is the mass genocide committed by German Nazis
(refuting the impression that such barbarism could not happen in the twentieth
century) (Elias and Dunning 1983: 33). Despite the impressive scope of The
Civilizing Process and the vast range of problems it surveys, it clearly stands to be
extended by a fuller application of civilization theory, taking in additional questions.
Elias himself definitely did not consider his conception as dogma, returning to it in
his later studies and adding a number of correctives. It may be objected, among other
things, that The Civilizing Process devotes too little attention to the sphere of
religion (though it was not ignored), art (but later came a separate study on Mozart),
labour, production and technology (differing from conceptions of civilization
emphasizing only technological development); moreover, only a limited part deals
with the Church and the bourgeoisie. Some historians may point out that Elias’s
image of medieval knights accentuated the dark shades of brutality and neglected the
spiritual dimension (though this criticism is blunted if we take into account Elias’s
analysis of courtesy).
Among all polemical voices the complaint heard loudest is that Elias ignored the
historical significance of the bourgeoisie. This is no coincidence. The bourgeoisie
and capitalism were the dominant topics of sociological research in nineteenth and
early twentieth century German sociology, and Elias, throughout his doctoral thesis
and work on civilization, by contrast set out to devote particular attention to the
nobility. For Marx and Weber, the fundamental difference between the era of the
bourgeoisie, i.e. capitalism, and the period preceding it, was a signature character-
istic. To Elias’s critics, concentration on the figurative dynamics of courtly society
led to a failure to examine the revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie, which after all
had led to the collapse of the royal absolutist mechanism. Elias did not deny this
historical role of the bourgeoisie, however; he merely interpreted the end of abso-
lutism somewhat differently than did the Marxist theory of class struggle (the
bourgeoisie were not understood as a homogeneous class from the interests point
of view, but as comprising groups with interests variously associated on the one
hand with the maintenance of state privileges, and on the other with removing state
privileges and the hierarchy). Elias devoted a whole chapter of the second volume of
The Civilizing Process to the relationship of bourgeois classes and the nobility (Elias
1994 [1931]).
When he accentuated the problems of the nobility and court, he had his reasons.
In his view the decisive phase of psychogenesis and sociogenesis took place before
the bourgeois revolution and could be clarified through examining the “balance of
power” within the absolutist configuration of the nobility.
What raises greater embarrassment in some of Elias’s pupils and followers is that
although the theory of civilization does not definitely imply a certain and clear vision
of the positive development of society, it does emphasise positive long-term social
processes, not dissimilar to some older conceptions of social progress. Moreover,
this ‘progress’ has also manifested aspects criticised by other twentieth century
thinkers, among whom we may mention two (omitting programmatic pessimists
How to Understand Elias Today 97
such as O. Spengler): Sigmund Freud (who emphasised links between oppressive

civilizational power and increasing personality disorders) and Edmund Husserl (with
his analysis of the crisis of European thought and sciences).
Doubters also address Elias’s civilization theory not infrequently from the camp
of cultural anthropology through arguments of cultural relativism. There are accu-
sations of ethnocentrism arising from the fact that civilization relies on comparative
approaches to historical periods and developmental stages. If, for us, today is more
civilized than the past, we may attribute westerners with a higher degree of control
over their affections than people in developing countries, implying evaluative
judgments which manifest an ethnocentric bias, as warned of by Anton Blok, Elias’s
former pupil. In the lecture Primitive and Civilized (Blok 1982) Blok deals with the
conceptual antithesis of primitive and civilized, concluding that these and similar
terms are used to legitimize the superiority of one group (“civilized”) over the other
group (“primitive”). He went so far as to accuse Elias of racism.
The most extensive effort to challenge Elias’s civilization theory was developed
by cultural anthropologist Hans Peter Duerr (born 1943), the author of the five-
volume work Der Mythos vom Zivilisationsprozeß (1988–2002). Duerr asserts that
Elias’s theory is false, that it is a pure myth, identifiable with the ideology of
colonialism that sees other cultures as “uncivilized”, even the cultures of our own
past. Duerr is not willing to formulate an alternative to Elias’s civilisation theory; he
simply puts compiles a heap of evidence with the aim of falsifying Elias’s theory.1
In relating these critiques, it must be borne in mind that Elias’s theory did not
itself work with the dichotomy of primitive - civilized (used by older generations of
cultural anthropologists); this alien approach was inferred by opponents. Further-
more, Elias’s civilizing process is not unambiguously positive and optimistic;
civilization is associated with human-generated pressure, repression and alienation.2
Since the concept of civilization was held so ambiguously by Elias, some criticisms
lose their foundation. It certainly cannot be said that Elias took the ethnocentric
1
His approach is based on two steps. First, in his interpretative approach, he converts Elias’s theory
into the form of few general propositions; subsequently he collects extensive empirical material to
refute these theses. Duerr abstracts from changes in social macro-structures; he is not interested in
topics such as law, power, military, manufacturing, technology, transportation, etc. Civilization
theory is interpreted as a theory of the evolutionary development of affection regulation that leads to
linear transformations of the mental habits of people in the direction of growth of shame boundaries
and barriers of embarrassment and a simultaneous reduction of aggression and cruelty. Duerr
criticizes Elias, arguing that the empirical material was adjusted to a pre-conceived theory, used
tendentiously and interpreted incorrectly.
Elias (1988) participated in a discussion with Duerr himself arguing that Duerr was deliberately
blind to the facts that illustrate the historical differences in the development of individual self-
regulation. To support his ideas, he mentioned the example of learning: The time which is now used
to acquire knowledge that one needs to perform an adult function in society, in comparison with the
past, is significantly extended. This results in the separation of biological maturity from social
maturity. In earlier societies the learning phase was not so long and the transition from childhood to
adulthood was smoother compared with today.
2
The evidence of that is for example Elias’s study The Loneliness of the Dying (1986).
perspective of promoting the Western European civilization model as a model for the
rest of the world. He was apparently aware of the risk of ethnocentrism, which was
why he insisted on a value-neutral approach to the study of his own society. In his
later works Elias took great care with his vocabulary, no longer talking of “higher”
and “lower” but of “other” degrees of civilization.
An important aspect of the contemporary debates over Elias’s works is the
question of what trend predominates in current development: the “civilizing” line
of development, or “contra-shifts” (de-civilization) against it? Undeniably, the
twentieth century offered indicators of de-civilization. In 1986 Edmund Leach
wrote that while Elias was formulating his theory of civilizing process, Hitler was
contradicting it massively (Leach 1986: 13, 14). In the present-day—with the
atrocities committed in the name of ideology, leader, nation or race—it can be easier
to talk about de-civilization than civilization. Modern “civilized” people have shown
the ability to destroy and kill on an unprecedented scale.
Violence and control of the means of it are central themes to the theory of the
civilizing process, yet people do not feel safe in city streets; they are threatened by
terrorist attacks; there are wars in various places around the globe and, over all of this
hangs the threat of the mass annihilation of mankind by modern weapons. European
territories, which Elias dealt with in his major work, are haunted by the memory of
the Holocaust. Such facts naturally raise doubts about the truth of Elias’s theory.
Elias himself, having seen with his own eyes the barbarous shift
(Barbarisierungsschub) which occurred in Germany in the 1930s, was prompted
to pose the question of how it was possible that in the twentieth century the civilized
conscience of a highly civilized nation could collapse (Elias 1992: 45). Knowing
how little was understood about the sociogenesis and psychogenesis of civilized
behaviour and its control mechanisms, he began to address the matter. His foreword
to the The Civilizing Process points out that the questions raised in the book arose
not from existing scientific tradition but from experience of the world in the crisis
and transformation of Western civilization (Elias 1994 [1931]).
Elias’s seminal work was completed at a time when the “final solution” had not
acquired its ultimate form, but many features of the Nazi regime were already
obvious. Some manifestations seemed ominous. They drew attention to the fragility
and vulnerability of civilizational achievements; civilized manners are long in
formation but quickly destroyed. On the question of why such de-civilizating
processes occur, Elias could not find a satisfactory explanation, an omission which
a motivates further thinking on his work. Elias did not expand comprehensively on
his theory of de-civilization, but offered a number of pregnant, original thoughts on
this problem. One of the major driving forces of social processes is tension and
conflicts related to the monopolization of the means of power. A considerable
proportion of humanity is now involved in these struggles for sovereignty. Future
development could easily take one of two very contradictory lines: there is the
possibility of advances in the direction of widespread integration and pacification,
but also the possibility of disintegration and self-destruction. The implicit model
of the de-civilization process is sometimes termed feudalization in the second part of
The Civilizing Process. Attempts to elaborate de-civilization theory in terms of
Elias’s Conception of Time 99
Elias’s way of thinking derive mainly from the analysis in the book The Germans
(1992). Among other things, Elias shows that from a historical point of view the
mass slaughter of defeated enemies is no surprise; on the contrary for a long time it
went without saying. In modern society the trend is dual: modern technology makes
possible the unprecedented expansion of killing behaviour, while in public opinion
mass killing is denounced and the growth of empathy is a symptom of civilization.
Elias characterizes the Nazi era as a barbarization shift, a civilization regress and
re-barbarization (Elias 1992: 45). He denounces the Holocaust as a return to the
atrocities of former times (Elias 1992: 394), pointing out that the slaughter of Jews
arose from certain tendencies inherent in twentieth century society; these actions
were rationally planned and managed, based on the use of an efficient bureaucracy
and modern technology (as shown by Hannah Arendt, people like Adolf Eichmann
did not have to pull the trigger, but merely sit at the table and carefully work out
timetables). However, Elias does not enter into deeper analysis. Among those who
have tried to add to his considerations to create a theory of de-civilization processes
is Jonathan Fletcher (1997).
In 1988, responding to H. P. Duerr, Elias returned to consideration of the concept
of civilization. He said that when preparing in the 1930s to write about the long-term
changes of human feelings and behaviour, he had wanted to show that they arise not
from the plans and goals of individuals or groups, but unexpectedly through the
overlapping intentions of many individuals. He identified the problem that language
offers expressions and explanations of social facts with an in-built ideological
character (Elias 1988). This concerned not only the concept of civilization, but
related concepts like evolution, social development, growth and progress. Such
terms were at the core of a once highly appreciated social ideology which in the
course of the modern history was losing its persuasiveness, part of a belief in
progress which assumed that human society is inevitably directed towards a desir-
able state of greater happiness for most people. Events of the twentieth century
caused the collapse of this ideal, leaving trauma and confusion. The pain of lost faith
manifested itself in a strong backlash against the belief in progress, including the
concept of civilization. In light of this, the concept needed to be re-examined and
clarified, since having searched for other possible concepts, Elias found nothing
more appropriate. He thus decided to keep the concept in close association with rich
empirical documentary material, and use it as an ideologically neutral, factual, and
also key concept of the theory of civilizing processes. It is in this light that we should
consider the analysis of civilisation.
Elias’s Conception of Time
The problems of time are central to part of the context of civilizational theory, and
are seen by Elias through the lens of the sociology of knowledge. Time is not a priori
given in human nature, but a social a product of the synthesising power which is the
result of a long process of development of knowledge. The historical development of
the understanding, marking and measurement of time is an example of a long-term

social process. Elias examines the development of the understanding and determi-
nation of time from early forms of society up to the period of industrialism.
The genesis of terms related to time lies deep in the past and was influenced by
two types of evolutionary process: the first concerns the ability of people to create a
certain synthesis accustomed to chronological arrangement and synchronization; the
second concerns the development of societies themselves. In accordance with Elias’s
civilizational theory, forms of perception and recording of time are interpreted as
examples of social pressures increasingly transformed into self-control and “self-
constraint” (in the early stages of development a person eats when hungry and sleeps
when tired; today these animal cycles are regulated by social organization and
structured to the point where our “physiological clock” is forced to set itself
according to the “social clock”). Elias critically addressed both the Newtonian
conception that time is a physical given of the eternal natural order, and Kant’s
assumption that time is the universal structure of human knowledge (Elias 1988:
101–102). To Elias, time is neither an attribute of an object, nor the priori equipment
of knowledge, but a synthetic human performance, the product of a lengthy process
of learning. The problem of time cannot be understood in isolation but must be seen
in its social contexts (mainly in issues of power and control) and social functions
(coordination and integration). Elias understands time as an orienting tool. Time is a
reference framework, serving people to create landmarks within a continuous stream
of change and thus allowing the comparison of individual phases (socially standard-
ized landmarks include various repetitive or unique events: the seasons, low tide and
high tide, the return of the full moon, the continuum of movement of the Earth and
the Sun, the birth of Christ or the prophet Muhammad).
Elias concentrated his efforts on capturing developmental changes in the percep-
tion of time. The difficulties in this he saw as caused by the absence of an
evolutionary theory to explain the creation of the abstraction and synthesis of
human knowledge. This was further complicated by the widespread tendency to
ascribe time to properties of the process, whose changes time symbolically repre-
sents. According to Elias timing arose from the ability to interconnect two or more
different sequences of continuous changes, one serving as a benchmark for the
other(s). The concept of time is based on what is common to such sequences,
regardless of substantive differences; the word time is a symbol for the relationship
that human groups (meaning groups of animals with biologically endowed abilities
to remember and synthesize) establish between two or more courses of events, with
one taken as a reference framework or benchmark for the standardization of others
(Elias 1988: 12) (continuums of this kind can include the movement of the Sun or
Moon; those who consider these natural movements to be inadequate may choose a
different measure).
To make certain events “time” means making a connection between at least three
elements: between people and two or more continuums of change, one of which is
selected as standard by the group, as a reference framework. At first humankind used
continual sequences of what we call natural events, then later increasingly
mechanical sequences. In this respect memory is of crucial importance. Terms like
“before” and “after” are manifestations of the human ability to combine what has not
Elias’s Conception of Time 101
happened simultaneously, and which was not even mutually experienced. The
human ability to create syntheses of time determination always requires memory
(for example, it would be absurd to say that now it is four o’clock, if it was not
recalled that previously it was two o’clock).
Many authors (among them Durkheim and Sorokin) considered the issue of
temporal concepts in the context of the development of abstract thinking. Unlike
them, Elias preferred to discuss not the abstraction (it is hard to say from which
specific phenomena time was actually abstracted), but the synthesis. Time is—like
nature, cause, or substance—the result of a “high-level synthesis” achieved in the
development from particular to generalized syntheses. The assumptions of Elias’s
civilization theory have been utilised by Johan Goudsblom, who structures the
determination of historical time into four phases: the first phase lacked tools to
measure time; in the second phase devices like sundials were used, though they
measured time in units (hours) of unequal, variable length; the third phase saw the
spread of the concept and thus the standardization of instruments for measurement
(clocks), which anticipated the introduction of units—hours (Uhrstunden)—of equal
length; the fourth phase saw efforts to synchronize, caused by the requirements of
modern transport and communication, resulting in a global “time grid” divided into
24 time zones (Goudsblom 1997: 129–140).
Time, like other social products, developed over the centuries, depending on the
growth of certain social demands (the processes through which time sequences
synthesized are reflected in details like the use of the word ‘sleep’ where today
night is used, and the word ‘harvest’ to indicate what now we call ‘year’). Among
social imperatives, first and foremost was the need for the coordination of activities
in relation to non-human nature. This requirement does not arise in all societies with
the same intensity; the larger, more populous, more differentiated and complex the
society is, the stronger the imperative is. With increasing urbanization and commer-
cialization comes the need for a general reference framework to synchronize
increasing human activities—an even, forward-looking time grid. This task (essen-
tial to the proper payment of taxes and interest, and the performance of contracts) is
taken up by central—religious or secular—institutions that find physical models a
support, aided by technical inventions such as tower, and later pocket—and later still
wrist—watches. An all-penetrating consciousness of time becomes integral to the
social “canon” of relatively complex, urbanized societies and the personality struc-
tures of their members. Time acquires a coercive power arising from its social
functions. With varying degrees of social development among societies we can see
significant differences in perceptions of the past and future. The chains of
interdependence were shorter in early societies. The past and the future in people’s
understanding were cut off from the present so that the immediate present was felt
significantly more sharply than the past and the future, and human behaviour
overwhelmingly focused on present needs and impulses (Elias 1988: 125) (these
ideas are challenged by researchers who stress the importance of the past to archaic
societies; Mircea Eliade in The Myth of the Eternal Return talks about “archetypes
and repetition” (Eliade 1993: 9). In archaic societies, tradition plays an important
role; life is a repetition from the distant past, lived as if in continuous communication
with the dead. It is sometimes said that ancient man did not see the future because he
was moving backwards and turned his back against it.)
In later societies interdependent chains lengthen and become more differentiated;
the network of interdependence is more complex. The exact determination of time
becomes necessary to regulate social relations. A marked distinction arises between
past, present and future. The relatively distant future increasingly influences present
activities.
Elias understands the experience of time as aspects of social habitus. With
numerous examples he shows that people did not always experience relations of
events as they do today. Human experience of what is today called ‘time’ has
transformed and continues to change. Modern man may believe that his patterns of
self-regulation are normal and characteristic of humanity, unaware that this approach
is the product of a long-term process.
The impression of the independent existence of time means that, like other “social
institutions”, it is relatively independent of individuals (though not completely
independent of people as society or humanity as a whole). On the matter of
distinguishing between types of time, such as social and physical time, Elias believes
that the problem of time cannot be divided like scientific disciplines, as the
interdependence of nature and society renders problematic the dualism ‘natural-
social’; time is “two in one.” He points out, for instance, that Galileo, whose work
represented a new turn in the development of the understanding of time, used water
clocks (klepsydra) which were originally developed as a social time measurement.
Galileo’s innovation consisted in using this social-by-nature tool as a measure of
natural events.
Here one needs to ask what a clock actually shows. The idea that a clock shows
the time—Elias notes—is wrong. A clock (and all means of time determination
whatsoever, whether man-made or not) is simply a mechanical movement of a
specific type used for the purposes of people (Elias 1988: 95, 96).
Elias examines the long-term development of the symbols of time from the
discontinuous reflections typical of archaic societies up to the finely divided grid
of hours, minutes and seconds of modern industrial society. While in archaic
societies the return of the Moon or turning of the seasons were interpreted as signals
from the spirit world, in later stages of human development they are increasingly
perceived as part of mechanical-causal nature. People experience all that they do
under co-ordinates established by a symbolic universe. The twin moves to increas-
ingly larger units of social integration and ever longer chains of social interconnec-
tion are accompanied by cognitive changes, particularly to higher levels of
conceptual synthesis. This development enables the perception of symbolic repre-
sentations of a more extensive and complex interdependence in society and nature.
The concept of time uses the same kind of symbols as mathematics, and understand-
ing what is ascribed to time means for contemporary man mastering the complex of
symbols of clock and calendar.
What Elias Did Not Deal with 103
What Elias Did Not Deal with
In analysing the process of civilization, Elias engaged with an expanse of history

ranging from the Early Middle Ages to modern times. His inquiry into psychogen-
esis is dedicated to the long-term processes of the transformation of human behav-
iour, while his study of sociogenesis is focused on long-term monitoring of the social
development which resulted in the creation of the modern absolutist state. The centre
of Elias’s attention in both cases is on the upper social classes, meaning the nobility
and courtly milieu that he considers the main mover of social dynamics.
In such a period a huge number of social changes and shifts took place, which are
obviously very difficult to put into a single explanatory framework. It is thus not
difficult to find aspects that Elias did not touch on or registered only marginally. We
may recall the issue of the interconnection of time, rationality and discipline, which
is a major topic for other authors, including Max Weber and Michel Foucualt.
The historian Jacques Le Goff observes that measurements of time and space are
an important instrument of social control. In the Middle Ages the measurement of
time was the privilege of the powerful. The time of the nobility, according to Le
Goff, was primarily a militaristic time (determined by the seasons appropriate for
waging battles and rural rhythms in which the harvest period was dominant).
Medieval time, however, was primarily religious time and priestly time (Le Goff
1991: 187, 188), born in monasteries and afterwards in cities, where the social
environment was not subject to natural rhythms. In his book Technics and Civiliza-
tion, Lewis Mumford (1934) proposes the idea that the pioneers of the modern
relationship to time were medieval monks who placed the iron discipline of religious
order against the volatility of worldly life. They became the seat of a structured,
regular and punctual life not inherent to humanity. Mumford, referring to Coulton
and Sombart, writes of the Benedictines as a great working order, probably the
original founder of modern capitalism. Mumford even claims that monasteries gave
human enterprise its regular collective beat and machine-like rhythm (Mumford
1934).
Before Mumford came Max Weber, who considered monastic ethics to be a
predecessor of the Protestant ethic. He saw monasteries as a model of rationally-
managed agricultural enterprise and monks as uneconomically motivated exemplars
living rationally by methodically arranged time. The working ethos of Puritanism
was for Weber a secular version of the ascetic ideals of monastic life, and he
observed that Christian asceticism in the Middle Ages—and even in ancient
times—carried within it a rational seed which decisively germinated in the way of
life of western monks founded on the Rule of Saint Benedict, sprouting into the
Cluniacs, Cistercians and most powerfully the Jesuits.
The monastic life consisted in subordination to highly-developed systems for the
rational conduct of life, with a view to overcoming the status naturae, suppressing
irrational instincts, escaping dependence on the world and nature, and, by subjection
to providence, with actions and thought under constant control, to work in the
service of the Kingdom of God and thereby to secure salvation (Weber 1920:
116). The monk was for Weber the pioneer of a new, rational and systematic conduct
of life; the first methodically living western man to occupy his life and time in
increasing self-control (Weber 1972: 699). According to Weber, monastic asceticism
foregrounded Protestant asceticism, although if monastic asceticism was “outside
the world” asceticism (außerweltliche Askese), then Protestantism was asceticism
“inside the world” (Weber 1920: 119). Asceticism transferred from monastic cells
into occupational life and began to influence secular morality, playing its part in
building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order and the technical
conditions for mechanical and machine production; this cosmos today determines
the lifestyle of all individuals born into it (Weber 1983: 357).
In 1980, Eviatar Zerubavel dealt in detail with the connection between Benedic-
tine ethics and the modern way of time scheduling, noting that the Benedictines were
probably the first to found time scheduling not only on the basis of calendar years,
months and weeks, but also on days and hours. Zerubavel argues that this temporal
regularity which is so characteristic of modern life has its origins in Benedictine
monasteries, whose monastic horarium divided the day into canonical hours. The
Benedictine horarium thus has a unique historical significance as the original model
for all other Western schedules (Zerubavel 1980: 158). Contemporary medievalist
Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum also pays attention to monastic time scheduling, though
he is sceptical of the grand propositions of Mumford and Zerubavel. Dohrn-van
Rossum criticizes the “mechanistic” view that sees the monastery as a prototype of
the factory. The reference to “iron discipline”, to the machine or hourly rhythm of
monasterial life—even as metaphors—can lead us astray. He is more specific about
the idea of monastic discipline, arguing that the much-discussed accuracy and
timeliness of monastic conduct is not only tied to some abstract time points compa-
rable to a clock, but also to a rhythm of collective behaviour (Dohrn-van Rossum
1996: 38).
Michel Foucault (1979), who deals with the transformation of power mechanisms
in the social modernization process, mentions monasteries in connection with
disciplining technologies, based on the active control of time and space. The
monastery was, according to Foucault, the first place where time was accurately
arranged and regulated; spatially, there was the monastic cell. In German authors
Hubert Treiber and Heinz Steinert (1980) we also find the idea of an affinity between
monastic and factory discipline (Wahlverwandschaft von Kloster-und
Fabrikdisziplin). Treiber and Steinert draw attention to (a) the accurate division of
daily time, (b) the determination of order in detailed rules for individual activities
and (c) spatial (architectural) arrangement in service of an objective. The affinity
between the monastery and the factory, according to these authors, is not at the level
of real historical development, but in the similarity of certain structures and tech-
niques of systematic disciplining and methodizing; they also assert that, in the
secularising era around 1800, the example of the monastery in the area of industrial
production may have played an inspirational role (Treiber and Steinert 1980: 66 ff.).
Regardless of the exact contribution that the monastic environment may have
made to the formation of the modern world, to one degree or another its role was
significant. In this context, it is easy to show that Elias paid insufficient attention to
What Else Is Not Reflected in Elias’s Work? 105
the impact of the religious environment on civilizational transformation and people’s

relationship to time. He focused attention on behavioural changes in the aristocratic
upper strata of society as the main driver of civilizational changes, paying much
greater attention to court discipline than to monastic discipline. The area of church
life was peripheral to Elias’s interest; not ignored, but marginal.
What Else Is Not Reflected in Elias’s Work?
For Elias, like Durkheim before him, time was a social structure. Elias’s idea of a
time grid overlooks one essential aspect of human experience—death. Elias, in his
conception of time as orientation, largely reduces it to measurement, ignoring the
great issue of the temporality of existence, respectively “Being” (Dasein), as Martin
Heidegger (1996) termed it. Finally—probably more fundamentally—a conception
of time as a human construct ignores the fact that the so-called arrow of time exists
objectively in many ways, and is definitely not a human fiction. Stephen
W. Hawking recognizes three arrows: (a) thermodynamic, in whose direction disor-
der increases, (b) psychological, whose direction coheres in the fact that we remem-
ber the past, but not the future, (c) cosmological, defined by the direction in which
the universe expands (Hawking 1991: 141). (It remains questionable whether these
manifestations of time’s direction are mutually linked, or at all associated with the
arrow of time suggested by the expansion of the universe (Barrow 1997: 196)).
In Elias’s interpretation we do not encounter anything about the problem of the
arrow of time. Substantial objections to Elias’s conception of time as a landmark of
synthesis achieved in the historical development of human knowledge may be
problematic, but what is missing from his perspective is the fact that people, despite
constructing the idea of time, did so not just on human measures; and periods cannot
be derived except in a particular direction—from the past through the present to the
future. People have created a concept of time to measure the length of individual
periods and their phases, but certainly they are not the creators of the arrow of time. It
is neither a human invention nor the conscious product of human activities, but
something objective and independent.
As a result of his approach, Elias did not reflect the important reality that his own
conception of the process of civilization was built upon certain assumptions of the
nature of temporality that make it an example of temporalized sociology. Elias’s
approach was characterised by processuality and a focus on the development of
social and personality structures. Elias was attracted by processes of continuous
long-term change, which take place unintentionally and unexpectedly and further-
more have neither an absolute beginning (zero point) from which to unfold, nor an
inevitable end. Development from the Stone Age to the present, according to Elias,
has been characterised by the constant clash of civilization processes with
decivilization processes (entzivilisierende Gegenprozesse), and though the civiliza-
tion process has prevailed, there is no reason it must do so in the future (Elias 1988).
It is paradoxical, for an author able to track social trends across centuries, that the
viewpoint of “temporalized sociology” is a mainly concealed, poorly reflected-on
assumption. Although Elias dedicated a monograph to time, the question of the
temporal assumptions of sociological thought went unaddressed, and he dealt with
time solely as a means of orientation. In many ways able to look at problems in a
fresh way, Elias remained middle of the road in his interpretation of time. Further-
more, the second part of the matter, the time-associated meta-theoretical question of
the role time can play in the construction of sociological theory, is only hinted at, and
the reader of Elias’s books may reach it only by separately considering the ontolog-
ical determinants of processual sociology.
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Social Power from the Perspective
of Historical Sociology
Practically every human action and interaction contains aspects of meaning,

normativity, and power. The definition of power is one of the most difficult concepts
to explain within social science, despite long having been a core concept. Since
ancient times, philosophers have studied the function of power, and with the
development of social sciences different fields of social science now study power
in respective specializations. What follows is a survey of the main sources and
thinkers in the field of power in historical sociology, and an indirect walk through its
development.
The Concept of Power as Central to Any Understanding

of Society
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), studied 158 constitutions of the Greek city-states of his
time, and highlighted three types of constitution from which legitimate power
emanated, and three which represented deviations. The three legitimate governments
were Monarchy (the rule of one) in the interest of all, Aristocracy (the rule of a few)
in the interest of all, and ‘polity’ or Constitutional government (the rule of many) in
the interest of all. In contrast to these three legitimate powers, there were three
corrupted, illegitimate versions: tyranny, oligarchy and democracy, in which the
one, the few or the many each govern in their interests, regardless of the interests of
the whole.
The concept of power in social science is rooted in political theory and political
philosophy. By branching into political science, sociology and the economy, the
theory of power gradually became embedded in different social science disciplines
(i.e. political sociology, political anthropology, political science, political geogra-
phy, constitutional law and political economy). It became a mainstay of social
science in the twentieth century, particularly after the Second World War. Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_10
110 Social Power from the Perspective of Historical Sociology
as a systematic study of the institutions of human societies, developed political

sociology as one of its oldest sub-disciplines, and its field of study is “the phenom-
enon of power at the level of an inclusive society (whether that society be a tribe, a
nation state, an empire, or some other type); the relations between such societies and
the social movements, organizations and institutions which are directly involved in
the determination of such power” (Bottomore 1979: 7).
Power became the major study of political sociology after notable contributions
from Steven Lukes and Anthony Giddens moved it “out of the arena of political
sociology to become perhaps the single most important concept of contemporary
sociology. Indeed, the dispersion may be said to be even greater. Power has become
one of the central concepts of the social and human sciences per se.” (Clegg 1997:
xviii).
Following Voltaire, who remarked that “If you wish to converse with me, define
your terms!” (Hitchner and Harbold 1962: 1) we will define two key concepts: power
and authority. Power can be defined as “the capacity of a person or, more often, a
group and institution to be able to manipulate and shape the views and actions of
people” (Orum and Dale 2009: 2), and the doyen of the theory of power Steven
Lukes gives the concept of power as “the notion of the bringing about of conse-
quences, with no restriction on what consequences might be or what brings them
about.” (Lukes 1979: 634, 635). A concept of power useful for understanding social
relationships must incorporate a criterion of significance—it must imply an answer
to the question: what makes consequences significant so as to count as power? For
such fundamental questions, there is wide range of answers. For some philosophers,
what is essential to power is the realization of will or desire, following Hobbes’
definition in Leviathan (1651) that “the power of man (to take it universally,) is his
present means, to obtain some future apparent Good” (Hobbes 1985: 150). Hobbes
identified many forms of power, but most notably for our later analysis, “Instrumen-
tal powers are those powers... ‘as’ means and instruments to acquire more: as riches,
reputation, friends, and the secret working of God, which men call Good luck”
(Hobbes 1985: 150).
An exercise of power typically involves intentional intervention in a chain of
causal effects. An accidental or incidental effect of an agent’s action cannot be
regarded as an exercise of power unless it is a foreseen consequence of these actions.
A power relation, then, involves the intention to produce a particular effect or the
desire to see particular effect occurring. Power is an intended or desired causal effect:
an effect that realizes a purpose. A power relation cannot, therefore, be identified
unless there is some reference to the intentions and interests of actors involved and
especially, to those of principals.
John Scott (2001) elucidates that power is a social relationship between two
agents, who may usefully be called the ‘principal’ and ‘subaltern’. A principal is the
paramount agent in a power relationship, while a subaltern is the subordinate agent.
The principal possesses or exercises power, while the subaltern is affected by it
(Scott 2001: 2). Gianfranco Poggi claims that “Power is the probability, within a
social relationship, of realizing one’s own way even against resistance, regardless of
the basis on which this probability rests” (Poggi 2001: 15). American Sociologist
The Concept of Power as Central to Any Understanding of Society 111
Talcott Parsons (1937) interestingly concluded in his now classic work that the
function of power is as a “generalized means” for attaining whatever goals one
wants to achieve (Parsons 1968 (1937): 263). In his latter, more developed, theory of
power, presented in November 1962 to the American Philosophical Society, he
states that “power is... a circulating medium, analogous to money, within what is
called the political system, but notably over its boundaries, into all three of the other
neighboring functional subsystems of a society,. . . . the economic, integrative, and
pattern-maintenance systems. Specification of the properties of power can best be
approached through an attempt to delineate very briefly the relevant properties of
money as a medium in the economy” (Parsons 1967: 306).
The most acknowledged historical sociologist specializing in social power,
Michael Mann, distinguishes the political from the military powers both state and
other groups, asserting that “political powers are those of centralized, institutional-
ized, territorial regulation; military powers are of organized physical force wherever
they are organized” (Mann 2008 (1986): 11); for him, political power differs from
other forms of social power in that its concern is one particular area, the “center”.
Political power is located in that center and exercised outward and is furthermore
territorial. We may define the state as differentiated sets of institutions and personnel
embodying centrality, in the sense that political relations radiate outward to cover a
territorially demarcated area, over which a monopoly is claimed of binding and
permanent rule-making, backed by physical violence (Mann 2008 (1986): 37).
Those who control the state, the elite, can obtain both collective and distributive
power and trap others within their distinctive “organizational chart” (Mann 2008
(1986): 27).
The second core concept is authority. If we compare power and authority, we
come to the conclusion that: “Power generally refers to a capacity of a person or,
more often, a group and institution, to be able to manipulate and shape the views and
actions of people”. “Authority is like power except that it refers to the set of
institutions, and institutionalized arrangements, in which it operates” (Orum and
Dale 2009: 2). Authority is that form of power which is accepted as legitimate, and
therefore obeyed.
Petr Skalník, one of the leading political anthropologists (Kurtz 2001: 175),
differentiates power and authority based on his research in Africa (Cameroon,
Ghana and South Africa), Asia (Lebanon), Europe (Slovakia), and Oceania (Papua
New Guinea). First of all, he criticizes the ambivalent definition of power given by
many authors, starting from Max Weber, and the usage of power and authority as
interchangeable concepts (Skalník 1989: 8). To save readers from a confusion of
concepts, he clearly differentiates power and authority, where power is state power
whereas authority is legitimate power, accepted without threat of military force, or as
Weber expresses it, the ‘state monopoly of physical violence’. “Power, in my
conceptualization, should be understood primarily as state power. This means the
capacity for carrying out decisions and activities ostensibly on behalf of a whole
society by specific state agencies that have monopoly of the use or threat of the use of
organized violence” (Skalník 1989: 8). Skalník, with Henri J. M. Claessen,
published eight volumes (Kurtz 2001: 175) on the origin of the state and its historical
development, differentiating polities into two types: state and other political orders.
Authority is a property of the people unaccompanied by professional military force.
He characterizes authority thus: “Authority, in unambiguous contrast to power, is
legitimate without the backing of power and is voluntarily recognized by all. It is so
because authority is diffuse, truly residing in and exercised by the people” (Skalník
1989: 8; 1999: 164).
According to the oral history, and later the written history, of North East Africa,
many nations to the East and South of Abyssinian kingdom had various democratic
political systems, without standing armies protecting their sovereignty from the
expanding Kingdom of Abyssinia. The conflict between the Kingdom of Abyssinia
and the Oromo, Somali and other nations, in which the dream of the Kingdom,
starting from thirteenth century, was to occupy Oromo territory and the Western
Indian coast of Somali territory, culminated at the end of the nineteenth century,
when new weapons and munitions reached Abyssinia in great quantities from the
colonial powers then scrambling for Africa—a competition in which Abyssinia was
the only black African state to participate; this changed the power balance between
Abyssinia on the one side and the Oromo, Somali and other indigenous societies of
the Horn of Africa, which thus became victims of colonialism. We thus saw power
overcome authority in the region. The Somali territory was divided into five colonial
administrations and Abyssinia got the largest share, alongside France, Britain and
Italy.
Human societies had lived almost for 2 million years without this new political
institution called the state. As Robert L. Carnerio, a noted anthropologist, states:
“For the first two million years of his existence, man lived in bands or villages
which, as far as we can tell, were completely autonomous. Not until perhaps 5000
B.C. did villages begin to aggregate into larger political units. But, once this process
of aggregation began, it continued at a progressively faster pace and led, around
4000 B.C., to the formation of the first state in history.” (Carneiro 1970: 733). In his
study of the origin of the state, Carneiro gathered histories of the formation of states
globally, and summarized them into six models: voluntaristic, coercive, environ-
mentally circumscribed, politically-evolutionary, resource concentrated and socially
circumscribed (Carneiro 1970: 733–738). In his understanding, the state is “an
autonomous political unit, encompassing many communities within its territory
and having a centralised government with the power to collect taxes, draft men for
work or war, and decree and enforce laws.” (Carneiro 1970: 733). We turn now to
the theories of four scholars whose work contained influential contributions to the
developing historical sociology of power:
• Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859). Tocqueville is known for his monumental
two-volume book, Democracy in America, considered the most penetrating
analysis of American democracy. His great contribution to the theory of power
is the role of voluntary civil society. He observed in USA the functioning of
voluntary associations and the freedom of citizens to organize themselves for the
common interest. From this arose new organizations pursuing political ends; and
such organizations were critical, Tocqueville asserted, to the success he observed
The Concept of Power as Central to Any Understanding of Society 113
among American revolutionaries. “In their political associations the Americans of

all conditions, mind and ages, daily acquire a general taste for association and
grow accustomed to the use of it.” (de Tocqueville 1987: chap. VII).
• Karl Marx (1818–1883). Marx was among the progenitors of Conflict Theory.
According to Marx, power is concentrated in the hands of those who have
economic control within society. A relationship to the means of production
provides the basis of domination, while the class which dominates the economic
life of the society largely dominates its politics: “the relationships of domination
and subordination in the infrastructure, will largely be produced in the super-
structure” (Haralambos and Holborn 1991: 146).
• Max Weber (1864–1920). Weber defines power (Macht) as “the probability that
one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will
despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests.” (Weber
et al. 1978: 53). In other words, power means the ability to get your own way
when others are opposed to your wishes.
Every state is founded on force, said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right. . . force is
a means specific to the state. . ., the ‘state’ is a human community that successfully claims the
monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. . . as the sole source
of the ‘right’ to use violence. Hence, ‘politics’ for us means striving to share power or
striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a
state. (Weber in Gerth and Mills 1958: 78).
Weber distinguishes three types of authority:

Charismatic authority. Max Weber defines charisma as: “a certain quality of an
individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary” and
treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically excep-
tional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person,
but are regarded as of Divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the
individual concerned is treated as a “leader”.
Edward Shils proposed another type of charisma, so-called “institutional”
charisma. “Institutional” charisma is not derived from the creativity of the
charismatic individual, but from the massive organization of authority. The
institutional charismatic legitimation of a command derives from membership
in the body as such, apart from any innate powers (Shils 1965: 206). This kind of
institutional charisma, arising from society, was instrumental in holding together
many African indigenous democratic societies without the military force consid-
ered by Weber the key characteristic of the state; for example the Oromo Gadaa
democratic system, in which the Oromo people led a socio-political life,
documented from the year 1467 (Legesse 2000: 195–242).
Traditional authority. Weber called the second type of authority ‘traditional’. In this
case authority rests upon a belief in the ‘rightness’ of established customs and
tradition. Those in authority command obedience on the basis of their traditional
status, which is usually inherited. Subordinates are controlled by sentiments of
loyalty and obligation to long-established positions of power.
Rational-legal authority. The last type of authority distinguished by Weber was

‘rational-legal’. Unlike charismatic and traditional authority, legitimacy and
control stem neither from the perceived personal qualities of the leader and
devotion they excite, nor from common traditional wisdom. Rational-legal
authority is based on the acceptance of a set of impersonal rules. Those who
possess authority are able to issue commands and have them obeyed because of
an accepted legal framework which supports their authority. Thus judges, tax
inspectors, or military commander are obeyed because others accept the legal
frameworks which support their authority. The rules on which their authority is
based are rational in the sense that they are consciously constructed for the
attainment of particular goals and specify the means to attain them: laws
governing the legal system are designed to achieve the goal of ‘justice’, for
instance (Weber et al. 1964: 324–385). According to Weber, in reality authority
would never conform perfectly to any of these three types; hence they represented
‘ideal’ types. In any particular example, authority may stem from two or more
sources.
Weber’s theory of power and authority has been influential. The pluralist view of
power and the state adopted Weber’s definition as the basis for measuring who has
power in societies. The pluralist concentrates on the ‘will’ or desires of individuals or
groups to achieve particular ends. The wishes that people have are then compared to
actual decisions taken by government. The group whose wishes appear to be carried
out is held to possess greater power than those who oppose them. Therefore, power
is measured by comparing the stated wishes of individuals or groups who seek to
influence government policy, with the actions taken by the government.
• Emile Durkheim (1858–1917). Durkheim studied the role of civil society in
politics and society in contrast to Marx’s emphasis on social class and the
economy, and Max Weber’s on the state. Durkheim, as student of August
Comte, believed that as there was a biological science (Biology) and a physical
science (Physics) there must be a science of society, a science of social facts.
Durkheim maintained that this was Sociology. He declared that social facts had a
force and power over people much as psychological or biological facts do (Orum
and Dale 2009: 64, 65), and in one of his earliest and famous works, Suicide
(1897), he showed that suicide was not the product of biological causes, or simply
a psychological fact, by demonstrating variations in suicide rates across times and
regions (Durkheim 1966: 394, 395).
Durkheim’s central focus is the nature of society as the object of the science of
sociology, mainly examined in terms of norms and laws, institutions, symbols,
rituals, and the division of labour. In his most influential book, Division of Labor
in Society (1893), Durkheim developed an evolutionary theory of social change. By
contrasting traditional and modern societies, he showed that the former are charac-
terized by low division of labor, a segmentary structure and strong collective
consciousness, or ‘mechanical solidarity,’ as basis for social order, while modern
Forms of Social Power 115
societies exhibit a differentiated structure, greater individual consciousness and

‘organic solidarity’ (Jary and Jary 1991: 169).
Mechanical solidarity is characterized by repressive sanctions imposed on crimes.
Since all crimes have one element in common—i.e. they shock sentiments which,
“for a given social system, are found in all healthy consciences”, what Durkheim
called the conscience collective, “the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to
the average citizens of the same society” (Durkheim in: Jones 2003: 199). The
distinctive characteristics of a conscience collective form a determinate system
with its own life; it is “diffused” in each society and lacks a “specific organ”; it is
independent of particular conditions in which individuals find themselves; it is the
same in different locations, classes, and occupations; it connects successive gener-
ations rather than changing from one to another; and it is distinct from individual
consciences, even though it can be realized only through them. By dividing the
conscience into two groups, Durkheim was postulating the duality of human nature.
In each of us there are two consciences: one containing states personal to each of us,
representing and constituting our individual personality, the other containing states
common to all, representing society, without which society would not exist (Durk-
heim 1984: 79 in Jones 2003: 199). Traditional societies were held together primar-
ily by the conscience collective, while more advanced societies enjoyed a type of
solidarity associated with the division of labor. Finally, Durkheim classified two
types of law according to these two solidarities. Laws in mechanical solidarity he
characterized as repressive sanctions (characteristic of criminal law), consisting of
some loss or suffering inflicted on the agents. The greater the number of repressive
laws, the greater the number of social relations regulated by this type of solidarity.
Laws in organic solidarity, he distinguished as restitutive sanctions (characteristic of
civil commercial, procedural, administrative, and constitutional law), consisting
only of the re-establishment of troubled relations to their normal state.
Durkheim asserts that the role of the state and its powers emanate from the
character of society, and thus the type of society, and one might say, civil society,
shapes the state. The state is guarantor of its common norms and laws.
“Thus, to oppose [the state] is to oppose the social order, or society, itself. In this
reckoning, then, power and authority are not exercised illegitimately or on behalf of
any class or other groupings; society is the basis of authority and the state must be
seen as representing its basic workings and operations” (Orum and Dale 2009: 69).
Finally, according to Durkheim, deviants from the general norms of society were
obliged to respect the norms and laws of society, but if not the state had responsi-
bility for maintaining norms and rules by coercive instruments like the police force.
Forms of Social Power
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) British philosopher, mathematician, Nobel Prize-

winner (literature, 1950), civil right activist, adopted a definition of power as “the
production of intended effects. It is thus a quantitative concept: given two men with
similar desires, if one achieves more of the desires than the other achieves, he has
more power than the other” (Russell 2008: 23).
Russell’s thoughts on power were published in 1938, just before the outbreak of
World War Two. After World War Two, the questions of ‘Who governs?’ and ‘What
is power’ became a vital discussion in social sciences, particularly between sociol-
ogists and political scientists. The debate on this core political issue divided discus-
sants into two political ideological camps: the elitists and the pluralists, both rooted
in political philosophy.
The Elitist School of Thought
The term elitism can be defined as the belief that government by a small ruling group
is normatively desirable. In Plato’s The Republic, Thrasymachus “asserts that force
is the foundation of the state and statesmanship. Under pressure from Socrates,
Thrasymachus concedes the importance of skill and knowledge in winning consent
for the rulers, but he refuses to admit that the rulers govern in the interests of the
ruled. The wielding of government power is nothing more than the art of imposing
one’s will” (Dunleavy and O’Leary 1987: 137). This tradition of ‘political realism’
captivated European political philosophy during the Renaissance period through
Machiavelli’s restatement in The Prince.
Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941) Italian political scientist and politician, in his book
(La Storia delle Dottrine politiche (1937), translated as The Ruling Political Class by
Khan Hannah D., lectured at Rome University as a professor for 8 years. His lectures
began by noting the oldest accounts of philosophical thought and then, proceeding
across the different historical eras, arrived at the most recent doctrines of interest to
men born toward the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth
(Mosca 1939: ix). Mosca dedicated a chapter of his work to ‘the theory of the ruling
class’, in which he formulated a new method of studying politics to concentrate on
the formation and the organization of the ruling class. Mosca formulated his concept
in 1883 as the political formula, but he changed it to the ruling class, generally called
the political class (Mosca 1939: 248, 249). In his research of European political
institutions Mosca identified two types of political system: (a), the liberal system,
developed via the contributions of Athens, Florence, Venice and medieval com-
munes, and (b), the autocratic system. Mosca explains great revolutions such as The
French Revolution and the Russian Revolution as transformations due to the weak-
ening of the political formula of previous political systems (Mosca 1939: 249).
Mosca was against the universal suffrage of ordinary people and the democratic
rights of ordinary citizens: “the major danger threatening liberal institutions consists
in... the most uneducated classes of the population” (Mosca 1939: 254). Accord-
ingly, society is divided into two groups, the ruling class and the masses—the latter
must be ruled by the former.
The second theorist of elites was Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), the French-born,
Italian engineer and social scientist who turned to sociology only in later life. The
The Elitist School of Thought 117
word “élite” was used in the seventeenth century to describe commodities of

particular excellence, and the usage was later extended to refer to superior social
groups, such as crack military units or the higher ranks of nobility (Bottomore 1964:
1). The term did not become widely used in social and political writing until late in
nineteenth century in Europe, arriving through the sociological theories of elites.
Pareto saw society as formed from heterogeneous groups, in which individuals are
not intellectually, morally or physically equal. In any particular grouping, some
people are more capable than others. Those who are most capable in their peculiar
branch of activity, whether playing chess or pimping a prostitute, thieving or
defending thieves in the law courts, writing poetry or governing the country, were
the elite (Pareto et al. 1966: 51). Pareto divided the population into two categories
(a) the lower stratum, non-elite class and (b) the superior stratum, elite class. The
latter in turn could be divided into two groups (a) the governing, political elite
(composed of all leaders who directly or indirectly play a part in ruling the society)
and (b) the non-governing political elite (who make up the remainder of the elite).
Governing elites were usually differentiated into military, religious, and commercial
aristocracies. When there was movement of the elite from one group to another, the
experiences, attitudes, and political views were carried over. In a country with only
two groups of elites—the governing and the non-governing elite, the phenomena of
movement between these groups was termed the ‘circulation of elites’; from the
contemporary view good examples of such circulation might be between the Con-
servative and Labour parties in the United Kingdom, or the Democratic and Repub-
lican Parties in USA. Pareto concluded that if the circulation of elites in relation to
‘supply and demand’ were not fulfilled it was among the causes of the destruction of
the governing class: “Aristocracies do not last. Whatever be the reason, it incontest-
able that, after a certain time, they disappear. History is a graveyard of aristocracies.”
(Mosca 1939: 249).
The theory of elites crossed the North Atlantic in the 1920s, gradually
transforming itself from its European origins as an anti-Marxist theory, into a
radical/left—leaning critique of the second school—Pluralism. The main contribu-
tion to this was James Burnham’s tract The Managerial Revolution (1960 (1941)).
Burnham argued that Marxism was the self-serving ideology of an insurgent
working-class elite, using statistical data of upper-class incomes of the Soviet
Union published in 1939: “the Upper 11 or 12 % of Soviet population now receives
approximately 50% of the national income. This differentiation is sharper than in the
United States, where the upper 10% of the population receives approximately 35%
of the national income” (Burnham 1960 (1941): 46). Burnham hypothesized that the
future society would not be Capitalism or Socialism, but that “a quite different
society is to come of the present period of social transformation” (Burnham 1960
(1941): 57), a new society led by a different social group—in which managers would
be the dominant or ruling class (Burnham 1960 (1941): 74).
The question of ‘who rules’ and ‘what is power’ was taken up by sociologists in
the USA in the mid-1930s, doing sociological research first on small town commu-
nity leadership, and later analyzing who governs in big cities. This concluded that
only a handful of people were influential in making major decisions (Lynd and Lynd
1937; Warner 1943 in Dunleavy and O’Leary 1987: 144). A ground-breaking study
of the structure of elite power in the local community was done on Atlanta, Georgia,
by Floyd Hunter and published in 1953, which became the reference point for
subsequent critical studies. Hunter interviewed people in the community with insight
into how the community was really politically organized, as it was their business to
know how decision making was accomplished, who made decisions and who the
most influential people were. Hunter interviewed insiders to the city of Atlanta, such
as journalists, interest group leaders and business executives (Clegg 1997: 48),
which he called the ‘local community political elite’. Hunter concluded from this
‘expert research’ (to use today’s terminology), that there was “a stratified pyramid of
power in American cities whose apex was in the hands of business and social elites
outside the formal structures of local political institutions” (Dunleavy and O’Leary
1987: 144). Hunter showed where the real power lay, stating that ‘the men of real
power controlled the expenditures for both the public and private agencies devoted
to health and welfare programs in the community’, and how the various associations
in the community ‘from luncheon clubs to fraternal organizations. . . are controlled
by men who use their influence in devious ways, which may be lumped under the
phrase “being practical”, to keep down public discussion on all issues except those
that have stamp of approval of the power group’ (Hunter 1953: 249 in Lukes 2005:
3,4). This tricky elite domination over the powerless population in regional cities
raised a discussion on power relations in USA at national level, led by known
American sociologist Charles Wright Mills in his famous book The Power Elite
(1956). According to Mills “The power elite is composed of men whose positions
enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women;
they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences.” The power elite
are those “in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society.
They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim
prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic
command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective
means of the power and the wealth and celebrity which they enjoy.” (Mills 1956:
3,4). According to Mills’ concept of ‘power elite’, a triumvirate of leadership groups
drawn from economic (big business), military (military industry), and political
cliques surrounding the USA President were the key ‘history-decision making’
group in America, leaving a wide range of less salient domestic issues to be tackled
at ‘middle levels of power’ such as Congress and the state governments.
After the publication of Mills’ book (1956), many sociologists and political
scientists went into the field to test his claim. Domhoff (1967), Putman (1976) and
Dye (2000), reached a similar conclusion concerning America’s concentration of
power. Peter J. Freitag (1975) revealed connections between the US executive and
big business from 1897 to 1973, undergirding Mills’ (1956) observation of the high
degree of interchange between elite corporate and political institutions (Freitag
1975: 142). One might call this approach ‘de facto elitism’, in the sense that they
did not advocate elitism but claimed (like Pareto, actually), that it somehow naturally
arose.
The Pluralist School of Thought 119
The Pluralist School of Thought
One group of scholars reacted against elite theory, but before we delve into their
view, it’s necessary to return to the history of political theory. The term pluralism is
derived from the Latin plures meaning “several” or “many” (perhaps significantly,
this is the basis of the Latin motto of the United States, e pluribus unum—from
many, one) and has formed the central concern of various intellectual traditions
throughout the history of philosophy. Pluralism in political theory challenges the
notion that a single authority or group must dominate all others (Akam 2005: 1825),
but we come across the idea of pluralism as early as the work of Aristotle, opposing
Plato’s assertion that “the philosopher should also assume the political authority of
king in the ideal republic, because he alone could rule on the basis of truth and
reason” (Akam 2005: 1825). For Aristotle, reality consisted of empirical facts in
concrete situations. Aristotle’s argument supporting empirical facts over the arid
abstraction of idealist philosophy was developed by eighteenth century and nine-
teenth century philosophers, particularly Italians and Germans. Giambattista Vico
(1668–1744), arguably the most significant Italian philosopher, and Johann
Gottfried Von Herder, the founder of German historicism, led the rebellion against
monism and absolutism. Rather than demanding conformity to some unreal univer-
sal truth, they cherished a world made of different and original cultures. According
to Herder, each culture, each epoch was not a mistake, deviation, or lower stage of
development. Like a colourful garden of many flowers, the plurality of cultures
suggested beauty and completeness in each form, all wondrous manifestations of the
creative force of human kind (Hayes 1931: 30). Vico defended the idea of pluralism
by rejecting the philosophers’ notion that mathematical laws corresponded to those
of an independent reality. For Vico, mathematics provided at best the knowledge of
regularity, but certainly not authentic understanding of the human world. We use
mathematics because it is a human creation, not for its correspondence with reality;
in Vico’s words, “We demonstrated geometry because we made it” (Berlin 1976:
12). Vico then applied this makers’ theory of knowledge to the realm of culture. We
could come to understand other cultures by virtue of our shared humanity and
capacities as creators of culture. “For this to occur, however, we must abandon the
fallacious doctrine of absolutism, and approach other cultures on their own terms”
(Akam 2005: 1825).
The political variation of pluralist thought particularly emanated in modern
philosophical history in John Locke’s argument against Thomas Hobbes’ (1985
(1651)) philosophical view that vesting absolute power in the government was
necessary to avoid an anarchic ‘war of all against all’. According to Locke (1924
(1689)), the state should rest upon consent, and governing authorities should never
have absolute power. Pluralism rejects unified and uncontrolled state power in the
hands of rulers. The related theory of sovereignty, meanwhile, was the contribution
of French lawyer and historian Jean Bodin (1529/30-1596), in his book, Six Books of
Commonwealth (1903 (1576)), during the struggle concerning the centralization of
power in the absolute monarchies of Europe. Sovereignty, he contends, has an
impact upon the internal affairs of the state as well as its external affairs; “Majesty, or
sovereignty, is the most high, absolute, and perpetual power over the citizens and
subjects in a commonwealth, which the Latins call majestas” (Bodin 1903 (1576):
book 1, 84). Against this monopolization of power in the hand of absolute monarchs,
political pluralism emerged in eighteenth century, particularly in France through the
French Philosopher Montesquieu, in his famous work The Spirit of Law (1999
(1748)). Montesquieu traveled in Europe and compared many political systems
and he took England’s division of rule into legislative and executive functions as a
good model, with the judicial function set aside via juries. According to Montes-
quieu “political liberty is the result of separation of power” (Montesquieu 1999:
xxv). This division of rule crossed the Atlantic and became one of the pillars of the
American revolutionaries in the drafting of the American Constitution (1787).
Tyranny was understood as arbitrary interference by government with the individ-
ual’s natural rights (both person and property) without the backing of law made by
popular representatives. The drafters wrote institutional pluralism into the American
political system through the division of power on state and federal levels. One of the
drafters, and later fourth US President, James Madison, candidly recorded that “The
oracle... always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu.”
that (Hamilton et al. 1987: № 47). The founders of the Constitution abhorred the
accumulation of power in the hands of individuals or groups, as experienced in the
tyranny of George III, King of United Kingdom 1760-1801. James Madison’s
contribution to pluralist thought through the USA constitution was studied in detail
by Dahl (1970 (1956): 4–33).
One Dimensional Power
Returning to the twentieth century, the majority of pluralist thinkers were by now
political scientists. Robert Dahl (1915–2014) published his famous article in the
journal of Behavioral Science in 1957 as a reaction to the aforementioned research
conclusions of power accumulation in the US political system in the hands of few
groups (Lynd and Lynd 1937; Warner 1943 in Dunleavy and O’Leary 1987; Hunter
1953; Mills 1956). His main response was to question the definition of power and
ask how power is diversified. His article starts with a question ‘What is “power?”’
(Dahl 1957: 201), and noted that scientists had not yet formulated a statement of the
concept of power rigorous enough for systematic study. His famous example was of
the relative power to stop traffic of the policeman contrasted with that of a pedes-
trian, concluding: “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do
something that B would not otherwise do” (Dahl 1957: 202, 203).
Dahl used ‘power’, ‘influence’ and ‘control’ interchangeably, on the assumption
that there was a ‘primitive notion that seems to lie behind all of these concepts’ (Dahl
1957: 202). As interpreted by another author, “by ‘primitive’ he means the first,
deepest, most underlying concept. Hence his definition is ‘formal’: he seeks to
capture the essential form of any and every notion of power” (Clegg 1997: 51).
Sources of Social Power 121
Dahl explained that power was a relationship among people, (he called the objects
in the power relationship ‘actors’). Actors may be individuals, groups, roles, offices,
governments, nation-states or other human aggregates. To more particularize the
relationship of power between two actors (A& B), A must have the ability to apply
his power to B via (a) a source, domain or base, and (b) means or instruments of
power such as love, fear, money etc., which will be expressed in (c) an amount of
power of A over B and (d) a corresponding range or scope of power over B. Dahl’s
central question was ‘who exercises power?’, and his central research method, as
described in his now classic work: Who Governs? (1961) was to ‘determine for each
decision which participants had initiated alternatives that were finally adopted, had
vetoed alternative initiated by others, or had proposed alternatives that were turned
down. These actions were then tabulated as individual “successes” or “defeats”. The
participants with the greatest proportion of successes out of the total number of
successes were then considered to be the most influential’ (Dahl 1961: 336). Dahl
and other pluralist thinkers aimed to study specific outcomes to determine who
actually prevailed in community decision making.
The basis of A’s power consists in all the resources—opportunities, acts, objects,
etc.—that they can exploit to affect the behavior of B. In 1968 Dahl returned to the
formal model of power for his International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences entry
on ‘power’. In this entry, the concept of resources is elaborated, and defined in terms
of the distribution of cash, popularity and control over jobs and information
resources (Dahl 1968: 409). He illustrated how resources can be utilized through:
political skill, which is more natural to some than to others; the motivation to
exercise power, which some may also have more of than others; the costs of
power, which may accompany some more than others; and costs in terms of the
opportunity costs involved in utilizing resources, which are also distributed
unevenly. Dahl (1968) clarified his ‘concept of power’ (Dahl 1957) by noting how
unequal resource control already structured the political field prior to any specific
relational action occurring. Among resources, the most important was wealth (Clegg
1997: 55).
Sources of Social Power
Michael Mann (1942–) is among the most distinguished contributors to theories of

power, with his four volume “The Sources of Social power” (vol. I, A history of
power from the beginning to A.D. 1760 (2008 (1986)); vol. II, The rise of classes and
nation-states, 1760–1914, (1993 (1986)), vol. III, Global Empires and Revolution,
1890–1945, (2012) and the concluding vol. IV, Globalizations, 1945–2011 (2013)).
According to Michael Mann, the object of sociology should be social power, with
the aim of charting its growth and transformation through time and space. To pursue
this aim, one needs a general theory of power, and this is what he offers, concluding
that social power emanates from four main sources: meaning systems, material
resources, physical violence and administrative infrastructure (Gorski 2006: 102),
leading to a demarcation of four types of social power: Ideological, Economic,

Military and Political power, which he gave the power acronym IEMP (Mann
2008 (1986): 22–32).
Mann was the first social theorist to depart from the usual trinity of power:
political, economic and ideological. He placed military power on the high ground,
whereas it had sometimes been ignored or treated without a sense of its nature and
significance (Poggi 2006: 135). Mann stepped away from the traditional typology of
power of such luminaries as Kant, with his trinity of evil dispositions, ‘hankering
after lordship’, ‘possessions’ or ‘fame’, and Weber’s ‘class’ or ‘status group’ which
also asserts forms of power which his successors developed to a trinity of economic,
ideological and political power. Ernest Gellner’s charismatically entitled Plough,
Sword, and Book (1988) is also among the trinitarians. Mann’s typology is quartet.
He explains that these four pillars are ideal types and that real ‘power networks’—
the networks of interaction in which power is embedded and exercised—tend to
draw on multiple power sources. One type of power ‘cross-fertilizes’ others, through
various channels concentrating as much as possible in the hands of power holders.
Mann analyses two forms of ideological power: ‘extensive’ and ‘authoritative’, and
adds two others: ‘intensive’ and ‘diffuse’.
Extensive power is high in scope but low in (social) efficacy, while intensive
power is high in (social) efficacy but (often) low in scope, so that extensive power
networks combine a low degree of mobilization with control over a large swathe of
territory, while intensive power networks combine a high degree of mobilization
with control over a smaller area. Regarding ‘authoritative’ and ‘diffuse’ forms of
power, the former is typically exercised through explicit commands, while the latter
operates through similarities in habits or practices. According to Mann, power can be
yet further divided into:
(a) Power in the zero-sum sense of ‘power over’ and
(b) power in the non-zero-sum sense of positive capacity or ‘power to’.
Power in the first sense involves relations of exploitation, domination or coercion
(e.g., the power of bourgeoisie over the proletariat, the power of a monarch over his
subjects, the power of an occupying army over the conquered population).
The second sense includes systematic or organizational capacities (e.g., the
productive capacity of capitalism, the administrative capacities of patrimonial states,
and the logistical range of a fighting force). Mann refers to this type of power as
‘collective’ power, because it denotes the capacity of a particular collective to
change or control its socio-spatial environment. Mann considers that these two
types of power are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, most power networks
embody both.
Mann views ideological power as deriving from the human need to find ultimate
meaning in life, to share norms and values, and to participate in aesthetic and ritual
practices. Control of the ideology that combines ultimate meanings, values, norms,
aesthetic, and ritual brings general social power (Mann 1993 (1986): 7). Religions,
along with secular ideologies like liberalism, socialism and nationalism, may
Sources of Social Power 123
provide this—all meanwhile grappling with such concepts as class and nation. Each
power source generates distinct organizational forms.
Ideological power is predominantly diffused, commanding through persuasion, a
claim to “truth”, and “free” participation in ritual. Its diffusion has two principal
forms. It may be socio-spatially “transcendent”; that is to say, an ideology may
diffuse right through the boundaries of economic, military, and political power
organizations. People belonging to different states, classes and so forth, face similar
problems to which ideology offers plausible solutions. In this case ideological power
spreads transcendentally to form new, distinct and powerful networks of social
interaction. Ideological power may also solidify an existing power organization,
developing its “immanent moral”. While transcendence is a radically autonomous
form of power, immanence reproduces and strengthens existing power relations.
Economic power derives from the need to extract, transform, distribute, and
consume the resources of nature. It is peculiarly powerful because it combines
intensive, everyday labor cooperation with extensive circuits of distribution,
exchange and consumption.
All complex societies have unequally distributed control over economic
resources, hence the ubiquity of classes. Marx distinguished essentially between
those who owned and controlled the means of production, distribution, and
exchange and those who had only their own labor. Marx claimed that the group—
the class, in his own vocabulary—in possession of economic power was also, by the
same token, the ‘ruling class’. Tocqueville in this context, considered that the
general tendencies of Western society in his own time pointed to the universal
passion for well-being which made ‘industry’ the key form of economic activity,
and on that account industrialists would represent a new form of aristocracy. ‘The
particular class, which occupies itself with industry’, which had once been ‘an
exceptional class’, threatened to become ‘the principal class and so to speak, the
sole class’ (Poggi 2001: 136). Tocqueville also suggested that, for industry to
expand, governments must undertake ever new tasks to provide it with required
‘infrastructures’, and with various other services, considering that this would allow
the government to gain a degree of control over social processes to rival that of
industrialists. With this insight Tocqueville was highlighting a dynamic tension
inherent in societies characterized by capitalist economic systems and liberal-
democratic political structures that has never since been completely resolved.
Max Weber, also aware that the relationship between economic and political
power is inherently contingent, saw at the heart of modernity two related but distinct
and partially contrasting rationalization projects: (a) the bureaucratization of author-
ity (mainly in the political sphere), and (b) the advance of modern capitalism
(especially industrial capitalism). His main concern was that in the future the first
trend would overwhelm the second, depriving the economic sphere of the autonomy
it needed to select and reward an entrepreneurial class effectively committed to risk
and innovation. The contemporary tendency to form a relationship between eco-
nomic and political power is often taken to show the opposite direction, with
economic power greatly influencing political power (Rothkopf 2009). Mills’ eluci-
dation of the structure of American society, and who rules the USA, defined the
power elite as “composed of men whose position enabled them to transcended the
ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make
decisions having major consequences.” (Mills 1956: 3, 4). His study on the national
political elite of USA became the cornerstone for more empirical research on the
political elite of American society. Peter J. Freitag (1975) reinforced this with
empirical data. President Clinton official, David Rothkopf, confirms this tendency
“to concentrate more economic power in the hands of relatively fewer people”
(Rothkopf 2009: xi).
Military power is the social organization of physical force, deriving from the
necessity of organized defense and utility of aggression. Mann (2008 (1986)), as
mentioned, asserts it as one of the four independent social powers in his ‘quadripar-
tite’ formula, disconnecting it conceptually from political power; whereas Poggi
(2001) sees military power through the prism of political or state power because the
military is the state institution specialized in physical violence.
Political power derives from the usefulness of territorially centralized regulation.
“Political power means state power” (Mann 1993 (1986): 9). Randall Collins,
meanwhile, defines the state as “the way in which violence is organized. The state
consists of those people who have guns or the other weapons and are prepared to use
them; in the version of political organization found in the modern world, they claim
monopoly on this use. The state is above all, the army and police, and if these groups
did not have weapons we would not have a state in the classical sense.” (Collins
1975: 351, 352).
The state is the only institution with a monopoly of power over territory. All states
must have the following criteria to be recognized as members of international
governmental organizations like the United Nations, African Union, European
Union and others.
1. Each state must have its own territory, with demarcated bounders which differ-
entiate it from other states. The state must have its own military force to keep
internal order and defend itself from external force.
2. Population: each state must have inhabitants; a state is a peoples’ organization,
and the desert cannot be called a state without a population.
3. A government of its own: a state must be organized to lead its national interest in
internal and external relations, to function as an independent legitimate person-
ality; it must be independent from external influence.
4. An independent foreign policy: a state is an independent institution representing
its own people, and a government governed by a foreign power is not a state but
colony or protectorate (McLennan 1975: 19, 20).
Starting from this basic ideal, let us look at the power of these institutions. The
state has its own apparatus and divisions of labor within itself. The main organs of
the state are the standing army, the police, the bureaucracy, (possibly) clergy,
judicature, and prison. Political power is state power, the strongest institution in its
own territory, which plays a protagonist’s role compared to other forms of social
power. Political power is the power of command in society. There are various
arguments concerning how people are governed. Hume, for example, wonders at
Power in the Globalized World 125
how the many are governed by the few, he writes “Nothing appears more surprising
to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the ease with
which the many are governed by the few.” (Poggi 2001: 30). Italian political
sociologist G. Poggi observes that “What is really provoking is that the many
allow the few not just to govern them, but to take advantage of them. As they
obey commands, the many engage in ventures into which the few have no intention
to lead them; they abstain from undertakings that would benefit them; they allow
goods and services to be exacted from them to the benefit of the few; they subject
themselves, at the few’s behest, to humiliating, hurtful, cruel forms of oppression
and exploitation. This is really puzzling” (Poggi 2001: 30).
The workings of power relate to the subjects or citizens of a state, but increasingly
they relate to states themselves, as they find themselves subject to what some darkly,
echoing the title of H.G. Wells’ 1940 publication, refer to as the ‘New World Order’.
Power in the Globalized World
Reflecting on the modern, globalized world, Leslie Sklair, Professor of Sociology at

London School of Economics (LSE), published the Sociology of the Global system
(1995 (1991)), focusing on three main institutional complexes characteristics of the
“capitalist global system” (Sklair 2001: ix). These are: transnational corporations,
the transnational capitalist class, and the culture-ideology of consumerism. His
second book examined the transnational capitalist class globally (Sklair 2001: ix),
studying Global 500 corporations to show the emerging global economy and the
leaders of these companies as a new global transnational capitalist class (TCC).
According to geographical distribution these were mainly in the USA (153 compa-
nies), in Japan (141), France (42), Germany (42), Britain (32), Switzerland (16), Italy
and South Korea each (12). Other countries domiciled less than ten companies
(Sklair 2001: 37). David Rothkopf subsequently made a detailed study of the
contemporary global power elite with the title: Superclass: how the rich ruined
our world; from this superclass the most powerful were the financial elite, what
Rothkopf called the elite of the elite. These were heads of great financial institutions
and funds, billionaire traders and commodity market kingpins. To Rothkopf, they
appeared to stride like titans through the new global era. He viewed them as
“symbols, examples, empowerers and beneficiaries of a new system, that appeared
to concentrate more economic power in the hands of relatively fewer people and that,
in the eyes of many, exacerbated the great chasm that separates the haves of this
world from the have-nots” (Rothkopf 2009: xi).
Although in relative terms, the gap between rich and poor nations has narrowed
since Sklair’s study, based on mid-1990s data, this is mainly due to rapid economic
development in Asia, while the gap between average incomes in other developing
countries and those in developed countries has not changed significantly (UN 2015).
The gap between the world’s richest and poorest has arguably never been greater
(Keeley 2015).
At beginning of the twenty-first century, a new concept of power emerged in

international relations, emanating from the United States’ power elite circle. The
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (13.1.2009), stated that “America cannot
solve the most pressing problems on our own, and the world cannot solve them
without America. We must use what has been called ‘smart power,’ the full range of
tools at our disposal.” (quoted in Nye 2011: ix). Two years before, President Bush’s
Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, had called for the US to commit more money
and effort to soft power tools, including diplomacy, economic assistance and
communications, to get support from other countries to fulfill American interests,
because in his view the military alone could not defend America’s interest around the
world. His was a note of realism which followed GW Bush’s assays into Afghanistan
and Iraq beginning in 2001 and 2003 respectively. He noted that USA military
expending at that time totaled more than half a trillion dollars annually, compared
with a State Department budget of $36 billion. In his words, “I am here to make the
case for strengthening our capacity to use soft power and for better integrating it with
hard power” (Gates 2007). The term smart power was introduced by Joseph Nye,
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Clinton Administration,
former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and
author of several books (2004, 2005, 2008; Nye and Armitage 2007) on hard, soft
and smart power. In his book Soft power: The Means to success in the World
Politics, Nye defines soft power as “as the ability to get what you want through
attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a
country’s culture, political ideas, and politics” (Nye 2005: x); in 2011 Nye defined
smart power as “the combination of hard power of coercion and payment with soft
power of persuasion and attraction” (Nye 2011: xiii).
To apply this strategy of hard and soft power into a successful smart power
strategy, Joseph Nye (D) and Richard Armitage (R) co-chaired a bipartisan Smart
Power Commission (2007), at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS). The members of the Commission were a group of Republican and Demo-
cratic members of Congress, former ambassadors, retired military generals and heads
of non-profit organizations (CSIS Commission on Smart Power 2007).
The aim of the Smart Power Commission was to develop a vision to guide
American global engagement. The Commission published its findings and recom-
mendations in 2007. The Commission found that people around the world,
according to opinion polls, were not happy with American leadership. Even tradi-
tional allies of the U.S. questioned American values and interests, wondering
whether they were compatible with their own. To give one example of the data
they looked at, a BBC World Service poll of more than 26,000 people across
25 different countries in January 2007 revealed that one in two believed the United
States was playing negative role in the world. There were many other such examples.
In particular, in the modern era, this has found expression not only in the reactions of
Islamic nations to Americanization, but in the stance of Putin’s Russia, which, in
Hobbesian fashion has challenged unipolar US power in the Middle East (Covington
2015), and NATO’s expansion Eastwards in Europe (Molder 2016).
Power in the Globalized World 127
The Commission’s recommendations in 2007 for US foreign policy included the

following to do list:
Alliances, partnerships, and institutions, rebuilding the foundation to deal with
global changes;
Global developments: Developing a united approach, starting with public health;
Public diplomacy: Improving access to international knowledge and learning, for
American public diplomacy to communicate with the people, not the govern-
ments, of foreign countries.
Economic integration: Increasing the benefits of trade for all people;
Technology and Innovation: Addressing climate change and energy insecurity (Nye
and Armitage 2007: 5).
It’s safe to say that the election of Donald J. Trump as US President in November
2016 provided an answer from the US people themselves on these priorities, as well
as another set of worries for the international community. In particular, the US
attitude to immigration, alliances, global treaties for climate change (Pavone 2018),
and free trade have been put under the microscope. In some respects, in the election
of Trump we can see too a reaction to perceptions of elites (Pareto, Rothkopf), even
though Trump himself might be characterized as a member of the elite. To use the
term of Pareto, it might be a case of enhancing ‘the circulation of elites’. It may also
be that by electing a member of one elite (property and hotels), the American people
are counteracting another (global, transnational) elite. Trump’s election may also be
seen as another chapter in the story of US pluralism, with Trump as President a
Dahlesque answer to the question of ‘Who Governs?’ After all, the American people
effectively elected a man as opposition to both existing main political parties, and
furthermore one who would seek both to battle with and transform the judiciary
(Gertner 2018). In one sense, Madison’s checks and balances were thus applied,
although some luridly claim that Trump’s threat is to overcome them completely.
While Trump ran as a Republican, he has been continually accused of not being a
Conservative. In particular, he ran in opposition to the Republicans’ alternative to
Nye’s philosophy, so-called ‘Neo-Conservatism’ (Boot 2018). Joseph Nye’s con-
cept of ‘smart power’, which was part of the consensus of US politics, has also been
questioned by Trump, not in its entirety, but in terms of its focus, costs and style. The
stability of NATO as a US-funded world military power-broker has been called into
question (Zapfe 2017). In all these ways and more, Trump acts as a lightning rod
transmitting the great questions of US and global power distribution at a critical
point in world development. What will Trump do with the post-cold war order? Does
he, as some claim, indicate the start of the American decline from dominance, or
does he represent a recalibration of US power for the evolving world order?
Epilogue
In this chapter we have tried to map out the concepts of power from different schools
of thought; from the perspectives of anthropology, sociology, political science and
economics (social sciences perspectives), starting from the founding fathers of social
theory and tracing the development of these theories to the present.
We have seen that concentration of power, especially economic power, in the
hands of an elite, not only exacerbates the division between absolute haves and
absolute have-nots, but also provokes reactions of various types. The theoretical
understandings of power offered by historical sociology shed light on these matters,
and perhaps offer ways to ameliorate the tensions caused by inequalities of power
and the effects that accompany them.
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Current Societal Processes
The expression “software modernity” is used by Zygmunt Bauman in his book

Liquid Modernity, to formulate the contrast between past and contemporary (post-
Ford) modernity. An obsession with quantity and weight, seen as symbols of
success, was typical for the first phase of modernity. It was a time of hardware, an
era of heavy-loading machines, long factory walls and numerous staff, an age of
heavy trains and gigantic transatlantic liners (Bauman 2000). Everything changed
with a start of the new software modernity, for which Bauman uses the metaphor of
liquidity, as patterns of social ties and production relations are losing their sturdy
shape and merging into liquidity, pliability and variability-like liquids, which in
contrast to solids are unable to preserve their form, though it is not easy to halt them,
as obstacles are encircled, overwhelmed, absorbed or infiltrated. Even at the begin-
ning of the 1970s, Alvin Toffler (1970) noted the start of fundamental and unstop-
pable technical changes, intensifying in pace. Some people were gratified by this
speed of change, but many felt “shock”. The basic characteristics of the emerging
(according to Toffler super industrial) society were newness, variety and transience,
showering humanity with novelties and impulses to an unprecedented extent and
variety. Consequently, people’s relations to the surrounding world revolve ever
more around momentariness and temporality, first characterised by disposable
goods but even extending to human relations. This heightened stimulation,
according to Toffler, represented a crucible of human adaptive capabilities summed
up in the expression shock of the future. One way to face this was to extend human
adaptive capabilities, which should be the task, according to Toffler, of a new
educational system.
One of the first to point out that modernity had entered a new period was Daniel
Bell (1973), who identified three basic types of societies: pre-industrial (agrarian),
industrial and post-industrial. The post-industrial society was characterized by the
rise of the tertiary sector. Jobs in services expanded but above all the production of
knowledge grew so that the dominant institutions of the post-industrial era were no
longer industrial enterprises, but universities and research institutions producing
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_11
132 Current Societal Processes
professional knowledge and technologies. Bell’s concept of the post-industrial

society came close to the concept of the knowledge society, whose founder is
considered to have been Peter Drucker, who used this expression in his work The
Age of Discontinuity (1969) and later developed it in other works. The knowledge
society also includes Toffler’s (Toffler and Toffler 1995) concept of ‘third wave’
society (the first wave is connected with the Neolithic Revolution; the second with
the Industrial Revolution; the third with computerization).
In the 1990s, Niko Stehr (1994) and Helmut Willke (1997), among others, dealt
with the concept of a knowledge society, where goods produced are valued neither
by the material for their production, nor by the working hours spent, but by the
knowledge (the know-how) to produce them. Product value is assessed by “spent
expertise”. The increasing production, broadening and exploitation of knowledge
leads to building new efficient infrastructures, “infrastructures of the 2nd rank”.
While roads, railways and power lines were infrastructures of the 1st rank, infra-
structures of the 2nd rank—communication technologies—provide fast extensive
effective global exchange and exploitation of information and knowledge. Spatio-
temporal compression results: as if the world has been made smaller (what was
remote is now near and within reach), and the world turned into a “global village”
(Marshall McLuhan talked about this in the 1960s).
The idea of a knowledge society is closely related to the term information society,
developed by Yoneji Masuda (1981), and later Scott Lash (1994). According to this,
the present era is distinguished by a shift from industrial production to the production
of information, which falls into second place behind communication. Ever greater
numbers of people deal with the production, distribution and evaluation of informa-
tion, and new communication and information technologies generate a new society.
There is a huge amount of freely accessible information but in practice everything
acquires the character of information and it is viewed according to content. The
result is everyday information shock.
The information society is based on a structure (network), through which infor-
mation is transmitted; society overall is a sort of network with countless access
points in constant change. Manuel Castells (2001–2003) connects the information
age with the start of networks forming new global structures of production, distri-
bution and control, noting relatedly that networks lead to the dynamic connection of
what is valuable for a dominant system, while a range of “black holes” languish
peripherally and are sentenced to poverty.
Ulrich Beck connects the conversion of modernity from the initial “classic
industrial society” of the nineteenth century to our contemporary phase with the
expressions first and second modernity. Beck (1992) insists a key characteristic of
contemporary advanced modernity is that the social production of wealth is system-
atically attended with production of risks. These risks are not in contrast to material
wealth, but are its accompanying sign, being the “modernization co-product of
wealth”, so that the 2nd modernity can also be called the risk society. Anthony
Giddens (2000), meanwhile, argues that our time is not more risky or dangerous than
past times, but a certain shift has occurred, with societally created (manufactured)
risks representing a threat equivalent to or greater than threats from “outside”.
Modern Risks 133
Among these dangers are not only global ecological risks, or world economic
breakdowns, but also events in the decision-making processes of our individual
lives.
The possibilities offered by computerization and contemporary information tech-
nology generally lead to the strengthening of our conviction of a growing rationality
in the social world and its individual parts, often reflected in sociology itself, which
tends to look at humans as rational beings and society as a rationally functioning
unit, while overlooking the fact that the products of new technologies have ambiv-
alent consequences: besides rationalization they can also support manipulation or
infantilization. Today, new media can more efficiently distract our attention from
real problems to insubstantial ones and implant in us artificial new needs allied to the
wish to be amused—thereby, as Neil Postman (1985) observed, “amusing ourselves
to death”. It was Jean Baudrillard (2001) who averred that the question for today is
how much the world we live in is a real world at all.
According to Baudrillard, in the information society electronic pictures become
vocal, and what is (tangibly) real blends with simulation, corresponding to nothing in
reality. Simulacra dominate the human world—man-made signs derived not from
reality, but other signs. One could talk about a crisis of representation brought about
by the fall of the traditional conception that the human subject reflects reality as a
mirror and is able step by step to get a true picture of the world—the world as it
is. Electronic media transform the principle of our lives: television not only repre-
sents the world, but may define what it is. Simulacra, spreading like sarcomas,
generate a quite new type of reality: hyper reality.
Modern Risks
The development of modern industrial society was accompanied at its beginning by

the devastation of nature, the looting of natural, especially raw and energy,
resources, the pollution of air, water and soil. Threats to the environment are now
of global dimensions, related to the very essence of our way of life, and of concern to
all humanity. Contemporary societies have produced dangers (Three Mile Island,
Bhopal, Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc.) unknown to previous generations; while sub-
duing nature new risks bloomed with which we have little experience and are often
not able to predict.
The technology of the modern age can be made “safer” but not “safe”—claimed
Charles Perrow, in his book Normal Accidents (Perrow 1984). Wider awareness of
this problem was raised shortly afterwards by Beck, for whom modern industrial
society, as a by-product of its economic growth and technological development,
produces risks surpassing society’s resilience, generating a self-destructive risky
business. A society which amasses hazards and risks is a risk society (Beck 1992:
44 ff.).
The development of modern society has always been connected with the aware-
ness of risks; today’s risk is new and substantially different from the early days of
classical industrial society. The nineteenth century raised the insurance system based
on painstaking calculation of the amount of risk and damages and compensation for
losses. Such protective measures are failing because risks that can no longer be
socially limited, concerning not a particular place (e.g. industrial company), but life
in general on this planet in all its manifestations, are simply global risks.
In classical industrial society risks were divided in principle in indirect proportion
to wealth; people at the bottom of the social hierarchy were most vulnerable to health
risks, unemployment and hunger. In late modern society, this loosened; risks arose
across the structures of social inequalities: poverty is hierarchic; smog is democratic
(Beck 1992). Modern risks are reflected in social terms—the “boomerang effect”—
and sooner or later catch even those who produce and benefit from them. Dangers
which are hidden, such as in chemical or nuclear technologies, challenge the
foundations of current thinking. These risks have a tendency to go global, crossing
national boundaries as supranational and class-unspecified threats. The civilized
world, with its borders, walls, barbed wires, army and police forces, is helpless
against a radioactive cloud. Nobody can dissociate from radioactive contamination.
The Industrial and scientific achievements of contemporary civilization are at odds
with its vulnerability. Wealth, nationality, social class, profession, gender and age
are irrelevant. The materialistic value system of traditional modernity has been
replaced by the value system of a society that lacks safety, whose aim is not to
achieve something desirable, but preventing the worst, because as the risk situation
worsens, so private escape routes and the possibility of compensation are gradually
disappearing, though still promoted and offered.
A characteristic feature of contemporary risks is “uncontrollability”, relating to
the way they spread as “stowaways” of normal consumption. They travel with the
wind and water, hiding everywhere, within what is most essential to life—the air we
breathe, our food, clothing and household equipment—surpassing all the strictly-
controlled protection zones of modernity (Beck 1992).
Another important characteristic is “latency”, a sort of “invisibility” which leaves
us with a problem unknown to the industrial society of the nineteenth century: how
to identify risks to the whole? Our inherited senses are usually inadequate and must
be aided by measuring instruments and scientific apparatus. The threat and destruc-
tion to which people were exposed as a result of Chernobyl, both near the site and in
remote areas, lies outside the capacity of human perception.
Risks must therefore be sought out and named, a process complicated not only by
their latency, but also because these are highly multi-layered complexes of causes
and reactions beyond the area of everyday knowledge. The key role in recognising
them is played by science. At the same time, until they are scientifically recognized,
they do not exist—in any case, at least not legally, medically, technologically and
socially. They are therefore neither suppressed, managed nor compensated (Beck
1992).
In light of this, the goal may be to prevent risks from arising. However, because
these are mediated by knowledge and not senses, they may be manipulated, exag-
gerated, or played down and dismissed. Here an important role is played by the mass
media; if risks are not expressed through the media, they remain a hardly intelligible
Problem of Interdisciplinary Communication 135
part of science. A special, rather absurd, feature of contemporary society, is the

tendency not only to produce risks, but to attempt to profit from them. As a
consequence, economic sectors are generated to make commercial use of risks by
offering their—often “cosmetic”—management and removal.
Problem of Interdisciplinary Communication
The relationship of science and risk is complicated and inconsistent. Generally—

according to Beck (1992)—it has three levels: (a) science has become the (joint)
cause of risks, (b) science is a means to define them, and (c) science should be a
source for their solution. Although the basic belief of classical industrial modernity
remains that every scientific and technological problem can finally be solved, the
position of science has suffered bruises and public confidence is more reserved; in
practice public opinion weighs in the balance not only the victories of science but
also its defeats and, increasingly reflects on its unfulfilled promises.
Beck draws attention to the issue of critical thinking. He states that the gateway to
scientific discovery and treatment of risks has become the criticism of science, the
criticism of progress, the criticism of experts and the criticism of technology.
Science is now characterised by methodological “doubt”. In the first phase of
modernity doubt was limited to the objects of research, while the foundations and
implications of scientific work were disregarded. In the risk society this doubt has
expanded and taken in the presumptions and risks of scientific work. This shift
corresponds with changes at the level of science and practice, a shift which Beck
(1992) indicates is from “a primary scientisation” to “reflective scientisation”; at first
science was applied to the existing world of nature, man and society; it is subse-
quently confronted with its own products and problems.
The second problem is the differentiation of science; its “hyper-complexity”.
With the gradual differentiation of various science disciplines grows such a confus-
ing multitude of specialised findings that science is not able to mutually interconnect
and understand risks as polycausal, multi-factorial phenomena. They often represent
very complicated phenomena which individual specialised disciplines are not able to
capture in their complexity. Together with this internal differentiation of science
there is a kind of pluralism in the interpretation of examined problems, allowing each
opinion or standpoint the formulation of a contradictory position. As a result, users
of scientific information are eventually left to themselves to decide which variant of
scientific “truths” they are to believe.
According to Beck, science is not yet able to adequately respond to the risks of
modernization. If this is to change, it must above all learn to see and understand the
context—to “specialize in context”, so that the “isolated, analytical way of thinking
thereby does not lose its justification, but ‘is seen as’ incorrect and creating practical
risks where it becomes the guide of limited, unilaterally oriented solutions.”
One of the problems that Beck focused his attention on is what he calls “organised
irresponsibility” (organisierte Unverantwortlichkeit (Beck 1988: 96–112)). The
roots of this phenomenon lie in one of the essential features of modernity, functional
differentiation, i.e. the further differentiation of the societal system into relatively
autonomous sub-systems, each with its own closed communication. According to
Beck, it is devastating that the three key sub-systems—science, economics and
politics—are mutually separated and unable to cooperate effectively. Actors who
think, decide and act solely in one particular system, cannot and do not accept
responsibility for the consequences outside their “own” sub-system.
Thus the division of labour, considered a crucial evolutionary preference, reveals
its dark side and becomes, in terms of the risk society, a disadvantage raising
questions of its value. If individual subsystems respect only their internal logic,
then “everybody and at the same time nobody” is responsible for the risk generated.
Despite their rationality and organizational forms, contrary to all the effort expended,
the sense of uncertainty and uncontrollability increases.
The risks of modernisation cannot be assigned to science, the economy, or
politics; they belong to all such subsystems at the same time, as “co-products” of
insufficient communication and coordination. The systemic crisis and its solution
require that partial social systems function as autonomous yet coordinated sub-
systems, in order to see and solve problems from a perspective beyond the individual
subsystems and thus to overcome the state of organized irresponsibility. This
requires a new orientation, the mentioned specialization in the context (Beck
1992), achievable only by overcoming the tapered self-concept of science, econom-
ics and politics.
The problem of cooperation and communication concerns not only relations
between the social sub-systems, but the single, internally very rugged system of
science. Research in the area of risk is often associated with competition between
scientific professions, creating a tension that prevents cooperation just when the
situation calls for interdisciplinary work. Beck’s view is that the sciences have to
grasp the matter of risk as a challenge to work together, which includes the ability of
self-criticism and the art of acknowledging a mistake. Above all, “fragmented”
scientific disciplines should use interdisciplinary knowledge to see risk in perspec-
tive, going beyond the optics of individual sub-specializations.
Multicentric World
After World War II the leading theoretical sociologist was Talcott Parsons, who
worked out the concept of the social system on the basis of structural functionalism.
The main concepts of this theory are system, structure, and function (Parsons 1966
(1951)), where society may be seen as a system representing a dynamic entity
structured in a certain way, whose structural components perform certain functions
(‘functions’ meaning contributions to maintaining the system as a whole). The whole
Parsonian model assumes that the ideal condition of a social system is a state of
dynamic equilibrium and integrity, with the main issue being how to maintain the
cohesion of the system with the help of value consensus and other social
Multicentric World 137
mechanisms, including socialization, education, conformity, social control, norms

and sanctions. For Parsons, and for later approaches, society is understood as a unity,
as an integrated whole organized on the basis of unifying principles.
One of the first to question this idea was Daniel Bell in the book The Cultural
Contradictions of Capitalism, where he expressed the view that contemporary
society cannot be understood properly in this way. Bell opposes the holistic
approach with his own conception established on the idea of a split into societal
spheres, where society is more divided than united. It is described—in Bell’s own
words—as an unstable “alloy” of three different “elements”, three different spheres:
techno-economical structure (or the economy), political system and culture. The
relations among these three spheres are—according to Bell—complicated and vary
with time. Individual spheres are mutually incompatible; they lie under different
axial principles, with different rhythms of change. Bell claims that disharmony
among these three spheres is a source of societal contradictions connected with
many latent conflicts.
In a similar vein, and indeed more radical in his thinking about society, is Niklas
Luhmann. Luhmann does not foreground the question of systems integration, but the
question of differentiation. Working with the idea of social differentiation, formu-
lated long before by Herbert Spencer, he regards system functional differentiation as
key to modern society, which he argues is composed of heterogeneous but equal
parts that are relatively independent in character, termed ‘societal partial systems’
(Teilsysteme; subsystems, systems within systems). Nowhere in his work does he
offer a comprehensive list of these partial systems, but there must be at least ten,
including the economy, politics, law, the army, science, the arts, religion, the mass
media, education, the health system, sport, the family and intimate relations.
Essentially, each of these systems has its own peculiar functional specialism for a
specific field of actions within it (economic behaviour differs from religion or
intimate relations etc.; a different meaning and purpose is attributed to each of
these kinds of actions). Each of these partial systems contributes in a different way
in its functional specialisation to the reproduction of society. Despite heterogeneity
the subsystems are equal in that all are essential for this reproduction, and one might
say irreplaceable for society to maintain its character.
The mutual unity of these subsystems is based on the combination of their
functional closure and nevertheless openness towards the environment. This
means that modern society represents a differentiated unity, i.e. a whole composed
of functionally dependent (i.e. dependent on the functions of other systems), and at
the same time autonomous, partial systems. Autonomy and dependence exist in a
mutually potentiated, stepped relationship (partial systems have become indepen-
dent but the collapse of one may have grave consequences for the societal system as
a whole).
Societal systems are self-referential, so that in their elements, operations and
structures they refer and relate to themselves. Although they are closed in terms of
structure and reproduction, this does not mean that they do not create contacts with
their surroundings. Indeed, without these the dynamic of operationally closed
systems would cease to exist: a university system can exist only against the
background of a functioning economy, political system, legal system etc. The

outside world is no meaningless residual category. On the contrary, the relationship
to surroundings is constitutive and systems can only endure in differentiation from
that outside world.
The condition of the existence of social systems is communication. Systems
create mechanisms to stabilise communication processes, which are termed media.
Luhmann’s concept of symbolically generalised communication media cannot be
narrowed down to the mass media as generally understood, because it also relates to
media such as power, money, laws, faith or knowledge. Luhmann considers one of
the main marks of social evolution to be the differentiation of separate communica-
tion fields such as politics, the economy, law, religion, science, but also education,
art and intimate relations, together with corresponding communication media.
The communication made possible by these media takes place in a certain binary
code (e.g. in the political system: to have power–powerlessness; in the economic
system: paid–unpaid; in the legal system: law–lawlessness; in science: truth–false-
hood; in religion: immanence–transcendence). Thanks to these, expressing a partic-
ular type of leading difference, specific subsystem semantics are created where the
autonomy of different systems is based on the application of its leading difference.
For example, the differentiation of the economy as an autonomous societal
subsystem starts with the establishment of a symbolically generalised communica-
tion medium—money (Luhmann 1988: 230). The elements of economics (unit acts)
are payments, the binary code is paid–unpaid, and prices, which condition and
programme payments, represent the language.
Overall the functioning logic has the character of a narrowed one-sided view
based on a highly specialised binary code through which system operations are
controlled. On the basis of its own observations, each partial system creates a picture
of society (what the legal system observes, for example, is society but society seen
through the application of the distinction: laws–lawlessness). As a result, individual
systems can only see what these schematisations allow them to see. The unified
picture of society fragments into partial observations, and a multicentric world
emerges (Luhmann 1984: 284).
From the perspective of Luhmann’s systems theory we can look at nature, for
example as physical, chemical and biological systems whose connection is a pre-
condition for the functioning of the societal system. Luhmann associates the way
social subsystems are able to perceive ecological threat and risk with the expression
“resonance”, concluding that the problem of contemporary functional differentiation
is that what is taking place in surrounding systems has too little resonance. If in the
economic system the processing of information is bound to prices, everything is
“filtered” by this language and the economy cannot react to breakdowns not
expressed in this language. This limitation is not necessarily a disadvantage, as it
guarantees that if a problem is expressed in prices it will be processed (Luhmann
1986: 122). However, just as the economy sees its surrounding world selectively—
through its own codes and programmes—so too do the other partial systems. As a
result, all kinds of interactive effects may arise, which may dampen resonance but
also disproportionately increase it, and so cause social breakdowns. Thus,
Multicentric World 139
paradoxically there may be too much resonance as well as too little. Luhmann
demonstrates that we cannot take for granted that changes in the environment will
find adequate resonance in society.
Despite the self-referential communication closure of different societal subsys-
tems, it is not true to say that these sub-systems operate only in their own worlds. On
the contrary, all kinds of structural bonds (Kopplungen) exist. At the same time,
however, this self-referential closure means that, for systems analysis, modern
polycontextual society no longer represents a substantially comprehensible unity
(as was the case in Parsons’ time). According to Luhmann, the character of contem-
porary society is shaped by the coexistence of a range of different subsystems
between which all kinds of structural bonds form, but to look for some overall
systems integration of the whole societal system, in the sense of co-ordination or
direction from some controlling centre, is futile.
Luhmann’s multicentric theory of the world corresponds with the diagnosis of
post-modern thinkers such as Jean-François Lyotard (1993), expanding
Wittgenstein’s theory of language games (Sprachspiele). According to this theory
communication has effect within various kinds of heterogeneous and mutually
untranslatable discourses (religion, arts, science...). There are no universal rules for
which discourse should take priority. It is a situation of radical plurality unfathom-
able on the grounds of one model.
The affinity between Luhmann’s theory and postmodernism is affirmed by
Zygmunt Bauman (1995: 20), who points out the need to revise our understanding
of how various elements of human community, diverse activities and life processes,
or various regulative ideas, conceptions and perceptions, interlock, interact and
cooperate. Bauman considers that “systemness” does not rest on mutual balancing
and adjustment, on the creation of formulas of such levelling, and elimination of all
departures from such formulas, but that it entails kaleidoscopic picture based on
games of antagonism, strain and ambivalence, arguing and disputes, understanding
and misunderstanding. Thus, the indefiniteness and ambiguity of communicating
elements is not a manifestation of system illness but of its vitality.
Luhmann’s analysis presents contemporary society as a whole differentiated into
functionally dependent, but autonomous, partial systems, that represent surrounding
worlds for each other. This raises the question of possible unifying forces or
integrating mechanisms.
The concept of the division of labour dominated the history of the systems
approach from Emile Durkheim to Talcott Parsons. According to this tradition,
different areas co-operate in a common whole, rather as different departments
co-operate in a company. If a major deviation or breakdown occurs in one of the
co-operating parts, central regulating mechanisms (consciously or instinctively) try
to remove the fault and re-establish co-operation between the individual parts.
Luhmann, however, sees this in a rather different light. His view is that “a function-
ally differentiated society operates without a top and without a centre” (Luhmann
1997: 802). Each subsystem tends to self-realisation combined with an “indiffer-
ence” to what is taking place in the surrounding systems (for example the economic
system is orientated towards the economic view regardless of whether it is valuable

to it, or beneficial from the point of view of art, health or family).
The Question of Supervision
The fragmentation and pluralisation of society are considered among the results of
the development of modernity. The comprehensive interpretation of the phenome-
non of fragmentation brought about systems theory, whose key insight on contem-
porary modernity concerns advanced functional differentiation, i.e. the segmentation
of the system of society into relatively autonomous partial societal systems with their
own internal closed communication (economy, politics, law, army, science, art,
religion, mass media, education, health service, sport, etc.). To re-state, Luhmann
(1984) presents contemporary society as a complex differentiated into functionally
dependent but autonomous, partial systems, which may be considered neighbouring
(environmental) worlds.
Some social scientists consider that society is controlled by a certain partial
societal system, and that this system is the economy; to others, it is politics or
religion. In the history of the systems approach from Emile Durkheim to Talcott
Parsons a vision dominated where various societal areas cooperated in a common
complex. For Luhmann, contemporary society does not represent a substantially
attainable unity, since its partial systems incline to self-absolutization connected
with a certain “indifference” to what happens in neighbouring (environmental)
systems. This self-absolutization should not produce problems while single systems
function quite independently of each other, but if not, it becomes a source of all sorts
of tensions.
Many writers have contributed to discussions around the system approach to
problems of regulation and integration. One is system theorist Helmut Willke
(1997), who tries to modify significantly ideas about the role of political system.
For Helmut Willke, contemporary society is above all a society of knowledge and
globalization processes. In accordance with the results of Luhmann’s analysis,
Willke claims that society has lost its customary unity and turned into a “polycen-
tric” society, and does not need integration but “supervision”. The prospects for
supervision arise from opportunities within a “society of knowledge”; the point is to
detect and cultivate these opportunities. Willke generates his own theory of super-
vision through a critical confrontation with how supervision is understood and used
at present. He claims that supervision cannot be narrowed down to control, check
ups, surveillance or consultancy, even if all these components are included in it. The
conception of supervision should be defined “non-trivially”—implying a self-
referential, self controlling process.
According to Willke, supervision relates to control processes, and in principle
rests on a supervisor. But it is not only the plain repetition or intensification of
control processes, or even reflections on them. Willke identifies supervision with
what he identifies as control of context. He concludes that supervision assumes a
The Risky Liberties of Flexible Man 141
supervisor who disposes of “additional 2nd rank perspectives” (Willke 1997: 42).
The supervisor must be able to take up the position of observer of the 2nd rank
(observer of the observer), from which one can discover the criteria by which the
observed systems watch themselves. At the same time, they must be able to make
visible even what the systems—as a consequence of how they select information—
do not see, not because they do not want to but because they cannot. The presump-
tion of supervision is the new approach to processing information.
Willke believes that supervision as a mode of control arises from the historical era
of a society of knowledge. Supervision is not an imitation of control or surveillance,
but an independent form of cooperative and congenerous searching for the solution
of problems (Willke 1997: 70). The author ascribes the role of supervision to politics
and the role of supervisor to the state as a political system. But this is nothing
automatic and self-evident. The state should grow into the role of supervisor step by
step, and politics must learn how to function in contemporary polycentric and
decentralised society. State supervision cannot be, as Willke envisages, anything
“forced” on its environment, and must respect the internal structures of neighbouring
systems.
For orthodox followers of Luhmann’s intellectual legacy, Willke’s idea of super-
vision is theoretically hard to accept. This is illustrated, i.a., by the views of Georg
Kneer (Kneer and Nassehi 1993) and Armin Nassehi (1999). The ability to observe
something like a unity of society is negated, according to these authors, because in a
contemporary functionally differentiated society the observation point is missing.
There is no central authority with whole-society reach, to evaluate all the differences
of the system and environment, transcending and connecting them through superior
senses. In addition, the means of “metacommunication” are missing. The complexity
of the societal system arises though the development of specialised media and codes
into individual partial systems, and does not throw up any metacommunication to
enable self-observation and self reference of the societal system as a whole. Thus,
contemporary society turns out to be rather unstable and vulnerable.
The Risky Liberties of Flexible Man
The problem of “narrowed perspectives” does not apply only to specialised societal
subsystems or single science fields, but also to human subjects within the limitations
of their narrow skills, who fail to notice many other matters of substance. A social
world “broken” into subsystems is a fragmented world. The problem which man
must face is how to find in this ever more complex, differentiated and fragmented
world, some orientation, and above all purpose.
The problems touched on here have a broader background, relating to a process
called individualisation. Even by 1893, Emile Durkheim in his work De la division
du travail social had placed this process into the context of the division of labour.
According to Durkheim, in pre-modern societies not only division of labour but also
human individuality was undeveloped. Man was “absorbed by the collective”,
people were more alike and more decisive individual features were absent. The start
of modern society contributed to a situation where man could quit his firm social
structures and individualisation developed. According to many sociologists (Sennett
1977; Lasch 1978; Lipovetsky 1983), this trend has acquired a new intensity and
relevance. It is even said that there is a new phase in the development of the
individual—the stage of narcissism—in which the individual’s relation to himself
actually increases (‘narcissist man’ is able to see the relation between himself and
the outer world only through the prism of the question: what does it mean for me?).
Ulrich Beck (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002) understands the increase of
individualisation as a result of people’s disengagement from social formations of
classical and industrial society. The setting and binding of individuals into classes,
families and social roles, typical for the first modernity, becomes obsolete in the
second modernity. Those once so firm social structures, which bound and restricted
people but at the same time offered support, orientation, have now become very
delicate. The growth of individualism is related to the weakening of traditional
solidarity.
The risks brought into play by this are the flip-side of the unfastening of
traditional relations. Beck (1994) talks about “risky liberties” and the ambivalence
of individual self-fulfilment. Problems that individuals once solved within the
framework of traditional institutions, now have to be managed alone. In
individualised life situations—free from collective structures—mutual problems
become individual problems; social failures and crises appear as individual failure
or destiny. Zygmunt Bauman (2000) considered the steady contact of capital with
labour to be characteristic of the industrial society, while in the phase of liquid
modernity such ties are loosened. Systems of employment dating from the nine-
teenth century, and established through a high degree of standardization of individ-
ual components, such as labour contracts, place of work and working hours,
permitting not only the setting of limits between work and “no work”, but a dividing
line between employment and unemployment. In the era of the second modernity
this system of full employment loses its clarity. One of the characteristic features of
the risk society is the de-standardization of earning employment (Beck 1992:
139 ff.), which occurs especially through the enforcement of flexible pluralist
forms of partial employment, blurring the borders between work and no-work. By
the flexibilization of three key elements—labour contract, place of work and work-
ing hours—the existing system of employment starts to lose outline and solidity.
Ulrich Beck saw this as a conversion from a unified, industrial society with a system
of lifelong and full-time work, whose extreme alternative was unemployment, to a
risky system of flexible, pluralized, decentralized partial employment. At the same
time, the author added, what has so far been antithetically opposed—formal and
informal work, employment and unemployment, in time will blend into a new
system of more flexible, more pluralized, more risky forms of partial employment.
Richard Sennett (1998) considers one of the essential features of contemporary
society the unreliable character of the new flexible economy, where nothing can be
forecast, and everything is on the move, subject to continuous and fast changes. With
a bits and pieces economy, short-term and elastic, nobody can be sure that tomorrow
Searching for Social Capital 143
they will do the same as today. The lifelong commitment to one company and to
continuous advancement within it are not realistic. People are obliged to be flexible,
to meet new tasks and adapt to new realities. One must be prepared for lifelong
learning, self-educate continuously, and, if necessary, change workplace and place
of residence.
Sennett (Sennett 1998) claims that instability has now become the norm, and the
ability to start again requires a special strength of character. His work The Corrosion
of Character (in German Der Flexible Mensch) asks the question of how persistent
changes effect interpersonal relations, which are in his view in essence “directed” to
the long-term. People lose control over their biography, lacking a stable sense of
themselves, but also a deeper reason to be concerned with themselves. The demands
of this age are “nothing long-term”, and “keep moving”. Sennett concludes that this
new flexibility destroys human character and threatens society itself.
Searching for Social Capital
One of problems of contemporary sociology is integration, reflected in a slightly

simplified way in the question: what keeps society together? Integration used to be
seen from two angles: system integration and social integration. In the process of
investigating system integration, we proceed on a macro-sociological level, above all
concerning the mutual relation of the parts (units, subsystems) which cohere to form
the societal system. This macro-sociological aspect we have already touched on in
the context of organized irresponsibility and supervision. In turning to social inte-
gration, we move onto the level of micro-sociology, dealing with individual partic-
ipants and their activities.
The micro-sociological view focusses on areas of interaction, conversation, face
to face contact, everyday meeting and interaction ritual. A key author for of this
micro-sociological approach is Randall Collins (1981, 2004), who emphasizes that
all micro-sociological features consist of micro-events taking the form of interactive
situations connected with conversation. Collins is interested, years before Emile
Durkheim was, in how people shape, keep and strengthen mutual ties, and the basis
of social solidarity. In this context, Durkheim (1995 [1912]) ascribes considerable
significance to emotions (emotive ties) and rituals. Collins envisages conversation as
interactive ritual supporting social solidarity and consistency.
In contemporary sociology the question of solidarity and cohesion is analysed
especially in terms of trust and social capital. For James Coleman (1994) social
capital constitutes structures which support the appearance of trust among individ-
uals, establishing informal relations and creating favourable conditions for cooper-
ative acts. He considers the essential outline of the development of modern society to
consist in the fact that while the total size of social capital falls, physical capital, in
the form of tangible wealth, grows. Coleman points out that social capital does not
quite disappear, and it can even rise again in favourable conditions. He considers
recovering lost social capital, and increasing it, to be one of the most pressing
problems of today. The idea of a decrease of social capital originated with Robert
D. Putnam (2000), who noted that as the USA built its economy, material living
conditions improved, but society lost the social capital of networks of human
relations and the reciprocity and trust arising from them. People worked and
consumed more than at any time before, but at the expense of time spent together
exercising political or civil activities, organized or spontaneous social activities, or
around the family table.
Into this context of the loss of social capital, within the era of liquid modernity,
the question arises of the role of new communication technologies. There is no
unequivocal answer to this. Things are on the move, they are continually changing
and developing. While on the one hand it is possible to present the hypothesis that
new communication technologies push back the traditional forms of interpersonal
communication and so further strain the sources of social capital, on the other hand
there are considerations that communications via the Internet, creating new forms of
sociability, will further develop and considerably change the character of social
reality. However, the relation between new information technologies and social
capital is a socially important subject to which current sociology must pay attention.
The End of Ideologies: Why Did It Not Occur?
The term ideology was first used by the French philosopher Antoine Destutt de
Tracy in the late eighteenth century, although in a different sense than today, to
represent a general science of ideas to enhance the quality of public opinion. Today,
the term is usually used in two concepts: (a) positively, ideologies are perceived as a
certain system of knowledge providing a basic set of values and views on society to
maintain order and social stability; (b) negatively, ideologies are perceived as
knowledge forced on people from above to control and manipulate them. In this
critical sense, for example, within Marxism ideologies are referred to as false and
perverse consciousness (turning the interpretation of society on its head).
In general, ideology is a set of theoretically substantiated political, legal, religious
and philosophical views, ideas and attitudes related to the conditions of existence of
a certain social group or class. Ideologies shape political thinking and thereby
attitudes and behavior. We can speak of three basic functions of ideology, namely:
to legitimize, mislead and conform. The crucial aspect is that ideologies are
contrasted with science and scientific thought. Ideologies, in comparison to science,
are understood as simplified and simplifying knowledge that is more easily acquir-
able and accessible to the masses, characterized paradoxically by French sociologist
Raymond Aron as a “secular religion”. One thinker, in particular, contrasted ideol-
ogies with science: the American sociologist Daniel Bell (1919–2011). Bell worked
at Columbia and Harvard Universities, and characterized his intellectual position as a
Trinitarian viewpoint: a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conserva-
tive in culture. In stating this opinion, Bell (1976) is trying to connect three
principles seen as necessary conditions of the civilized order: (a) the integration of
The End of Ideologies: Why Did It Not Occur? 145
all people into civil society with an economic minimum of human dignity, (b) the
principle of individual achievement of social status based on merit, (c) the continuity
of the past and present in the shaping of the future. Bell’s popularity and reputation
rest mainly on three books: The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political
Ideas in the Fifties (Bell 1960), The Coming of Post-industrial Society: A Venture in
Social Forecasting (Bell 1973), The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (Bell
1976).
What all three of Bell’s most famous books combine, is the author’s interest in
social change, or more precisely the issue of transformation in contemporary modern
society. In the book The End of Ideology—like Aron—he makes a parallel between
ideologies and religion. Ideologies are sets of ideas showing not only how the world
can be interpreted, but how to act in it and change it. Ideologies are characterized by
simplified, schematic ways of thinking with considerable effect on the emotions,
requiring faith and obedience from followers. They blossomed in the nineteenth
century in a period of evolving industrialism, filling the vacuum left by the decline of
religion and secularizing tendencies. Bell considers ideologies as not purely nega-
tive, but possessing certain positive aspects, particularly the fact that at times
ideologies have been significant carriers of the ideas of social emancipation, equality
and freedom. Nevertheless, he understands ideologies as deforming human thinking,
significantly reducing life and its fullness, and thus dehumanizing it. The further
development of society will lead, in Bell’s opinion, to the abandonment of ideologies
to be replaced by objective, reliable knowledge based on scientific research. This
optimistic expectation, we can observe after almost 60 years, has not been fulfilled,
which raises the question of why ideologies remain a key component of human
knowledge and have not been replaced by science.
The answer is linked to the current shape of scientific knowledge and what can be
called its hyper complexity. As early as 1959, the British physicist Charles Percy
Snow published the lecture Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, in which he
formulated the idea of two areas of modern culture. On the one hand there were the
humanities, arts and literature, and on the other, science and technology. He warned
of an impending loss of contact between the two, which were gradually diverging
into mutual isolation. The complexity of current scientific knowledge means that
deeper understanding of modern science and technology is virtually impossible for
representatives of the humanities and arts. Conversely, the deepening specialization
and increase of expertise among representatives of the natural sciences hinder their
involvement in the field of humanistic culture. This growing abyss would need to be
overcome in the future, according to Snow. In the follow-up, The Two Cultures and
a Second Look, he talks about the need to create a third culture to connect the two
existing ones.
The urgency of this task has been raised by many other authors over the
subsequent years. Efforts to overcome the differentiation of human knowledge are
still being made today. As earlier mentioned, Ulrich Beck stands out among these. In
his view the scientific system is not able to react adequately to the risks of modern-
ization. The “fragmented” disciplines, Beck advocates, must use their knowledge in
an interdisciplinary way, looking beyond the optics of sub-specialization to

(in Beck’s famed expression) “specialization in the context”.
The matter has consequences not only for society or for the system of knowledge,
but for all of us, for our individual lives. Today’s volume of knowledge appears such
that none of us can be a renaissance personality, as for example, Leonardo da Vinci
was; he was an artist, but possessed technical, architectural, military and medical
knowledge as well. Each individual must somehow delimit themselves profession-
ally, which means resigning ourselves to doing something distinct from others.
Today’s scientists are highly specialized experts on particular problems, but often
lack awareness and knowledge of the wider dimension. Some feel nothing
concerning this lack, and those who feel it can find solace or compensation in
religion, philosophy, art or ideology.
This appears to be the main reason why the vision expressed by Daniel Bell in his
book The End of Ideology was not fulfilled. There has been no weakening of the
ideological way of thinking since his time, and science has become too diverse and
specialized to challenge it. It seems that not just for ordinary citizens, for laymen but
also respectively for politicians, experts and scientists themselves, ideologies remain
an important support and orientation in a world of increasing complexity.
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A Hypothesis for a Sociology of Ignorance
in the Twenty-First Century
Current social processes are forming new phenomena in our world which need our
attention and study. One of these is ignorance. Here we will attempt to bring a
sociological approach to the matter, examining the role ignorance is increasingly
playing in our ever more complex society.
The simple definition of ignorance as ‘lack of knowledge’ implies multiple
meanings. For example, Croissant (2014) identified almost forty synonyms for the
word ‘ignorance’. Despite this huge number of expressions, there are two main
categories: lack of data (or lack of methods for collecting them), and uncertainty
(i.e. lack of a robust theory for interpreting the available data). Within this frame-
work, the opinion is common in the literature that ignorance is an essential part of
any knowledge process.
In fact, ignorance and knowledge do not only coexist in the scientific field, but in
all human activities. It is impossible to imagine a context where both aspects are
totally absent (Gross 2010: 51). Each actor may act only according to a set of
necessary information, but any data-collecting activities, no matter how accurate,
are very unlikely to provide all necessary information. According to Gross,
Attempts to grasp notions such as ignorance are spurred by a well-known paradox: whenever
new knowledge arises, the amount of non-knowledge may increase proportionally, since
every set of newly generated knowledge opens up a wider horizon of what is not known
(Gross 2010: 51).
This means that the information collected to make any decision may highlight
problems, doubts, or other kinds of ignorance not yet considered. Ignorance is, in
fact, functionally related to the activities of knowledge: being aware of the informa-
tion missing on a given object enables us to effectively orientate the search for
required data (Roberts and Armitage 2008).
The facts serve mainly to unlock ignorance. The scientist does not utilize their
knowledge to defend, treat, or enrich, but rather to frame a new question. In other
words, scientists concentrate not on what they know, which is considerable yet
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_12
150 A Hypothesis for a Sociology of Ignorance in the Twenty-First Century
miniscule, but rather on what they don’t know (Vitek and Jackson 2008: 15). Thus,
according to Hearst Witte and others: ignorance is a dynamic force in learning and
research, and its topography shifts with inquiry. There are at least six lands within
the domain of ignorance: all the things we know we don’t know (known unknowns);
things we don’t know we don’t know (unknown unknowns); things we think we know
but don’t (errors); things we don’t know we know (tacit knowns); taboos (“forbid-
den” knowledge); and denials (Witte et al. 2008: 253).
Besides this thorough classification, we may note that ignorance has been the
object of philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Cusa etc.) and epistemology (El Kassar 2018;
Gross and McGoey 2015; McGoey 2012a, b; Proctor and Schiebinger 2008).
Sociology of Ignorance
In spite of the robustness of the analyses in the philosophical and epistemological

domains, they mainly refer to scientific activities. Little has been said about the way
ignorance affects social actions, especially in social contexts outside scientific
communities. The so-called ‘Sociology of ignorance’ is meant to tackle just this
field, even if existing literature mostly focuses on intentional ignorance, such as
censorship, merchandise with unknown impacts, evidential rules in judicial trials etc.
(McGoey 2012a: 5).
More specifically, literature on the sociology of ignorance seems to have focused
on a category of phenomena that, like Goffman’s studies on secrecy and information
concealment, implies social actors’ strategies to keep or gain strategic advantages
over their neighbors. As this kind of sociology is strictly related to power (Gross and
McGoey 2015: parts IV, V; Steyn 2012), it seems to have partially neglected another
category of social phenomena, unintentional ignorance, which has been perhaps the
most common condition of ignorance in many domains of human life where there
has been a lack of necessary information and strategies.
Of course, this implies cases in everyday life, such as the need to get information
to reach a destination, to pay due taxes etc. Nevertheless, from a sociological point of
view, the most interesting category of phenomena relates to undesired ignorance in
the domains of public policy and public opinions. This domain implies not the nature
of the universe or the origin of life on earth etc., but information on issues that
directly affect social life: technological innovation (e.g. Big data and Artificial
Intelligence), economic and demographic flows and so on.
In this context, to properly define the mission and the scope of the sociology of
ignorance, we must recall the knowledge theory of the Palo Alto School, namely, the
notion of two levels of knowledge: “knowledge of things (1* knowledge)” and
“knowledge about things (2* knowledge)1” We can adapt those notions to the needs
1
In this context, it is necessary just to mention that the authors state the existence of a third level of
knowledge, consisting of the general criteria to make sense of empirical information (Watzlawick
Science and Social Actors 151
of the sociology of ignorance, and talk about “ignorance of things” when there is
scant information on a subject and social actors do not actually know what is
missing; the other side we shall call “knowledge (or ignorance) about ignorance”,
the condition where there is a clear idea of the information necessary to achieve
better knowledge on a subject (but this information is lacking). More specifically,
“knowledge about ignorance” can include formulating cognitive-epistemic strategies
for understanding if, given a subject with unknown features, it is possible to achieve
a deeper knowledge, or if ignorance is unavoidable. In the first case, actors will need
to achieve the greatest information possible on the subject, and reduce the amount of
data lacking. Traditionally, classical scientific practice performs this function.
In the second case, there are two possible strategies of ignorance management. On
one side, ignorance may be insurmountable, no matter how large the amount of
information collected. Chaotic phenomena, for example, fall into this category. In
such phenomena, the persistence of ignorance depends on the impossibility of
interpreting data according to theoretical models which produce reliable descriptions
and predictions of future states, as in the case of the (rather over-cited) butterfly
effect phenomenon.
One the other hand, ignorance can depend on the observer’s limits, such as the
inability to deal with a high number of variables, or to grasp the data bias caused by
observer subjectivity (Prigogine and Stengers 1984).
In other words, “knowledge about ignorance” consists of the ability to recognize
the nature of any possible case of ignorance, and to develop a management strategy.
As we shall see, the ability to cope with ignorance is related to social and cultural
contexts and is functionally crucial to the social system.
Put briefly, the notion of a double level of ignorance is a theoretical framework
for comprehending the ignorance management strategies that all social actors carry
out when they are in a condition of ignorance. Those strategies imply a basic
decision: assessing if a condition of ignorance is permanent or temporary, which.
implies social actions respectively aiming at either collecting the information to
overcome ignorance, or tackling the uncertainty related to ignorance. The strategies
that social actors carry out to tackle ignorance are the subject of the sociology of
(unintentional) ignorance.
Science and Social Actors
Within this framework, problems of ignorance management can arise at every level
of sociological observation: micro (individuals), meso (institutions) and macro
(national and supranational societies). Elsewhere, strategies of ignorance manage-
ment at a micro-level are described (Ruzzeddu 2017); in this work I will focus on the
et al. 1967: 262). This level of knowledge also contains cultural assessments of what knowledge is
and what parts of reality are worth exploring.
meso-macro levels, because at these levels occur the phenomena of ignorance that
are crucial for the future of global societies.
From this point of view, it must be noted that issues concerning ignorance
obviously relate to science. As a matter of fact, science, as a social institution,
represents the social capabilities of global societies to gain knowledge and reduce
ignorance. In other words, science states what society knows and what it ignores. Put
another way, science is the institution legitimized to separate knowledge from
ignorance. What science knows is what a society knows, and social actors cannot
legitimately ignore; if social actors ignore what science knows, they face problems
of prestige.
The crucial point, for sociology, is that scientific knowledge and ignorance are
not equally distributed in the social system. Not only is disseminated knowledge
unavoidably less complex and accurate than original findings—not all social groups
have the same access to the most complex aspects of scientific knowledge. In other
words, even if scientific knowledge, as a matter of principle, were open and
accessible to everybody, the nature of most findings makes it impossible for the
public to have both direct experience and comprehension of realities that only take
place in laboratories or computer simulations. This situation also affects the social
sciences: in a world that lives more and more “at the edge of chaos”, quick and
effective decision-making processes call for an adequate and immediate flow of
pertinent, reliable information. The public do not have the level of access to
information and data of scientific communities, so their knowledge about social
phenomena must rely on the system expert’s narrative. As Giddens (1991: 84) states:
No one can completely opt out of the abstract systems involved in modern institutions. This
is most obviously the case in respect of such phenomena as the risk of nuclear war or of
ecological catastrophe. But it is true in a more thoroughgoing way of large tracts of day-to-
day life as it is lived by most of the population. Individuals in premodern settings, in
principle and in practice, could ignore the pronouncements of priests, sages, and sorcerers
and get on with the routines of daily activity. But this is not the case in the modern world, in
respect of expert knowledge.
A typical example is renewable energies: the financial and scientific investments

are large, and the mass media both traditional and online are paying serious attention
to this subject. Within this framework, political authorities, investors, and citizens
need to evaluate the performance of the existing technologies for renewable ener-
gies; to decide, through laws, investments and votes respectively, if the moment is
right to ‘drop’ fossil fuels. The problem is that only a few social actors seem to have
developed the skills to understand how reliable the available information is. Big
companies and stakeholders have developed strategies to calculate the rate of risk
related to any investment; if the information that they have shown an acceptable
level of risk, they make investment decisions accordingly.
It is impossible any longer for a non-expert observer to assess such questions as
whether a 100% renewable energy system is feasible, or if fossil fuels are still
technically essential for contemporary civilization. Furthermore, science and tech-
nology progress so quickly that it is even difficult to judge which renewable energy
will most likely predominate on the global scale: solar, wind, bio-fuels, or something
Ignorance and Ignorance Communication 153
else. Even other social subsystems like politics or civil society are generally much
less able to assess the risk level of any decision and, above all, can only tolerate very
low levels of risk. Policy decisions on energy, for example, need more reliable
information than a financial investor might. A wrong choice about energy sources or
environmental protection might result in unsustainable, long-term social and polit-
ical costs, in the form of poor economic performance, hostile public opinion etc.
Generally speaking, political decision-makers are supposed to be able to manage
areas of social life that in fact are turning more and more fluid, causing unforeseeable
phenomena such as humanitarian emergencies and wars. Emergencies such as the
refugees in the Mediterranean are accompanied by great uncertainty. Consequently,
decision-makers claim that they can hardly obtain the data necessary to manage
events to an acceptable degree (Bhatasara 2015).2
Ignorance and Ignorance Communication
Turning to instances of the gap between science and social actors, science offers the
following insight:
Our use of probabilistic terms to describe the outcome of events in everyday life is therefore
a reflection not of the intrinsic nature of the process but only of the ignorance of certain
aspects of it. Probabilities in quantum theory are different. They reflect a fundamental
randomness in nature. (Hawking and Mlodinow 2010: 118).
Such declarations of ignorance, which can refer both to the scientific world and
everyday life, not only do not cause any social stigma but, on the contrary, are
evidence of prestige and intellectual authority.
It is impossible to understand ignorance clearly if one ignores what society
actually knows. We do not know yet what dark matter is, but in order to grasp this
we need to know how the community of physicists has arrived at a stage where it can
postulate the existence of a new category of matter.
To take another example, the sentence: “We do not know how to heal
Alzheimers,” when uttered by an eminent neurologist, reflects the awareness that
we are, today, still unable to treat this illness, but that progress has been made in
understanding its causes. Furthermore, the neurologist will know what information
is still lacking and how the scientific community hopes to discover it. Likewise,
saying that we have not yet found any evidence of life on Mars implies awareness of
2
It might be questioned whether the issue is one of genuine ignorance due to factors beyond control,
or strategic ignorance due to broader political priorities (e.g. Germany’s need for workers or the
EU’s good relations with Turkey) but in general the processes in question are faster, more dynamic,
and harder to control than previously—as Bauman puts it, they are more ‘liquid’. Nevertheless,
Mcgoey (2012b: 555) points out that ‘cultivating ignorance is often more advantageous, both
institutionally and personally, than cultivating knowledge’.
the data accumulated since 1973 by probes sent to that planet and an understanding
of the models of planetary evolution that astrophysicists have developed.
According to this epistemic framework, one line of investigation may be to
comprehend under what conditions and in what cases a declaration of ignorance
can be a cause either for approval or stigmatization. One scenario is that an
admission of ignorance itself may be a cause of prestige, or that some given
affirmations of ignorance are sources of prestige through demonstrating an aware-
ness of the state-of-the-art knowledge of a whole group (Gaudet 2013; Gaudet and
Czub 2012). Another interpretation is that the speaker’s prestige affects the reception
of their ignorance. If another person than Hawking had made the statements quoted
above, they might not have received the same reaction. Considering the position of
ignorance in contemporary societies, it is necessary to investigate the level of
prestige that science currently receives, which often seems to be very low.
Ignorance and Culture
This lack of prestige may arise for two essential reasons. The first is that most
societies still hold a positivistic expectation of science, so that problems like illness,
shortages of food or water etc., are interpreted as the surrender of scientific commu-
nities to obscure political or economic interests.3
The other cause relates to society’s cultural structure. It is known that culture
consists not only of visible habits and artifacts, but also of deep level, unconscious
assumptions (Schein 2004: 85). These assumptions concern the “nature of truth,
time, space, human nature, and human relationships”. In a given social context, the
idea of time affects social representations of evolution and progress. If this idea
depicts change as a negative trend, any innovation, no matter how technological or
social, will encounter distrust and hostility. In light of this, it is easy to understand
the sometimes low prestige of science and expert systems.
This scenario might also help to shed light on contemporary political reality: the
electoral success of parties—of either left or right—who have campaigned against
migration, global trade, and international institutions in the name of national or local
sovereignty, can be interpreted as evidence that larger and larger social groups lack
instruments to cope with the ignorance and uncertainty related to phenomena like
financial trends, diverse migrant backgrounds etc.; these parties’ voters are mainly
demanding more familiar cultural references, often through emotionally charged
behavior. In other words, large parts of contemporary societies still cling to
3
The project of Scientific Citizenship (Nowotny 2008; Nowotny et al. 2001; Pitasi 2014; Pitasi and
Angrisani 2013) aims at bridging this gap by making stronger alliances between hard and social
sciences. This would trigger a wider diffusion of scientific knowledge both among academics from
different domains and with institutional policymakers. This virtuous alliance would also benefit
civil society and the general public, as the more effective the dissemination strategies are, the more
science-based the decision-making processes are at any level of society.
Final Remarks 155
traditional representations of reality, expecting expert systems to produce reliable

knowledge on the world.
The possibly unavoidable limits of science and political planning are causing the
revival of more traditional cognitive frameworks like ethnic roots, cultural traditions,
and religious fanaticism, among those social categories that have problems dealing
with globalization. This is the cause of an interesting paradox: certain groups openly
declare that they are not able to understand scientific communities’, intellectuals’, or
public institutions’ cultural products; these groups, being “ignorant” (and having no
intention of overcoming this condition), fall back on simplistic cultural references
that offer a strong sense of certainty. In other words, because science manifests high
degrees of ignorance, other social actors claim a kind of ‘right to ignorance’, i.e. to
openly reject knowledge that science has provided.
In sum, ignorance, which can be wielded as an instrument of domination, has
turned into a distinctive feature of given categories of social actors, no matter
whether they are specialized communities (Alcoff 2007: 44; McGoey 2012a) or
not (Davies 2011: 409; McGoey 2012a, b). The condition of uncertainty, or worse,
of ignorance about ignorance, has become characteristic of most parts of social life,
and has been the cause of systemic dysfunctions in terms of a lack of reliable social
action patterns.
Final Remarks
In this chapter, we have seen that studying ignorance entails two main areas of
investigation: intentional ignorance and unintentional ignorance. While the literature
about intentional ignorance is quite broad, even among the main classical sociolog-
ical authors (especially Goffman’s school: secret, intimacy etc.) unintentional igno-
rance is a less explored territory.
Unintentional ignorance implies not only describing all those situations where
social actors lack important information, but especially the strategies they enact for
managing this lack of information, which means either looking for more data or
interpreting the world without that information.
The main theoretical conclusion of this work, is that the strategies of ignorance
management that social actors carry out are related to their position in the social
space, i.e. their social prestige. This relation is biunivocal: in given contexts, the
prestige held by social actors will deeply affect the social acceptance of their
ignorance management strategies. An individual or an institution which has a high
level of prestige will be more likely to openly admit ignorance. In other contexts,
copycat declarations of ignorance will increase the actors’ prestige. This is particu-
larly evident in contemporary political discourse: conceiving a gap between, on one
side, rich, greedy and corrupted élites and, on the other, people whose needs
international politics and economics increasingly ignores. Thus, while global élite
members are always educated, ignorance has become a mark of belonging to the
‘people’. In other words, according to the current populistic vision of the world,
ignorance is synonymous with ‘democracy’ and ‘honesty’.
While many empirical research paths may lead from such a framework, one fact is
evident: in the current cultural context, ignorance is cause of unprecedented prestige.
Never have so many people felt so proud to have skipped so much education, to have
avoided books or art and, at the same time, claim the right to participate in the main
decision-making processes that affect social life. Further scholarship should high-
light potentially dysfunctional consequences of this cultural scenario, as well as
trying to identify the underlying cause of it.
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The Dimensions of Globalization
At this point in our considerations we must give attention to one of the key processes
taking place in our world today, altogether known to us as the process of globaliza-
tion, where we will meet again with a number of topics mentioned in previous
discussions. This time, however, we will look at them from a somewhat different
standpoint: not the traditional sociological perspective bounded by the concept of
society in the framework of nation state, as is usual in examining most sociological
problems, but a glance from the level of what Niklas Luhmann once called “world
society” (Weltgesellschaft) (Luhmann 1990: 175–190; 2012: 83–99).
Major Social Factors in the Development of Globalized

Sociology
The social conditions of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries were of the
utmost significance in the development of sociology, culminating in the late twen-
tieth century with globalized sociology and correspondingly the sociology of glob-
alization. These include: political upheaval in Europe that culminated in the French
Revolution of 1789; the Industrial Revolution which transformed agricultural soci-
ety into industrial society; the spread of the ideas of Socialism; urbanization; the
growth of Science; the gradually changing place of religion in society.
1. Political Revolutions. Centering on the European continent, there were a series of
political revolutions headed by the French Revolution in 1789. The political
upheavals of the nineteenth century were key to the rise of sociology. Here we
can distinguish “classic” revolutions, such as took place in France and Russia,
and more recent revolutions in so-called developing societies (e.g., China, Viet-
nam, Cuba, Iran, and Nicaragua) (Janoski et al. 2005: 404).
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_13
160 The Dimensions of Globalization
The impact of classic revolutions on many societies was enormous. The

attention of early theorists was attracted by both negative and positive aspects.
Many theorists were disturbed by the resulting chaos and disorder, especially in
France. The main group of thinkers opposed to the French Revolution was later
termed “conservative”, united in their desire to restore order to society and even
nostalgic for the peaceful and relatively orderly days of the Middle Ages. More
sophisticated thinkers recognized that social change had made such a return
impossible. This group may be called “progressive” thinkers. Instead of a return,
they sought new bases of order in societies overwhelmed by their political
revolutions (Ritzer 1988: 6). To this day the issues of social order and social
change are major concerns of sociologists and several sociological theories.
2. The Industrial Revolution and the Rise of Capitalism. In the shaping of socio-
logical theory, the Industrial Revolution is equally important. Starting in England
and sweeping through many western societies in the nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries (Mantoux 1966: 19), the Industrial Revolution was not a single
event but many interrelated developments culminating in the transformation of
the western world from a largely agricultural to an overwhelmingly industrial
system. Industrialization brought in its train a transformation of the division of
labor critical for the rise of sociological thinking (e.g. Durkheim): from manual
workers in the field to workers in factory halls.
The expansion of the industrial economy demanded many types of services,
leading to large economic bureaucracies and a more clearly capitalist economic
system, whose core priority was to create a free market where products of the
industrial system could be exchanged. A few profited greatly from this while the
majority worked long for low wages, resulting in a labor movement as well as in
various radical movements aimed at overthrowing the capitalist system (Ritzer
1988: 6; Ritzer and Stepnisky 2014: 1–11).
Such upheaval shaped early sociological thinking. The four major thinkers in
the early history of the sociological theory—Karl Marx (1818–1883), Max Weber
(1864–1920), Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), and Georg Simmel (1858–1918)
were all faced with these changes and their consequences, and ultimately worked
to develop programs to accommodate them.
3. The Rise of Socialism. Chief among the solutions proposed in response to
industrialization was socialism. Sociologists were divided on the question of
socialism; most were personally and intellectually opposed to it—such as Max
Weber and Emile Durkheim. On the other hand, a group led by Karl Marx viewed
capitalism as the last class-based society, which was to be replaced by social-
ism—resulting in a classless society. Those sociologists who opposed program-
matic socialism sought social reform within capitalism itself rather than the social
revolution argued for by Marx, fearing communistic socialism more than they did
capitalism.
4. Urbanization. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the demand for
labor in the newly created factories caused a large number of people to be
uprooted from rural homes and relocated in urban areas. The movement of people
from countryside to cities and towns expanded existing settlements, producing a
Major Social Factors in the Development of Globalized Sociology 161
seemingly endless list of urban problems—overcrowding, pollution, noise, traffic

and others, which attracted the attention of many early sociologists even before
the establishment of sociology as an academic field at universities—including the
young Friedrich Engels (friend of the young Marx), whose seminal work, based
on his study in Manchester, was The Condition of the Working Class in England
written in 1844 (Engels 2009). In addition, the census in England, starting in
1801, provided information on all the people living in the country, and stimulus
for fresh study. Early sociologists interested in urban social issues also included
Max Weber et al. (1978: 1212–1334) and Georg Simmel (Simmel and Wolf
1950: 409–426). Looking more broadly at the history of sociology, meanwhile,
the city of Chicago occupies a central position, where the first major school of
American sociology, the Chicago school, was to a great extent defined by its
concern for the city, a kind of laboratory where the problems of urbanized society
could be studied. All this points to the significance of urbanization, a concomitant
of industrialization, in the rise and establishment of sociology as an academic
discipline.
5. Religious Change. The economic and political transformation of society, as well
as urbanization, had a deep effect on religiosity. Many early sociologists came
from religious backgrounds and were actively, in some cases professionally,
involved in religion. Many sociologists studied the role of religion in different
societies; Max Weber studied the religion of India, China, ancient Israel, and
Christianity (from which he developed the concept of the Protestant work ethic),
and had a profound effect on the development of sociology of religion (Weber
et al. 1978: 399–634; Weber 1998; Ritzer 2003: 168). Another of the founders of
sociology, Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist, made a great contribution to
the sociology of religion with “The elementary forms of religious life”, which
aimed to describe and explain the most primitive religion known to man, to better
understand “the religious nature of man” (Durkheim 1995). Karl Marx, too, had
an interest in religiosity, but his orientation was far more critical: “Communism
abolishes all religion” (Marx and Engels 2008 (1848)).
6. The Growth of Science. The technological products of science were permeating
every sector of life in the nineteenth century, and science was acquiring enormous
prestige. Those associated with the most successful sciences (physics, biology,
and chemistry) were accorded honored places in society, which attracted the
interest of figures such as Auguste Comte (1798–1857), the founder of the term
sociology (socio – society and logy – science: in direct translation, sociology is
the science of society). Comte classified science into two groups: abstract and
concrete. Abstract science examined the laws of categorized phenomena. Con-
crete science applied these laws to specific areas. For example, biology is an
abstract general science of life, while medicine is a concrete science which
applies the general laws of biology. In his classification of science, Comte
identified five abstract, theoretical sciences: astronomy, physics, chemistry, biol-
ogy and, finally, sociology (Keller 2004). Durkheim took a similar view, model-
ing sociology after the successful physical and biological sciences. However,
sociology is a pluralist social science in which different approaches are taken;
Max Weber and others considered that social life had distinctive characteristics
and the adoption of a scientific model was difficult and unwise (Weber et al.
1978: 7–8). The relationship between sociology and science is debated to
this day.
7. Intellectual forces and the rise of sociology. We can see from the above account
that a number of circumstances, and a number of key individuals, led to the
establishment of a new discipline, integrating new political horizons (via revolu-
tion), the new organizational forms of industrialization, and social concerns about
exploitation and urban disorder, with religious concerns and the impulses of new
scientific discoveries.
A variety of other social factors have been important in the years since the
foundational period. The radical students’ movement of 1968, for instance, led to
a renewed interest in sociology in Western Europe and USA (Tilly 2004: 68–71),
while the collapse of socialism at the end of 1989, and the expansion of religious
fundamentalism during and after the 1990s, have given stimulus to sociologists to
understand our contemporary (Huntington 1991; Hagopian and Mainwaring
2005; Saine 2009), ever more interconnected world (Tilly 2004: 95–143), and
these stimuli have led sociology onto the global field.
8. Globalization from the perspective of political sociology. In recent decades
Globalization has become an important part of political sociology. It is a
sub-discipline of sociology; within this, the following main areas of study can
be identified:
– The general nature and functions of the state and the political system
(or subsystem);
– The nature of political parties, pressure groups, political organizations and
political movements;
– The empirical study of patterns of individual political participation and behav-
ior, including non-participation, e.g., empirical research on voting behavior;
– Comparative research on types of political system and their relative effective-
ness and stability; particular and general analysis of the relations between
states, including warfare, and positioning of states within world systems.
Political sociology has above all been identified with the study of political elites and
masses, and the extent of domination by a ruling class (Jary and Jary 1991: 479).
As the contemporary world has become interconnected in many aspects of
life—political, economic, technological and communication among others—
global developments have invited social science to study political problems on
a global scale.
9. The Origin of Global Sociology. Sociology became a university academic disci-
pline at the end of the nineteenth century. The first department of sociology was
founded in USA, at Chicago University, in 1892; “modern political sociology has
existed for more than a century, but it came into its own in the decades between
World War II and the anti-Vietnam War Movement” (Janoski et al. 2005: 1). At
the same time, world events influenced political development across the world, as
Major Social Factors in the Development of Globalized Sociology 163
the brief sketch illustrates, showing how contemporary sociology has developed
themes to cope with globalizing trends.
Decolonization Processes The old colonial empires were gradually forced to dis-
mantle. The British were persuaded to leave India, which became independent in
1947, starting a wave of decolonization in the rest of Asia, Africa, Middle East and
the Caribbean. The Dutch left Indonesia in 1949, and although the French and
Portuguese tried to halt the wheel of decolonization, eventually, they too were forced
to abandon their colonial territories in Asia and Africa by liberation movements
in Algeria, Mozambique, and Angola. The French were forced to leave Algeria in
1962, while Angola and Mozambique became independent from the Portuguese in
1975. The former colonial subjects of Western European states came to the world
stage after reaching independence, with their own agenda for global affairs. The
roots of racial supremacism had been shaken by the holocaust of WWII. Some
continued to live in the racialized past, but others realized that the post-1945 period
required a change in public consciousness. Institutions such as the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, in 1946,
gave their response:
The great and terrible war which has now ended was a war made possible by the
denial of the democratic principles of dignity, equality and mutual respect of men
and by the propagation in their place, through ignorance and prejudice, of the
doctrine of the inequality of men and race (Banton 1994: 336).
The members of UNESCO’s governing committee set themselves the task of
studying racial discrimination and starting from 1952 published books on the
equality of ‘race’ (Lévi-Strauss 1952: 199), and over a period of some 30 years
provided a number of authoritative statements agreed by panels of eminent geneti-
cists, biologists, anthropologists and sociologists. Article 1 of the General Confer-
ence of 1978 proclaimed that “All human beings belong to a single species and are
descended from a common stock. They are born equal in dignity and rights and all
form part of humanity” (Banton 1994: 336, 337). The racist theory formulated and
propagated by French philosopher Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882), culminating in
the excess of the Nazi era, had helped bring about the most devastating war in the
history of the continent. According to Gobineau there were three great races of
human species with clearly marked types: the black, the yellow and the white. The
highest rung of the ladder was accorded to white people and the lowest for what he
calls negroid:
After this latest great war in Europe, with its inherently racist dimensions, the
mood logically shifted towards universalism, and the emergence of other strong
states during the war, such as Japan (despite its eventual defeat) and the USA,
attracted western scholars (especially political scientists) to ‘area studies’ and ‘com-
parative government’. The aim was to compare the political systems of countries
systematically, according to common categories (Almond and Coleman 1960: 3).
Throughout his academic carrier, Gabriel A. Almond collaborated widely and
co-generated a corpus of work covering political culture (Almond and Verba
1963) and comparative government (Comparative Government: Politics of
Industrialized and Developing Nations (Deutsch et al. 1981). Almond and his
colleagues finally brought their study to the world level, including all major states
(Almond and Powell 1992). Political scientists, sociologists, and economists from
Western Europe and North America sought information about former colonial
territories, as well as communist countries behind the iron curtain, to make this
possible.
A key question started to emerge, originally from Latin American intellectuals, on
the question of development. Why was their part of the world, having gained
political independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century, so economically
and culturally dependent on northern industrial countries? To answer this question
they developed Dependency Theory, which was a critique of the development theory
projected by North American social scientists that advised developing countries to
adopt the system of development which North American states had used to indus-
trialize their countries (So 1990: 91–165). Latin Americans found that after more
than hundred years of political independence they remained an underdeveloped part
of the world, and social scientists thus started to examine the root causes of regional
underdevelopment. Among these was Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president of the
International Sociological Association (1986–1990) and later elected president of
Brazil; he published several basic theoretical works on the subject (Cardoso and
Faletto 1979 (1969)). André Gunder Frank, a German scholar who worked for many
years in Chile, was deeply influenced by theories of dependency and underdevelop-
ment in Latin American circles and popularized them in English speaking parts of
the world (Frank 1967, 1969).
The problem of underdevelopment in Africa, meanwhile, was described generally
by African scholars such as the Egyptian political economist Samir Amin (1974) and
the Martinique political philosopher, essayist and psychologist Frantz Fanon, who
participated in the Algerian liberation struggle and published a key statement on how
economic and psychological degradation imposed by imperial powers afflicted their
colonies (1990 (1961)). Asian underdevelopment was addressed by sociologists
such as the Pakistani Hamza Alavi (1972) who analyzed the post-colonial states of
Pakistan and Bangladesh, or the Jamaica-born Harvard University professor of
historical sociology, Orlando Patterson, who wrote key works on the evolution of
slavery and freedom (1982).
What Is Globalization?
A notable author associated with early use of the term ‘Global Sociology’ in
sociological theory was Wilbert E. Moore in his presentation “Global Sociology:
The World as a singular system”, at the convention of the American Sociological
Association in August 1955 (Moore 1966). He defined global sociology as sociology
of the globe, of mankind. After the end of the Cold War in 1989, with the eclipse of
the teleological vision of socialism, many theories emerged on the future of political
development globally.
What Is Globalization? 165
Chief among them in terms of recognition was American political scientist

Francis Fukuyama (1989, 1992), who brought the academic world the concept of
“the end of History”. His core idea was as follows:
A remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a
system of government has emerged throughout the world over the past few years, as
it conquered rival ideologies like hereditary monarchy, fascism, and most recently
communism. More than that, however, I argue that liberal democracy may constitute
the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and “final form of human
government,” and as such constitute the “end of history.” (Fukuyama 1992: xi).
He argues that all earlier forms of government were characterized by grave
defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, while liberal democracy
is free from such fundamental internal contradiction. The general direction of
political development is still towards democracy, but nobody can be sure whether
the world will be governed by liberal governments in the future, as was the wish of
Fukuyama. Sociologists who examine the obstacles of democracy in the southern
hemisphere highlight one of the main problems of building democratic government
as the “international support of dictatorship” (Monga 1999: 59). Such support
provided to the dictators by the West (particularly surprisingly by the USA and
Great Britain) can be instanced by the politico-economic-diplomatic support given to
four guerrilla leaders who came to power not through the ballot box but through the
barrel of the gun—Museveni of Uganda—1986, Meles of Ethiopia—1991,
Afeworki of Eritrea—1991, and Kagame of Rwanda—1994. This support started
with President Clinton and has been continued by the contemporary leaders of the
West. The West’s support tends to be for one group in each country to come to power
instead of democratization overall. The wish of Fukuyama is facing frustration, not
only through such abortions of democratic aspirations, but with the challenge of
radical ideologies which we can see today in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The other notable American political scientist who prognosticized the future of
the world after the cold war era was Harvard University professor Samuel Hunting-
ton, already a controversial figure in his writing on contemporary politics with his
“realist” book Political Order in Changing Societies (1996 (1968)). In this book he
recommended the communist type of undemocratic government to avoid military
coups in the developing part of the world. He asserted his view as follows:
History shows conclusively that communist governments are no better than free govern-
ments in alleviating famine, improving health, expanding national product, creating indus-
try, and maximizing welfare. But the one thing communist governments can do is to govern;
they do provide effective authority. Their ideology furnishes a basis of legitimacy, and their
party organization provides the institutional mechanism for mobilizing support and execut-
ing policy. To overthrow the government in modernizing countries is a simple task: one
battalion, two tanks, a half-dozen colonel may suffice. But no communist government in a
modernizing country has been overthrown by a military coup d’etat. The real challenge
which the communists pose to modernizing countries is not that they are so good at
overthrowing governments (which is easy), but that they are so good at making governments
(which is a far more difficult task). They may not provide liberty, but they do provide
authority; they do create governments that can govern. (Huntington 1996 (1968): 8).
There are many questionable points here, such as the notion of authority and
legitimacy, but there was an even more controversial article and book after the end of
cold war, in which he projected a hypothetical future. In his article “The Clash of
Civilization?” (Huntington 1993) and his subsequent book (1998), Huntington
proposed the sources of conflict after a post-cold war world. The Cold War was
centered upon the conflict between the USA and former USSR; the major world
conflicts from there on would not be ideologically based, but rather focused on
civilizational issues.
His central idea was that culture and cultural identities, at their broadest level
civilizational identities, were shaping patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and con-
flict in the post-Cold War world.
He grouped the globe into major contemporary civilizations as follows: Sinic
(or Chinese), Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Western (whose three major
components were Europe, North America, and Latin America), and African (possi-
bly) (Huntington 1998: 45–47). His view on Africa is West-Europe-centric, largely
ignoring is as a civilization (Diop 1974 (1955); 1991 (1981); Jackson 1994; Connah
2006; Ehret 2002; Eze 1998). He defines civilizations as “the ultimate human
tribes”, and the clash of civilizations as “tribal conflict on a global scale” (Hunting-
ton 1998: 207). To avoid such conflict the USA must reaffirm its western identity
and westerners must accept their civilization as unique but not universal, and unite to
renew and preserve it against challenges from non-western societies. Avoiding a
global war of civilizations depended on world leaders cooperating to maintain the
multi-civilizational character of global politics. In Huntington’s view, the worst
scenario for western hegemony was collaboration between Islamic and Asian civi-
lizations, as Asian and Islamic civilizations stressed the superiority of their cultures
over western culture. If westerners wanted to keep their hegemony they must avoid
an alliance between them.
When President Bush announced a few hours after the tragic attack on the twin
towers in New York on 9/11/2001 that there should be a crusade against (mainly
Muslim) terrorism, the president’s proclamation had to be seen against the back-
ground of Huntington’s thesis. “Some have said that Huntington, in fact, wrote the
script for the trauma of 11 September, 2001” (Robertson and White 2007: 57). A
leading globalization theorist, R. Robertson, disagrees with the idea of the clash of
civilizations, arguing that the real conflict is to do with scarce resources, in particular
oil and, more recently, water, summarizing that “it would be extremely foolish to
deny the significance of the material resource aspects of recent international conflicts
or to neglect the great salience of military and strategic consideration” (Robertson
and White 2007: 57).
This broader consideration of the historical forces propelling us towards global
interaction returns us to our core topic: concepts of globalization.
Various definitions of globalization have been given, depending on what sector is
concerned and which academic discipline is examining it—sociology, economics,
anthropology, cultural history, international relations or political science (Robertson
and White 2007: 56). Each discipline defines globalization from its own point
of view.
What Is Globalization? 167
The former Chief Economist at the World Bank, winner of the Nobel Prize for
Economics 2001, Joseph Stiglitz, defines globalization as “the closer integration of
countries and peoples of the world... brought about by an enormous reduction of
costs of transportation and communication, and the breaking down of artificial
barriers to the flow of goods, services, capital, knowledge, and (to a lesser extent)
people across borders” (Stiglitz 2002: 9). The globalization process has been accom-
panied by the creation of new institutions added to existing ones, working across
borders. There have been international civil societies, such as Jubilee movement,
which pushed very hard for debt reduction for the poorest countries: “Jubilee 2000
was a global campaign that led ultimately, to the cancellation of more than $100
billion of debt owed by 35 of the poorest countries.” (Jubilee 2000).
Established organizations like the International Red Cross have expanded their
activities globally. Globalization is driven especially by international corporations
moving not only capital and goods across borders but also technology. Leading
British global sociologist Martin Albrow writes that our contemporary period is not
an age of national society; we have started another era which he calls the Global Age
(Pongs 2000: 25). According to Albrow, globalization is “all those processes by
which the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society, Global
society” (Albrow 1990: 9). He elucidates two concepts reinforcing globalization:
Universalism and Globalism. Universalism refers to values which take humanity,
regardless of time or place, whether in theory or in reality, as the subject. Both
science and religion draw on universalistic values, which have a long history in
western thought but also characterize non-western religions and philosophy. Albrow
describes it as the belief in principles true for all times and places, especially in the
area of human rights, internationalism and the community of humanity (Albrow
1990: 84). Compared to globalism, however, universalism has its weak points.
Although globalism has a much shorter history, for Albrow globalism “refers to
those values which take the real world of five billion people as the object of concern,
the whole earth as the physical environment, everyone living as world citizens,
consumers and producers, with a common interest in collective action to solve global
problems” (Albrow 1990: 8).
In Albrow’s perspective, the Global Age is characterized by five basic factors
which, in specific ways, contributed radically to the reshaping of the human life and
behavior:
A devastated environment caused by human action;
A lack of safety as the result of using atomic energy;
New communication highways as the result of global networks (internet, satellite
television, teleconference, social networks . . .) without the limit of time and
space;
Transnational business relationships;
Cross border consciousness, thanks to social interaction, so that we live in global
society. In the process of globalization, along with the formation of global
society, there exists a network of social relations across the whole world, func-
tioning on our common planet—Earth (Pongs 2000: 25, 26).
The concept of globalization is very complex, so who defines it? Wealthy nations
in the north? Developing countries in the south? Members of a ‘super-class’?
Environmental movements? Members of trade unions? Sociologists, anthropolo-
gists, economists? Views on globalization vary widely, with some, such as Professor
Vandana Shiva, Indian physicist and ecologist, believing that “Globalization is not
merely a geographic phenomenon which is tearing down national barriers to capital”
but that through it also ‘ethical and ecological limits on commerce’, so that ‘life has
lost its sanctity, as living systems become the raw material, the new site of invest-
ment, the new sites for investment’, while ‘The poor are being doubly denied their
right to life—first when the resources that sustain them are taken away from them...
and then when the pollution and waste of global economy are unequally and unjustly
piled on them’ (Shiva 2000: 128). Such grievances can be heard from across Asia,
Africa, and Southern America, especially where governments came to power not
through the ballot box but violence, as often happened in Africa. From a certain
perspective, ‘illegitimate’ governments have combined with a northern vulture-like
super-class, mainly from former colonial powers, to ruin our World (Rothkopf
2009). Obviously, this is a contentious claim, and leading globalization theorists,
Robertson and White, indicate that despite many books and articles, there is no
accepted definition of globalization. For this reason a number of scholars speak of
‘globalizations’ in the plural, as opposed to a single process.
The Dimension and Forms of Globalization
Many authors who write about theories of globalization, however, agree on the
direction of the globalization process, with four predominant dimensions: economic;
political; cultural; and social (Robertson and White 2007: 64). Globalization stud-
ies—now emerging across the disciplines—can be divided into:
– The globalized economy—new systems of production, finance, consumption, and
integration (Das 2004);
– Global cultural patterns—new transnational practices and flows, and the idea of
‘global culture(s)’ (Pieterse 2004: 43–63; Axford 2013: 91–109; Tomlinson
2009: 71–105);
– Global political processes—the rise of transnational institutions and, concomi-
tantly, the spread of global governance, and authority structures of diverse sorts
(Delanty and Rumford 2007: 414–427);
– The multi-directional movement of peoples around the world, involving new
patterns of migration, identities and communities (Robertson and White 2007:
60–61);
– New social hierarchies—forms of inequality and relations of domination around
the world and in the global system as a whole (Robinson 2007: 125).
To summarize the main characteristics of globalization—it consists primarily two
main directions: connectivity and consciousness. Globalization also focuses upon
The Dimension and Forms of Globalization 169
four points of reference: nation-state; world politics; individuals; and human-kind,

and is constituted by four major facets of human life—namely, the cultural, the
social, the political and the economic. In the following part of this chapter we deal
with different forms of globalization.
The World-System Theory The issue of the form taken by globalization was raised
particularly by Immanuel Wallerstein. He produced three classic works on the world
system (Wallerstein 1974a, 1980, 1989), starting with when and how the contem-
porary global system was founded at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Wallerstein raised an extremely important point on the making of what he calls the
modern world system—that the world could have become a singular ‘system’
(which it has now more or less actually become) in various ways. In different
ages, there were endeavors to form a single world space—for example under
particular religious institutions (the Roman Catholic church). The world could
have become singular through the activities of an ideologically-based vanguard
organization, such as the Soviet Communist Party, or through the expansion of
German Fascism. Others have proposed similar routes to a world-system, e.g. along
lines planned by some Japanese politicians and intellectuals during the Second
World War (Robertson and White 2007: 59). The modern world could be system-
atized and coordinated along imperial lines, but putting imperialism to one side,
Wallerstein nevertheless coined the term ‘world-system’, which other scholars have
called world society, or global society.
Before elaborating this, we must examine the various dimensions of globalization
in greater detail, taking the following in reverse order
The Nation-State The place of nation-state in globalization has raised many differ-
ent debates. Some argue that globalization is a process hindered by nation-states,
while others assert that the nation-state is being rapidly undermined, especially by
economic forces. It can be argued however that the nation-state should actually be
regarded as an aspect of globalization. It is very hard to think about globalization in
the contemporary world without the existence of the nation-state. The increasing
connectivity in the contemporary world has been centered on the increasing intensity
and organization of the relationships between nation-states, even though connectiv-
ity refers to all kinds of connections that involve by-passing nation-states. The reality
seems to be not the decline of the nation-state, but rather its changing nature
(Robertson and White 2007: 60).
A potential example of the changing nature of the nation-state is the work of the
European Union. The European Union is an association of (at the time of writing) 28
European states which pass to the Union part of their sovereign power, while
retaining some. This is not precisely the decline of the nation-state but reflects an
ambition for the common resolution of matters such as climate change, international
criminal gangs, a common market, common currency, etc.
Individual Selves The process of individualization may paradoxically form part of
globalization. There exist two distinct concepts of individualization: the neo-liberal
idea of the free-market individual and the concept of individualisierung (a German
term) as institutionalized individualism. Neo-liberal economics rests upon an image

of the sovereign human self. The neo-liberal economic view is that individuals alone
can master their lives, and that they derive and renew their capacity for action from
themselves. From the sociological perspective this ideology of neo-liberal individ-
ualization is in conflict with evidence from the world of work, family and local
community, which shows that “the individual is not a monad but is self-insufficient
and increasingly tied to others, including at the level of world wide networks and
institutions” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: xxi).
Institutionalized individualism represents an alternative, drawing on Giddens’
role of individuals in structuration, where individualization (a) is a structural char-
acteristic of highly differentiated societies, and (b) does not endanger their integra-
tion but makes it possible. The role of individuals is very important for every society,
because individual creativity contributes new energy for renewal. In developed
modernity, human mutuality and community rest not on established traditions, but
on reciprocal individualization. However, there is a danger that the central institu-
tions of modern society—basic civil, political and social rights, but also paid
employment, training and mobility—are organized for the individual not for the
group. “In so far as basic rights are internalized and everyone is to be economically
active to earn their livelihood, the spiral of individualization destroys the given
foundation of social coexistence” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: xxi-xxii).
‘Individualization’ per se means dis-embedding without re-embedding.
The International System and Its Challengers The international system was
referred to by T. Parsons in the 1960s as a system of societies. During the cold
war the main political players were the two superpowers (Soviet Union & USA), but
the end of the cold war brought with it the end of bipolarity. Since 1989, we have
essentially been living in a unipolar world dominated by the United States of
America. The USA is gradually subsiding as the only power as the economic
power of other states, especially of China and other East Asian states, Russia,
India and Brazil is increasing, and inclines the USA to look to these states for
cooperation to solve the common problems of the globe, such as the economic crisis
of 2008, or global climate change. The other new phenomenon of the post-cold war
period is terrorism. The USA State Department came to a definition of terrorism in
1972, after the Munich Olympics, where Palestinian members of the group Black
September Organization brutally murdered nine Israeli athletes: “Terrorism is pre-
meditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets
by sub-national or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”
(Schweitzer and Schweitzer 2002: 24). This definition tells us only one part of the
truth, defining non-governmental terrorist acts, but leaving out other acts of political
terror—in particular, heinous acts perpetrated by governments (or government spon-
sored organizations). Modern state terrorism started with Maximilien Robespierre,
the ‘father of terror’, who set up the Committee of Public Safety that ruled France
during the turbulent years following the French revolution of 1789. This dictatorship
was the forerunner of state-sponsored oppression in the name of ideology, such as
Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Pol pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia.
Different Schools and Theories of Globalization 171
The contemporary groups destabilizing world peace have their origins in the
1980s sponsorship by the CIA of Pakistani-based theology students (Taliban in
Arabic) to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan; when Gorbachev came to power
in mid-1980s, he recalled Soviet troops from Afghanistan, but when they left, the
Afghani and Pakistani Taliban became estranged from their sponsors. The contem-
porary ‘war on terrorism’ of President G. Bush therefore was launched against
former allies, and thus a maze of complexity was entered that has kept the question
of terrorism in place as one of globalization’s key puzzles and weaknesses (see
Brzezinski’s interview 1998).
The Component of Humanity The first globally recognized human rights docu-
ment was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Proclamation in the 1948
resolution of United Nations General Assembly held on 10 December, 1948
(U.N. 1948 Doc. A/811).
In its preamble, this United Nation declaration states “the inherent dignity and of
equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of
freedom, justice and the peace in the world”, while article 1 declares that “All human
beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (U.N. Doc A/811). The General
Assembly voted unanimously for this historic document, and there followed many
ground-breaking resolutions, including especially the International Convention on
the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination approved on
21 December, 1965.
Another politically important document is the resolution of General Assembly
‘International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’ (1966), which officially buried
colonial rule by alien power, declaring that “All peoples have the right of self-
determination. By virtue of that right they may freely determine their political status
and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development” (Brownlie 1992:
125). These three United Nations General Assembly resolutions laid the foundations
for human rights, the equality of nations and ‘races’, and the right of nations to rule
themselves. They have been succeeded by other human rights causes, such as for the
physically and psychologically handicapped, categories of gender, children and
the aged.
Different Schools and Theories of Globalization
Literature on globalization has proliferated, moving from specific studies on the

impacts of globalization on particular states and regions, and gender and nationalism
to topics like global tourism, changes in the state, the restructuring of work,
transnational care-giving, globalization and crime, the global media, etc. (Naím
2005). The majority of disciplines and specializations in the academy participate
in globalization studies such as: Women studies, Language and cultural studies,
Nationalism, Literature, Arts, Social sciences, History, Law, Business administra-
tion—even Natural and Applied sciences are building sections for global studies in
their academic departments. The research agenda of different fields of globalization

can be summarized in two broad research categories: (a) those studying specific
problems or issues related to globalization; (b) Those studying the concept of
globalization itself. While there is disagreement (as mentioned earlier) about the
nature of globalization, David Held et al. (2005) distinguish three broad schools:
hyper-globalizers; sceptics; transformationalists.
The Hyper-globalizers define contemporary globalization as an era in which
peoples everywhere are increasingly subject to the disciplines of the global market.
They compare the power of business with the power of nation-states, and they argue
that the growth of international business and particularly of transnational networks
of production, trade and finance have rendered nation-states practically irrelevant
(the so-called declinist view of the state). The hyper-globalizers’ view is that national
authorities have lost power over their economies and act as mere transmitters of
global market discipline to the domestic market (Hoogvelt 2001: 120; Ohmae 1996).
In contrast to the Hyper-globalizers, the Sceptics argue that globalization is
essentially a myth, while the international economy is increasingly segmented into
three major regional blocs in which national governments remain very powerful.
They argue—with regard to historical data of foreign trade and capital movements—
that the idea of globalization, as a worldwide process of the integration of national
economies, simply does not stand up to the historical record of the late colonial
period, the period of the ‘gold standard’, when on every proxy measure of integra-
tion the world was just as (or perhaps even more) integrated and open as it is today,
and when the ‘developing world as a whole’ was more deeply embedded in the
world system (Hirst and Thomson 1996; Hirst 1997).
According to the transformationalist thesis, the contemporary pattern of global-
ization is historically unprecedented: states and societies across the globe are
experiencing profound change as they try to adapt to a more interconnected but
highly uncertain world. This group of thinkers understands globalization primarily
as a social phenomenon that has brought qualitative change in all cross-border
activities. The social phenomenon is time-space compression, culminating in the
total ‘annihilation of space through time’. This phenomenon occurred by the fusion
of telecommunication and information technology and can be dated to the early
1980s (Hoogvelt 2001: 121), which eventually brought along the internet,
e-commerce, and e-business (Held et al. 2005).
While the discourse of globalization has penetrated all social science disciplines
with what might be called ‘globe-babble’, sociologists and social geographers have
also been at the forefront of efforts to give it a rigorous and consistent theoretical
status. In the work of prominent authors such as Immanuel Wallerstein (to which we
now return), Roland Robertson, David Harvey, Anthony Giddens, or Manuel
Castells, we find distinctive formulations that may help us to overcome the limits
of globalization discourse that have so vexed economists and international relations
theorists.
World-System Theory 173
World-System Theory
Some authors see the world-system as a ‘precursor’ to globalization theories, and

world-system analysis as a distinctive sociological paradigm emerged from 1974,
i.e. more than decade before the use of globalization exploded as a subject of
academic research and publication. What is distinctive to the world-system theory
is the paradigm of its principal founding father, Immanuel Wallerstein, that global-
ization is not a recent phenomenon but originated with the birth and spread of the
world capitalism c. 1500.
As clearly elaborated by Wallerstein, it is constituted on the proposition that the
appropriate unit of analysis for macro-social inquiry in the modern world is neither
class nor state/society, but the larger historical system in which these categories are
located. Wallerstein divided the world into three social systems according to devel-
opment: mini-systems, world-empires, and world economies.
Mini-systems combine a single division of labor with a single cultural system. Mini-
systems comprise simple agricultural or hunting and gathering economies, and no
longer exist because of their absorption by world-empires or world-economies.
World-empires have multiple cultural systems but a single political system with a
single division of labor. The great civilizations of China, Egypt, and Rome were
examples of this kind of social system.
World-economies incorporate multiple polities and multiple cultures in a single
division of labor. Through the development of the modern world system, world
empires ceased to exist, yielding to a single world-economy that, for the first time
in the history, includes the entire globe (Kumsa 2007: 26–29). The capitalist
world economy established market and production networks that eventually
brought all peoples around the world into its logic and into a single worldwide
structure. Finally, by the late nineteenth century, there was but one system that
had come to encompass the entire planet, the capitalist world-system, a truly
‘global enterprise’ (Wallerstein 1974b: 396).
The key structure of the capitalist world-system is the division of the world into
three great regions, or geographically-based and hierarchically-organized tiers.
These regions are core, periphery, and semi-periphery. Core—the powerful and
developed centers of the system originally comprised Western Europe and later
expanded to include North America and Japan. Periphery—those regions forcibly
subordinated to the core through colonialism or other means, which in the formative
years of the capitalist world-system included Latin America, Africa, Asia, the
Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Semi-periphery—countries and regions previously
in the core which are moving down in the hierarchy or those that were previously in
the periphery and are moving up. Resources flow from the periphery to the semi-
periphery, and then to the core, as each region plays a functionally specific role
within the international division of labor that reproduces this basic structure of
exploitation and inequality.
Another key feature of the world-system is inter-state rivalry which leads to the
maintenance and reproduction of the world system. Additional characteristics
include cyclical rhythms of growth and crisis and several secular trends, such as
outward expansion, increasing industrialization and commodification, struggles for
hegemony over the whole system, and conflict with ‘anti-systemic forces’. For
Wallerstein “the economic divisions of core, periphery, and semi-periphery define
the positions of the states and ethnic groups in the world-system division of labor.
Conflicts between them, while political in form and cultural in expression, are
economic in origin” (Beyer 1994: 160). The world-system has been developing in
this conflicting way for 500 years, stratifying the world according to economic
development and the interconnection of all regions in the same market system. If
globalization is defined as intensified interconnections and inter-dependencies on a
planetary scale, and consciousness of them, then certainly world-system theory is a
cohesive theory of globalization.
Wallerstein was insistent that globalization was not a new phenomenon: “Glob-
alization... has been happening for 500 years” (Wallerstein 2000: 249). He consid-
ered the development of our period from 1945 to 2025, in the logic of world system
theory, as but a moment of transition in the system. The overall process of global-
ization is divided into two time-frameworks: from 1945 to today, and from circa
1450 to today.
With respect to the period from 1945 to today, the world economy has undergone
two phases: an A-phase or upward swing (economic expansion) from 1945 to
1967–73, and a B-phase or downward swing (economic contraction) from
1967–73 to today, which will probably continue for a number of years to come.
The period from 1450 to today, by contrast, marks the broader life cycle of the
capitalist world economy, with its period of genesis, its normal development and
now its period of terminal crisis (Wallerstein 2000: 250). In his analysis, the system
has entered into terminal crisis which will give way to a new, as yet undetermined,
historical system by the year 2050.
Theories of Global Capitalism
Another group of theories of globalization, which can be called the global capitalism
school, shares world-system theory’s critique of capitalism and emphasis on the
long-term and large-scale nature of the processes that have culminated in globaliza-
tion, as well as the centrality of global economic structures. Nevertheless, they differ
from the world-system paradigm in several basic respects, inclining to see globali-
zation as a completely new stage in the involving system of world capitalism, with
qualitatively new features that distinguish it from earlier epochs (Robinson 2007:
130). The main focus is on the new global production and financial system that is
seen to supersede earlier national forms of capitalism, emphasizing the rise of
processes that cannot be framed within the nation-state system that informs world
system theory—and in fact, much traditional macro-social theory. As these theories
Theories of Global Capitalism 175
represent recent developments in the theory of globalization, it is appropriate to

briefly consider them here.
Leslie Sklair, Professor of sociology at London School of Economics and Polit-
ical Science studied what he called the transnational capitalist class (TCC), and how
it made capitalism into a globalized project. He coined the term Global system
theory, and the keys to this are Transnational Corporations (TNC), the transnational
capitalist class and the culture-ideology of consumerism. The power and authority of
the members of the transnational capitalist class derive from the corporations they
own and control, and they are the main drivers of a series of globalizing practices in
the global economy, comprising corporate executives, globalizing bureaucrats, and
politicians, globalizing professionals, and consumer elites (Sklair 2003: 2–4).
William I Robinson, Professor of Sociology at California University, advanced a
related theory of global capitalism focusing on three areas: transnational production,
the transnational capitalist class, and the transnational state. He traced the transfor-
mation of economic development from national economies integrated in the inter-
national market to a world economy, to a global economy; he called this process an
‘epochal shift’. The new transnational stage of world capitalism involves the glob-
alization of the production process itself, which breaks down and functionally
integrates what were previously national circuits into a global circuit of production
and accumulation. Robinson analyses the rise of the Transnational Capitalist Class in
a similar way to Sklair. Globalization creates new forms of transnational class
relations across borders, and creates fresh cleavages globally and within countries,
regions, cities and local communities, in ways quite distinct from the old national
class structures and international class conflicts and alliances.
Nevertheless, Sklair and Robinson have different views on the role of the state.
For Sklair, such structures have little place in the global system. By contrast,
Robinson theorizes an emergent Transnational State (TNC) apparatus (Robinson
2009: 165–260). A number of globalization theories also see the rise of such
supranational political and planning agencies as the Group Seven/Eight (G7/8), the
World Trade Organization, the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos and the
Trilateral Commission (originally created in 1973 to bring together experienced
private sector leaders to discuss issues of global concern at a time when communi-
cation and cooperation was lacking between Europe, North America, and Asia) as
signs of an incipient transnational or global governance structure. David Held and
his colleagues, in their comprehensive volume Global Transformation (2005), give
fascinating empirical data which show how states, International Organizations (IGO)
and International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO) increased from 1900 to
2000 (Held et al. 2005: 52–58).
David Rothkopf, a former U. S. deputy undersecretary of commerce for interna-
tional trade in President Clinton’s administration, published a fact-finding book on
the question of who rules the world, studying the rise of a global power elite.
Rothkopf opined that “none among the world’s superclass—the most powerful of
the world’s most powerful people—have flown higher than the financial elites ...
Their trading decks ran a real-time referendum on national policies that impacted the
fate of political leaders as once only electorates or armies could do. They have been
symbols, examples, empowerers and beneficiaries of a new system that appeared to

concentrate more economic power in the hands of relatively fewer people and...
exacerbated the great chasm that separates the haves of this world from the have-
nots” (Rothkopf 2009: xii). He highlights a gross inequality in the distribution of
power and wealth in the world, noting that the combined net worth of the world’s
richest thousand or so people—the planet’s billionaires—is the almost twice that of
the poorest 2.5 billion—an indictment of civilization which he views as a threat to its
stability (Rothkopf 2009: xix). Who are the members of this superclass according to
Rothkopf? They are everywhere, but each is one in a million people, around six
thousand out of a planet of six billion, running our governments, our largest
corporations, the powerhouses of international finance; the media, world religions,
and (from the shadows) the world’s most dangerous criminal and terrorist organi-
zations. They are the global superclass, shaping the history of our time.
The Empire of global capitalism—a term proposed by American literary theorist
Michael Hardt in collaboration with the Italian political philosopher and radical
political activist Antonio Negri in their twin studies Empire (2000) and Multitude
(2004)—takes global capitalism theory a step further, indicating that the empire of
global capitalism is fundamentally different from the imperialism of European
domination and capitalist expansion of previous eras. The empire of global capital-
ism is a new universal order that accepts no boundaries and limits, not only in
geographic, economic and political senses, but in its penetration into the recesses of
social and cultural life, and indeed, even the psyche and biology of individuals. The
leading engines of this empire are transnational corporations, global institutions and
other command centers of political, economic, cultural and media contemporary
world. The second work, Multitude, sees gathering pressure within this ‘empire’ for
full blown democracy. Multitude refers to earth’s six billion increasingly networked
citizens, as having enormous potential for the “destruction of sovereignty in favor of
Democracy”, agitating for democratization of the world in politics, economics and
other aspects.
The Network Society
The doyen of the technologistic approach to globalization is Manuel Castells,

sociologist who published a groundbreaking trilogy, The Rise of the Network Society
(2000 (1996), 2010 (1997), 1998). Castells, like Weber before him in an altogether
different historical epoch, tries to comprehend, in one unified conceptual frame, the
meaningful connections between huge numbers of contemporary changes: eco-
nomic, social, cultural, and political. He firmly argues that the contemporary world
is a new, comprehensive interconnected totality, ruled by a dominant logic that
penetrates all spheres of life. This dominant logic is that of ‘the age of information’ a
new technological paradigm based on information technologies. He theorizes that
two distinct processes came together in the last part of the twentieth century to cause
the rise of network society, namely the development of the computer and the
Theories of Space, Place and Globalization 177
internet, representing a new technological paradigm and leading to a ‘new mode of

development’ that Castells terms ‘informationalism’.
This shift from industrialism to informationalism is not the equivalent of the
transition from agricultural to industrial economies, or the emergence of the service
economy, but rather hybridized informational agriculture, informational manufactur-
ing, and informational service activities, which produce and distribute on the basis of
information and knowledge provided to the work process by the increasing power of
information technologies. What has changed is not the kind of activities people are
engaged in, but their technological ability to use as a direct productive force what
distinguishes our species as a biological oddity: its superior capacity to process
symbols (Castells 2000 (1996): 100). This is a new system of ‘information capital-
ism’ which Castells and others alternatively refer to as the ‘new economy’. Its
distinctives are that it is (a) informational, knowledge based; (b) global, in that
production is organized on the global scale; and (c) networked, in that productivity is
generated through global networks of interaction.
The global economy has the capacity to work as a unit in real time, or on a
planetary scale, involving global financial markets and the selective globalization of
science and technology. The institution which applies this economy is, according to
Castells, the networked enterprise, which is the vanguard of a more general form of
social organization, the network society itself. The networked enterprise makes
material the culture of the informational, global economy: it transforms signals
into commodities by processing knowledge.
Among Castells’ core concepts are space of flows and timeless time. Space of
flows substitutes the space of places, while time becomes erased in the new com-
munication systems, when past, present and future can be programmed to interact
with each other in the same message. The space of flows and timeless time are the
material foundations of a new culture (Castells 2000 (1996): 406), with the world
divided into two areas: areas and segments of population switched on to the
technological system, and those switched off or marginalized, giving rise to the
oft-cited digital divide.
Theories of Space, Place and Globalization
New configurations of time and social space are central to a number of globalization
theories. The theoretical issue of the relationship of social structure to space, the
notion of space as a material basis for social practices, and the changing relationship
under globalization between territory, institutions and social structures, calls to mind
the commonsense notion that ‘there is a time and place for everything’. Certain
behavior to be encouraged in the classroom, for example, is not appropriate around
the dinner table, and vice versa. Ordered space is very important for expected social
practise, and serves as a reminder for social practices. David Harvey (1990), a social
geographer, asserts that the development of cartography during the Renaissance
permitted the objectification of space and the accurate measurement of land,
supporting the emergence of ownership of land and the precise definition of trans-
ferable property rights by replacing the unclear feudal obligations that preceded
it. As a result, the organization of space held the key to power. Today, after
500 years, transnational corporate capitalists have the freedom to move their capital
and goods wherever they want worldwide, giving them a decisive advantage over the
masses restricted in their movements and migrations by the passport they carry.
Harvey’s second concept is time, related to the value of money itself. In capitalist
economies, accountants calculate interest rates, ‘the time of value’. The time of
production together with the time of circulation of exchange are referred to the
turnover time of capital. The greater the speed with which the capital that is launched
into circulation can be recuperated, the greater the profit will be. An investment in
the Czech Republic may give me the value of my money back in 6 years, while in
Kenya it does so in 3 years. The relationship between time and space is fundamen-
tally changing in the global era, and money, accompanied by power, responds
to this.
Anthony Giddens explains the concept of ‘time/space distanciation’ as the
distance necessary to travel to do business or transport commodities to their final
destination, or to cross-haul intermediate product for manufacture, calculated in
terms of the time it takes to cover the distance. In short, the measure of time/space
distanciation can express the degree to which the friction of space has been over-
come in accommodating social interaction. Technological progress has compressed
the time/space equation enormously. For example, between 1500 and 1840 the
highest average speed of horse-drawn coaches and sailing ships was 10 mph.
Between 1850 and 1930, it was 65 mph for steam locomotives and 36 mph for
steamships. By the 1950s propeller aircraft covered distance at 300–400 mph, while
the latest passenger aircraft jet reached a cool 500–700 mph (Giddens 1998: 241).
Combined with the later telecommunications revolution, this has created conditions
for the compression of time and space.
Anthony Giddens illustrates the shrinking of geography with the term ‘global
village’, which amounts to a virtual annihilation of space through time compression.
“Globalization”, he says, can be “defined as the intensification of worldwide social
relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped
by events occurring miles away and vice versa” (Giddens 1998: 62). In other work
Giddens’ reveals a skeptical view of this evolution, giving a detailed picture of the
further torment of Africa which this mighty globalization has brought. He states “the
statistics are daunting. The share of the poorest fifth of the world’s population of
global income has dropped... In Sub-Saharan Africa, twenty countries have lower
income per head in real terms than they had in the late 1970s...—poor quality
medical drugs, destructive pesticides or high tar and nicotine content cigarettes;
rather than a global village, one might say, this is more like global pillage” (Giddens
2002: 16).
Another scholar of time and space is Professor Saskia Sassen of Columbia
University; she takes the city as one of the main themes of globalization. Starting
from the logic that most production, financial interaction and political activity
happens in the cities, she makes them her main study area. Sassen concentrates on
Theories of Transnationality and Transnationalism 179
the study of so-called ‘world cities’ as the centers of world economic coordination
(Sassen 1991). She theorizes that a new spatial order is emerging under globaliza-
tion, based on a network of global cities. The most powerful of the new geographies
of centrality at the global level binds the major international financial and business
centers: New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich, Amsterdam, Los
Angeles, Toronto, Sydney, Hong Kong, and others. But the economic power of
other geographic areas is changing and cities such as Bangkok, Taipei, Sao Paulo,
and Mexico City are more and more important (Sassen 2007: 111). These global
cities are sites of specialized services for the transnationally mobile capital that is so
central to the global economy, which has decentralized production at the same time
as it has centralized in global cities the command and control of the global produc-
tion system. Sassen identifies four key functions of the global city:
– They are highly concentrated command posts in the organization of the world
economy;
– They are key locations for finance and for specialized service firms providing
‘producer services’ for the leading global firms, such as financial no-how,
insurance, real estate, accounting, advertising, engineering and architectural
design;
– They are sites for the production and innovation of these producer-oriented
services and headquarters for producer-servicing firms;
– They are markets for products and innovation; Sassen shows in her studies how
New York, London, and Tokyo, as major global cities, have restructured from
manufacturing centers to producer-service centers and how producer-service
activities have become ‘networked’ across global cities (Robinson 2007: 137).
Theories of Transnationality and Transnationalism
In globalization literature, transnationalism is referred to generally as an umbrella

concept encompassing a wide variety of transformative processes, practices and
developments taking place simultaneously at local and global levels. Transnational
processes and practices are defined broadly as the multiple ties and interactions—
economic, political, social and cultural—that link people, communities, and institu-
tions across the borders of nation-states.
Immigration studies view transnationalism through the efforts of immigrants to
forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations between their societies of origin and
settlement as a single unified field of social action. This interconnection is possible
thanks to innovations in transportation and communications that have made possible
an unprecedented density of links between countries of origin and of settlement.
These communication highways, and cheaper transportation, have allowed commu-
nities to live simultaneously in two or more worlds; in other words, to create and live
in ‘transnational spaces’.
Modernity, Post-modernity and Globalization
A further school of globalization considers globalization as simply a radicalized or

culminated project of modernity. Leading scholars in this school are Roland Rob-
ertson, Anthony Giddens (who falls into multiple categories, such is his range and
influence) and Peter F. Beyer.
Roland Robertson, an early pioneer in globalization theory, considers globaliza-
tion as a universalization of modernity. He gives the most widely accepted definition
of globalization among scholars: “Globalization... refers both to the compression of
the world and intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole. . . both
concrete global interdependence and consciousness of the global whole in the
twentieth century” (Robertson 1992: 8). Robertson sees the globe as a whole,
constituted by cultural, social and phenomenological linkages between the individ-
ual, national societies, the international system of societies, and humankind in
general.
Along similar lines, Anthony Giddens advances the idea that the universalization
of modernity is central to the very concept of globalization. In his opinion, the
universalization of modernity takes places in various forms:
– The universalization of the nation-state as a political form;
– The universalization of commodity production;
– Foucauldian Surveillance by the modern state;
– Centralization of control of the means of violence within an industrialized
military order (military power) (Giddens 1998: 56, 57).
The above rationale led Giddens to express his view of globalization in the title of
his noted book—Consequences of Modernity (1990).
John Meyer and colleagues from Stanford University have contributed to the
theory of globalization through institution and network, offering what can be
considered a cultural as well as institutional theory of globalization. Meyer et al
analyzed the so-called world-polity, as a global system of nation states. In their view
world polity is a system operating parallel to the world economy, while being to a
significant degree functionally independent of it. Nation-states are not only condi-
tioned by the world economy but also conditions not reducible to economic forces.
Meyer explains that: “the world political . . .system is linked closely to the rise and
expansion of the world commodity economy, but it also operates to restructure and
alert this economy, and to transform social life” (in Beyer 2003: 163). Meyer et al
refer to their approach in terms of ‘world polity’ and of ‘world society’, as distinct
from ‘global society’. Globalization is seen as the spread and ultimate universaliza-
tion of sets of modern values, practices and institutions through isomorphic (Greek
meaning equal in shape) processes operating on global scale. As an example,
increasingly strong, centralized states have emerged all over the world. With few
exceptions, states around the world are similar. States, for instance, have national
constitutions with similar goals associated with ideas of ‘progress’ and ‘equality’. In
Meyer’s analysis, nation-states are very much the prime legitimate actors in the
Global Age: An Alternative Theory of Globalization 181
world polity. States are legitimate representatives of their citizens in that they pursue
globally legitimate ends of progress and equality, what Meyer et al call universal sets
of modern values, practices and institutions, through isomorphic processes on a
global scale. Educational institutions are singled out as central to isomorphic trans-
mission of culture and values that become global in scope.
Global Age: An Alternative Theory of Globalization
Martin Albrow, British professor of sociology, departs from the Eurocentric idea of
Max Weber in defining the Global Age: “I therefore make no apology to Weber or
my contemporaries in declaring that the contributions of pre-modern and
non-western thinkers can illustrate the debate about globalization. In scholarly
terms this requires us to rethink our understanding of globalization and globality
in terms of epochal theory” (Albrow 2003: 6).
In this, his thinking aligns with that of Lord Acton, who in 1895 in his inaugural
speech on becoming the chair of Modern history in Cambridge, announced that “The
modern age did not descend from the mediaeval by normal succession, with outward
tokens of legitimate descent. Unheralded, it founded a new order of things, under a
law of innovation, sapping the ancient reign of continuity” (Albrow 2003: 13).
Albrow postulated that the Global Age is not a continuation of modernism but a
historical epoch of development in human history. In his view, globalization is
making or being made global in individual instances:
– By the active dissemination of practices, values, technology and other human
products throughout the globe
– When global practices exercise an increasing influence over people’s lives
– When the globe serves as a focus for, or a premise in shaping, human activities
– In the incremental change occasioned by such interaction
– The generalization of such instances
Historical transformation is constituted by the sum of particular forms and
instances of the above (Albrow 2003: 88).
Albrow explains that when discussing globalization there are many kinds of close
connectedness in the world, such as:
– The biological relatedness of the human race;
– The universal ability of human beings to communicate through symbols;
– The waterways of the world which have always existed as potential transport
routes;
– The worldwide network of economic exchange which has existed for several
hundred years;
– The webs of contacts among people which are enveloping humanity.
Some of these factors to a degree have always made it possible to speak of
humanity and human society, but in the Global Age there are new kinds of
connectedness. Today, communications permit instant response to messages

irrespective of distance, while world commerce is the outcome of a global division
of labour, and products, services and their associated icons may be found and
recognized everywhere. Not only this, but numerous types of professionals, and
laypeople are engaged world-wide in the attempt to understand and grapple with
these powerful new currents.
In short, a new ‘global age’ has prevailed; it is a fresh, independent one.
Theories of Global Culture
Cultural theories of globalization tend to assume one of the three following

positions:
(a) Homogenization theories see global cultural convergence, highlighting the rise
of world music (beat), world cuisines, world tourism, uniform consumption and
widespread patterns of cosmopolitanism (Axford 2013: 99–102).
(b) Heterogeneity approaches see continued cultural differences and highlight local
cultural autonomy, cultural resistance to homogenization, cultural clashes and
polarization, and distinctive experiences of globalization (Tomlinson 2009:
100–104).
(c) Hybridization stresses new and constantly evolving cultural forms and identities
produced by manifold transnational processes and fusions of distinct cultural
processes (Pieterse 2004).
Major Historical Waves of Globalization
Close analysis of the history of globalization has highlighted waves of global

unification, contending with the more theoretical model of such academics as
Wallerstein. A brief scan of this schema will show its contrasting approach.
The first globalization wave: The diffusion of world religions and establishment of
transcontinental civilizations. During the fourth to seventh centuries (CE), Chris-
tianity became dominant in Europe through its establishment and officialization
in the Roman Empire, and also settled in Ethiopia (founding some of the oldest
churches on earth) and Kerala (India).
Hinduism spread to South East Asia; Buddhism went to China from India and
spread from there to Korea and Japan. By the beginning of the eighth century CE,
Islam ruled Spain, and the Arab world from Morocco to (current) Iraq,
The second globalization wave: This occurred through European colonial conquests
and naval exploration, commencing in the late fifteenth century with the Colum-
bus moment in 1492—and continued with decelerating velocity for about the next
hundred years,
Final Remark 183
The third globalization wave: Power struggles between the expanding European
imperial powers over regions of the world, especially between Britain and France,
and a shifting constellation of allies from all corners, created a social thrust
towards the global scale.
The fourth globalization wave: This took place in a century of relative peace, lasting
from the early-mid-nineteenth century to 1918. Characteristics of the period
included the drive to trade, -oceanic mass migration, and new and faster means
of transport and communication. The First World War and its immediate after-
math represented the death knell of this fourth wave
The fifth globalization wave: This globalization wave resulted from the Second
World War, and represented an interlude of peaceful globalization characterized
by:
– The constitution of the United Nations and its specialized organizations.
– The Nuremberg Trials of the Second World Nazi war criminals.
– The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
During this period the cost of communication and transport declined enormously,
and external trade began to pick up. Its main ideological conflict pitched the USA,
its allies and clients, versus the USSR, its allies and clients.
The sixth globalization wave—current wave: Today, the politico-military dynamic
of the Cold War has been overtaken by a mainly financial-cum-cultural one, with
the opening of global financial markets, international migration, and improved
communications, especially through the internet.
Final Remark
The topic of globalization presented here demonstrates that in today’s phase of

sociological thinking, as in the past, sociological study cannot be limited to a narrow
framework of comparable social groups, institutions, or societies, and moreover
cannot be limited even to the level of nation states. Current exploration of global-
ization emphasizes that sociology must follow social processes, not just considering
questions of structure, but development and change. Globalization is the spread of
worldwide practices, relations, consciousness, and organization of social life. Con-
sequently, nearly every nation and the lives of billions of people throughout the
world are being transformed, often quite dramatically, by globalization. These
processes of transformation have brought the emergence of globalization theory,
culminating in a series of developments internal to social theory. Globalization, as
this chapter elucidates, can be analyzed culturally, economically, politically and
institutionally. For each type of analysis, a key difference is whether one sees
increasing homogeneity or heterogeneity. If we take the globalization of culture, it
can be seen either as transnational expansion of common codes and practice (homo-
geneity) or a process in which many local-global cultural inputs interact to create a
kind of a blend leading to a variety of cultural hybrids (heterogeneity).
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A Few Notes About the Open Future
(in Place of a Conclusion)
For a systems theorist like Niklas Luhmann, evolution constitutes the specific
mechanism of structural change. In earlier conceptions of evolutionary theory, the
majority view prevailed that evolution was an inevitable process of change, often
associated with the concept of civilizational growth, social progress or growth of
humanity. This notion was abandoned with the modern variant of evolutionary
theory. For Luhmann, evolution is connected with the increase of societal complex-
ity. In this context he showed that the earlier supposition connected with the idea that
history should be a magistra vitae—a teacher of life—was no longer adequate.
Indeed, before Luhmann, R. Koselleck had already pointed out that history could
serve as a model for the future only if the past and the future are ultimately the same
(Bergmann 1983: 475). Contemporary society, which is very dynamic and rapidly
changing, is continually moving away from its past and differentiating itself from
it. In such a situation, the simple application of the idea that we should learn from the
past is becoming somewhat problematic. As a result of evolutionary changes, history
has lost its model character; its orientation to its own systemic history has become
insufficient, and the focus of attention has shifted to the future, to social planning,
which is, according to Luhmann, the manifestation of efforts to the so-called
“defuturizing of the future”. The fact that it is ever harder to guess the future arises
not from some fundamental unpredictability, but from the complexity of a world
following no plan and constantly accelerating.
Sometimes we meet with the assertion that the faster a person goes, the further
ahead they must see. If we carry this consideration into current, dynamic social
development, it implies that we must foresee, forecast and plan. Thus, in the
twentieth century disciplines such as forecasting and futurology developed, and
various planning organisations, offices and agencies arose. One of the symptomatic
works of the late twentieth century was that of American futurologist, Alvin Tofler,
with his ‘Future Shock’. Today, forecasting involves assessing the state of current
developmental trends, and on this base making projections into the future to estimate
the future state of things.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52183-7_14
188 A Few Notes About the Open Future (in Place of a Conclusion)
In the scientific community, for many decades, there has been a shared under-
standing, which in most cases holds even today, that every science is subject to the
requirement, in order to be recognised as a science—something which applies even
to Sociology—that it must be able to predict the future state of studied elements.
Determinism, characteristic of the thinking of the modern natural sciences of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, presumed that as long as we know the
starting conditions of any phenomenon, and providing we know all fundamental
laws influencing it, we should be able to forecast any future state of the phenomenon.
In social and human sciences this model was associated with certain further sources
of inspiration. Among these was the philosophy of history, which was clearly formed
in this new era under the influence of religious eschatology. The philosophy of
history arose from the idea of an interconnected story of social development from the
past to the present and through to the future. It was supposed that this development
proceeded according to certain laws, and that the task was to reveal these laws of
development which directed history. In this way considerations were strengthened,
giving an idea of progress originating in the time of the enlightenment, with
supposed rules of gradual development (e.g. the past was limited and primitive
while the present stood much higher; while this was nothing compared to what
humanity could expect in the future). With the postmodern thinking of the late
twentieth century, we should note, the theory of progress as a “big story” was finally
put into the waste bin of discarded concepts.
Among the critics of deterministic thinking in the social and human sciences in
the mid-twentieth century was Karl Popper, who formulated his arguments in the
work The Poverty of Historicism (Popper 1957). Put simply, the problem lay in the
fact that social reality (but even natural reality) was of an emergent character, which
meant that things and phenomena were discovered that didn’t exist before. A
fundamental part of every society, according to Popper, was the knowledge that
the people in society had at their disposal: how they saw the world and evaluated it,
their consciousness and knowledge, and how they used technology. The basic
problem lies in the fact that we do not and cannot know what knowledge will be
at the disposal of people after 20, 50 or 100 years, and thus we cannot with sufficient
clarity and certainty foresee how society in these times will look, and how its
development will shift. A very illustrative example in this regard is offered by the
forecasting and futurological literature produced in the period after the Second
World War. It is interesting to read and observe to what degree they were able, or
rather unable, to predict the situation we are living in today, and to what degree and
level former prognoses differ from the present.
Significant to this is what was offered by the historical sociology of Norbert Elias.
As we know, Elias was attracted by long-term developmental processes of a
spontaneous nature—processes which were not intended and planned, but rather
manifested despite intentions, across the long term. Elias, however, noted that the
persistence of these processes in a certain direction or trend did not ensure their
continuance in the same direction. The future, for Elias, was open, and social
development had no prescribed direction. Moreover, the events of the twentieth
century showed that social processes might stop, slow down or completely change
References 189
their direction. Even if we may clearly observe that certain processes in society have
developed in one specific way for a very long time, this past tendency provides no
guarantee that these things will continue in the same way in the future (Elias 1988).
Elias warned that the civilizing trend which he identified in his work might change,
and in its place could come a de-civilizing process connected with re-barbarization.
Ulrich Beck (2016), in his last book The Metamorphosis of the World, stated that
contemporary sociological theory requires a fundamental revision. One of the key
concepts of Beck’s book is “emancipatory catastrophism”. He takes the view that
catastrophic views and hypotheses about the contemporary metamorphosis of the
world contain emancipatory and healing potential. He also believed that the devel-
opment of the concept of metamorphosis would lead to the metamorphosis of
sociological theory itself. The concept of the metamorphosis of the world,
should—in contrast to the term social change—express something without intention
and program-normative orientation (Beck 2016: 18). Beck adds that the expression
metamorphosis does not tell us whether the transformation of the world is for better
or worse. According to Beck, the sociological understanding of metamorphosis
requires empirical study. With the intent to create a theoretical basis for such a
study, he gradually considered a range of problems that, in his opinion, deserved to
be analyzed by suitable research methods. These topics included the metamorphosis
of social classes, international political structures, globalized economies, scientific
research, climate change and other contemporary risks.
Finally, it must be added that that the reality that the future is open, and thus in
principle we will never be able wholly to predict it, does not relieve us of the task of
striving and attempting to do so. One of the key reasons for such considerations, is
what Ulrich Beck termed “emancipatory catastrophism”. Its task is not the creation
of fear itself at the catastrophes we might undergo in the future, but above all and
overall, to look for the potential of overcoming current problems to make this world
a better place for the life of all its dwellers.
References
Beck, U. (2016). The metamorphosis of the world. Cambridge: Polity.

Bergmann, W. (1983). Das Problem der Zeit in der Soziologie (The problem of time in sociology).
Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (Cologne Journal of Sociology and
Social Psychology), 35(3), 462–504.
Elias, N. (1988). Was ich unter Zivilisation verstehe: Antwort auf Hans Peter Duerr (What I mean
by civilization: Answer to Hans Peter Duerr). Die Zeit, 25.
Popper, K. R. (1957). The poverty of historicism. London: Routledge.

Explaining Social Processes: Jiří Šubrt Alemayehu Kumsa Massimiliano Ruzzeddu

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Explaining Social Processes

ISBN 978-3-030-52182-0 ISBN 978-3-030-52183-7 (eBook)

Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

A Hypothesis for a Sociology of Ignorance in the Twenty-First

Jiří Šubrt is associate professor of sociology at Charles University. In 2009, he

Alemayehu Kumsa is senior lecturer in the sociology of organization management at

Massimiliano Ruzzeddu is Tenured Researcher in Sociology at Niccolò Cusano

Alexander, J. C. (1987). Sociological theory since 1945. London: Hutchinson.

Norbert Elias’s book, The Society of Individuals, constantly revisits a problem he

acts of individuals. In sociology the origins of such methodological individualism

Individualism Versus Holism

In terms of Weber’s sociology, all social phenomena, formations—the entire

them. Within this movement we ﬁnd the contribution to sociological theory of

Elias’s Concept of Figuration

evolutionism. The dominant representative of this was of course Parsons. Giddens’

our existence is social and in it we represent “just an extension of society” (Durk-

Most sociologists, dealing with issues of interaction, develop concepts character-

The Problem of Structure from the Duplex Perspective

The ﬂaw in current considerations of this topic in sociological thinking—in Giddens

structure of utterances (“parole”). Sociological thinking concerning structures usu-

Durkheim, E. (1913). Le probléme religieux et la dualité de la nature humaine (The religious

Basic Approaches and Thematic Areas

towards social psychology. However, the contemporary mainstream of American

structuralist perspective and the understanding of structure as a network of relation-

Role Playing: A Concept to Aid in Resolving the Relationship

Though the concept of social role continues to be encountered in sociological

The theory of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann represents a particular

Media and Communication

begins with the establishment of a symbolically generalized communication

Resonance and Filtration

From the perspective of Luhmann’s systems theory, nature can be viewed as

Despite the self-referential communication closure of individual social sub-systems,

permanent synchronization by means of scientiﬁc ﬁnancing. This mode ensures that

Qualitative Discontinuous Time

• Duration, synchronization, sequencing and changing of socio-cultural phenom-

Confusing Number of Social Times

Another shift in the understanding of social time is presented by Georges Gurvitch in

5. Retardant time is characterized by lags, found in such groups as nobility, closed

Weaknesses and Questionable Assumptions

Examples of temporalized sociology can be drawn from the entire ﬁeld of

Gurvitch, G. 1964 (1963). The spectrum of social time. Dordrecht: D. Riedel.

The Antinomies of Memory

Individual Memory and Collective Memory

Memory Spontaneous and Purposeful

Some experiences and situations are captured spontaneously, so to speak automat-

Rationality and Irrationality

Spirit and Matter

The Past Irrevocable and Revocable

Mead focuses attention on the reconstructive function of thinking in the sense

Saving and Deleting

Psychology devotes considerable attention to the problems of remembering. Gener-

Table 1 Social memory in phases of media evolution

and audiovisual media. Phased transformations of social memory in terms of media

History, Myth and Science

questionable; while certain lessons undoubtedly have some durability, others

History, Memory and Identity

During developments in Europe following the fall of the communist regimes,

consciousness of society. In sociological terms, such events include wars, occupa-

Historical Consciousness as the Focus of Sociological Inquiry

Today in post-communist countries the concept of historical consciousness seems

While the expressions ‘social memory’ and ‘historical consciousness’ overlap,

wanted to take advantage of opportunities offered by quantitative methodology, in particular