A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline

A sociology of modernity Confusion reigns in sociological accounts of the current condition of modernity. The story lines reach from the ‘end of the subject’ to ‘a new individualism’, from the ‘dissolution of society’ to the reemergence of ‘civil society’, and from the ‘end of modernity’ to ‘another modernity’ and ‘neo-modernization’. This book offers a sociology of modernity in terms of an historical account of social transformations over the past two centuries, focusing on Western Europe, but also looking at the USA and at Soviet socialism as distinct variants of modernity. A fundamental ambivalence of modernity is captured by the twin notions of liberty and discipline and examined in three major dimensions: the relations between individual liberty and political community, between agency and structure, and between locally situated human lives and widely extended social institutions. Two major historical transformations of modernity are distinguished, the first one beginning in the late nineteenth century and leading to a social formation that can be called ‘organized modernity’, and the second being the one that dissolves organized modernity. It is this current transformation which revives some key concerns of the ‘modem project’, ideas of liberty, plurality and individual autonomy. But it imperils others, especially the creation of social identities as ties between human beings that allow the meaningful and socially viable development of individual autonomy, and the possibility of politics as communicative interaction and collaborative deliberation about what human beings have in common. A Sociology of Modernity will be of interest to students of Sociology, Political Science and Cultural Studies. Peter Wagner is Research Fellow at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. A sociology of modernity Liberty and discipline Peter Wagner London and New York First published 1994 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the TayIor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 1994 Peter Wagner All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-203-41857-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-72681-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-08185-8 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-08186-6 (pbk) Meiner Mutter Contents Prologue ix Acknowledgements xvi Part I Principles of modernity 1 Modes of narrating modernity 3 2 Enablement and constraint: Understanding modern institutions 19 Part II The first crisis of modernity 3 Restricted liberal modernity: The incomplete elaboration of the modern project 37 4 Crisis and transformation of modernity: The end of the liberal utopia 55 Part III The closure of modernity 5 Networks of power and barriers to entry: The organization of allocative practices 73 6 Building iron cages: The organization of authoritative practices 89 7 Discourses on society: Reorganizing the mode of cognitive representation 104 Part IV The second crisis of modernity 8 Pluralization of practices: The crisis of organized modernity 123 9 Sociology and contingency: The crisis of the organized mode of representation 141 10 Modernity and self-identity: Liberation and disembedding 154 vii viii Contents Part V Towards extended liberal modernity? 11 Incoherent practices and postmodern selves: The current condition of modernity 175 Notes 194 Bibliography 240 Index 261 Prologue A SOCIOLOGY OF MODERNITY? To propose a sociology of modernity seems tautological at best. What else is sociology, if not the systematic attempt to come to an understanding of modem society? At worst, a sociology of modernity could seem an impossible project. If sociology grew with modernity, as its mode of self-monitoring, then it could never achieve the distance to the object that every analytical endeavour requires. Indeed, any attempt at a sociology of modernity risks falling prey to the problematic of its being enmeshed with the social world it tries to understand. Nevertheless, I think there is an important, if largely empty, space between tautology and impossibility. It seems worth trying to take a step back and gain some perspective on modernity, though it is still around us.1 To look at modernity from a distance should be more easily possible in times of doubt and questioning. Indeed, the ‘classical’ sociologists, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim among others, were writing in such a period. And, among other signs, the debate on postmodernity indicates that we do so, too.2 There are good reasons for assuming that this is a particularly appropriate moment for trying such an assessment of the modem condition. Even below the level of the postmodernist discourse, contemporary Western societies have for the past two decades been widely seen to be undergoing a major restructuring. Most accounts of this have been in terms of crisis of one or the other core aspect of these societies: the governability crisis of mass democracy; the crisis of Keynesian-style demand management; the crisis of the social democratic welfare state; the environmental crisis of industrial technology; the relativist and post-positivist challenge to science; and so on. In response to diagnoses of crises, concepts have proliferated that try to advance an understanding of the emerging features of the societies in transformation. The first, and probably still the most common of these concepts, was that of post- industrial society, proposed as early as the 1960s and in many respects a pre-crisis concept. Since then, notions like consumer society, knowledge society, information society, risk society, neo-liberalism, or new individualism have entered into the discussions. The notion of postmodern society is only the most fashionable of these new labels, equally vague and encompassing. ix x Prologue If there is widespread, though not unanimous, agreement on the existence of a major social transformation, there is also strong disagreement, even diverging views about its nature. The story-lines of accounts reach from the ‘end of the subject’ to the ‘new individualism’, from the ‘dissolution of society’ to the reemergence of ‘civil society’, from the ‘end of modernity’ to an ‘other modernity’ to ‘neo- modernization’. Confusion reigns, or so it seems. To some extent, this confusion reflects the inability of sociologists to capture what I will call the ambiguity of modernity. Some aspects of social changes are emphasized at the expense of other, inverse ones. Furthermore, a basic rule for the analysis of social change is often disregarded. Authors describe a new social state and the process towards it in terms of comparison to an earlier state, but they hardly pay any attention to the adequacy and consistency of the concepts and terminology used to characterize the earlier state. A closer look reveals that most claims to novelty in the writings on ‘new’, ‘other’ or ‘post’ states evaporate. What is supposed to be new is very often a common feature of modernity. This is one reason why I think that an attempt to understand the current state needs to be built on a historical redescription of modernity. Some may argue that a redescription is unnecessary given that sociology has already provided such an account over the years of its observation of modern society, from Weber and Durkheim to Parsons and beyond. However, the sociological canon cannot easily and directly be put to such use, exactly because sociologists were enmeshed in the modern project and modern practices they were trying to describe. While this inevitable fact does not make their work useless, it limits its use. This is the other reason why I think that a historical redescription, including a redescription of sociology, is necessary. My proposal is that sociological practices should be analysed and reflected like all other social practices of modernity. Re-reading modernist sociology will contribute to a current sociology of modernity, but rather as a source of interpretation than as a conceptual cornerstone. THE OBJECT OF INQUIRY AND THE THESIS The core argument of this reassessment of modernity is developed, in historical- empirical terms, for Western Europe. A practical reason for this focus is that I am most familiar with these societies, both from earlier research and from personal experience. An analytical reason is that this region is considered the birth-place of modernity, that its practices and discourses have provided the reference point in the construction of modern societies. I will, however, not refrain from looking beyond the boundaries of this region. From the turn of the eighteenth century, it was the United States of America and, after the beginning of the twentieth century, it was Soviet socialism that provided distinct variants of modernity. A contrasting look at these societies can enhance the understanding of the dynamics of modern social configurations. Historically, the analysis will go back to the age of the democratic and industrial revolutions, that is, to the turn of the eighteenth century, a point in time which in Prologue xi some, though not all, respects can be taken to mark the beginning of modernity. A review of the two centuries since then will allow us to grasp the different forms the social configurations of modernity have taken, not only spatially but also temporally. An inventory of these forms is the precondition for understanding the changes that modernity is now undergoing. It will emerge that the currently observable changes in social practices should indeed be regarded as a major social restructuring.

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