Re-thinking Contemporary Political Behaviour: The Difference that Agency Makes 2018054239, 9781138297609, 9781315099149

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RE-THINKING CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR THE DIFFERENCE THAT AGENCY MAKES Sadi ya Akram

Re-­thinking Contemporary Political Behaviour

Proposing a novel approach to understanding the contemporary political landscape, Akram draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Margaret Archer on agency and argues the need for an in-­depth engagement with concepts of agency to improve the reach and scope of political analysis. Is the way that people engage with politics changing? If so, how well-­ equipped are we to document and explain the extent and range of the ways in which people are engaging in politics today? This book tackles these questions through a blend of theoretical reflection and empirical research, shedding new light on the relationship between arena and process definitions of politics, and how the social relates to the political. Hitherto unexplored features of agency such as the unconscious and the internal political conversation are shown to be critical in exploring how people mobilise today and how they make sense of their political engagement. Two in-­depth case studies of the internal political conversations that individuals hold as well as an analysis of the 2011 UK riots are presented. Making a case for the role of self-­expression in politics, this book will be of use for graduates and scholars interested in British politics, political theory, social theory, political sociology, the theory and practice of political engagement and political behaviour. Sadiya Akram is a lecturer in political theory at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her articles have appeared in The British Journal of Sociology and The British Journal of Criminology and Public Administration.

Routledge Studies in Anti-­Politics and Democratic Crisis Series Editors: Jack Corbett University of Southampton

and Matt Wood

University of Sheffield

This book series aims to provide a forum for the discussion of topics and themes related to anti-­politics, depoliticisation, and political crisis. We supposedly live in an anti-­political age in which popular disaffection threatens to undermine the very foundations of democratic rule. From the rise of radical right wing populism through to public cynicism towards politicians, institutions and processes of government are being buffeted by unprecedented change that have in turn raised questions about the viability of seemingly foundational practices. The series is intentionally pluralistic in its geographic, methodological and disciplinary scope and seeks works that push forward debate and challenge taken-­for-granted orthodoxies. For a full list of available titles please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-­ Studies-in-­Anti-Politics-­and-Democratic-­Crisis/book-­series/RSAPDC Refiguring Democracy The Spanish Political Laboratory Ramón A. Feenstra, Simon Tormey, Andreu Casero-­Ripollés and John Keane Re-­thinking Contemporary Political Behaviour The Difference that Agency Makes Sadiya Akram

Re-­thinking Contemporary Political Behaviour The Difference that Agency Makes

Sadiya Akram

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Sadiya Akram The right of Sadiya Akram to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 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. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. 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 Names: Akram, Sadiya, author. Title: Re-thinking contemporary political behaviour : the difference that agency makes / Sadiya Akram. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge studies in anti-politics and democratic crisis | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018054239 | ISBN 9781138297609 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315099149 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Political sociology. | Political participation–Social aspects. | Agent (Philosophy) Classification: LCC JA76 .A4335 2019 | DDC 306.2–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054239 ISBN: 978-1-138-29760-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-09914-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman By Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

To my mother and daughter with love

Contents



List of illustrations Acknowledgements



Introduction

viii ix 1

Part I

17

1 Political participation: the debate so far

19

2 Agency and political participation

33

3 Agency: the neglect of the unconscious

56

4 Talking heads? The internal political conversation

74

Part II

93

5 Exploring internal political conversations

95

6 Rioting: criminal, political or post-­political act?

113



Conclusion: contemporary political behaviour – looking forward

132



Index

138

Illustrations

Figure 2.1 The morphogenetic sequence

43

Tables 4.1 The modes of reflexivity 5.1 Interviewee details 5.2 Features of the internal conversation

85 99 100

Acknowledgements

The ideas developed in this book represent the culmination of thought and conversation over the course of many years and through discussions with colleagues in various university departments. To each I am grateful for their different kinds of help and encouragement along the way. I will always be indebted to the Economic and Social Research Council for awarding me funding to pursue my doctoral research at the University of Birmingham on the concept of agency, which forms the cornerstone of this book and remains the guiding theme in my research to date. A post-­doctoral research fellowship at the Institute of Governance and Political Analysis at the University of Canberra enabled me to develop my research into political behaviour. I am fortunate to have made many lifelong colleagues and friends while at Canberra, and will always be grateful for the warmth, support and good humour with which I was received and spent many happy days in Australia. I would also like to mention Queen Mary University of London as an intellectually stimulating environment where I had the pleasure of meeting interesting and generous colleagues who have supported me at various stages. Thank you to Kim Hutchings, Michael Kenny, Robbie Shilliam and Engin Isin, in particular. A special thanks to my mentor and friend David Marsh who has been an unerring source of encouragement and support throughout my academic journey. An earlier version of Chapter 6 was published in the British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 54(1), pp. 375–92, 2014 while parts of Chapter 2 were published in the British Journal of Sociology, Vol.  66(4), pp.  605–25, 2015. I am grateful to the publishers for permission to reproduce material from these articles. Last, but not least, this book would not have been possible without my family, Ben and Freya.

Introduction

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.… (A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1859, p. 1)

The ability to understand and document the range of ways in which people are engaging in politics could not be more critical and timely. We are at a point in history when political behaviour is changing significantly, at least within Western democracies. This is due to a range of factors among which could be counted a rise in anti-­politics (Stoker, 2006; Allen and Birch, 2015; Clarke et al., 2018), de-­politicisation (Burnham, 2014; Hartley, Pearce and Taylor, 2017; Fawcett et al., 2017) and the impact of technology on society (Norris, 2001; Oates et al., 2006; Vromen, Xenos and Loader, 2015). It has been well-­ documented that there has been a decline in conventional forms of mobilisation, such as voting, joining political parties and interest groups, leading some to argue that we are seeing unprecedented levels of political disengagement and apathy (Putnam, 2000a; Stoker, 2006; Flinders, 2012). We also know there has been an increase in new and alternative forms of mobilisation such as protesting, consumer boycotts and direct action, and that this occurs both offline and online (Norris, 1999, 2001; Dalton, 2000, 2008; Gibson and Cantijoch, 2013). How well-­equipped are we to document and explain the extent and range of the ways in which people are engaging in politics today? While there have been some important insights into developing our understanding of the contemporary political landscape, and particularly the alternative and new spaces for political engagement, this book argues that they do not go far enough to capture or explain the range of ways in which individuals today are mobilising. Echoing the quote from Dickens above, there is a tendency to polarisation in this debate, with some proclaiming the death of, or a crisis in, democracy while others suggest more caution, pointing to shifts, evolution or adaptation in democracy as reflecting a changing citizenry and a specific historical moment. As Norris wisely puts it: ‘the sky is not falling down for democracy as Chicken Little claimed. But neither is the Panglossian view true that all remains well in the body politic’ (1999, p.  2). Instead, the picture, as is ever the case, is more

2   Introduction complicated; it is important to recognise the multi-­faceted nature of this debate before we proceed to diagnosis and putative treatment of the problem. Democracy, according to some, is in trouble because of a lack of public participation in the system, as is most prominently evidenced by low and falling levels of voting in mature democracies (Putnam, 2000a; Wattenberg, 2002; Franklin, 2004; Zukin et al., 2006). Further indicators of the decline of public support for democracy can be seen in the long-­term decline in public trust in government (Dalton, 2004; Wroe, Allen and Birch, 2013), a growing disconnect between citizens and the state (Norris, 1999, 2011; Dalton, 2004), and the rise of a more sceptical or critical electorate (Norris, 1999, 2011; Dalton, 2004). Explanations as to why this is the case vary, but a good place to start would be to acknowledge the rise in anti-­politics. We are living in an era characterised by a culture of ‘anti-­politics’ (Allen, 2006; Hay, 2007; Boswell and Corbett, 2015; Allen and Birch, 2015; Clarke et al., 2018). Anti-­politics is defined as ‘citizens’ negative sentiment towards the activities and institutions of formal politics (politicians, parties, elections, councils, parliaments, governments)’ (Clarke et al., 2018, p. 3; see also Clarke et al., 2017). These negative sentiments leave citizens detached, sceptical and disillusioned with formal politics and, according to some of the literature, help to explain rising levels of dis-­engagement with formal politics. There has been a proliferation of interest in the contemporary mood of anti-­ politics, linking it to anti-­elite sentiment (Saunders, 2014; Allen and Birch, 2015) as well as elite cynicism towards the political process (Boswell and Corbett, 2015) and shifts in ideology (Weltman and Billig, 2002). In contrast, and taking the long view, Clarke et al. (2018) remind us that anti-­politics has precedent and, questioning the dominant narrative of a golden age in politics in the post-­war period, they find evidence of pervasive anti-­politics during this period as manifested in distrust of politicians and lack of faith in political institutions. Despite this finding, the authors concur with the extant literature to the extent that they agree that anti-­politics today is more widely and intensely felt than in previous years. Clarke et al. (2018) explain the phenomenon as a result of ‘more negative folk theories’ about politics – and, in their view, about politicians in particular. The good politician previously was someone who was competent and independent, whereas today leaders are required who are trustworthy but also of the people, or normal – a balance which is especially difficult to achieve in circumstances of an ‘abundant, competitive media and professionalised, mediatised political campaigning’ (2018, p.  14). The overall effect is to produce a negative popular narrative of how politics is meant to work compared to how it does work for most people. Although anti-­politics may not be new, its effects are generally seen to be negative, and have been linked to rising populism and support for the right (Norris, 2005; Jennings et al., 2016). Interestingly, we see that an increase in anti-­politics is not necessarily related to a concomitant decrease in support for democracy (Norris, 1999, 2011; Dalton, 2000, 2008). Instead, we find that support for the principles of democracy remain relatively stable, but it is the practice of democracy which is increasingly

Introduction   3 q­ uestioned by citizens leading to scepticism about the performance, institutions and actors of the regime. Norris terms the gap between aspiration and satisfaction with democracy as the ‘democratic deficit’ arguing that it leads to ‘dissatisfied democrats’ (Norris, 1999, 2011). Indeed, this is a phenomenon which affects Western or more mature democracies as well as newer ones (Putnam, 2000b; Norris, 2011). This disjuncture between the theory and practice of democracy is corroborated by the work of Stoker and Hay (2017) and Hibbing and Theiss-­ Morse (2002) on the ‘stealth model of democracy’, which finds that people are generally found to be in agreement about the goals of democracy, but increasingly see the practice of democracy as a technical exercise best carried out by managers. The proliferation of dissatisfied democrats is perhaps unsurprising if we consider proponents of the ‘democratisation thesis’, who argue that we are seeing profound shifts in how citizens relate to their governments and to politics more broadly. Drawing on, but extending the classic work of Almond and Verba (1963) and Inglehart (1977, 1990) on post-­materialism and value change, Dalton and Welzel (2014) highlight what they see as a shift from ‘allegiant to assertive citizens’ (see also Dalton, 2000). Extrapolating from the multi-­country World Values Survey, Dalton and Welzel find that while mid-­twentieth century democracies expected their citizens to be supportive and generally quiescent, this has now changed. People in both mature post-­industrial and developing democracies are sceptical of state authority and institutions and are now more willing to assert their own views and voice. This has led to what Norris and others have called the rise of the critical citizen – citizens who question traditional sources of authority, including government. However, the crucial point for Norris is that ‘criticism does not necessarily imply disengagement. It can mean the reverse’ (Norris, 1999, p. 16). On this reading, we are seeing critical but more politically engaged citizens who may be more conditioned in their support for authority and regimes alike and will go above and beyond formal channels for political expression. Certainly, rising assertive cultures present new challenges for democracies and new demands upon the political process. Furthermore, if the existing mechanisms fall short of the ideals of the democracy then they may need to evolve to meet new challenges. Notably there is a tension between those who see a more assertive populace as a positive step to re-­invigorating and reforming democracy (Norris, 1999, 2011; Dalton, 2000, 2008) and those who argue that the political culture is poorer for recent changes and that we must recover what has been lost (Stoker, 2006; Flinders, 2012). Whether the contemporary moment is viewed as crisis or opportunity, this leaves us at a critical juncture.

Summary of argument It may be useful at this point to articulate the argument of this book and outline its contribution. It is indisputable that political participation is changing in the UK, and while the decline in formal modes of political engagement should be of

4   Introduction genuine concern, it should not be our sole or even primary focus in this debate. Following Dalton (2000, 2008) and Norris (1999, 2011), I argue that we need to take new and alternative forms of engagement seriously. I suggest that we are seeing a proliferation of activities on the borders and in the spaces between formal and informal political participation. It is my aim to contribute to the nascent literature on alternative forms of participation, but to also help to navigate this terrain by addressing some of the key underlying conceptual tensions in the literature which to date remain unaddressed. As is clear from the discussion so far, the question of what counts and does not count as political participation is central to debates about the health of political participation and the degree to which democracy is afflicted by a malaise. Such a question brings into focus a series of related sub-­questions: where does politics occur? What is the relationship between social and political issues? Finally, how do we measure the efficacy and impact of political action? Addressing these questions – at a conceptual and empirical level – is paramount if we want to comprehend contemporary political participation. My intent in what follows in this introduction is to address each of these questions in turn since they underpin the theoretical framework for subsequent chapters in the book. Building upon this foundation, a further central theme of this book is to highlight the neglect of the concept of agency in debates about political participation. Agency is important to debates on political participation for two related reasons. First, a concept of agency is implicit in all conceptions of political behaviour, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. Neglecting agency does not take the agent out of the picture, it merely sidesteps the issue. Second, making conceptions of agency explicit has the benefit of improving the reach and scope of how we understand and interpret political behaviour, so bringing agency in adds depth to analysis. Engaging with our underlying concepts of agency and making them explicit will help us to move beyond dominant models of agency, which characterise agency singularly as the expression of rational preferences, choice or reflexivity. I highlight neglected features of agency such as the internal conversation and the unconscious, showing how they enrich and add complexity to our account of what agency is and, in turn, provide a more intricate lens through which to understand and make sense of contemporary forms of political engagement. Such a perspective is important because the mode of engagement and gains achieved in new and alternative forms of political engagement require us to go beyond a language of choice and reflexive actions. While choice and reflexivity may feature in actors’ account of their engagement, we also need to factor in the role of emotions, memory and social context. As such, we need a new and more extensive language with which to understand how people make sense of their political behaviour. To this end, I critique various conceptions of agency in the literature on political participation as well as explore the more conceptual literature on agency. Essential to this task is engaging with theoretical debates about the relationship between agency and social structure. Agency has the potential to enhance our

Introduction   5 understanding of contemporary political behaviour, whether it takes conventional or unconventional forms. The task of this book is to show how agency informs our understanding of new and alternative conceptions of political behaviour. Drawing the threads together, the key conceptual themes as introduced in the remainder of this introduction and developed in following chapters are as follows: • • • •

What is the relationship between arena and process definitions of politics? What is the relationship between the social and political? What is the relationship between efficacy and impact in political participation? How does the concept of agency affect our understanding of political participation?

These four themes provide the key conceptual foci of the book. Below, I commence the discussion of my conceptual framework by looking at what is included in definitions of politics and the political, and how this relates to where politics take place.

Mapping contemporary forms of political engagement ‘Arena’ and ‘process’ definitions of politics A concern to map, document and understand new forms of political participation is driven by a sense that current developments in political participation might be productively analysed by focusing initially on our definition of the political, highlighting the boundaries that shape our understanding of what counts, and, ergo, what does not count, as being political. I begin by highlighting the distinction between arena and process definitions of politics, suggesting that this represents a useful starting point for thinking about how politics and the political should be defined. For those committed to arena definitions of politics, ‘(P)olitics is the process of governing, an activity or a range of activities made meaningful, significant and worthy of investigation by virtue of the (formal) context in which it occurs’ (Hay, 2002, pp.  72–3; also see Leftwich, 2004). In contrast to arena definitions, ‘process’ definitions of politics emphasise that politics can and does occur in all contexts: it is concerned not with arenas, but with processes, and, more specifically, relates to the ‘… (uneven) distribution of power, wealth and resources’ (Hay, 2002, p.  73). This distinction between arena and process politics, or how one understands the boundaries of the political, shapes the way in which the extant literature has interpreted the changing nature of political behaviour in the UK today; it therefore provides a useful frame for navigating the debate. We see that it is with the arena definition of politics that Flinders (2012), Putnam (2000a), and Stoker (2006) are primarily concerned, highlighting the

6   Introduction need to re-­engage citizens with formal political processes, and voting in particular. The problem from this perspective is an unprecedented level of citizen apathy, with Flinders (2012) cautioning against the ‘decadent expectations’ of citizens and emphasising instead the difficult choices that politicians have to make amid a lack of public understanding regarding the political process. An arena definition clearly has a role to play in politics, but there is increasing recognition that politics occurs outside of formal political institutions, the state or the public sphere (Hay, 2002; Norris, 2002, 2007). The process definition of politics has, to some extent, influenced the literature on alternative modes of political engagement. We can see this in Norris’ (2002, 2007) acknowledgment that the agents and targets of political behaviour have changed, thus widening the focus beyond the core institutions, to targeting multinational corporations (MNCs), banks and non-­governmental organisations (NGOs). Such an insight is important and widens our understanding of political behaviour – it does not go far enough, however, because it is still largely orientated to the impact of action on the formal political arena. Norris’ work indicates the problem with an expanded arena definition of politics. Here, an action is political to the extent that it is directly trying to influence government processes and policies, thus treating many actions regarded as ‘political’ by more critical scholars of participation as ‘non-­political’. This approach also tends, to a large extent, to see actions as ‘political’ only if they involve collective action and, at least in a limited way, are efficacious. A more critical literature is emerging (O’Toole et al., 2003a, 2003b; Bang, 2009, 2011; Xenos, Vromen and Loader, 2014; Vromen, Xenos and Loader, 2015) which recognises the growth of informal modes of activity such as protesting, commercial boycotting and a proliferation of online political engagement, seeing such activities as characteristic of late-­modernity politics, and often viewing political parties as in terminal decline. For example, there is now a growing literature on consumer boycotting and ethical consumption, showing how individuals respond to issues directly through boycotting and often bypassing formal political processes (Bryant and Goodman, 2004; Stolle, Hooghe and Micheletti, 2005; Barnett et al., 2005). Providing a cross-­national and systematic study of the phenomenon, Stolle, Hooghe and Micheletti (2005) found that political consumerism is primarily a tool of those who are distrustful of political institutions, but who were trusting of their fellow citizens. Challenging discourses which link political disengagement with apathy (Flinders, 2012) and seeking to understand the reasons for rising political disengagement, O’Toole et al. (2003a, 2003b) explore ‘political non-­participation’, or the self-­consciously political decision not to participate in formal political processes by choosing either not to register to vote, or, having registered, choosing not to cast a vote. The authors argue that such action is decidedly political in motivation and represents a protest against formal arena-­based channels of political participation. Some important distinctions have emerged in this literature, such as the recognition that online activity and the use of social media is as worthy and,

Introduction   7 ergo, political, as offline activity and that individuals often engage in both, as and when suits them, rather than choosing one or the other (Gibson and Cantijoch, 2013; Xenos, Vromen and Loader, 2014; Vromen, Xenos and Loader, 2015). Of particular note is Halupka’s (2014, 2018) discussion of clicktivism, which he describes as a legitimate political act but one which has been marginalised through a recurrent negative discourse. Online political engagement, be it through social media or the internet, raises questions about the role and effects of individualised action. Notably some have criticised the individualised and non-­collective dimension of such action (Stoker, 2006), but others have argued that it is more accurate to term it ‘personalised’ rather than ‘individualised’ because the latter expression may lead to ‘thin’ notions of community (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; see also Pattie et al., 2004). This more critical literature advances our understanding of contemporary forms of mobilisations; however, it also suffers from certain limitations and there is more work to be done in expanding and understanding process politics. First, there continues to be a persistent dualism in this literature between arena and process definitions of politics, with citizens engaging either in the political arena, or outside that arena in ways which some of the literature would see as non-­political. This is of concern, because we know that individuals may move from one to the other, so they are not mutually exclusive. Second, newer and alternative forms of engagement often blur the boundaries between the social and political, which has consequences for our definition of what constitutes the political. More work is needed on clarifying the relationship between the social and political. Third, there remains in this literature a focus on observable political actions which lead to output, thus neglecting individual-­level impact. It is to the latter two issues that I turn next. The social and the political Our definition of the political, in my view, relates to a broader set of issues regarding the relationship between action within and outside the political arena and, relatedly, the relationship between the social and the political. Consequently, new forms of political participation are of interest because they engage not only on those borders between the political arena and its outside, but also between the social and the political. This requires a re-­thinking of how social issues become political, and how we might understand their political efficacy. The important proviso here is that politics cannot occur in all social interactions between individuals, because then we are in danger of seeing everything as political, so that there is no separation between the ‘political’ and the ‘social’. To be clear, the social refers to activities which are not conventionally political such as, for example, discussing the challenges of work-­life balance on Mumsnet (an online parenting organisation) or mobilising for resources in local community art and clean-­up projects. Such activity may be individualistic, but can also be collective and often occurs outside of the formal political arena.

8   Introduction Efficacy and impact A related concern in this debate refers to what I term the efficacy-­impact question, where only activity which shows tangible efficacy or impact is deemed to be political and efficacious. The extant literature, in my view, is overwhelmingly concerned with tangible and visible outputs, whether taking part in a protest, or online activity which leads to an output. An interesting exception here is Vromen and Coleman’s (2011) research on GetUp!1 – an online mobilisation group based in Australia. In their research on GetUp!, Vromen and Coleman (2011) found that the organisation makes a distinction between outcome and output when measuring success. Outcome here refers to whether campaign goals were achieved while output refers to public participation rates and depth of participation in the campaign. So, we see that success for GetUp! is based on creating political change through increasing mobilisation as well as on more specific campaign goals (see also Vromen and Coleman, 2011). Of importance here is the need to move away from a criterion of observability for activity to be valued as worthy or legitimate. Instead, I want to suggest that social action can be political if it occurs within either an arena or a process definition of politics, and if it leads to a development in thought or political awakening for the individual in question. Such activity may lead to an output, or impact, but equally it may not. Crucially, however, there is personal impact for the individual in question. The key insight of such a view is that political activity may have a range of intensities – it may sometimes lead to a principled decision and action to vote a particular way for example, but it also includes the thinking process when one engages in discussion on a website about arena issues such as political parties, or issues such as the reality of managing one’s work-­life balance. Theorising agency to understand political behaviour A focus on how political activity is efficacious for the individual brings us to a principle theme of this book, which is to highlight how critical engagement with the concept of agency can help us to better understand contemporary forms of mobilisation. I suggest that one of the problems with all explanations in the current literature on political participation is that it fails to interrogate the concept of agency, yet all explanations of political behaviour are rooted, in part at least, in an explicit, or more often implicit, concept of agency. Consequently, this book advances an alternative reading of informal modes of political participation, arguing that, if we attend to the concept of agency underpinning such activity, we have a better understanding of why people engage in this behaviour, and of its political potential. Such a position necessitates looking at the reasons why people engage, what they get out of their engagement or non-­ engagement, and how action may be meaningful for them. This requires moving beyond a model focusing on agency as simply involving a ‘choice’ to maximise or satisfy preferences, to engage in a broader and more in-­depth critique of

Introduction   9 agency. However, an in-­depth engagement with agency would be short-­sighted unless it also considered the role of social structure in affecting life chances. Hence, my consideration of concepts of agency in this book critically engages with those concepts of agency which are developed within dialectical conceptions of the relationship between structure and agency – i.e. Margaret Archer (1995, 2000, 2003) and Pierre Bourdieu (1977). To be clear, dialectical conceptions of structure and agency recognise that agency operates in relation to structure and, in turn, affects structures. Such a perspective is crucial as it helps us to locate the role of social structures such as class, gender, race and ethnicity in our accounts of how people engage politically in the world; a perspective which has been neglected in much of the nascent literature on new forms of political participation. To this end, this book is concerned with outlining various aspects of agency and showing how they have the potential to illuminate contemporary modes of engagement whose political potential is contested. Such a task is crucial if we are to understand the range of ways in which people engage politically, thereby giving us a richer, more complex picture of political engagement in the UK today. The theorisation of agency provided in this book involves discussing certain characteristics of agency, which, in turn, illuminate particular aspects of political behaviour. The characteristics of agency I discuss are the unconscious and the internal conversation, both of which play a critical role in relation to political behaviour. First, focusing upon the internal political conversation helps us to understand the silent conversations individuals have in their heads as they make sense of their political engagement in relation to the socially structured world around them. Such a viewpoint provides an extra layer of analysis above and beyond observable political action. Second, I highlight the unconscious element of action, which helps us to recognise how the past informs the individual’s present in ways which they may be unaware of, or unable to consciously control.

Illustrative cases The conceptual ideas explored in this book are discussed through two illustrative cases, which, in different ways, shed light on the twin problem of how the political is defined and how a more sophisticated concept of agency can help us understand various types of political behaviour. While we can be confident that there has a been a decline in forms of political engagement, such as voting and joining political parties, how much insight do we have into the varied ways in which people mobilise today and how they make sense of this political mobilisation? Furthermore, must all political action be efficacious and reveal tangible impact, or is there also value in documenting thinking processes in themselves, which may or may not lead to identifiable political action? To address these questions, what is needed is an in-­depth interrogation of the meanings people attach to their engagement, which, in turn, necessitates a reflection on the underpinning concept of agency. To this end, Chapter 5 is dedicated

10   Introduction to exploring individuals’ internal conversations about politics or their internal political conversations. This chapter starts from a recognition of the need to move beyond a dualism between political action which occurs within the political arena and that which occurs outside it; there is also need for more detailed accounts of how people make sense of their political behaviour today in their heads and how this relates to their political practice. Such an approach adds a layer of insight beyond documenting tangible political outputs, or a reductive focus on agential choices and decision-­making. Instead, it helps us to see how individuals rationalise, deliberate and think through their political engagement in relation to their emotions and their commitments, among other factors. In documenting internal political conversations, Chapter 5 seeks to broaden the conceptual tools available to political analysts to make sense of the varied ways in which people think about and engage in political behaviour today. The chapter also discusses the methodological challenges involved in accessing internal political conversations. That the overwhelming majority of interviewees in Chapter 5 revealed that they regularly voted but understood voting to be an important but minimum form of political engagement, often before detailing the other ways in which they were engaged politically, shows that the boundary between formal and informal politics as well as that between the social and political is artificial and porous. It also reveals that politics can take place in a range of spaces and involve a range of actors. Such an insight is particularly relevant to the second illustrative case, the riot, which I turn to next. The sense in which rioting is political requires more attention because of the dominance of frames for understanding it which are based on criminality, looting and violence. Indeed, even where the literature is sympathetic to the grievances of rioters, it has struggled to locate political motivations in an act which, on the surface, is spontaneous and lacks an articulated political strategy. Looting and criminality are features of this act, but they do not exhaust all possible explanations of the motivations guiding it. Rather, I argue that rioting is distinctively political, in so far as we are able to re-­think what is political, and how we define the boundaries of the political. Crucially, however, recognising the characteristics of agency, and how underlying grievances are stored within the unconscious but come to the surface in rioting, is central to recognising the political potential of this form of behaviour. Such an account requires a renewed focus on agency which goes beyond a singular focus on articulated political strategy, in order to think about how an individual’s experiences of inequality over the life-­course informs their participation in the riot. Taken together, what do these two cases reveal? Paying more attention to agency and how we define the political significantly enhances our understanding of the myriad ways in which people are engaging politically today. Rioting, I suggest, is distinctively ‘political’, but to understand it as such we need a broader definition of politics and a concept of agency which recognises the role of the unconscious. Similarly, the internal political conversation offers political analysts a lens through which to gain more detailed insights into how people make sense and reflect on their own political practice, which may not always be

Introduction   11 gleaned from their external actions. Taking all of this into account, I argue, gives a fuller picture of the range of ways people are engaging in politics today, which enhances our understanding of new forms of arena and process politics and where they overlap. While my focus in this book is on alternative and contemporary modes of political behaviour, it is important to highlight that activity as explored in the two cases discussed here is not unrelated to broader shifts in formal political engagement and the widely-­documented decline in voting and membership of political parties and interest groups in Western democracies. While my aim in this book is to emphasise the role and value of new and alternative forms of engagement, I do not do this at the expense of formal channels of engagement. Informal and formal modes of political engagement are not a dualism as is so often posited in the literature, and understanding engagement in the informal sector may help us to better understand how people relate to formal modes of political engagement. To this end, I agree with Norris who argues: … opportunities for participation by all citizens are a necessary but far from sufficient condition for democracy. Multiple institutions need to be working effectively to channel citizen’s voices into representative government, and to ensure that participation is meaningful rather than merely symbolic. (Norris, 2002, p. xiii)

Chapter outline The two case studies of political behaviour (internal political conversations and rioting) which comprise the case-­study material of Part  II of this book might be considered unconventional cases whose political potential is contested. Through a detailed discussion of, first, the boundaries of the political and what counts as politics and, second, of agency as it relates to the actors involved, it is my aim to show here that these activities are distinctly political. It is also worth pointing out that the discussion of internal political conversation provides a window through which to explore how people make sense of their political behaviour in the contemporary climate, although the case of rioting, explored in Chapter 6, has a long history, which takes on political potential when examined through the prism of agency. This book provides a discussion of agency which is timely for understanding newer forms of mobilisation, but also has broader appeal by helping to think about more long-­standing forms of mobilisation whose political potential is contested. This book is divided into two parts. In the first part, I develop a critique of existing accounts of agency before sketching out the features of agency pertinent to understanding the forms of political behaviour discussed here. In the second part of the book, I utilise aspects of the concept of agency discussed in the first part to illuminate how they help to better understand contemporary forms of political behaviour. Chapter 1 introduces the key themes to be examined throughout the book and provides a discussion of the literature on alternative forms of political participation

12   Introduction as well as debates about anti-­politics, arguing that, while it is correct to argue that formal modes of political engagement have declined, we must pay greater heed to alternative modes of political engagement and, in particular, to those which occur online. A discussion of the nature of politics, its boundaries and what counts as ‘political’ provides the broader frame for this chapter and highlights the importance of moving from arena to process definitions of politics. Chapter 2 of the book begins by rendering explicit the concepts of agency that underpin and, in my view limit, understanding of political behaviour in the extant literature on political participation. Next, the chapter develops a critique of the concept of agency by questioning the robustness of models of agency based on rational choice theory and reflexivity, arguing that the latter, in particular, has become dominant in the recent literature on agency. Chapter 3 has a more specific focus, drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to explore the role of the unconscious and the ‘habitus’ as a frame for understanding activities which inform behaviour, but of which the actor may not be aware. I argue that a concept of habitus, which includes an unconscious element, helps us to conceptualise agency in a way which recognises how the agent’s past informs action in the present. Chapter 4 posits the question as to whether individuals have silent internal political conversations in their heads: what their role and function is, and their relationship to more visible forms of action. I take the concept of the internal conversation from Margaret Archer (2000, 2003), but using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, critically adapt it to emphasise the role of the unconscious in agency, but also to downplay the reflective and purposive overtones in Archer’s theorisation. This chapter argues that we must conceive political identity formation beyond a narrow notion of choice and instead seek richer accounts of people’s engagement with politics. In the second part of the book, I apply these theoretical insights to my case studies. Chapter 5 explores internal political conversations about politics with a view to understand how people make sense of their political engagement, whether it be arena- or process-­based, and where the two overlap. The in-­depth accounts challenge the reading that engagement in alternative forms of activity is throwaway, self-­indulgent and largely ineffective; instead, this chapter explores the varied ways in which people engage and how this links with their internal thinking about politics. My broader aim here is to move away from an understanding of political behaviour based on outcomes, focusing instead on process. Exploring the riots of 2011 in the UK, Chapter 6 examines contestation over the meaning of riots. I consider interpretations of rioting as looting and criminality, but argue that there is difficulty in reconciling an apparently spontaneous act with political motivations. This chapter argues that rioting is a distinctly political act, but, in order to understand it as such, we must theorise the characteristics of agency that underpin it. Drawing on Bourdieu’s habitus, but expanding it to include an unconscious aspect, the chapter develops a framework for understanding the rioter as a political actor. Habitus is presented as a mechanism that can help us better understand how experiences in their past may affect

Introduction   13 the rioter’s present, thereby allowing the rise of underlying political grievances to the surface. The concluding chapter reflects on what this research has demonstrated and can contribute to the field. It focuses on the theoretical and empirical insights generated by the research, offering a more sophisticated understanding about the role of agency in conceptualisation of the political and the role of agency in contemporary forms of political behaviour. The chapter explores strategies for thinking through how formal and informal modes of political behaviour may coexist and, in places, intersect.

Conclusion The forms of political behaviour that people engage in have expanded and relate to both arena and process definitions of politics. We know that the repertoires of political action have extended to include boycotting, signing petitions and engaging in protest politics more broadly. There is also recognition that many of these activities take place on an everyday basis, as explored by Bang (2009, 2011; also see Bang and Sørensen, 2001) in his concept of the ‘everyday maker’, which is explored in Chapter 1. Yet, as the case studies in this book reveal, we must go further and recognise that things can be political in different ways. We require more conceptual tools to recognise the range and nuance of activities which occur under the umbrella of informal and unconventional forms of political behaviour. Some forms of activity, such as those associated with localised community action, may engage with explicitly political issues, but exist outside of the formal political arena. On the other hand, in the case of rioting we have a case study of political behaviour which lacks explicit strategy or articulation of motives, yet it is hard to deny that political grievances are being expressed. This book seeks to draw attention to, and re-­frame, the way we think about modes of political behaviour whose political potential is contested. The danger here, of course, is that we make everything political, and so describing behaviour as political becomes meaningless. Such a criticism, often expressed by those defending formal modes of political participation, who pay limited attention to informal modes, reflects a rigid commitment to arena politics, neglecting an increasingly complex and evolving political landscape shaped by arena and process modes of engagement. This new reality inevitably requires more sophisticated tools for political analysis.

Note 1 www.getup.org.au

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Introduction   15 Halupka, M. (2014). Clicktivism: A Systematic Heuristic. Policy and Internet. 6(2), pp. 115–32. Halupka, M. (2016). The Rise of Information Activism: How to Bridge Dualisms and Reconceptualise Political Participation. Information, Communication, and Society. 19(10), pp. 1487–503. Halupka, M. (2018). The Legitimisation of Clicktivism. Australian Journal of Political Science. 53(1), pp. 130–41. Hartley, S., Pearce, W. and Taylor, A. (2017). Against the Tide of Depoliticisation: the Politics of Research Governance. Policy & Politics. 45(3), pp. 361–77. Hay, C. (2002). Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hay, C. (2007). Why We Hate Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hibbing, J. R. and Theiss-­Morse, E. (2002). Stealth Democracy: Amer­icans’ Beliefs about How Government Should Work. New York: Cambridge University Press. Inglehart, R. (1977). The Silent Revolution. Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics. Princeton. Princeton University Press. Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jennings, W., Stoker, G. and Twyman, J. (2016). The Dimensions and Impact of Political Discontent in Britain. Parliamentary Affairs. 69(4), pp. 876–900. Karpf, D. (2010). Online Political Mobilization from the Advocacy Group’s Perspective: Looking Beyond Clicktivism. Policy and Internet. 2(4), pp. 7–41. Leftwich, A. (Ed.) (2004). What is Politics? Cambridge: Polity Press. Marsh, D., O’Toole, T. and Jones, S. (2007). Young People and Politics in the UK. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Norris, P. (1999). Critical Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, P. (2001). Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press. Norris, P. (2002). Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, P. (2005). Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market. New York: Cambridge University Press. Norris, P. (2007). Political activism: new challenges, new opportunities. In: Boix, C. and Stokes, S. (Eds) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norris, P. (2011). Democratic Deficit. Critical Citizens Re-­visited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oates, S., Owen, D. and Gibson, R. K. (Eds) (2006). The Internet and Politics: Citizens, Voters and Activists. London: Routledge. O’Toole, T., Marsh, D. and Jones, S. (2003a). Political Literacy Cuts both Ways: The Politics of Non-­participation among young people’. Political Quarterly. 74(3), pp. 349–60. O’Toole, T., Lister, M., Marsh, D., Jones, S. and McDonagh, A. (2003b). Turning Out or Left Out? Participation and Non-­participation. Among Young People. Contemporary Politics. 9(1), pp. 45–61. Pattie, C., Seyd, P. and Whitely, P. (2004). Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, R. (2000a). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of Amer­ican Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Putnam, R. (Ed.) (2000b). Dissatisfied Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? Princeton: Princeton University Press.

16   Introduction Saunders, C. (2014). Anti-­politics in Action? Measurement Dilemmas in the Study of Unconventional Political Participation. Political Research Quarterly. 67(3), pp. 574–88. Stoker, G. (2006). Why Politics Matters: Making Democracy Work. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Stoker, G. and Hay, C. (2017). Understanding and Challenging Populist Negativity Towards Politics: The Perspective of British Citizens. Political Studies. 65(1), pp. 4–23. Stolle, D., Hooghe, M. and Micheletti, M. (2005). Politics in the Supermarket: Political Consumerism as a Form of Political Participation. International Political Science Review. 26(3), pp. 245–69. Vromen, A. and Coleman, W. (2011). Online Movement Mobilisation and Electoral Politics: The Case of Getup! Communication, Politics & Culture. 44(2), pp. 76–94. Vromen, A., Xenos, A. M. and Loader, B. (2015). Young People, Social Media and Connective Action: from Organisational Maintenance to Everyday Political Talk. Journal of Youth Studies. 18(1), pp. 80–100. Wattenberg, M. P. (2002). Where Have All the Voters Gone? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weltman, D. and Billig, M. (2002). The Political Psychology of Contemporary Anti-­ Politics: A Discursive Approach to the End-­of-Ideology Era. Political Psychology. 22(2), pp. 367–82. Wood, M. (2015). Politicisation, Depoliticisation and Anti-­Politics: Towards a Multilevel Research Agenda. Political Studies Review. 14(4), pp. 521–33. Wood, M. and Flinders, M. (2014). Depoliticisation, Governance and the State. Policy & Politics. 42(2), pp. 135–49. Wroe, A., Allen, N. and Birch, S. (2013). The Role of Political Trust in Conditioning Perceptions of Corruption. European Political Science Review. 5(2), pp. 175–95. Xenos, M., Vromen, A. and Loader, D. B. (2014). The Great equalizer? Patterns of social media use and political engagement in three advanced democracies, Information, Communication and Society, 17(2), pp. 151–67. Zukin, C., Keeter, S., Andolina, M., Jenkins, K. and Delli Carpini, M. X. (2006). A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing Amer­ican Citizen. New York: Oxford University Press.

Part I

1 Political participation The debate so far

Introduction This chapter introduces the key themes to be examined throughout this book. My primary focus is to provide a discussion of the alternative forms of political participation literature by outlining the main concerns of the recent more critical literature, many of which are explored in subsequent chapters, but to also highlight an important limitation and area that has not been addressed yet – the role of agency, where this book makes its contribution to these debates. I begin by arguing that, while it is correct to posit that formal modes of political engagement have declined, such behaviour does not exhaust the political and that we must pay greater heed to alternative modes of political engagement and, in particular, to that which occurs online. To this end, a discussion of ‘what is politics?’, its boundaries and what counts as ‘political’ provides the broader frame for this chapter and highlights the importance of moving from ‘arena’ to ‘process’ definitions of politics. My discussion of the new forms of political participation literature emphasises two key distinctions which lay the ground for subsequent chapters in the book. First, how we can conceptualise the links between connective and collective action, and online and offline ‘political’ activity; and second, the relationship between duty norms and engagement norms, and between project identities and opposition or legitimating identities. In the final part of the chapter, I explore the putative rise of what Henrik Bang (2005, 2009, 2016; Bang and Sørensen, 2001) terms ‘the everyday maker’ (EM). These debates provide the necessary context to what follows in subsequent chapters in Part I of the book, namely a detailed engagement with the concept of agency, an issue which has been sorely neglected in debates about political participation thus far. A concept of agency, I will argue, is central and critical for how we understand the spectrum of political behaviours. Yet, when agency is discussed in the extant literature, the discussion is often dependent upon a language of rationality deriving from rational choice theory, or reflexive and choice­dependent models of behaviour. Such models are problematic for a range of reasons explored in detail in Chapter 2. Chapters 3 and 4 highlight the utility of a more in-­depth engagement with agency by considering the role of the unconscious and the internal conversation respectively. The empirical chapters of the

20   Part I book in Part II illustrate these conceptual issues drawing on case study material which shows the vibrancy of the informal sector and the difference that a concept of agency makes.

What’s changed? The decline thesis Perhaps one of the key issues in the literature revolves around how large, and how fundamental, the changes in political participation have been. One of the key determinants of these changes is shifts in what is known as formal or conventional modes of political participation – namely voting, joining a political party or an interest group. A good place to begin is to document this side of the debate, which I term the decline thesis. In Britain, voter turnout at general elections has been broadly in decline since the post-­war period. We also know that this is a problem that particularly affects young people – and in terms of voting at recent elections for instance, young people continue to turn out in lower numbers than do their older contemporaries (Henn, Weinstein and Wring, 2002). After the post-­war high of 83.9 per cent in the 1950 election, turnout declined to 59.4 per cent in the 2001 General Election. Despite increases in 2015, to 66.1 per cent and again in 2017, to 68.7 per cent, turnout remains much lower (The Electoral Commission 2018).1 This pattern is broadly replicated across the world in countries where voting is not compulsory. For example, Fieldhouse, Tranmer and Russell (2007) draw on national election results and the 2002–2003 European Social Survey to show that the overall turnout rate for 22 European countries in elections between 1999 and 2002 was 70 per cent compared to 51 per cent for electors aged less than 25. Similarly, with regard to the USA, Macedo et al. (2005) argue that Amer­ican voter turnout ranks near the bottom among democratic nations and Putnam highlights that participation in presidential elections has declined by ‘roughly a quarter over the last thirty-­six years’ (Putnam, 2000, p. 32). In a similar vein, all three of the UK’s main political parties have experienced a dramatic decline in membership levels since the 1960s (Pattie, Seyd and Whitely, 2004). The Democratic Audit, which conducts regular audits of political party membership in the UK highlights long term decline in membership of the mainstream political parties in the UK over the same period (Dunleavy et al., 2018). As a consequence, the share of the UK electorate belonging to a political party now ranks among the lowest in Europe (Driver, 2011). Similarly, Van Beizen et al. (2011) estimate that, since the 1980s, party membership has declined by around 50 per cent or more in France, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Ireland (also see Whiteley, 2010). Conventional forms of political participation are thus clearly declining, although explanations for why this is occurring differ, as is discussed below.

Explaining decline A range of explanations have been offered as to why there has been a decline in conventional forms of political participation. Before I turn to these, it is

Political participation: the debate so far   21 important to first address a more fundamental question: what is the relationship between political participation and democracy? Political participation is considered to be critical to democratic citizenship because, without public involvement in the process, ‘democracy lacks both its legitimacy and its guiding force’ (Dalton, 2008, p. 76). Political participation as a principle of a healthy democracy was notably enshrined in Almond and Verba’s (1963) model of ‘civic culture’ which has been very influential in defining what constitutes political participation. This model is based on a five-­nation survey of mass attitudes and values and identifies three broad types of political culture: the participatory culture, the parochial culture and the subject culture. Almond and Verba argue: A participant is assumed to be aware of and informed about the political system both in its governmental and political aspects. A subject tends to be cognitively ‘oriented’ primarily to the output side of government: the executive, bureaucracy and judiciary. The parochial tends to be unaware, or only dimly aware, of the political system in all its aspects. (1963, p. 79) This model associates political participation with engaging with the government or the political system and it is the loss of this engagement which is lamented by much of the literature on political participation. Clearly, there has been a decline in traditional forms of political participation and it is important to acknowledge that this is occurring (Putnam, 2000; Macedo et al., 2005; Stoker, 2006; Hay, 2007). However, this chapter emphasises that this is only a partial reading of trends in political participation today. Historically, this approach to political participation has held a narrow definition and understanding of political participation, which has two main features. First, it concentrates on a limited range of forms of political participation, which are primarily conventional and individualised, such as voting, election activity and political party and interest group membership. Only a minority of these forms are unconventional, for example, involvement in protest actions (Norris, 2002). Second, it emphasises citizen attempts to influence officials. As such, it operates with a narrow ‘arena’ definition of politics, which focuses on formal political institutions and neglects ‘process’ definitions, which are concerned ‘with the (uneven) distribution of power, wealth and resources’ (Hay, 2007, p. 73) which may occur in a range of institutional and social environments (Leftwich, 2004). Putnam’s famous book Bowling Alone (2000) provides a good example of the literature’s explanation of the decline thesis in political participation. He argues that, since the post-­war period, there has been a significant decline in political participation. This decline has led to disengagement with politics and disenchantment with political processes. Putnam’s view is that weaker civic engagement will lead to a weaker, and less effective and responsive, government. While Putnam’s empirical analysis of declining levels of political engagement is important, I would argue that he employs a narrow definition of politics, focusing exclusively on

22   Part I c­ onventional forms of political participation. As in much of this literature, individuals are held responsible for their disengagement with the state and there is a neglect of new and alternative forms of political participation as valid forms of political behaviour. Stoker’s passionate plea for a re-­engagement with politics in Why Politics Matters (2006) is again typical of this approach to political participation. Stoker assumes widespread disengagement with politics, laments a decline in formal political engagement and is disparaging about new forms of political engagement. For example, while Norris (2002) describe signing petitions as a novel and important form of political participation, Stoker sees it as market-­based consumerism: ‘what counts as politics for most people is not much more than an extension of their activities as a consumer’ (2006, p. 10). Given this view, it is clear that Stoker identifies individuals as being responsible for declining levels of political participation. Indeed, Stoker’s solution to the problem of disengagement is to argue that people should be more self-­critical and reflective about their approach to politics and be more committed to formal politics and political institutions. At the political level, he argues for the importance of reforming wider political institutions and of a wider civic culture to enable people to engage in politics more effectively, without needing them to become ‘model citizens’. In contrast, Hay (2007) disputes the thesis that there is a rising tide of apathy in Western democracies and shows that a significant proportion of those that have withdrawn from formal politics are engaged in other modes of legitimate political activity. He defends a broader and more inclusive conception of the political that is far less formal, less state-­centric and less narrowly governmental than in most conventional accounts. However, he also accepts that there has been a rejection of traditional politics by many people and that this stems from their distrust of politicians and of the political process.  Interestingly, unlike much of the mainstream participation literature which lays the blame for declining political participation at the hands of a non-­voting electorate, Hay (2007) holds politicians, economists and the political and economic system accountable. He identifies an increase in the number of policy areas where politicians have abdicated responsibility, whether through choice or force of circumstance. Hay’s main explanation for declining levels of political participation suggests that a process of ‘depoliticisation’ has occurred, which is a consequence of the dominance of a neo-­liberal ideology that values market-­ based decision-­making over democratic solutions involving an active and participating electorate. Arguably Hay, provides a more balanced critique of the current situation in political participation. However, an argument that still emphasises the growth of widespread depoliticisation is, despite its protests, still firmly rooted on an arena- and state-­focused approach to political participation. Once we broader our definition, it becomes clearer that, while participation is changing, this does not necessarily imply a crisis of participation itself as advocated by the decline thesis.

Political participation: the debate so far   23

Putting the politics into political participation Before we can proceed, it is worth clarifying my understanding of the ‘political’, particularly given that a common criticism is that some of the literature discussed above operates with a narrow definition of the ‘political’ (Marsh, O’Toole and Jones, 2007). In discussing ‘politics’, the most common distinction is between arena and process definitions (Leftwich, 2004, p. 3). Arena definitions see politics as occurring within certain, limited ‘arenas’: historically, Parliament, the executive, the public service, political parties, interest groups, elections and so on (Leftwich, 2004, p. 3; Hay, 2007). More recently, Norris’s (2002) work has broadened the focus of ‘arena’ politics significantly to consider arenas previously seen as non-­ political. However, Norris (2002), whose work has been important because it emphasises the extent to which contemporary political participation involves new agencies, repertoires and targets, still focuses upon the impact of action on the formal political arenas. For her, social movements are ‘involved’ in politics because they combine ‘traditional acts such as voting and lobbying with a variety of alternative modes, such as internet networking, street protest, consumer boycotts and direct action’ (Norris, 2002, pp.  190–1). In contrast, she argues that many activities, which are often termed ‘lifestyle politics’ such as helping at women’s shelters or raising funds for voluntary organisations, are important socially and economically, but are not ‘political’. In my view, and following Bang (2005, 2009) and others, this is a mistake and we need a broader understanding of politics. At the same time, process definitions of politics are too loose (Leftwich, 2004, p.  3), with politics seen as occurring in all organisations and contexts, and thus wherever people interact. This presents a major boundary problem, given that if everything is political, then the term loses any definite focus. If we return to Norris’ example, a women’s shelter may not be in and of itself ‘political’, in Norris’ sense, because the individual acting is not attempting to change policy. However, it may be what Rowe (2015, 2017) terms a ‘proto-­political action’, so that in a particular context, given a particular stimulus, it may develop into an action within the political arena. One way forward, as Rowe (2015, 2017) suggests, is to think in terms of a continuum between ‘non-­political’ actions in the broader social arena and actions in the specifically political arena. Here, proto-­political actions are located at various points towards the centre of the continuum. They can sometimes be social, in this case involving providing shelter and care for abused women, but will become political if, and when, those involved attempt to change legislation, judicial attitudes or police behaviour. The idea of a proto-­political action is a potentially important concept because it can help to bridge the dualism inherent in the extant literature on political participation. The interaction between politics inside and outside the political arena is an interactive one; we are thus dealing with a duality, not a dualism. Citizens do not

24   Part I engage in a mutually exclusive way either in the political arena or outside that arena – which some of the extant literature would see as non-­political. As such, and this is a point I return to below, arena actors and scholars working on political participation can no longer dismiss much online activity as ‘clicktivism’, or ‘slacktivism’, that is as not being significant political activity, because so many people are acting in this way, are doing it together and, in some instances, moving from such activity into the political arena (Halupka, 2014, 2016). My understanding of the nature of the ‘political’ has three crucial features. First, normatively, it gives more agency to citizens, who increasingly have the capacity to develop and use different actions to bring the views of their ‘political’ community, often perhaps a ‘thin’, rather than a ‘thick’, community, into the public sphere. Second, I emphasise that ‘political’ activity can, and does, occur outside the political arena. Here, I argue that it is important to step away from Laswell’s (1936) classic view of politics as involving ‘who gets what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’, because like Rowe (2015), I acknowledge that politics is involved in the development of awareness as the precursor to action. Given this, it is useful to think of a proto-­political sphere in which there is activity which would be seen as social, although collective, but which, under certain circumstances, can become engaged in the political arena. I would suggest that this is a common feature of the contemporary world. Third, and following from the last point, I suggest that it is these interactions on the boundaries of the political that are crucial when we are examining contemporary forms of political behaviour.

What’s new? There has been an increasing recognition in the literature that there have been important changes in the types of political action in which individuals are engaging, the reasons for their actions and the outcomes of these actions. Building on her work earlier work on the rise of critical citizens and dissatisfied democrats, Norris (2002), in particular, provides a helpful conceptual framework for understanding these changes (see also Norris, 1999, 2011). She argues that the literature on this issue has diversified in terms of acknowledging that there have been distinct changes in the ‘agencies’ (the collective organisations through which people mobilise for the political), the ‘repertoires’ (the ways in which people choose to express themselves politically) and the ‘targets’ (the actors towards whom participants are attempting to direct their action). But we can and must go further than Norris. Here, I examine some of the key distinctions in this literature, preparing the ground for the analysis that follows in subsequent chapters. Duty norms and engagement norms Dalton (2008) argues that citizenship norms shape political behaviour, and identifies a shift from a duty-­based citizenship to a more engaged citizenship. Duty norms encourage people to participate as a civic duty in activities such as voting or reporting a crime. Conversely, engaged citizenship involves an expressive,

Political participation: the debate so far   25 participatory emphasis on individualised and direct forms of action. The engaged citizen is willing to act on her principles, be politically independent and address social needs. More broadly, Bang (2009) argues that this shift to engagement norms means that individuals’ political participation reflects their ‘project identities’, rather than ‘legitimating’ or ‘oppositional’ identities. Where Bang focused on project identities and personal projects, Bennett and Segerberg (2012) offer us the notion of ‘personal action frames’. The idea here is that citizens are increasingly focused upon their personal projects, such as commitment to combating climate change or to addressing gender inequalities, which do not necessarily align with broader political commitments, be they orientated toward political parties or government. Such changes have implications for how we understand political engagement and disengagement. The contemporary political climate is one where individuals do not necessarily identify themselves in relation to political authorities as either supportive of them or in opposition to them, though they may support or oppose these political authorities in relation to any particular political project they are pursuing. Once again, these distinctions between duty norms and engagement norms and between project identities and legitimating or oppositional identities may be too stark. It is quite possible to posit that people may vote largely out of a sense of duty, but engage in other political actions which reflect their personal action frames. Collective and connective action The dualism between collective and connective action highlighted by Bennett and Segerberg (2012) and that between arena and process definitions of politics discussed above is clearly linked. Indeed, many authors see politics as involving collective action. For example, Stoker (2006; also Hay, 2007) views thick collective capacity as necessary for responsive, effective and accountable democratic government. In this view, politics is a collective enterprise involving the development of strong, thick, deliberative ties between citizens. Bennett and Segerberg’s (2012) theory of ‘connective action’ takes issue with this focus on collective action. In their view, the growth of digital technologies means that connective action has replaced collective action as the main way in which the young particularly engage in politics. For them, individuals have ‘personal action frames’ and become involved in specific projects that interest them, or impact them directly; here we can see synergies with Henrik Bang’s work (2009, 2011), which is discussed below. From this perspective, contemporary political participation is not individualised, but rather personalised. Here it is also important to draw a distinction between personalisation and individualism. Personalisation is not individualism, because the personal project may be geared towards collective action and shared ideals, such as preserving the environment or creating community, whereas individualism makes the well-­being of the individual the ultimate goal (Castells, 2012). Similarly, in Bennett and Segerberg’s (2012) view, communication, and

26   Part I the means of communication, can lead to the development of organisational structures, allowing for the development of personalised connective action frames. Digitalised technology then results in loosely interconnected, interpersonal networks which create outcomes that ‘resemble collective action, yet without the same role played by formal organisations or the need for exclusive, collective action framings’ (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012, p. 35). While connective action involves a community, it is not based on the strong, face-­to-face interaction associated with collective organisations. For Bennett and Segerberg, such personalised action frames and project identities result in forms of citizen engagement which reflect a decoupling of individuals from political authorities and institutions which traditionally encouraged social and political aggregation. Consequently, what develops is a ‘thin community’: connections are virtual, not face-­to-face, and driven by common concerns and engagement norms, rather than by ideology and duty norms. In my view, it seems of limited utility to see connective and collective action as dualisms for at least two reasons. First, as Bennett and Segerberg (2012) themselves acknowledge, connective action has a collective dimension; such action, often if not usually, involves a thin community in which individuals exchange information. Second, this connective action often results in collective action in both the virtual realm (Halupka, 2014, 2016), but also in the formal political arena (Vromen and Coleman, 2011, 2013). Consequently, it is important to recognise both that connective action can become collective action and that collective action often utilises online repertoires. This problem is acknowledged by arguments that the distinction between online and offline activity is an inadequate, and often false, one (Norris, 2001; Oates et al., 2006; Gibson and Cantijoch, 2013). However, it is important to go further and acknowledge that, while connective action is online and often involves fairly loose communities, there is always the strong possibility that such connective action will generate collective action which aims to influence government policy in the formal political arena (Tormey and Feenstra, 2015).

Henrik Bang: the rise of the everyday maker The concept for which Bang is best known is the ‘everyday maker’ (EM), and I briefly explain the context and key features of the EM, before considering the question of whether we can identify EMs. Bang’s work on EMs is widely cited (see Rowe, 2015 for a fairly recent list) and he has made a significant contribution to the debate on political participation and alternative forms of participation (2009, 2011). It is worth exploring his conception of the EM in more detail, as it provides a useful framework through which to understand and explore new forms of political participation. The crux of Bang’s argument is that since the nature of politics, and thus political participation, is changing, new forms of participation need to be acknowledged. Bang contends that, while there have been some developments in the literature on political participation, much of it still suffers from a commitment

Political participation: the debate so far   27 to state-­centric politics and continues to neglect, and indeed deny, alternative forms of politics as being legitimate and important. This results from a limited definition of the political and an enduring commitment to a state-­centric model of political participation, which focuses almost solely on participation through conventional means. Like Dalton, Bang explains the changes in political participation in late modernity in terms of a shift from duty norms to engagement norms (Bang, 2011). This norm change corresponds with a concomitant move away from the traditional dichotomy between legitimating and oppositional norms, which has a strong basis in democratic theory and has been the dominant paradigm in the political participation literature. For Bang, in a period of Late Modernity, political exclusion is the main problem facing politics today. Political exclusion, he suggests, leads to an uncoupling of political authorities from ordinary citizens – where there is a gap between citizens and the state (2009, 2011). One of Bang’s key contributions to the political participation literature is his contention that participation today is characterised by project politics and project identities, which means that individuals put concerns for ‘immediate and prudent action’ (Bang, 2009) above worries about decision-­making. Introducing the everyday maker It is Bang’s classification of everyday makers (EMs) that offers one of the most important recent contributions to the political participation literature, which it fundamentally challenges (Bang and Sørensen, 2001; Bang, 2005, 2009, 2011, 2016). Bang introduces the EM as new types of citizen who engage in political participation in late modernity.2 For Bang, the key focus for the EM is to act in an everyday way, to act locally, although they may also think globally, and to act because it matters to them. EMs do not feel defined by the state; they are neither apathetic about it, nor opposed to it. The boundaries between their politics and lifestyle may not be clear, as EMs do not make a distinction between participating to feel engaged and to develop oneself and participating for specific causes. EMs are governed by a project identity: whether they engage in protests, collaborate in public, private or state and civil society partnerships, make alliances with the media, or do voluntary work in their neighbourhoods, EMs repeatedly engage in concrete projects. EMs can be pro-­system, anti-­system or both in different contexts, as this flexibility helps their causes and enables them to pursue their own projects. They adopt oppositional or legitimating identities only if it is functional to developing their project and to meeting specific life plans or policies. For Bang, the EMs have several key mantras: • •

Do it yourself Do it where you are

28   Part I • • • • •

Do it for fun, but also because you find it necessary Do it ad hoc or part time Do it concretely, instead of ideologically Do it self-­confidently and show trust in yourself Do it with the system if need be (Bang, 2009, p. 132)

To date there has only been one attempt to identify and analyse EMs quantitatively. Li and Marsh (2008) used the UK 2001 Home Office Citizenship Survey data to establish the number and characteristics of the EMs. They acknowledge that their data has major limitations, because they do not have attitudinal data and so cannot establish whether individuals’ actions are non-­ideological or whether they participate for fun, two characteristics of EMs. Despite these limitations, their results are interesting and they identify 37.3 per cent of participants as EMs. Unsurprisingly, Li and Marsh also found two further categories of political participants, political activists and non-­participants. There have been a number of qualitative attempts to identify EMs; they also suggest, however, that there is room for refinement of the concept (Hendriks and Tops, 2005; Blakeley and Evans, 2009). For example, Marsh, O’Toole and Jones (2007) found evidence of EMs in a qualitative study of young people and politics in the UK. Few of their respondents were involved or even interested in formal politics, but some became involved in local issues which concerned them; in Bang’s terms their activity was local, ad-­hoc and non-­ideological. Li and Marsh argue that more work needs to be done to refine Bang’s characterisation of alternative forms of political participation and examine how citizens’ activities relate to the porous boundary between traditional and new forms of political participation (also see Rowe 2015). In a similar vein, Marsh and Vromen (2013) argue more broadly that it is important to recognise that there are many participating citizens who demonstrate some, but not all, of the characteristics of EMs, and there is a need to distinguish between different types of EMs, or alternatively to recognise that we need more categories. Clearly, to the extent that Bang has identified new forms and modes of political participation, this has consequences for both the practice and recognition of citizen engagement and, more broadly, the future of politics and democracy. Overall, I would argue that the concept of the EM is one of the most interesting developments in recent conceptual work on political participation, and others share this view (McFarland and Michelleti, 2011; Furlong and Cartmel, 2012; Rowe, 2015). However, I would argue there is a need for further detailed empirical exploration of the EM, which will enable us to come to a clearer understanding of the role and activity of EMs.

Conclusion This chapter has questioned the view that the dominant trend in political participation is that of decline. While recognising that some conventional forms of

Political participation: the debate so far   29 political participation, such as voting, have declined, I have argued instead that political participation is evolving, but in a way that some of the participation literature seems unable or unwilling to recognise, since much of it is committed to a paradigm that only accepts conventional forms of participation as legitimate. Crucially, as has been shown, the question of how we define ‘the political’ is central to this debate. Scholarly focus on political participation must move beyond an exclusive focus on arena definitions of politics, which are concerned with the state and formal institutions and processes. Instead, I argue in favour of greater recognition of process definition of politics which are concerned ‘with the (uneven) distribution of power, wealth and resources’ (Hay, 2007, p.  73). This has two related implications: first, greater acknowledgment that politics occurs in a range of institutional and social environments and, second, that we should be concerned with how and when these sites overlap. To this end, I argue that it is useful to think in terms of a proto-­political sphere in which there is activity that would be seen as social, but which, under certain circumstances, can become engaged in the political arena. Following on from the last point, I suggest that it is these interactions on the boundaries of the social and political which are crucial when we are examining contemporary forms of political behaviour. This chapter has also been concerned with identifying and discussing some of the distinctions which help to navigate the terrain of contemporary forms of political participation. I highlight Dalton’s important work on the shift from duty to engagement norms, as well as cautioning against overly rigid dualisms between connective and collective action. Following Bang, I highlight, much more than Stoker or Hay, the importance of alternative forms of political participation, suggesting that Bang’s concept of the everyday makers offers us a useful framework from which to explore, document and understand the contemporary political climate. This now clears the way for the following chapter, which discusses the difference that a concept of agency makes, something which has not been addressed to date in the political participation literature and offers a way to shed further light on political engagement today.

Notes 1 The 2017 General Election marked a change in this pattern with 64 per cent of registered voters aged 18–24 casting their vote, which is close to the highest share since 67 per cent voted in 1992 (see The Electoral Commission 2018).  2 Bang also introduces a notion of the Expert Citizen (EC); this is someone who uses their expert knowledge and understanding of traditional political processes to influence outcomes. As such, ECs may be new professionals, particularly in voluntary organisations. They build networks of negotiation and co-­operation with politicians, administrators, interest groups and the media; in the process of so doing, they develop ‘network consciousness’.

30   Part I

Bibliography Almond, G. A. and Verba, S. (1963). The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bang, H. and Sørensen, E. (2001). The Everyday Maker: A New Challenge to Democratic Governance. Administrative Theory & Praxis. 21(3), pp. 225–342. Bang, H. (2005). Among Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens. Remaking Governance: Peoples, Politics and the Public Sphere. In: J. Newman (Ed.) Remaking Governance: Peoples, Politics and the Public Sphere (pp. 159–79). Bristol: Policy Press. Bang, H. P. (2009). ‘Yes We Can’: Identity Politics and Project Politics for a Late-­ modern World. Urban Research & Practice. 2(2), pp. 117–37. Bang, H. P. (2011). The Politics of Threat: Late-­Modern Politics in the Shadow of Neo-­ Liberalism. Critical Policy Studies. 5(4), pp. 434–48. Bang, H. P. (2016). Interactive governance: a challenge to institutionalism. In: J. Edelenbos (Ed.), Critical Reflections on Interactive Governance (pp.  66–93). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Bennett, L. W and Segerberg, A. (2012). The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics. Information, Communication & Society. 15(5), pp. 739–68. Blakeley, G. and Evans, B. (2009). Who Participates, How and Why in Urban Regeneration Projects? The Case of the New ‘City’ of East Manchester. Social Policy & Administration. 43(1), pp. 15–32. Castells, M. (2012). Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd edn). London: Polity. Dalton, R. J. (2008). Citizenship Norms and the Expansion of Political Participation. Political Studies. 56, pp. 76–98. Driver, S. (2011). Understanding British Party Politics. Cambridge: Polity. Dunleavy, P., Park, A., Taylor, R. (2018). The UK’s Changing Demecrocy: The 2018 Democratic Audit. London: LSE Press. DOI:https://doi.org/10.31389/book1 The Electoral Commission (2018). ‘Voting in 2017. Understanding Public Attitudes Towards Elections and Voting’. Report available from: www.electoralcommission.org. uk, accessed 2018. Fieldhouse, E., Tranmer, M. and Russel, A. (2007). Something About Young People or Something About Elections? Electoral Participation of Young People in Europe: Evidence From a Multilevel Analysis of the European Social Survey. European Journal of Political Research. 46, pp. 797–822. Flinders, M. (2012). Defending Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Furlong, A., and Cartmel, F. (2012). Social Change and Political Engagement among Young People: Generation and the 2009/2010 British Election Survey. Parliamentary Affairs. 65(1), pp. 13–28. Gibson, R., and Cantijoch, M. (2013). Conceptualising and Measuring Participation in the Age of the Internet: Is Online Political Engagement Really Different to Offline? The Journal of Politics. 75(3), pp. 701–16. Halupka, M. (2014). Clicktivism: A Systematic Heuristic. Policy and Internet, 6, pp. 115–32. Halupka, M. (2016). The Rise of Information Activism: How to Bridge Dualisms and Reconceptualise Political Participation. Information, Communication, and Society. 19(10), pp. 1487–503. Hay, C. (2007). Why We Hate Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Political participation: the debate so far   31 Hendriks, F. and Tops, P. (2005). Everyday Fixers as Local Heroes: A Case Study of Vital Interaction in Urban Governance. Local Government Studies. 31(4), pp. 475–90. Henn, M., Weinstein, M. A and Wring, D. (2002). A Generation Apart? Youth and Political Participation in Britain. British Journal of Politics and International Studies. 4(2), pp. 167–92. Karpf, D. (2010). Online Political Mobilization from the Advocacy Group’s Perspective. Looking Beyond Clicktivism. Policy and Internet. 2(4), pp. 7–41. Laswell, H. (1936). Who Gets What, When, How. New York: Whittlesey House. Leftwich, P. (Ed.) (2004). What is Politics: The Activity and its Study. Cambridge: Polity Press. Li, Y. and Marsh, D. (2008). New Forms of Political Participation: Searching for Expert Citizens and Everyday Makers. British Journal of Political Science. 38, pp. 247–72. McFarland, M. and Michelleti, A. (2011). Creative Participation: Responsibility-­Taking in the Political World.Boulder, CO: Paradigm Printers. Macedo, S., Alex-­Assensoh, Y., Berry, J. M., Brintnall, M., Campbell, D. E., Fraga, L. R., Fung, A., Galston,W. A., Karpowitz, C. F., Levi, M., Levinson, M., Lipsitz, K., Niemi, R. G., Putnam, R. D., Rahn, W. M., Reeves, K., Reich, R., Rodgers, R. R., Swanstrom, T. and Cramer Walsh, K. C. 2005). Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Marsh, D. and Vromen, A. (2012). Deconstructing Everyday Makers: Beyond Mainstream Approaches to Political Participation. Australian Political Science Association Conference, 24–26 September 2012, Hobart. Marsh, D., O’Toole, T. and Jones, S. (2007). Young People and Politics in the UK. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Norris, P. (1999). Critical Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, P. (2001). Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press. Norris, P. (2002). Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, P. (2011). Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Re-­visited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oates, S., Owen, D. and Gibson, R. K. (Eds) (2006). The Internet and Politics: Citizens, Voters and Activists. London: Routledge. Pattie, C., Seyd, P. and Whitely, P. (2004). Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of Amer­ican Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Rowe, P (2015). MamaBakers as Everyday Makers: The Political is Personal. Policy Studies. 36(6), pp. 623–39. Rowe, P. (2017). The Everyday Politics of Parenting: A Case Sstudy of MamaBake. Journal of Information Technology & Politics. 15(1), pp. 34–49. Stoker, G. (2006). Why Politics Matters: Making Democracy Work. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Tormey, S. and Feenstra, R. A. (2015). Reinventing the Political Party in Spain: The Case of 15M and the Spanish Mobilisations. Policy Studies. 36(6), pp. 590–606. Van Beizen, I., Mair, P. and Poguntke, T. (2011). Going, Going, … Gone? The Decline of Party Membership in Contemporary Europe. European Journal of Political Research. 51(1).

32   Part I Vromen, A. and Coleman, W. (2011). Online Movement Mobilisation and Electoral Politics. The Case of GetUp! Communication, Politics and Culture. 44(2), pp. 76–94. Vromen, A. and Coleman, W. (2013). Online Campaigning Organisations and Storytelling Strategies: GetUp! in Australia. Policy and Internet. 5(1), pp. 76–100. Whiteley, P. F. (2010). Is the Party Over? The Decline of Party Activism and Membership Across the Democratic World. Party Politics. Vol. 17(1).

2 Agency and political participation

Introduction A concept of agency underlines all conceptions of human behaviour in the social sciences: it is the skeleton upon which we hang our theories and explanations regarding social and political behaviour. Yet all too often this underpinning concept of agency is neglected, or shortcuts are taken for normative reasons or because it is epistemologically convenient to do so. This neglect has culminated in a tendency for concepts of agency to remain implicit rather than explicit. More typical is the tendency to see a focus on particular characteristics of agency, such as the turn to emotion (Hochschild, 1979; Holmes, 2010; Burkitt, 2014) and even particular emotions such as affinity (Manning and Holmes, 2014) or to the embodied nature of human behaviour (Shilling, 1997). What such manoeuvres should remind us of is that isolated features are fragments of agency, but in order to engage in social and political analysis we need greater clarity about what we mean by agency. Specifically, we need a better understanding of how specific features of agency interact in relation to each other, and second, how agency is informed by and in turn informs the world around it. Part of the challenge of conceptualising agency – the task of the present book – is that the concept of agency we develop must bear resemblance to human life because the validity of our conception of agency is something that we can all relate to. In this book, I argue that we neglect agency at our peril, because the concept of agency we invoke inevitably informs the accounts and understanding of human behaviour that we develop when explaining and understanding social and political phenomena. My focus in this book is on political behaviour, and how concepts of agency inform this as well as our broader understanding of what constitutes legitimate political behaviour.

Chapter outline One of the key themes of this book is that concepts of agency are unavoidable and they underline all conceptions of political behaviour, yet they can often be neglected or remain implicit. In this chapter I am concerned with exploring the

34   Part I extent to which accounts of contemporary modes of political behaviour are shaped by an underpinning concept of agency – and to what extent certain assumptions limit or shape those accounts. To this end, my goal here is to render explicit the concept of agency in a selection of examples from the literature on political participation: I begin with Hay (2002, 2007), before turning to Stoker (2006) and Norris (1999, 2011). My aim is to show that when political behaviour is discussed in this literature, the discussions of agency are partial and, in the case of Stoker and Hay, are dependent upon a language of rationality deriving from rational choice theory, or reflexive and choice-­dependent models of behaviour. Such models are problematic for a range of reasons, including not only the singular features of agency that they tend to focus upon, but also those which they neglect to consider. Subsequently, the chapter goes on to explore a range of alternative conceptions of agency to highlight the difference that a more detailed and explicit engagement with agency can make, particularly when agency is situated in relation to social structure. This, I suggest, necessitates a return to the theoretical literature on agency. I begin by critiquing Archer’s concept of agency and her focus on reflexivity, which is gaining increasing traction in the literature, but is, in my view, deeply problematic. Next, I turn to Giddens, showing how we have a much more complex and in-­depth conception of agency, but a limited conception of structure. I end with rational choice theory, arguing that while it has shaped and continues to provide a dominant frame for thinking about agency, it remains problematic for different reasons. A return to the foundational philosophical literature on agency as outlined above is, I suggest, a necessary step before we can proceed to Chapters 3 and 4, which focus on and discuss specific aspects of agency which have been neglected in the literature, namely the unconscious and the internal conversation. As will be shown, both the unconscious and the internal conversation advance our understanding of contemporary political behaviour, thus highlighting the interconnected relationship between theories of agency and political behaviour. It is important to add that addressing agency in toto is an exhaustive, perhaps unachievable task beyond the confines of this book, but I highlight aspects which are particularly relevant to understanding the contemporary political climate. Although the focus of this book is on agency, the chapter ends with a discussion of social structure, emphasising that agency cannot be understood without taking structure into account if we are to understand how actors navigate a socially structured socio-­political world. Accordingly, the two illustrative cases explored in part two of this book both illustrate (albeit differently) the importance of concepts of agency to political science, but also the necessity of conceptualising agency in relation to social structure. For example, as Chapter 6 highlights, the actions of the rioter in the riot make little sense unless we take the structural deprivation that characterises rioters’ lives and, in many cases, limits opportunities, into account.

Agency and political participation   35

Conceptions of agency in the political participation literature Hay: the distinction between social and political action Hay’s (2007) work on distinguishing the relationship between social and political action represents a useful place to commence our discussion. Hay recognises that there have been significant shifts in how people engage in politics today and he is sympathetic to the need to operate with a broader definition of politics which recognises the role of formal politics, but also acknowledges that politics can occur in different contexts and takes varying forms. Hay is in favour of a differentiated, yet inclusive definition of politics, but suggests the need to proceed with caution and is against ‘conceptual stretching’ or the tendency to make one’s definition of politics so broad as to become meaningless. To specify the domain of the political, Hay (2007, pp.  65–70) distinguishes between ‘social’ and ‘political’ action, arguing that the latter has four features: choice, so politics can only occur in situations of choice; a capacity for agency, so politics only occurs in situations where actors can make a difference; deliberation, so choice and agency on their own are not enough – actors must have the capacity to identify and discuss the issues at stake; and social interaction, so politics only occurs in situations which involve either collective choice or collective consequences. If one adopts Hay’s definition, then all political action must involve a choice, must be geared towards action, must be deliberative, and collective. While these four features may be present in some forms of political activity, it seems unlikely that all four will or should feature in all political activity, especially the newer forms of political engagement. For example, let us consider the case of consumer boycotting, a phenomenon which has significantly increased in recent years (Bryant and Goodman, 2004; Barnett et al., 2005; Stolle, Hooghe and Micheletti, 2005). Boycotting goods for ethical reasons may involve a choice to buy particular items and not others, but it is often an individualised activity and does not include deliberation. Similarly, abstaining from voting is an individualised action, which lacks deliberation and capacity for action (O’Toole et al., 2003a, 2003b). Notably, in both cases, the effects of actions may be collective, but certainly at the point of action this cannot be known. It is also worth pointing out that much online political mobilisation as featured on websites such as 38 Degrees and Get-­Up! is individualised, and does not include deliberation, nor social interaction. In this vein, there are clearly some activities which are crucial to study if we are concerned with political participation now and in the future, which would not fit with Hay’s definition of the political. We can go yet further, and take issue with Hay’s conceptualisation of the boundary between the social and the political, and argue that the boundary is more porous than Hay acknowledges. For example, some social issues such as protesting against housing cuts may start as social, but may become political at a later point if, and when, those involved attempt to change legislation, judicial attitudes or police behaviour. Again, the boundary between the social and political is not as

36   Part I stark as Hay’s definition suggests. To cover such activities, as Rowe (2015, 2017) suggests, it may be useful to posit a continuum between ‘non-­political’ actions in the broad social arena and actions in the political arena. Here, proto-­political actions are at a mid-­point. Beneath the conception of Hay’s political actor, it is possible to discern a broader conception of agency. Clearly, agency for Hay is defined in terms of choice-­making and action. Indeed, if we return to Hay’s earlier work (Hay, 2002), we see that for him agency refers to intentional and conscious action – or the ‘ability or capacity of an actor to act consciously and in so doing, to attempt to realise his or her intentions’ (2002, p.  94). Hay also highlights the role of reflexivity (ability to monitor consciously and to reflect on consequences of previous action), rationality (capacity of the actor to select modes of conduct best likely to realise a given set of preferences) and motivation (desire or passion with which an actor approaches the attempt to realise a particular intention or preference) as central features of agency (2002, p. 95). Hay’s aim in this theorisation of agency is to emphasise the free will, autonomy and choice available to agents, and while I do not dispute these features of agency, I would argue that this is a partial definition of agency – one which emphasises instrumental and intentional action above all else. Indeed, despite Hay’s work on the many shortcomings of rational choice theory, his conception of agency continues to emphasise choice, rationality and preferences (Hay, 2004). Stoker and rational choice theory For Stoker (2006), democratic politics is in trouble because of the spread of market-­based consumerism and individualism, which has led to the lionisation of citizens’ roles as active choosers and, which, in turn, leaves the government struggling to deliver against this ideal. Democracy, from this perspective, is a tough and complex process which requires collective decision-­making. The final decision is not necessarily the one of the citizen’s choice and yet they are expected to follow it. Stoker argues that the discontent of modern politics is because the discourse and practice of collective decision making sits very uncomfortably alongside the discourse and practice of individual choice, self-­ expression and in his view, an increasingly market-­based approach to politics. As a result, in Stoker’s view, too many citizens fail to appreciate the inherent contradictions and limitations of the political process in a democratic setting. Stoker’s pessimism about alternative and newer forms of political engagement is captured well in the comment below: People make an input, identifying what they want, but they not engage in a wider analysis of the issues. The growth of boycotting, complaints and other forms of activism appears to have a ‘consumer’ feel and activism could be in danger of becoming more of a lifestyle statement than a serious engagement. (2006, p. 88)

Agency and political participation   37 The distrust of actors’ motivations for engaging in alternative political behaviour is not unrelated to the adoption and normalisation of rational choice theory (RCT) as the dominant model of explanation in political science. RCT presents individuals, be they government or citizens, as utility-­maximisers who engage in cost-­benefit analysis in order to maximise self-­interest, which is their overriding goal. As a result, the literature informed by RCT is deeply pessimistic about the capacity for collective action, believing that self-­serving and selfish motivations of those engaged will undermine any good intentions or ideals. Interestingly, Stoker is critical of RCT and its narrow assumption of self-­ interest. He recognises that self-­interest is not the sole motivational factor in politics, stating: When they engage in politics, motivations other than self-­interest can and frequently do come to the fore. People can see norms not as sanctions but as commitments that reflect a way of understanding life. Action for individuals is not based on a weighing of costs and benefits but rather on their commitments (their beliefs and values) which often lead them to pursue a course of action and feel that they could not act in any another way. (Stoker, 2006, p. 124) Stoker’s comments here are instructive precisely because, despite his criticism of RCT, he continues to rely on a conception of agency which maps effectively onto the RCT model. So, while he identifies ‘commitments’ as well as ‘beliefs and values’ as relevant motivations which affect action, his discussion of contemporary political action rests on a notion of individualised and self-­interested actors. Moreover, his discussion of agency exists at a generalised level, as if concepts such as beliefs, values and commitments are not also complex and deserve detailed discussion. It is precisely such concepts which help us to better understand and explain why people want deeper and more meaningful engagement from their politics – something which requires that we move beyond focusing on choices and actions, and instead involves detailed consideration of how people make sense of their political activity in relation to the world around them. Norris: critical citizens The narrative of the rise of critical citizens represents another side to this debate in offering a cautiously optimistic reading of the contemporary political landscape (Norris, 1999, 2011; Dalton and Welzel, 2014). According to Norris (1999, 2011) citizens today are not dissatisfied by the principles associated with democracy, but experience a gap between their aspirations for democracy and its supply, which Norris terms the ‘democratic deficit’. But what is a critical citizen – and what is its underlying conception of agency? Does critical refer to a ‘disposition’ in the Bourdieusian sense, so

38   Part I meaning a type of attitude to democracy (Bourdieu, 1977), or does it describe a type of evaluative behaviour? Let us explore this further by looking at Norris’ discussion and definition of critical citizens. In debates about democracy, citizens are variously described as losing trust or confidence in governments and they are seen to be increasingly sceptical or cynical. According to Norris (2011), concepts such as trust are far from simple and often imply normative judgements where trust is a desirable quality while scepticism is regarded negatively. However, blind trust in leaders can be dangerous for democracy and a certain amount of scepticism about politicians and the political process may produce ‘the most rational and suitable response’ (Norris, 2011, p. 20). It is in this context that Norris develops her understanding of the critical citizen from Easton’s ‘system support’ model (1965). The idea of system support refers to citizens’ orientations towards the nation state, its agencies and actors. Where orientations are positive, citizens accept the state and the legitimacy of the state to govern, and where they are negative they challenge its legitimacy and practice. System support is understood as a psychological orientation, but psychological orientations are complex phenomena, and Norris argues that there is a tendency in the literature to draw a simple link between psychological orientations with political behaviour: But it is often deeply problematic, indeed foolhardy, to infer psychological orientations from behaviour; citizens may be acting from many complex motives, such as voting out of fear of reprisal or legal sanctions, habit, or a sense of duty, without necessarily supporting the regime. (Norris, 2011, p. 20) As Norris maintains, citizens’ attitudes towards the nation-­state, its agencies and actors (system support) need disentangling. Norris’ approach to critical citizens draws on Almond and Verba’s (1963) classic study to focus on cognitive orientations (knowledge and beliefs about the political system), affective orientations (feelings about the political system), and evaluative orientations (judgements and opinions, which include values, information and feelings). Such a perspective is, in her view, an improvement on the existing literature because it combines affective and evaluative perspectives, thus providing a more intricate picture of the various components at play in political orientations. Norris’ discussion of critical citizens is helpful in articulating the multiple factors involved in understanding system support, or lack of it. Yet, we might also say that it remains partial because it does not engage in a more detailed investigation of what agency is and is not. For example, in the tradition of Almond and Verba (1963) and Easton (1965), Norris is keen to emphasise the role of psychological orientations in determining political orientations, but it is not clear how cognitive orientations relate to affective feelings or values: is there overlap between these various features, and how might we understand their

Agency and political participation   39 interplay? Also, what is the relationship between conscious and unconscious cognitive processes? Notably Norris includes discussion of the role of habit in affecting political behaviour, yet arguably habit is often, but not always, an unconscious action achieved with minimal cognitive involvement (Camic, 1986). A further crucial, but unanswered, question here is what does the ‘critical’ in critical citizen refer to? Is there a relationship between critical and reflexive attitudes and behaviour in the critical citizen? Reflexivity has been a dominant theme in the literature on agency (Archer, 2000a, 2007, 2010a, 2010b, 2012), but is not engaged with here. My overall point is that the literature on critical citizens would benefit from a more detailed engagement with theorisations of agency, seeing as Norris’ discussion involves describing how attitudes and orientations relate to political action. Taken together, the discussions of Hay, Stoker and Norris’ conceptions of political action and behaviour reveal two issues: first, that concepts of agency are often implicit in our discussions of political behaviour, yet they feature in an ad hoc and partial way and lack a more systematic approach. Norris perhaps provides the most detailed discussion of agency, but restricts her analysis to orientations and attitudes. Second, in my view, making agency explicit will enrich our accounts of political behaviour because it enables us to engage with our underlying assumptions about the capacity and limits of actors. Moving on, the chapter now turns its focus to the theoretical literature on agency – and agency in relation to structure to explore the difference that a more detailed discussion of agency can make in debates about political participation.

Agency and structure To what extent are actors free to choose courses of political action? How do class, religion, resources or the culture and traditions of a particular society affect political behaviour? Is there a link between actors and the contexts within which they operate – and how might we conceptualise this link? These are some of the questions that this book is concerned with. These are not abstract theoretical questions, but ones which directly inform empirical work. Before we can address empirical questions, we must be clear about the theoretical presuppositions which necessarily inform our answers to real world problems because, as the case of rioting discussed in Chapter 6 illustrates, they will help us to see political action where otherwise we see none. While this book is primarily concerned with agency, a focus on agency without reference to its relationship to social structure would be short-­sighted. Understanding the precise relationship between individuals and society, or structure and agency, is one of the core issues of concern to the social sciences. Social theory, since its emergence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and according to its various theoretical approaches, has attempted to theorise structure and agency in various ways. This discussion has come to be known as the structure and agency debate. Discussion of the

40   Part I relationship between structure and agency can be traced back to the founding fathers of sociology, and the social sciences more broadly; it was a central question for Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx. It is a reflection of the importance of this issue that it continues to be debated among more modern socio-­political theorists, in the work of Margaret Archer, Anthony Giddens, Colin Hay and Pierre Bourdieu. Thus, although our first port of call is Archer, I must first explore how the relationship between structure and agency has been historically understood and what it means to understand structure and agency as a dialectical relationship. A rejection of structure and agency as a dualism: towards a dialectic In its theorisation of structure and agency, social theory has traditionally characterised the relationship between these concepts in terms of a dualism. A dualism is best understood as any doctrine in which the fundamental forms of things, substances, or reality are of two contrasting types, without any possibility of one being reduced to the other (Archer, 2000a, p. 166). A dualistic approach emphasises structure or agents, but not both. An intentionalist or agent-­centred approach would highlight the role of actors in orchestrating their lives. Rational choice theory is a good example of such an approach given its emphasis on actors as utility-­maximising decision-­makers. In contrast, a structuralist position makes agents the bearers of structures and, thus, according to some, denies agents power. Much of the more recent literature on the issue of structure and agency has rejected dualistic approaches to structure and agency and instead argues for a dialectical approach (Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1979, 1984, 1993; Archer, 1995, 2003; Hay, 2002). The dialectical approach is certainly more interesting and appealing than intentionalist and structuralist positions as it seeks to combine insights from both approaches without privileging either. Central to the dialectical approach is the idea that structure and agency are both implicated in understanding how society functions and, further, that structure and agency are independent, but related, entities, which come together to produce social outcomes. My focus in the remainder of this chapter is on dialectic approaches to structure and agency because they help us to think through the relationship between political actors and the contexts within which they operate. However, within dialectical approaches, we can and must go further than this to be clear about three central questions: what do we mean by agency; what do we mean by structure; and how do we understand the interplay between structure and agency? While there is now an emerging literature on the nature of interaction and, to a certain extent, on structure and agency as separate entities, there remains a significant gap in the literature on this topic. One of the core arguments of this book is that there is a disturbing neglect of the conceptualisation of concepts of agency within dialectical approaches and, in particular, a neglect of the unconscious as an aspect of agency. Consciousness, reflexivity and intentionality have been privileged in existing conceptions of agency, partly for normative reasons,

Agency and political participation   41 but also because it is epistemologically convenient to do so. This is a major flaw in the existing literature, as it means that dialectical approaches tend to privilege agency and in turn, deny structures autonomy and causal power, which is contrary to the principles required for a dialectical approach. The key problem then with the existing literature on dialectical approaches is that it omits or neglects discussion of the unconscious realm of agency. It is difficult to see how structure can have any independent causal power in interaction between structure and agency, so a dialectical relationship is difficult to maintain. Actors must, of course, be free and capable of exercising power over their own lives, but they do this in the broader context of structural constraints and enablements. For example, in the UK, it is hard to deny that neo-­liberalism or austerity as material and ideational structures shape the context within which many actors find themselves. Similarly, we know that sexism and racism negatively affect opportunities and life chances. To ignore the context within which agency operates is to advance an overly simplified and empowered concept of agency, which makes little sense given the heterodox linkages between social and political inequality which we see in society today. Archer, Hay, Giddens and Bourdieu, as advocates of the dialectical approach, agree about the general principles of a dialectical approach. However, there are many differences between them about the precise nature of this relationship and this is reflected in the alternative models of the relationship that the theorists put forward: Archer’s morphogenetic approach; Hay’s strategic relational approach; Giddens’ structuration theory; and Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. Within these approaches some attention has been paid to developing a concept of agency. As an example, Archer’s two books after Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (1995), Being Human: The Problem of Agency (2000a) and Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (2003), both focus specifically on developing a concept of agency within the morphogenetic approach. Certainly, there is recognition in the literature on dialectical conceptions of structure and agency that agents are important, that they are unique and complex, and that they deserve attention within analysis of the dialectic. Archer has sought to develop her concept of agency to overcome the notion of the ‘passive agent’ in society and has gone on to consider, in some detail, the composition of the personal and social life of the agent. Similarly, Giddens has maintained a deep interest in the concept of agency throughout his academic career and has pushed for ‘a theory of the human agent’ (1979, p.  49), who can be seen as operating ‘as a continuous flow of conduct’ (1979, p.  55). Indeed, Giddens’ approach to agency, as developed in structuration theory, emphasises that agents are the prime focus for an analysis of how structure and agency interact, to the extent that some of his critics argue that it is too agent-­centred, denying independence and autonomy to structures (Archer, 1995; Stones, 2001). Interrogating the precise nature of the structure and agency dialectic requires close attention to be paid to both structure and agency, that is, to both aspects of the dialectic. While this book mainly focuses on the neglect of the concept of

42   Part I agency and rectifying this, it is also important to provide a brief discussion of what social structure comprises and, crucially, how agency is informed by structure. In my focus on agency in this book, I seek to contribute to the broader literature on the dialectic and its component parts, and to problematise Archer’s focus on developing her concepts of agency within the dialectical position. As will become clear throughout this book, while it is important that Archer has recognised the superiority of a dialectical, rather than a dualistic, approach, and has sought to develop her concept of agency, this resulting concept of agency is essentially timid in my view, because it lacks a notion of the unconscious or a notion of agency which might sit comfortably with a conception of social structure within her dialectical approach.

Margaret Archer on agency In this section, I examine what I consider to be a number of significant limitations with Margaret Archer’s conceptualisation of agency, as developed in her morphogenetic approach (1995, 2000a, 2000b, 2003, 2007, 2010a, 2010b, 2012). Margaret Archer has made a significant contribution to the structure and agency debate in developing the morphogenetic approach (1995). One of the most important points in Archer’s work is that she regards structure and agency as both ontologically and analytically distinct and, as such, they have independent causal power. Archer contends that structure and agency are irreducibly different, are relatively autonomous and, as distinct causal powers, have the ability to affect social outcomes (2003, pp.  1–2). She proposes (1995) that we must examine how structure and agency interact with one another over time and, consequently, strongly criticises the way in which Giddens ‘brackets off ’ the affect of structure, instead advocating a morphogenetic approach. To understand Archer’s account of agency, we must begin with her conceptualisation of the relationship between structure and agency as developed within the morpho­ genetic approach. The morphogenetic approach identifies a three-­part cycle of change (see Figure 2.1). To Archer, not only are structure and agency ontologically separate, but, in addition, structure precedes agency temporally. Archer starts with the structural (economic, social, political or environmental) context of action, at T1, where T represents time. She terms this process ‘structural conditioning’. These conditions affect, but do not determine, the interests that agents have. While agents are constrained and facilitated by structural conditioning, their actions are also shaped by their abilities, skills and personality at T2 and T3. In acting, agents can change the structural context at T4, to a greater or lesser extent, and sometimes in a way they did not intend, in a process termed morphogenesis (structural elaboration) or morphostasis (structural reproduction). The key point here is that the structure that is created is not new, but an adaptation of the prior structure – hence the use of the term morphogenesis. This structural elaboration becomes the structural context at T1 in the next cycle.

Agency and political participation   43 Structure T1 Interaction T2

T3 Structural Elaboration T4

Figure 2.1  The morphogenetic sequence. Source: Archer, 1995, p.76.

As is clear from this description, Archer’s morphogenetic approach emphasises the structural context of agency as a crucial basis of the interaction between structure and agency and heavily criticises Giddens for failing to examine the iterative nature of the relationship. However, I want to argue that in her later work (2000a, 2003) she, in effect, ‘brackets off ’ structure and develops a conceptualisation of agency (2000a, 2003) which does not seem to fit happily with the morphogenetic framework. Archer on reflexivity Archer’s theory of agency proposes a seismic shift in how people form and conduct themselves in everyday life and, by extension, in their political behaviour, a process that would result in the realisation of extremely high levels of ethical autonomy (Archer, 2000a, 2003, 2007, 2012). If substantiated, Archer’s thesis takes the understanding of the formation of agency well beyond existing understandings about ontological security and the routinisation of social life (Giddens, 1984, 1993). It would similarly displace Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of the habitus as passé, which Archer sees as not being a feature of our current epoch. As such, Archer’s perspective is worthy of serious consideration if only because such a position would displace much of what is already known with regards to how people form, understand and manage themselves in everyday life. My concern is that Archer over-­emphasises reflexivity in her concept of agency to the extent that: (a) agency is elided with reflexivity, and (b) this privileging of reflexivity means that agents are not sufficiently affected by the social, despite her presenting her thesis as a dialectical one where the social is integral to the analysis. Archer’s account does acknowledge social structure, but it does so in a very partial way, which ends up privileging agency. Further, her account of agency denies the routine aspects of social life, and singles out the role of habit,

44   Part I in particular, for critique while describing it as a redundant concept. I question this, and defend the role of habitus and habit as well as that of the unconscious in agency. Archer’s conception of agency is developed within a dialectical approach to the structure and agency problem, i.e. a position that highlights the independent and interactive relationship between structure and agency (Archer, 1995). This position is defended against overly structuralist and subjectivist positions, which emphasise either the former or the latter to the neglect of the other. The role of social structure in society then is integral to Archer’s theorisation of how society functions, yet for this to be the case, the characteristics of agency must be receptive to social structural influence. There are reasons to question this, however. For Archer, reflexivity is progressively replacing routine action in late modernity, particularly in more advanced societies. She defines reflexivity as: ‘the regular exercise of the mental ability, shared by all normal people, to consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts and vice versa’ (2012, p. 1). This increase in reflexivity derives from the absence of social guidelines indicating what to do in novel situations, meaning that individuals are increasingly asked to be reflexive in their lives, where once they could follow social rules and norms. Increases in reflexivity in society mirror a transition from a morphostatic (stability and reproduction) to a morphogenetic society (constant change) (Archer, 1995). Archer defines her understanding of reflexivity against that advocated by proponents of the reflexive modernisation thesis (Beck, 1992; Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994), leading her to make a distinction between universal and extended reflexivity. The former refers to her understanding of reflexivity, and defines it as a characteristic of agency, while the latter is advocated by Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994 and Beck (1992) as a feature of the epoch in which we find ourselves. Reflexivity is also linked to our emotional commitments, our ‘ultimate concerns’, all of which help to sustain something called the ‘internal conversation’ within agents (Archer, 2007). The internal conversation reflects the ongoing conversations in agents about who they are and how they see their lives progressing (this is explored further in Chapter 4). For Archer (1995), reflexivity emerges from a new social and cultural order which creates novel situational contexts that confront agents, and which they must negotiate. In such a scenario, agents are said to draw upon their ‘socially dependent, but nonetheless personal powers’ of reflexivity to define their course(s) of action (2012, p. 1). From this perspective, reflexivity is not necessarily positive, because it can also have negative outcomes: some will pursue what they care about most, others will think they are taking the best course, but may end up pursuing routes where negative outcomes rebound upon them. By this account, not all reflexivity will be successful, but all, crucially, are trying to be reflexive. It is not disputed that reflexivity is important, as agents must engage with their own concerns and negotiate the best course of action for themselves. However, the literature holds that it is just one characteristic among others (reactivity, decision-­making, and habit, to name a few) on a spectrum of agency that exists against a backdrop of the routinisation of social life. Like Archer, I accept

Agency and political participation   45 that there must be some interplay between changes in society and reflexivity, but this does not mean that identity and agency become a blank canvas. I argue that reflexivity is heightened in periods of breach that disturb the durable routines of everyday life. In other work, I highlight different types of breaches (crises) to illustrate the relationship between breach, reflexivity and the processes of change therein (Akram and Hogan, 2014). Archer is particularly critical of Bourdieu and his emphasis on habitus and what we might call the routinisation of social life. Archer’s rejection of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus drives to the heart of the structure and agency problem, in that it is a question about social integration, or of the influences of the social order upon agency. Archer agrees with this point and argues that this debate stems from whether the social should be located ‘fully within agents or entirely outside them’ (2012, p.  49). For Archer, Bourdieu is ultimately problematic on two counts: first, the world has changed and is unlike the world in which Bourdieu was living and writing, so his approach is described as historically specific. Second, she argues, a notion of reflexivity is contrary to Bourdieu’s notion of practice, which emphasises that all action is ‘in situ’, and the focus is upon knowing how, not knowing what – or why. It follows that the subject is incapable of such reflexivity (2012, p.  75). Archer’s work raises the idea that individuals actively think about who they are (in the sense of personal and social identity) and modify their identity in the course of everyday being. But what does it mean to argue that (political) actors regularly re-­think and evaluate their everyday being? What kinds of circumstances or frames of reference would be necessary to bring on such a form of reflexivity, and would it be practical to do so? Central to such a practice of the self, moreover, is a deep awareness of who one is, how one became who one is, and the benefits and motivations of pursuing such new, performative aspects of identity. Archer’s position is evidently problematic. It skates over the top of the very basics of how a person becomes who they are and how they maintain and sustain themselves in daily interactions. I would argue, drawing on Bourdieu, that the habitus is written deeply within us by multiple, layered, intersecting and at times conflicting social processes. Individuals are shaped and legitimated by habitus as well as being challenged and at times undone by it. I explore habitus in more detail in the next chapter, but the contrast with Archer’s concept of agency should be clear. I have spent some time here detailing my critique of Archer, because it represents a good example of a recent highly detailed foray into the concept of agency which clearly has many gaps. Agency is complex, but if it is developed within a dialectical conception of structure and agency, then agency must be subject to the influence of social structure and, in turn, influence it. Over-­ emphasising reflexivity, as Archer does, prevents this.

Giddens: agency or intentionality? Giddens explains that human agency has often been thought of in terms of ‘intentionality’ (albeit mistaken). This view is plausible as there are some acts

46   Part I which cannot occur unless the agent intends them, suicide being a good example.1 However, as Giddens notes, suicide is not typical of most human acts. There can also be mistaken intentionality, i.e. intending to do something, but mistakenly doing something else. Giddens suggests the view that, for an event to count as an instance of agency it must be intentional is incorrect, as it confuses the designation of agency with the giving of ‘act-­descriptions’ (1984, p. 9). He argues that: Agency refers not to the intentions people have in doing things but to their capability of doing those things in the first place (which is why agency implies power: cf. the Oxford English Dictionary definition of an agent, as ‘one who exerts power or produces an effect’) (1984, p. 9) Moving away from intentionality, Giddens instead proposes that ‘(a)gency refers to doing’ (1984, p.  10). In my view, his distinction between intentionality and agency is an extremely important consideration for a better understanding of what agency is within a dialectical relationship between structure and agency. Giddens outlines his conception of the agent in his ‘stratification model of action’.2 In this model there are three layers of action: reflexive monitoring of action, rationalisations of action, and motivations for action (1979, 1984). The model makes clear that all three levels of action are potentially implicated in the production and reproduction of social and political systems. Crucially, the model also incorporates the ‘unacknowledged conditions of action’ and ‘unintended consequences of action’. These are important elements if we are to accept, in respect of the former, that structural influences condition action (albeit outside of the agent’s awareness), and in terms of the latter, how unintended consequences of action result from interaction – again, perhaps, outside of the agent’s awareness. The ‘reflexive monitoring of action’ refers to the ‘intentional’ or ‘purposive’ character of human behaviour, but, importantly, intentionality is defined as being ‘process’ or ‘routine’ (Giddens, 1979, p.  56). Giddens’ approach here is to be contrasted with the notion that actors have ‘definite goals consciously held in mind’, or are doing something ‘purposefully’ (1979, p.  56). Giddens considers motivational components of action to refer to the organisation of an actor’s wants and argues that these ‘straddle conscious and unconscious aspects of cognition and emotion’ (1979, p.  58). Giddens claims that ‘the whole weight of psychoanalytical theory suggests that motivation has an internal hierarchy of its own’ (ibid.) and, therefore, this leads him to argue that ‘a conception of the unconscious is essential to social theory’, even if it departs from classical Freudian schemes (ibid.). In Giddens, we have a convincing account of agency which combines reflexivity with the routine nature of action, as well as with recognition of the role of the unconscious. The problem, however, is reconciling this account with Giddens’ conception of structure. Giddens’ conception of social structures is

Agency and political participation   47 worth considering in some detail as it differs significantly from, for example, that of Archer (1995) For Giddens, structures have a ‘ “virtual existence”, as instantiations or moments’ (1979, p.  63). Giddens argues that structures ‘exist paradigmatically, as an absent set of differences’, temporally ‘present’ only in their ‘instantiation’, in the constituting moments of ‘social systems’ (1979, p. 64). To Giddens, structures do not exist independently of agents, as he himself explains: ‘structures do not exist in time-­space, except in the moments of the constitution of social systems’ (1979, pp.  64–5). When they are implicated in interaction, Giddens sees structures as ‘literally inhabiting people’, arguing that structures should be interpreted as ‘knowledge – as memory traces – of “how things are to be done” (said, written) on the part of social actors …’ (1979, p.  64). Giddens uses a coin as an analogy to evoke the relationship between structure and agency, arguing that one cannot see the affect of both structure and agency at one time, just like one cannot see both sides of the coin at once. So, methodologically, at any given time, one can only study either structure or agency while holding the other constant, or ‘bracketing it off ’ (Giddens, 1984, p. 288). Giddens’ rejection of the ontological separation between structure and agency is problematic. Despite developing a convincing account of agency, Giddens ends up making ‘structures so vaporous that it is next to impossible to get a grip on them’ (Healey, 1998, p.  510). However, his model, by bypassing the ontological separation between structure and agency, does appear to provide a compelling account of structural influence, albeit at the cost of the ontological dualism between structure and agency. Stones argues that Giddens’ conception of the structure and agency relationship allows for structures to ‘enter into the constitution of reflexive and pre-­ reflexive motivations, knowledgeability and practices of people’, as ‘knowledgeability and memory traces’ (Stones, 2001, p. 184). Therefore, we see that structures have the capacity to affect agents at both reflexive and pre-­ reflexive, and conscious and unconscious levels. As Stones remarks, using Giddens’ conception, we can take account of ‘habits, pre-­reflexive routines and background assumptions’, and (the fact that) ‘much of what is done is “seen but not noticed”, even by the actor herself ’ (Stones, 2001, p.  185). In this vein, Giddens identifies signification, along with domination and legitimation, as one of the basic ingredients of social structure (1979). These structures are mediated by, and through, interpretive frames and norms within the memory traces of agents. Through signification and the seen, but not noticed, dimension of action, we have a better understanding of how agents draw upon structures without reflexivity and that their behaviour does not just reflect a simple calculation of their utilities. In Giddens’ model we have a much more sophisticated conception of how agents have differently mediated experiences of the real world. Here, agents do not have direct access to their material interests and are not totally aware of the structural contexts within which they are located or that these structural contexts can influence their actions. The narrow account of structure, however, makes it

48   Part I ultimately problematic because structures must be ontologically separate from agents if they are to affect agents outside of the latter’s awareness.

Questioning the dominance of rational choice theory Rational choice theory (RCT) is a dominant model for explaining behaviour in political science, and it is important to be clear about the assumptions upon which it is premised. RCT is not a theory of agency; it is better described as a ‘heuristic’ (Hay, 2002, 2004) and a ‘model for predicting human behaviour’ (Ostrom, 2010). RCT operates with a thin notion of rationality and a thin notion of agency. It does not adhere to a philosophical or particular conception of rationality, yet rationality is the unquestioned starting point of any analysis of human behaviour for rational choice theorists. Rationality, in this view, is understood as the expression of choice or decision-­making based on preferences and utility optimisation. More recent refinements to the approach have stressed the importance of bounded rationality or the idea that bounded rational agents experience limits in formulating and solving complex problems and in processing (receiving, storing, retrieving, transmitting) information (Herbert, 1957). The point here is to move away from a notion of perfect information as the input to decision making – and move towards a notion of satisficing in which solutions that are not optimal are chosen if they meet minimum requirements based on the information that was processed (for a review of contemporary developments in rational choice theory see Ward, 2002). Actors, of course, are instrumental, express choice and make decisions, all of which can be modelled to predict behaviour and, so, rational choice theory is not without merit. However, a narrow focus on decision-­making or choices to the exclusion of other features of agency encourages a ‘hyper-­determinism’ in which political action is understood as a simple expression of the dynamics of interests narrowly conceived and with no significant intervening process (Finlayson, 2007). On this view, there is no room for emotions, structural influence or ideology (Hay, 2002, 2004). Finlayson (2007) reminds us that choice-­making is a dynamic process, which begins long before the choice is made. Taking a broader perspective to agency enables recognition of the role of deliberation, argumentation with one-­self as well as the role of context before choices are made (Finlayson, 2007). Choice, then, does not operate in a vacuum and to operate as if it does represents a methodological decision which assumes a highly simplistic conception of agency. An example might prove illustrative here. Reay (1996) reminds us that all choices are to varying extents constrained. In the context of parents choosing schools for children, she suggests that choices in this situation are not unrelated to local matters of geography and history, understandings of the psychological impact of social class and the differential access to social power and material resources. Yes, we do exercise choice in life and we may have more choices than before but choice is not exercised in the abstract: it must be considered as a situated concept linked to structural circumstances. Critical of discourses of absolute choice with regard to school provision, Reay suggests that consumerist

Agency and political participation   49 approaches to education are seductive and may be a positive ingredient of any educational provision. However, choice as it is frequently written in official and educational texts is decontextualised (Hughes et al., 1994 in Reay, 1996), ignoring the impact of social class, gender and ‘race’. Her research also suggests that the choices black parents make need to be embedded in a recognition of the social dynamics of racism.

What is structure? While the focus of this chapter is on the concept of agency, it is important to complement this analysis by also considering the concept of structure. My aim in this sub-­section of the chapter is to consider a range of conceptions of structure. I consider conceptions of structure as developed by Lopez and Scott (2000), Giddens (1979, 1984, 1993) and Hay (2002) to highlight the importance for clarity in answering two questions: first, what are the different forms of structure, and second, how do structure and agency interact, or what are the precise characteristics of agency that make this interaction possible? The neglect of the latter point, I suggest, confirms the need for a renewed focus on the characteristics of agency and, in particular, on the unconscious. Lopez and Scott’s typology of structure Starting with Durkheim, the history of the concept of social structure reflects two broad understandings represented by the terms institutional structure and relational structure. Institutional structure is seen as ‘comprising those cultural or normative patterns that define the expectations which agents hold about each other’s behaviour and that organise their enduring relations with each other’ (Lopez and Scott, 2000, p.  3). On the other hand, relational structure refers to ‘the social relations themselves, understood as patterns of causal interconnection and interdependence among agents and their actions, as well as the positions that they occupy’ (ibid.). Embodied structure represents a third strand in the literature on social structure and can be found in the work of Giddens, Foucault and Bourdieu. The embodied conception of social structure re-­positions the human agent at the centre of an understanding of how social structure operates. In this approach, patterns of institutions and relations result from the actions of individuals, who have the capacity to produce them by acting in organised ways. Lopez and Scott suggest that these capacities are: … behavioural dispositions, and so social structure has to be seen as an embodied structure. Embodied structures are found in the habits and skills that are inscribed in human bodies and minds and that allow them to produce, reproduce and transform institutional structures and relational structures (2000, p. 4)

50   Part I The various approaches to social structure should not be considered in opposition to each other, but rather represent potentially complementary facets of social structure, which together provide a range of conceptions of social structure available for the analysis of society. For example, for both Bourdieu and Foucault ‘bodies are seen as the carriers of relational and institutional structures’ (Lopez and Scott, 2000, p. 98). Giddens’ conception of structure as duality of structure Moving beyond identification of the types of structure, it is also important to think through how agents engage with structures and how social structural influence is achieved – or in Archer’s terms, how ‘mediation’ occurs. Giddens’ conception of social structure is worth considering as it differs significantly from that of Archer (1995, 2000a, 2000b). For Giddens, structures have a ‘ “virtual existence”, as instantiations or moments’ (1979, p. 63). Giddens argues that structures ‘exist paradigmatically, as an absent set of differences’, temporally ‘present’ only in their instantiation, in the constituting moments of ‘social systems’ (ibid., p. 64). According to Giddens’ conception, structures do not exist independently of agents: as he himself explains, ‘structures do not exist in time-­space, except in the moments of the constitution of social systems’ (ibid., pp. 64–5). When they are implicated in interaction, Giddens sees structures as ‘literally inhabiting people’, arguing that to regard structures as involving a virtual order of differences implies recognising the existence of ‘knowledge – as memory traces – of “how things are to be done” (said, written)’ on the part of social actors (ibid., p. 64). As discussed above, Giddens’ structuration theory is based on his core notion of the ‘duality of structure’ (1979, 1984, 1993), meaning that structure and agency are a duality, not a dualism: they are interdependent and internally related. According to this conception, the same structural characteristics are present in the subject (the actor), as in the object, thus ‘structure is both the medium and outcome of interactions’ (1979, p.  15). Giddens’ rejection of the ontological separation between structure and agency in favour of ‘conflationism’ (Archer, 1995) is, in my view, a problem and following Archer, I would argue in favour of an ontological separation between structure and agency. However, Giddens’ model, by bypassing the ontological separation between structure and agency, does appear to provide a compelling account of structural influence, albeit at the cost of the ontological dualism between structure and agency. Therefore, we see that structures have the capacity to affect agents at both reflexive and pre-­reflexive, and conscious and unconscious levels. This is a good starting point for the development of a better conceptualisation of the dialectical relationship between structure and agency. Hay’s conception of agency/structure Hay defines structure as referring to context and to ‘the setting within which social, political and economic events occur and acquire meaning’ or to ‘the

Agency and political participation   51 ordered nature of social and political relations – to the fact that political institutions, practices, routines and conventions appear to exhibit some regularity or structure over time’ (2002, p. 94). This I suggest represents the typical way in which structure tends to be invoked when understanding social and political phenomena. While this is helpful to a certain extent, we need to go beyond definitions of structure which refer to structure as context, but do little to explain the exact mediating process between structure and agency or the properties of agency that are involved in this process. The key point here is that by referring to structure as context, structure is understood in terms of its externality to agency: in terms of the structural terrain within which agents must operate. To explore this point further, let us return to Hay’s conception of agency. Hay conceptualises agency as: ‘the ability or capacity of an actor to act consciously and, in so doing, to attempt to realise his or her intentions’ (2002, p. 94), which would imply that agents operate within a clearly signposted and external structural context. This theorisation of structure and agency, clearly influenced by Hay’s constructivism (2006), suggests that structures do not affect agents, if agents do not intentionally and strategically choose to be influenced by them. There are no mechanisms, such as the unconscious, which indicate that agents can be affected by structures outside of agential consciousness. Structure again plays no role in influencing outcomes; the explanatory power lies in an appeal to the consciousness of agents. In this view, an individual develops identity, or becomes gendered or classed, as a result of a conscious decision: s/he consciously ‘opts’ (or does not opt) to be influenced by these structures. In my view, Hay’s conceptualisation of agency does not recognise the structural constraints on agents’ actions of which agents are unconscious, a position which has important methodological implications in empirical social research. To Hay, class or gender are structural constraints to the extent that they are acknowledged as such by agents, so we need to ask them what, if anything, constrains their actions. The discussion of the concept of social structure undertaken in this chapter is an important cornerstone of this book in terms of contributing to an understanding of the context within which agency must operate. Crucially, however, I have attempted to show here that in order to understand how structure and agency function together in the dialectic, we need a detailed consideration of the agential characteristics that are implicated in this process. Being clear about what we mean by agency and, in turn, structure is therefore pivotal for engaging in socio-­political analysis.

Conclusion Conceptualisations of agency underline and shape how we understand contemporary political behaviour. This chapter began by critiquing conception of the political actor in the political participation literature, focusing on Hay (2007), Stoker (2006) and Norris (1999, 2011). As the discussion of Hay and Stoker reveals, while both authors are highly critical of rational choice theory (RCT), a

52   Part I language of choice-­making and rational action casts a significant shadow on their conceptions of agency and political behaviour. Recognising this represents an important first step if we are to move beyond RCT and re-­think how we define agency and the implications of this for contemporary political participation. Further, Hay’s discussion of the distinction between social and political action indicates a narrow conception of political activity which would exclude many of the activities which are crucial to study if we are concerned with current modes of political participation such as online mobilisation and boycotting. Norris (1999, 2011) on the other hand, provides us with a more in-­depth conception of agency and political behaviour based on the notion of orientations, but a more robust engagement with the theoretical literature on agency would certainly enrich the concept of critical citizens. The chapter next turned its focus to the theoretical literature of agency in order to explore its key insights as a guide for re-­thinking how to conceptualise agency and, in turn, the political actor. The recent turn to agency in Archer’s work is certainly to be welcomed for the focus it provides on the concept, but as the discussion above shows, there remains considerable contestation about what agency is. In sum, the dilemmas that arise from this initial problematisation of three dominant approaches to agency in the literature can be expressed in the form of two questions: first, can we develop a more convincing account of agency, which respects the autonomy of agents, but also recognises that the social world exercises some influence as per the structure and agency debate? Second, how will this concept of agency affect our understanding of political behaviour? I respond to these questions in the affirmative and they represent the guiding questions of this book. While they may be difficult questions, they should not and cannot be avoided. Instead, I propose that we proceed with caution, which may involve making some bold claims, perhaps necessary if we are to understand this central concept in the social sciences. Following Sartori (1970), I suggest that we need to be conscious thinkers with regard to the assumptions and implications of the concepts we use. Concepts are tools which we use in our daily work; they need to be rigorously explored and justified, and they are not avoidable. In responding to these questions, it is necessary to develop an approach which does not attempt to be law-­like nor can it provide an exhaustive account of agency. To the two questions above, I add a third: what status does the proposed concept of agency occupy? Following Bhaskar3 and others in the critical realist school of thought,4 I begin by assuming that any legitimate approach to social and political analysis requires at least some ontological assumptions and commitments (Hay, 2002) and that these inform concrete empirical research. The centrality of this ontological starting point requires me to say a little more by way of justification. The practical analyst of society needs to know not only what social reality is, but also how to begin to explain it, before addressing the particular problem under investigation (Archer, 1995, p.  5). Ontological, epistemological and

Agency and political participation   53 ­ ethodological clarity and coherence are central to the internal consistency and m successful application of any particular approach to the social sciences. For some, the articulation of an ontological framework consists in providing a blueprint of what exists, its properties and how individuals interact with this. Roy Bhaskar, as the founder of the critical realist ontology, starts from the premise of questioning the principles which inform positivist social science and is critical of its commitment to Humean causality. As detailed by Bhaskar in his two seminal books A Realist Theory of Science (1975) and the Possibility of Naturalism (1979), critical realism represents a consistent ontological and epistemological approach to the social sciences because it is developed through a process of immanent critique. As such, it is able to overcome the problems which characterise alternative approaches, such as classical empiricism, hermeneutics and a turn in social theory which can broadly be termed as post-­structural. Bhaskar favours a transcendental ontology formulated from a Kantian question about the conditions under which a social science is possible: ‘what properties do societies and people possess that might make them possible objects of knowledge for us?’ (Bhaskar, 1979, p.  13). Such a position gives rise to his three-­fold stratification of the social world where he proposes a distinction between the realms of the real (the inherent properties of and causal mechanisms linking objects), the actual (events) and the empirical (our experiences of such events). This ontology recognises that social reality comprises an open system and is based on contingency compared to the natural science’s ‘closed experiments’ which attempt to control the variables at play. Working within this ontological framework, my overall approach in this book will be to sketch out various aspects of agency, with a view to fleshing out what agency is and how it informs understandings of political behaviour. I propose an ontological stance and a grammar of concepts which make it possible to construct and furnish answers to empirical problems that can withstand scrutiny because they reflect both on the concrete and the ontological. Indeed, in seeking to make agency more explicit, I hope to encourage readers to think more clearly about what is meant by agency, and to evaluate how it informs the questions they are addressing. While this chapter has sought to outline the gaps in our understanding of agency, the following two chapters move towards re-­ constructing agency. In the next chapter, I turn to the unconscious as a sorely neglected aspect of agency in the literature.

Notes 1 Giddens gives the example of Durkheim’s work on suicide to illustrate this point. According to Durkheim, suicide cannot be said to occur unless there is intent to precipitate self-­destruction. In contrast, someone who is knocked down by a car cannot be said to be a suicide if the event is accidental (Giddens, 1984, p. 8). 2 Giddens’ stratification model of action appears in Figure 2.1 of Giddens, 1979, p. 56 and can also be found in Figure 1 of Giddens, 1984, p. 5. 3 Bhaskar rejects positivism to develop a practice of ‘explanatory critique’ in the human sciences that is explicitly oriented to ‘human emancipation’. For Bhaskar, a suitably

54   Part I conceived and constructed social science makes the connection between certain sorts of explanatory theory and critique and explanation (1979). If certain theories can identify false (that is, ideological) beliefs by providing causal explanations of the sources of those beliefs, we can and must move immediately to a negative evaluation of the source of false beliefs, as well as a positive evaluation of social action aimed at the latter’s challenge and removal (1979, pp. 101–5). 4 Margaret Archer self-­describes as a critical realist and develops her concept of agency within this ontological frame (Archer, 2000a).

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3 Agency The neglect of the unconscious

What role does the unconscious play in an individual’s political action and political thinking? How might a notion of the unconscious help us to better understand the influence of the past on agents’ political behaviour? To what extent are political actors subject to socio-­political influences which they do not necessarily filter through their conscious, intentional and reflexive capacities – and, how might we explain these influences? This chapter addresses an omission in the literature on agency, namely the neglect of a notion of the unconscious within conceptions of agency in social and political theory and, more specifically, within dialectical approaches to structure and agency. It will be argued that a concept of the unconscious is central to agency, but has largely been neglected in debates about agency to date, although it has the potential to significantly enhance the reach and scope of how we understand and explain socio-­political behaviour. A notion of the unconscious is important for three reasons. First, it provides a contribution to the literature on agency in terms of recognising the role of the unconscious capacities of agents within a broader overall conception of agency. This conception of agency must also contain intentional, reflexive and strategic capacities – an acknowledgement of the unconscious is not a rejection of these other capacities. Second, a notion of the unconscious has implications for our understanding of how the structure and agency dialectic functions and will improve social sciences’ understanding of how structures influence outcomes. For the dialectic to function properly, where structure and agency are both autonomous and are involved in interaction, the concept of agency must allow structures to have causal power and to independently influence agents without them consciously and reflexively negotiating this influence. If the conception of agency is premised only on the reflexive and intentional capabilities of agents, then structure has limited autonomy in the interaction between structure and agency, as agency dominates. This position, of course, does not require that all social structures operate in this way, but it does broaden our understanding of the range within which social structure operates. Finally, a notion of the unconscious expands our understanding of contemporary forms of political behaviour as it extends the realm of influences on, and motivations for, political behaviour. To illustrate the difference that a notion of the unconscious makes, the final

Agency: the neglect of the unconscious   57 section of the chapter explores substantive areas of research wherein a notion of the unconscious is implicated and enhances our understanding of political behaviour.

Chapter outline The ‘unconscious’ is never anything other than the forgetting of history which history itself produces by incorporating the objective structures it produces in the second nature of habitus. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 78) I develop my understanding of the unconscious from Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. My argument involves a two-­step manoeuvre: first I must explain what habitus is and how it provides a compelling account of how to understand the relationship between structure and agency. Second, I outline the unconscious aspects of habitus. While Bourdieu spent much time discussing habitus, he said less about its unconscious aspects. This is both unfortunate and perplexing, as the unconscious aspects of habitus are central to understanding how habitus operates, and so making them explicit is an important task if we are to have a better handle on agency. First, however, to understand habitus, we need to understand Bourdieu’s broader theoretical framework, so his concept of ‘practice’ and ‘field’ also deserves attention. I also address the charge of determinism directed at Bourdieu and consider the role of reflexivity in habitus, with a view to elaborating a broader conception of agency. After fleshing out what the unconscious is and how it relates to other parts of agency, I want to draw out the significance of the unconscious for understanding political behaviour in the second part of the chapter. Here, I consider its significance for research showing how it relates to memory formation, debates about unconscious bias and approaches to political socialisation. This chapter is largely theoretical in focus and is the theoretical compliment and preface to the chapter on rioting (Chapter 6) where I draw extensively on a notion of the unconscious habitus to understand motivations for rioting.

History of the unconscious It is important to clarify at the outset how my understanding of the unconscious differs from existing conceptions, as this will clear the terrain for discussion in this book. For most readers, reference to a notion of the unconscious immediately raises the spectre of Freud or Lacan and psychoanalysis, approaches which have largely dominated discussion on this topic. While social and political theory has always been concerned with the concept of the agent, her actions and thought processes, Freud’s claim to scientific status for his topography of the mind and his concern with the unconscious, its relationship to the libido and repression among other concepts, have, for some, closed off the subject of the unconscious for socio-­political theory. A failure to engage in these discussions, as opposed to discussion and disagreement, is, in my view, unacceptable and, moreover,

58   Part I unhealthy. Indeed, if modern psychology, as the self-­proclaimed scientific study of the mind, has distanced itself from psychoanalysis and Freud, but gone on to develop its own (scientific) concepts of the mind, socio-­political theory should not neglect undertaking its own discussions of the unconscious. This is especially important because – as will be argued in this book – a concept of the unconscious is crucial for a better understanding of agents and how they function in societies. By extension, it would also seem reasonable to question why Bourdieu did not discuss the unconscious aspects of habitus himself if, as I argue, it is central to habitus. Bourdieu, I suggest, wanted to distance himself from psychoanalysis and to establish his theoretical concepts firmly within a sociological tradition. We might say that there was a stubbornness on Bourdieu’s part, which he may have struggled with given that he did, in fact, end up referring to the unconscious aspects of habitus. In her analysis of Bourdieu’s The Weight of the World (1999), Fowler distinguishes between psychoanalysis and Bourdieu’s approach, but also sees similarities between them. Fowler contends that Bourdieu has developed ‘a new view of the sociological project’ which contains a distinctive methodology ‘concerned with a kind of socioanalysis [as opposed to the prestigious psychoanalysis] which will provide the setting for richer memories and accounts of the actors’ and, specifically, will ‘permit the return of the social repressed’ (Fowler, 1996, p. 14). Fowler claims that the sociologist’s role is to provide ‘the felicific conditions which will facilitate such an open and frank communication, and which are not reserved as psychoanalysis has been, to the comfortably off ’ (1996, p. 14). Fowler’s description of Bourdieu’s approach as identifying the social repressed is interesting and demands further exploration. Further, she is correct to argue that social theory does not need to borrow its concepts from psychoanalysis, as the answer to habitus may lie in a form of socio-­analysis, distinct from psychoanalysis, but firmly rooted in an analysis of social structures and individuals’ dispositions. Also noteworthy is a trend in the literature, which, as a result of recognising the importance of the unconscious to both psychoanalysis and socio-­political theory, seeks to encourage an inter-­disciplinary relationship and argues that these two disciplines, although historically antagonistic, in fact, complement each other in terms of both theory (Bocock, 1978; Craib, 1989; Elliott, 1992; Laledakis, 1995; Billig, 1997; Clarke, 2002, 2006; Edley, 2006) and methodology (Billig, 1997; Clarke, 2002, 2006; Edley, 2006). While interdisciplinary approaches can be healthy and should be encouraged, I do not endorse an interdisciplinary approach to the unconscious with regard to psychoanalysis and socio-­political theory. The conception of the unconscious developed in this book is decidedly different to that developed by Freud and those who engage with Freud and so I seek to distinguish my understanding of the unconscious from that of Freud’s and from psychoanalysis more broadly. I develop a conception of the unconscious from a social science perspective. In doing so, my broader aim is to create a space for the social sciences to also contribute to our understanding of the unconscious, albeit in a different way to psychoanalysis.

Agency: the neglect of the unconscious   59

Bourdieu’s theory of practice and fields As we saw in the last chapter, most dialectical interpretations of the structure and agency relationship also reject singularly objectivist or subjectivist approaches to analysing agents’ actions in the social world. However, Bourdieu advances beyond this first level of understanding of the dialectic to argue that analysis of a relationship between structure and agency within a dialectical position must also focus on analysis of the agent’s ‘practice’, as reflecting the crucial moment of the ‘internalization of externality and the externalization of internality’ (1977, p.  72). From this he develops his theory of ‘practice’.1 Bourdieu argues that the social sciences have been preoccupied with developing ‘theoretical’ knowledge or passing off Marx’s ‘things of logic as the logic of things’ (Bourdieu, 1990a, p.  61). He suggests that this approach has been particularly popular in the social sciences as it satisfies abstract claims to objectivity. It is Bourdieu’s concern to move away from abstract theory and locate practice2 at the centre of his analysis that leads him to develop his theory of practice, and it is this which forms the crucial background to understanding his central concept of ‘habitus’. Bourdieu argues: … one has to return to practice, the site of the dialectic of the opus operatum and the modus operand; of the objectified products and the incorporated products of historical practice; of structures and habitus. (1990b, p. 53) Before we proceed it is worth briefly spelling out Bourdieu’s understanding of ‘field’ as it is central to his conceptualisation of practice and habitus. Bourdieu has an interesting conception of social structure, which is notably different from the Marxist understanding that society is primarily structured by class. While acknowledging the role of class in society, Bourdieu does not privilege class as a defining feature of his overall theory. Instead, he argues that society is structured in terms of ‘fields’. Bourdieu emphasises the independent, non-­economic, character of differentiated social spheres and the necessity for a more pluralistic, non-­synchronous and anti-­reductionistic theory to understand them (Alexander, 1995, p. 158). Bourdieu defines a field as: In analytic terms, a field may be defined as a network, or configuration, of objective relations between positions. These positions are objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon their occupants, agents or institutions, by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field.… (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 97) Bourdieu argues that, in highly differentiated societies, social space is divided into multiple, relatively autonomous, fields, which are spaces that operate

60   Part I according to their own logic and necessity and which are different to other fields (1992, p. 97). So, we might refer to the education field, the artistic field or the political field. The field is characterised by social struggles or manoeuvres which take place over specific resources (capital) or stakes and access to them. Habitus The concept of ‘habitus’ is central to Bourdieu’s theory of practice. Bourdieu defines habitus as ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions’ and ‘structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures’ (1977, p. 72). In the broadest terms, habitus refers to ‘our overall orientation to, or way of being in the world; our predisposed way of thinking, acting and moving in and through the social environment that encompasses posture, demeanour, outlook, expectations, and tastes’ (Sweetman, 2003, p. 532). As such, habitus is not only a mechanism relating to mental phenomena, but also refers to embodied practices, as it encompasses ‘bodily hexis’, which Bourdieu defines as: ‘… political mythology realized, em-­bodied, turned into a permanent disposition’ (1977, p. 93). Bodily hexis is said to reflect how the physical body is also affected by habitus and structural conditioning, and so bodily hexis refers to how we walk, talk or sit, and to our facial expressions, tone of voice or style of speech (1977, p. 87).3 Offered as a more nuanced way to understand the relationship between structures and agents, habitus reflects the embodiment of social structure and is intended to challenge dichotomous approaches to structure and agency. Bourdieu claims that the individual’s habitus is the product of their upbringing and, more particularly, of their class (1977, p. 87). Bourdieu suggests that habitus should be seen as a ‘subjective but not individual system of internalised structures common to all members of the same group or class’ (1977, p. 86). He argues that there is ‘diversity within homogeneity’ (1977, p.  86), which allows room for individual differences, but also overarching structural groupings based, for example, on class and gender. Through shaping dispositions and practice, habitus is also able to reproduce social structure and, in this way, both habitus and social structure are continually reconstituted ‘in a loop of agency and structure and agency’ (Adams, 2006, p. 515). Bourdieu’s concept of habitus quite clearly contains an unconscious element and this is reflected in the subtle ways that habitus operates. In my view, the unconscious is an essential aspect of agency for Bourdieu, as it emphasises the importance of his goal of focusing on the agent’s ‘practice’, as opposed to the theoretician’s interpretation of the agent’s actions. Agents do not go about the world engaging in an explicit way with rules or structures. The fact that they do engage with rules and structures requires a different principle of action, hence the unconscious. In his discussion of Sartre’s conception of agency, Bourdieu rejects a notion of action as ‘a sort of unprecedented confrontation between the subject and the world’ (1977, p. 73) and he also rejects the claim that agents operate in terms of ‘mechanical obedience to explicit codified rules’ (1990a, p.  63). The theory of

Agency: the neglect of the unconscious   61 habitus is presented as a conceptual mechanism which aims to locate the body in the social world and the social world in the body. For Bourdieu then, the key aspects of the social world are experienced as embodied. Bourdieu describes the process of interaction between structures and agents in a very interesting way, using an analogy which sees the social world as ‘the game’ and the agent as the ‘game player’. He presents habitus as the ‘feel for the game’, suggesting that, as a result of this sense of awareness or ‘feel’, ‘the social game [is] embodied and turned into second nature’ (1990a, p. 63). Bourdieu goes on to suggest that the ‘good player … does at every moment what the game requires. This presupposes a permanent capacity for invention, indispensable if one is to be able to adapt to indefinitely varied and never completely identical situations’ (1990a, p.  63). Through the analogy of the game and the game player, we see that Bourdieu is able to remove (theoretical) concepts, such as rules and intentional action, from the process by which agents and structures interact: the process in many ways becomes seamless, mundane and ordinary. Central to this process of interaction and habitus is a complex understanding of the notions of consciousness and the unconscious. The unconscious is deeply implicated in the way that habitus operates, as the agent’s practices, according to Bourdieu, are ‘ “regulated” and “regular” without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them’ (1977, p. 72). Bourdieu’s aim here is not reduce the role of reflexivity or consciousness per se in agents’ actions, but to argue that, alongside these factors, other principles of agency are also involved when considering interaction between structures and agents. Bourdieu’s task here reflects his more general concern to move away from the manner in which the relationship between structure and agency has usually been defined, that is by adopting the categories through which we define agency in particular, i.e. interpreting agents as intentional, rational, reflexive and strategic. Bourdieu’s argument about rejecting the theoretical point of view, or passing off ‘the logic of things as the things of logic’, is again relevant here (1990a, p. 61). Further, we see that Bourdieu’s conception of agency or practice is to be contrasted with those of Archer (1995, 2000a, 2003) and Colin Hay (2002), whose conceptions of agency within the dialectic are dependent on agents who engage in intentional and reflexive actions, without any reference to more subtle modes of behaviour and interaction in the structured world. Archer’s conception of agency is especially problematic, as it appears as if agents are able to vet the structural context before interaction occurs. Bourdieu’s argument regarding habitus here is often misunderstood and leads to criticism that habitus is determinist, leaving little room for reflexivity and conscious behaviour. However, I would argue that stating that agents act in an unconscious and habitual way in terms of everyday structural interaction is not the same as arguing that agents have no conscious and reflexive capabilities, rather it is to argue that structural and agential interaction occurs in a mundane, habitual and unconscious manner.

62   Part I The unconscious habitus While Bourdieu does not explicitly address the issue of the unconscious aspects of habitus, his texts are peppered with references to the ‘unconscious’ and, more frequently, to how actions are ‘not conscious’. In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu writes: The ‘unconscious’ is never anything other than the forgetting of history which history itself produces by incorporating the objective structures it produces in the second natures of habitus: ‘… in each of us, in varying proportions, there is part of yesterday’s man; it is yesterday’s man who invariably predominates in us, since the present amounts to little compared with the long past in the course of which we were formed and from which we result. Yet we do not sense this man of the past because he is inveterate in us; he makes up the unconscious part of ourselves’. (1977, pp. 78–9)4 Many of Bourdieu’s critics have commented on the unconscious aspects of habitus. Sweetman (2003) states that ‘(H)abitus is predominantly or wholly pre-­ reflexive, however, a form of second nature, that is both durable and largely unconscious and which is disproportionately weighted to the past’ (Bourdieu, in Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p.  133 in Sweetman, 2003, p.  532). Similarly, Adams points out that habitus is ‘an unconscious formation’ (2006, p. 514) and that ‘(T)he various characteristics of the habitus are carried out unthinkingly; that is partly what defines them as habitual. The sense of ease in our surroundings – “le sens pratique” … – thus develops as an unconscious competence …’ (Adams, 2006, p.  514). Finally, Adkins suggests that, in Bourdieu’s approach, ‘social practice often works through an unconscious practical mastery’, which is ‘a pre-­reflexive, non-­cognitive form of knowledge which cannot be explicitly articulated’ (Adkins, 2003, p. 24). Aside from the way in which the unconscious is implicated in how the habitus functions, other critics have argued that the presence of the unconscious in the habitus affects, or reduces, conscious actions and thoughts. Elder-­Vass suggests that there is confusion in Bourdieu’s stress on the ‘subconscious operation of habitus and his heavily qualified acceptance of some role for conscious thought’ (2007, p.  329). In the same vein, King is highly critical of how ‘individuals unconsciously internalise their objective social conditions’ in Bourdieu’s theory (King, 2000, p.  423). In his critique of Bourdieu’s neglect of ‘the self ’ or a habitus which comprises morals and values, Alexander argues that habitus is an ‘unconscious motivational structure that is formed in earlier, family life’ (1995, p.  137). Jenkins raises the important question of how Bourdieu understands processes of the mind and, more specifically, asks about the relationship between conscious and unconscious mental processes in Bourdieu’s theory. Jenkins answers his own question thus:

Agency: the neglect of the unconscious   63 … having dismissed conscious thought, [Bourdieu’s] empiricism leaves him similarly sceptical about the existence or knowability of the invisible unconscious. His way out of this dilemma, the habitus, exists somewhere between the two states, a sub-­mind of embodied habituation and thoughtless practice which could easily have its theoretical origins in behaviouralist psychology. (2002, p. 93) The existence of the unconscious in habitus should not be disputed, therefore. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, based on a dialectical understanding of structure and agency, quite clearly contains an unconscious aspect. Moreover, a notion of the unconscious is central to understanding how habitus operates. This is an important point, as other proponents of a dialectical approach to structure and agency, such as Archer (1995, 2000a, 2003) and Hay (2002), claim support for a dialectical position, but fail to include a notion of the unconscious within their concepts of agency. The issue for Jenkins (2002) and Elder-­Vass (2007) appears to be that a focus on the unconscious leads to a reduction in conscious thought in Bourdieu’s theory. The issue then, in terms of how useful habitus is for understanding agents’ practice in society, concerns the balance between consciousness and unconsciousness in habitus and it is to that issue I turn next. Relationship between consciousness and the unconscious in habitus Bourdieu is easily read as a determinist. Take the following passage as an example: If they [agents] seem determined by anticipation of their own consequences, thereby encouraging the finalist illusion, the fact is that, always tending to reproduce the objective structures of which they are the product, they are determined by the past conditions which have produced the principle of their production, that is by the actual outcome of identical or interchangeable past practices.… (1977, pp. 72–3) Similarly, he argues: The principles em-­bodied in this way [in habitus] are placed beyond the grasp of consciousness and, hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made explicit. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 94) While Bourdieu is easily read as a determinist, in my view, he is not a determinist. This issue is not just semantic, although much has been written about his obscure, and often frustrating, writing style (Jenkins, 2002). The list of those who choose to read Bourdieu as a determinist is long, including Alexander (1995), Jenkins (2002), King (2000) and Shilling (1997). In addition, there are

64   Part I those who, while more positive about Bourdieu’s theoretical project, accept that the accusation of determinism is partly justified, for example, Elder-­Vass (2007), Crossley (2001, 2003) and Adkins (2003). I would suggest that the charge of determinism is easily sustained only if one highlights certain aspects of Bourdieu’s theory and, therefore, it is crucial to understand Bourdieu’s theoretical project as a whole and in context. Further, and as will be shown, the unconscious aspect of habitus is central to understanding how habitus works, but is not in itself a justification for arguing that habitus is determinist. Rather, the unconscious aspect of habitus is central to understanding how habitus operates on an everyday level and allows agents to engage in practice in a structured world. The reasons for accusations of determinism tend to revolve around opportunities for critical reflection on habitus and the ability to change one’s habitus, which I address below. Reflexivity in habitus The criticism of determinism in habitus refers to the agent’s powers of reflexivity. Some critics have argued that Bourdieu denies agents reflexivity and that he must address this issue by allowing agents sufficient decision-­making powers and the ability to attempt to change their habitus, if the need (and opportunity) arises. There is also a separate and growing body of literature that recognises reflexivity as already present in habitus, but also offers attempts to ‘hybridize reflexivity and habitus’.5 It is my argument that, according to Bourdieu’s own writings, reflexivity is clearly present in habitus, but that it is a particular conception of reflexivity, specific to Bourdieu’s conception of habitus. In my view, it is very important to understand Bourdieu’s conception of reflexivity, because unless properly understood, it may lead to accusations of determinism in habitus. In this section of the chapter, I want to examine both strands of the literature on habitus and reflexivity and to highlight a crucial difference between the two. The difference, as I see it, is that reflexivity cannot simply be added to habitus in an external way in order to counter the alleged determinism of habitus. The crucial point which separates the two strands of literature, and highlights the reason behind the confusion among those who argue that Bourdieu rejects reflexivity, is that, if habitus is premised on an unconscious platform, then reflexivity must also function in relation to this unconscious aspect of agency. McNay (1999), Adkins (2003), Sweetman, (2003) and Adams (2006) all acknowledge this fact, although to differing degrees, and, again, offer different, interesting models for conceptualising the relationship between reflexivity and habitus. Conversely, we can see that those who argue for simply adding more reflexivity to habitus also tend to reject its unconscious aspects and interpret the unconscious as further evidence of Bourdieu’s determinism. Certainly, what emerges from the critique offered is that the relationship between reflexivity and habitus is complex. Another issue to be taken into consideration here is how reflexivity has been used and defined in the literature. Archer conceptualises reflexivity as an individual capacity which individuals possess, enabling them to exercise (more)

Agency: the neglect of the unconscious   65 control over their lives (Archer, 2000a). The literature on habitus and its relationship to reflexivity examines reflexivity as conceptualised by authors such as Giddens (1991, 1992) and Beck (1992). Giddens and Beck are proponents of what might be termed the de-­traditionalisation thesis, or the extended reflexivity thesis;6 they argue that, in pre-­modern social contexts, identity was taken as given, or was relatively stable, while in late modernity, high modernity or reflexive modernity, individual identities can no longer be assumed, but have to be constructed from a wide range of available options, thus agents are said to be more reflexive. Thus, Archer (2000a) emphasises reflexivity at the level of the agent, while Giddens (1991, 1992) and Beck (1992) focus more on the societal or external conditions which encourage reflexivity. My analysis will attempt to incorporate both of these understandings of reflexivity, as they are both implicated in understanding how habitus functions in relation to reflexivity. Unlike some of his critics who suggest otherwise, I would argue that Bourdieu allows for the possibility of reflexivity in his conception of agency. However, his conception is in line with his construction of habitus, and so reflexivity is conceptualised as an ability to rethink the ‘unthought’. Bourdieu defines reflexivity as: the systematic exploration of the unthought categories of thought that delimit the thinkable and predetermine the thought. (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 40) Reflexivity, according to Bourdieu, is not a general capacity available to all agents, but ‘paradoxically, is itself a form of habitus, a required constituent of a particular field’ (Adams, 2006, p. 515). As Adams comments, ‘reflexivity is as much the habitual outcome of field requirements as any other disposition’ (2006, p. 515). Jenkins, however, remains dismissive of Bourdieu’s account of reflexivity, arguing that what appears to be reflexivity is in fact ‘part of the repertoire of the habitus, not in any sense, an autonomous or chosen process or … an illusion, insofar as the principles of its operation are constrained by and derive from the habitus’ (Jenkins, 2002, p. 77). The overall point to take from Bourdieu is that reflexivity does not take place in a vacuum, but must contend with the field in question as well as the habitus. My broader argument in this chapter is that habitus with its unconscious elements provides a more comprehensive and convincing way of conceptualising agency, which in turn, provides the tools with which to analyse the social and political world. Essentially, habitus can capture how structures influence agency, as well as provide a ‘store’ for the life experiences of the agent. The focus on practice and everyday action, in turn, helps us to think about the present moment, or how agents act, reproduce and effect change in the social structural world. Hollow conceptions of agency inevitably constrain and delimit what we can say about the world. In contrast, this conceptualisation of agency provides a necessary grounding from which to build more nuanced understandings of social and political behaviour.

66   Part I

So what? The difference that the unconscious makes Why is a conception of the unconscious important? What specifically does it help to do that we cannot do otherwise, and how does it help in the study of social and political phenomena? Before I can answer these questions, it is necessary to establish the conceptual status of my understanding of the unconscious, as this will inform what the unconscious is and how it affects behaviour. My understanding of the unconscious is as an analytical concept and not a normative category linked to positive, negative or descriptive aspects of the personal or social life of the agent. I use the concept of the unconscious in a more analytical sense to recognise that agents’ thoughts are often implicit, automatic and not necessarily filtered through conscious, intentional, reflexive or strategic thought processes. Simply put, there are cognitive processes that do not involve cognitive awareness. To be clear, Freud’s notion of the unconscious in linked to his core concepts of desire, drives, repression, representation and sexuality, and while this provides an interesting account, it has little to do with the account of the unconscious developed in this book. The unconscious then might be thought of as an empty box, to be filled over the life course by the agent, by things such as memories, experiences, and influences. At different points, the unconscious will inform behaviour, sometimes in line with what the agent intended to do and sometimes otherwise. The unconscious, in my understanding, as informed by Bourdieu and his concept of habitus, exists as a store for the agent’s memories and past experiences. As Bourdieu states, we each carry in ourselves ‘part of yesterday’s man … who inevitably predominates in us, since the present amounts to little compared to the long past’ (1977, p. 79). Consequently, habitus enables a temporal aspect to agency. Thinking about the present involves taking a long view and acknowledging that in everyday actions and indeed, when looking forward, we also look back; this may be done both consciously, as we draw on past experiences, as well as unconsciously, as experiences from our past influence our behaviour in ways of which we are not aware. In this way, the unconscious can influence us in both positive and negative ways. For example, seeing an old photograph may trigger a memory from the past, which may rekindle positive or negative associations. The habitus as a store of the past is said to bring about a: unique integration, dominated by the earliest experiences.… Thus, for example, the habitus acquired in the family underlies the structuring of school experiences …, and the habitus transformed by schooling, itself diversified, in turn underlies the structuring of all subsequent experiences …, and so on, from restructuring to restructuring. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 87) The integrative feature of habitus means that experiences build on each other seamlessly, thereby creating a personal history for the agent, which they can draw upon both consciously and unconsciously.

Agency: the neglect of the unconscious   67 The crucial point here is that the unconscious points to a realm of motivation and influence which is outside of the agent’s control. We may – consciously – seek to tap into the unconscious but the unconscious is free to exercise influence whenever it wishes. It is part of agency, but crucially, it is informing behaviour in ways of which the agent is not aware. It is important to distinguish between the unconscious and memory and address whether the unconscious can be a synonym of memory. I would answer in the negative. Memories refer to the past, real and imagined. The unconscious will contain memories – as it is a store of memories – but it must also be more than this. The unconscious refers to a realm of experience that impacts behaviour outside of the agent’s awareness. Memories may influence behaviour but they do not exert influence in the way that the unconscious does. Memory implies a conscious re-­collection of the past, whereas with the unconscious, there is limited active involvement by the agent. The other relevant fact here, of course, is that the unconscious helps us to explain how social structures are reproduced. For example, there is now a growing body of work which points to unconscious bias as the means through which gender inequality is reproduced in society today (Mackay and Rhodes, 2013; Evans et al., 2014a; Evans and Edwards, 2014b; Akram, 2017). I have argued elsewhere that the concept of unconscious bias, as a method through which inequality is reproduced, is becoming increasingly accepted and yet, this presupposes that agents have an unconscious which impacts on their behaviour. This would not sit well with approaches to agency such as that developed within rational choice theory, or as developed by Margaret Archer (2000a, 2012). Unconscious bias is certainly a useful way of thinking about persistent and stubborn forms of discrimination in an age where we have seen significant developments and progress in tackling inequality through legislative change and, related changes in the norms and culture of society. For example, despite much progress in the workplace, we know that women, ethnic minorities and other minority groups continue to be severely underrepresented in senior positions in the workplace (Evans et al., 2014a). This is a significant issue from the perspective of those working in favour of workplace diversity and better representation for a range of groups (Pitkin, 1967; Mosher, 1982; Sowa and Selden, 2003; Skorkjaer, 2011). While acknowledgment of unconscious bias represents a step in the right direction, it becomes a more useful and more convincing concept when situated within a broader concept of agency. Furthermore, it is short-­ sighted to focus singularly on the concept of unconscious bias without thinking in a more in-­depth manner about the unconscious as a whole, and what relationship it bears to an over-­arching concept of agency as is provided by the concept of habitus. A further illustrative example might prove useful here. A more in-­depth focus on agency and the unconscious also help with regard to debates about political socialisation. More specifically, my concern here is with how political socialisation occurs, or what categories of agency are implicated in this process. An overview of the extant literature on political socialisation suggests that there has been

68   Part I much focus on when it happens, but little on how agents are socialised. Is it a conscious process, unconscious, or a mixture of both? How do childhood influences inform adult behaviour? Do agents trawl back through memories when making political decisions, or might they partially exist deep in their unconscious, and filter through without their necessarily knowing that this is the case? Certainly, in the literature, agents appear rather passive in terms of their involvement during processes of political socialisation. A language of choice-­making and reflexive decision-­making does not capture the subtle and nuanced way in which political socialisation occurs. This is not necessarily a passive process, but we need a richer vocabulary with which to describe the process. Given that political socialisation refers to the formation of political habits, attitudes and behaviour, I would suggest that the concept of habitus and its unconscious elements can play a significant role. Moreover, because much of the literature highlights the role of habits and attitudes formed during childhood, habitus may also help to explain how something deep in one’s past and perhaps learned in one’s childhood might influence adult behaviour through the unconscious. The literature on political socialisation is extensive and much of the early debates were dominated by now classic texts such as Easton and Dennis (1969) and Greenstein (1965, 1970). This literature has since developed and addresses multiple arenas of influence such as parents (Kudrnáč and Lyons, 2016; Dahlgard, 2018), peers (Gordon and Taft, 2011; Fieldhouse and Cutts, 2012) and schools and voluntary associations (Quintelier, 2011). Building on the insights of Easton and Dennis (1969) and Greenstein (1965, 1970), much of the literature continues to point to the early years as being the period of most influence and socialisation, where parents are expected to guide young people’s behaviours through direct and indirect socialisation (Kudrnáč, 2015). Direct socialisation takes place when parents are actively engaged in politics (Jennings and Niemi, 1974; Jennings et al., 2009) and its indirect form happens where parents discuss politics with their partner and children. While experiences in childhood undoubtedly play a valuable role in political socialisation, I would question, with Marsh, the rather static notion of political socialisation offered by the literature, and I would suggest that adult experience also informs political socialisation, in that it is a more fluid experience informed by experiences throughout the life course, especially periods of crisis or breach (Akram and Hogan, 2015). As Marsh noted, ‘early attitudes are viewed as likely to remain virtually unchanged or as underpinning in some more subtle way subsequent adult attitudes’ (Marsh, 1971, p.  455). Where Marsh uses the words ‘underpinning in some more subtle way’, I would insert ‘unconscious’, so the attitudes learnt in childhood unconsciously inform adult behaviour. Furthermore, I would suggest that exploring the agent’s habitus provides a useful approach through which to think through the formation of political attitudes and political socialisation. My aim in these brief interludes with debates on unconscious bias and political socialisation is to show that they offer good example of branches of literature which seek to understand various forms of influence on political behaviour,

Agency: the neglect of the unconscious   69 yet do not engage in a critical way with theories of agency. Doing so, I suggest, would help to strengthen explanations and provide a stronger conceptual underpinning for understanding social and political phenomena. With this in mind, Chapter 5 of this book provides a detailed illustrative case study of how actors engage in internal political conversations, which are better understood when situated within a broader frame of the partially unconscious habitus. With rioting as its focus, Chapter 6 explores how a notion of the unconscious and habitus helps to locate motivations for an act which is usually deemed devoid of political motivations and, therefore, might be classed as violence or criminality. I argue that rioting is political and that the unconscious habitus helps us to see politics where otherwise it might be difficult to see.

Conclusion My aim in this chapter was to further our understanding of agency by discussing Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and to highlight its unconscious elements. The unconscious is a much-­neglected concept which is central to understanding the depth and complexity of agency, which in turn informs our understanding of the social and political world and political behaviour. To this end, I have examined the various facets of the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of habitus. I have also shown how Bourdieu’s work represents a vast improvement on existing conceptions of agency within a dialectical understanding of structure and agency, because he, uniquely, incorporates an understanding of the unconscious into his conceptualisation. This inclusion of the unconscious dimension has, however, often led to the charge that habitus is a determinist concept. In contrast, it has been my aim in this chapter to show how the unconscious is necessary to the operation of habitus and, further, that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus includes concepts such as reflexivity, which also operates in relation to the habitus and field in question. The chapter has also explored illustrative examples which help flesh out the theoretical discussion. I have accordingly looked at the debate on unconscious bias and the literature on political socialisation, showing how a notion of the unconscious habitus strengthens our understanding and explanations of these phenomena. The next chapter continues the exploration of agency by inquiring into the internal (political) conversation.

Notes 1 Interestingly, King criticises Bourdieu for failing to take the full implications of his practical theory seriously. King argues that the concept of habitus marks a return to objectivism and, thus, undermines Bourdieu’s theory of practice (King, 2000). King favours a hermeneutic and intersubjective sociological approach, and sees signs of this in Bourdieu’s theory of practice, but argues that the concept of habitus ‘reverts into a sophisticated form of objectivism’ (2000, p. 418). 2 Despite Bourdieu’s bold claims to the contrary, there is some dissent regarding the originality of his claims about the theory of practice. Alexander (1995), for example, is highly sceptical of Bourdieu’s claim that his theory of practice is a novel development

70   Part I in social theory and he argues that Bourdieu fails to take account of earlier work on practice. Alexander points out that ideas about the practicality of action did not originate with Bourdieu, that they ‘express, rather, the broad commitments of a particular theoretical tradition’ (1995, p.  132). He claims that in European philosophy Husserl may have been among the first to provide a critique of structuralist and abstract theorising about action (Alexander, 1995, pp. 132–3). 3 Shilling is highly critical of Bourdieu and the concept of habitus, arguing that it is determinist, leaving little room for human creativity or the opportunity for social change (1997). Despite Shilling’s rejection of Bourdieu’s approach, I would argue that he and Bourdieu share a common concern with the socialised and material body and how it is implicated within broader processes of social-­agential interaction. Analogously to Bourdieu’s concept of bodily hexis, Shilling, in his own work seeks to draw attention to the neglect of the ‘socialised and embodied agent’, an agent that possesses ‘senses, sensualities and physical habits that have been partially socialised, but that continue to shape as well as be shaped by social structures’ (Shilling, 1997, p. 738). 4 The internal quote is from Emile Durkheim, 1938, p. 16. 5 Adams (2006) provides a helpful survey of some of this literature. 6 Adams coins the term extended reflexivity thesis, arguing that while the main proponents of increasing reflexivity in society are Beck, Giddens and Lash (1994) and Beck (1992), various nuanced versions of this thesis remain popular and continue to be developed (e.g. Castells, 1997) to the point where one might refer to ‘the extended reflexivity thesis being commonplace in sociological theory’ (Adams, 2006, p.  512). For reasons of consistency the term ‘de-­traditionalisation’ will be used throughout this chapter to describe the phenomenon as implied by this literature.

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Agency: the neglect of the unconscious   73 Sowa, J. E. and Selden, S. C. (2003). Administrative Discretion and Active Representation: An Expansion of the Theory of Representative Bureaucracy. Public Administration Review. 63, pp. 700–10. Sweetman, P. (2003). Twenty-­first Century Dis-­ease? Habitual Reflexivity or the Reflexive Habitus. The Sociological Review. 51(4), pp. 529–49.

4 Talking heads? The internal political conversation

Introduction The central premise of this book is that in order to understand contemporary forms of political participation and move beyond a narrow definition of what counts and does not count as political participation, we must engage more seriously with how agency is defined and how it operates in relation to social structure. Such an approach will help us to see political motivations, thinking and action that would not ordinarily be visible to us – it will also help us to understand and explain why people behave the way they do. This necessitates not only an in-­depth theorisation of the core characteristics of agency, but also a recognition that agency must be situated in relation to social structure. Both factors ensure that individuals are affected by and, in turn, affect the socio-­political world around them. This is the central dilemma addressed by the structure and agency debate. The present chapter continues the focus on agency and political participation by exploring the realm of inner subjectivity as it relates to internal thinking or deliberation about politics, drawing on what Margaret Archer calls the ‘internal conversation’. Archer defines the internal conversation as ‘the modality through which reflexivity towards self, society and the relationship between them is exercised’ (2003, p.  9). Here, I critically evaluate Archer’s development of the concept, but also extend it to explore the internal political conversation. The core argument of this chapter is that the internal realm is distinct from external talk about politics, although it may affect external talk. Furthermore, I argue that the internal conversation has the potential to significantly enhance the reach and scope of our understanding of how people engage in political deliberations; how they mull over the things they care or feel strongly about; and how they make sense of their own political behaviour in relation to the world around them. Thus, the discussion that follows addresses two questions. First, what is an internal conversation? Second, to what extent do agents engage in internal political conversations and how does the latter inform their political deliberations and behaviour? My approach to the internal political conversation is to discuss it within the confines of a broader theory of agency, and agency in relation to structure. To this end, the present chapter provides a theoretical frame for understanding the internal political conversation and forms the backdrop to Chapter 5,

Talking heads?   75 which discusses examples of internal political conversations as well as a methodology for accessing the internal conversations. I recommend that the reader returns to, or keeps in mind this chapter when reading Chapter 5. Political conversations: internal and external A focus on the internal political conversation extends but does not replace a focus on political behaviour that is directly observable and informed by choices and decisions. To date, the study of political behaviour has understandably been primarily concerned with observable political behaviour and with choices and decision-­ making. This has proved to be an empirically fruitful approach, because it means we can observe, measure, and in some cases predict phenomena such as voting, turnout at political meetings and membership of political parties. This also, however, suggests an approach to political behaviour which focuses on actions, decisions or choices we make as agents. Documenting observable actions, decisions and choices matters, but does not necessarily capture the complexity of the deliberations that agents engage in when thinking about politics, nor will it capture the internal deliberations that inform actions, or indeed lead to a decision not to act. For example, a choice is a real choice when one has options, but in the case of abortion, for example, if a woman feels that keeping the baby is not a viable option because of economic constraints or personal circumstances, then the choice to abort looks less like a choice, and more like taking the only real option available. In this example, exploring the internal deliberations behind the choice to abort would reveal a much more complicated thought process than a singular focus on the fact that the abortion took place. This chapter argues that a better understanding of agents’ internal deliberations, premised on a more in-­depth conception of agency, enhances our understanding of contemporary forms of political behaviour. The political landscape in the UK is changing, as is how people engage with politics, thus necessitating a broader set of conceptual and analytic tools to engage in political analysis. The lesson from the literature is that people are having to work harder to work out their political identities, which once were more stable. This is partly attributed to partisan de-­alignment and to the more fluid nature of class and other forms of identity formation (Inglehart, 1979, 2008; Dalton and Welzel, 2014). Technology is also affecting how people engage with politics (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Karpf, 2012). Class, I suggest, is still important, but the effect it has on political behaviour has changed, as have the ways in which social scientists understand and document it (Savage et al., 2013; Evans, 2004). For Bang (2009), new forms of political participation as illustrated by his theorisation of the ‘everyday maker’ involves a complicated form of meaning-­making. From this perspective, the everyday maker is more inclined to act locally on issues that matter to them, so the normative dimension of their action is strong. We might also say that for these individuals, the boundaries between their politics and lifestyle may be blurred, as everyday makers do not make a distinction between participating to feel engaged and participating for specific causes.

76   Part I I suggest that one way to explore and better understand the new forms of political engagement as discussed by Bang (2009) is to document the internal conversations people have about politics to document their understanding of their political engagement, which may not always be self-­evident from their actions. For example, the choice not to vote in General Elections may be driven by a rejection of the well-­known shortcomings of the electoral system rather than by voter apathy. Such a mode of investigation requires a new language and a new way of theorising both agency and political behaviour: the task of this chapter. To this end, I argue that we should be interested in the internal political conversations in which agents engage, and which inform practice in the world. Paying more attention to these offers an opportunity to better understand thinking processes in themselves and as they inform actions. Both political disengagement and new forms of engagement are a complex phenomenon and to understand them we must pay greater attention to people’s motivations and understandings of their engagement, all of which may be studied by first acknowledging, and then exploring internal conversations. My approach to the internal conversation is developed through a sympathetic, but critical, discussion of Margaret Archer’s work on this subject (1995, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2012). The aim of this chapter is to outline the core features of the internal conversation and to theorise it within the broader context of a theory of agency, but, crucially also in relation to structure. I depart from Archer, arguing that she overplays agential reflexivity in the internal conversation, but downplays the unconscious dimension of the internal conversation, as well as the effect of social structure on agency. The overall effect of this is that agency is privileged over structure and the internal conversation is overly purposive. To address these issues, I re-­frame the internal conversation by drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus. The chapter is particularly concerned to show what makes an internal conversation distinctly political. This chapter is divided into four sections. My starting point is to compare Archer’s earlier and later work on agency and indicate her inconsistency. Section 1 addresses Archer’s early work on the morphogenetic approach which treats the relationship between structure and agency as dialectical, with both having independent causal power, even though they also interact. The chapter then moves on to Archer’s later work which was concerned with conceptualising agency within the dialectic, showing how she privileges reflexivity and denies a role for the unconscious, therefore undermining the dialectic. Section 3 discusses Archer’s formulation of the internal conversation, highlighting its overly purposive nature. The fourth and final section discusses an alternative frame for re-­ conceptualising the internal political conversation.

Archer mark I: the morphogenetic approach Archer’s work on the internal conversation (2003) is the most recent iteration of her longstanding concern with the concept of agency, as situated within the structure and agency dialectic. I begin my discussion by re-­visiting Archer’s

Talking heads?   77 (1995) work on the morphogenetic approach, which was concerned with conceptualising the relationship between structure and agency. The reason for doing so is to show that Archer’s later work on the internal conversation (Archer, 2000, 2003, 2012) departs from her earlier work on the morphogenetic approach (Archer, 1995). The crucial point here is that the earlier work emphasised a dialectical relationship between structure and agency, where the two interact in an iterative way, thus emphasising the structural context of action – which agents are influenced by, and in turn inform structures such as patriarchy and class. However, her later work on agency, and then on the internal conversation, privileges agency, overplaying reflexivity, and downplaying structure. The effect of this is that agents become infinitely empowered beings, who can reflexively choose courses of actions without encountering any constraints posed by the socio-­political world. Thus, I suggest it is useful to refer to ‘Archer Mark I’ and ‘Archer Mark II’. My overall argument here is that the morphogenetic approach established valuable principles for understanding the nature of the relationship between how agents are constrained but also enabled by the world, which are not reflected in Archer’s later work and have implications for the internal conversation. I advocate that the later Archer could usefully re-­visit her earlier work. Margaret Archer: the morphogenetic approach Archer made a significant contribution to the development of the structure and agency debate by developing the morphogenetic approach (1995). One of the most important points in Archer’s work is that she regards structure and agency as both ontologically and analytically distinct; as such, they have independent causal power (2003, pp. 1–2). The morphogenetic approach identifies a three-­part cycle of change (see Figure 2.1). To Archer, not only are structure and agency ontologically separate, but, in addition, structure precedes agency temporally. Indeed, one of Archer’s key contributions to this literature is the identification of temporality as crucial to understanding the interactions between structure and agency (temporality is represented by the letter ‘T’ in the morphogenetic approach). Archer starts with the structural, for example, economic, social, political and environmental, context of action, at T1, a process she terms structural conditioning. These conditions affect, but do not determine, the interests that agents have. While agents are constrained and facilitated by structural conditioning, their actions are also shaped by their abilities, skills and personality at T2 and T3. In acting, agents can change the structural context at T4, to a greater or lesser extent, and sometimes in a way they did not intend, in a process termed morphogenesis (structural elaboration) or morphostasis (structural reproduction). Crucially, the structure that is created is not new, but an adaptation of the prior structure: hence the use of the term morphogenesis. This structural elaboration becomes the structural context at T1 in the next cycle. Unfortunately, Archer’s treatment of agency in her work on the morphogenetic approach (1995) and that elaborated, first, in Being Human: The Problem

78   Part I of Agency (2000) and then in Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (2003) appear inconsistent. As we saw, Archer’s morphogenetic approach emphasises the structural context of agency as a crucial basis of the interaction between structure and agency: it heavily criticises Giddens for failing to examine the iterative nature of the relationship. I discussed Giddens in Chapter 2, but it is worth briefly exploring Archer’s critique of Giddens before proceeding. Giddens’ argument is that structure and agency are a duality, not a dualism; they are interdependent and internally related (1979, 1984, 1993). Giddens uses a coin as an analogy to evoke the relationship between structure and agency, arguing that one cannot see the effect of both structure and agency at one time, just as one cannot see both sides of the coin at once. So, methodologically, at any given time, one can only study either structure or agency while holding the other constant, or ‘bracketing it off ’ (Giddens, 1984, p. 288). As a result of this ontological duality, Archer describes Giddens as a ‘central conflationist’ who ends up merging the individual properties of structure and agency (Archer, 1995, pp. 93–134) – and in empirical work ends up bracketing off one or the other. Hay (2002, pp. 118–121) and McAnulla (2002, pp.  278–80) criticise Giddens in broadly the same way, emphasising that the approach is not dialectical given it does not allow us to study the interaction between the two and, in empirical terms, tends to privilege agency and bracket off structure. The broader point here is that in her later work, Archer (2000, 2003) in effect ‘brackets off ’ structure and develops a conceptualisation of agency which does not seem to fit happily with the morphogenetic framework. Archer conceptualises an agent as one who has ‘selfhood – a continuous sense of self or reflexive self-­consciousness’ (2000, p.  19, my emphasis). However, Archer over-­stresses ‘selfhood’, reflexivity and the consciousness involved in agents’ actions and, in turn, denies that agents also operate at an unconscious level. The overall effect of this is that Archer’s agents are overly reflexive and purposive – thus echoing rational choice theory’s conception of action. To explore these issues in more detail, it is important to be clear about the core features of Archer’s conceptualisation of agency, which I turn to next. Archer’s conception of agency: reflexivity and the unconscious According to Archer, more time has been devoted to dealing with the concept of structure than agency to date and, consequently, we have over time come to rely on a rather hollow conception of agency. By ‘hollow’ Archer means that the social sciences have adopted an overly structuralist account of agency – i.e. one that denies agency, or favours rational choice theory.1 The key features of Archer’s conception of agency are that it is irreducible to structure, has causal efficacy and contains its own unique properties, or ‘emergent powers’. Structure and agency are involved in a dialectic, meaning they interact, but for Archer, they are ontologically as well as analytically distinct – which they are not to Giddens. Crucial to understanding Archer’s position is recognising the centrality of her critical realist ontological frame and how it provides the scaffolding for her

Talking heads?   79 theory-­building. Archer explains that, while structure and agency are distinct entities which interact, realist social theory has neglected to discuss how structures affect agency, beyond advancing a vague notion of ‘social conditioning’. Highlighting Bhaskar’s central claim that ‘the causal powers of social forms is mediated through social agency’ (Bhaskar, 1989, p. 26 in Archer, 2003, p. 2 – my emphasis), Archer suggests that we understand very little about what this mediatory process entails, and the word ‘through’ requires considerable unpacking. For Archer, engaging in this task is useful for two reasons: first, it helps us to understand how structures affect agents; second, it would help to explain why agents act one way and not another in ostensibly similar situations. Archer’s response to this challenge has two, inter-­related, parts: first, she emphasises reflexivity (Archer, 2000); second, she overplays the conscious dimension of agency, neglecting the role of the unconscious dimension. Chapter 2 addressed Archer’s concept of reflexivity and Chapter 3 highlighted the unconscious dimension of Bourdieu’s habitus, so, here I briefly consider how these two concepts are relevant for understanding Archer’s concept of agency. Archer defines reflexivity as ‘the regular exercise of the mental ability, shared by all normal people, to consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts and vice versa’ (2012, p. 1). For Archer, reflexivity is a personal emergent property and is progressively replacing routine action in late modernity, particularly in more advanced societies. Given this, she develops a schema of four different types of reflexive person – communicative, autonomous, meta-­reflexives and fractured reflexives.2 In Chapter 2 and elsewhere (Akram, 2012; Akram and Hogan, 2015), I argued that Archer overplays the extent to which reflexivity is the key mechanism through which agents negotiate social structure today. With the decline of social cleavages, Archer suggests we are increasingly reflexive in our outlooks, weighing and negotiating our options in light of available opportunities and circumstances. Such a position, I suggest, overlooks the role of the unconscious and the-­taken-for-­granted (explored in more detail in Chapter 3), or the more enduring aspects of our identities, which are harder to shift, although not fixed, and are not necessarily subject to regular reflection. In my view, it is important to acknowledge that structural influences (unacknowledged conditions of action) also affect agents in subjective, but often unconscious, ways. Why does social structure matter? Chapter 2 provides an extended discussion of social structure, but it may be helpful to re-­cap what structure is and, further, how structure and agency interact. This will help to establish the difference that reinstating a stronger role for structure makes and, ultimately, underscore why it matters for understanding contemporary forms of political behaviour. While discussions about structure and agency may appear highly technical, these are far from abstract debates. On the contrary, they refer to the context within which agency or political actors operate and how agents are shaped by

80   Part I and, in turn, inform their socio-­political context. Our conception of agency is crucial here, because it determines the unique capacities that agents have which inform their interaction with structure. Thus, how we understand these issues will inevitably affect how we engage in political analysis. What is social structure? Social structure means shared norms, values and ideas that shape social behaviour, such as patriarchy, nationalism and gender roles, but it also refers to relational structures understood as patterns of interconnection among agents as well as the positions that they occupy (Lopez and Scott, 2000). Structure can be material and ideational; it can refer to the embodied experience of class and gender, but also include ideas about class and gender which influence people through talk, perceptions, beliefs and interpretations and have the potential to guide human conduct. There is also, of course, a relationship between material and ideational structures. In Culture and Agency (1988) Archer usefully makes an ontological and analytical distinction between structure, culture (or ideas) and agents – reminding us that ideas such as neo-­ liberalism can be dominant, but are also adaptable and are dependent upon usage by agents. Agents can hold contradictory ideas, or beliefs that positively or negatively affect their life chances, which affirms the open nature of society and the fact that ideas are distinct entities to the agents that hold them (Archer, 1988). In sum, structure matters because without it we cannot explain the existence of structures such as class, nor can we explain the inequalities that emerge out of the effects of such structures on agency. Yet, we cannot really acknowledge structure without thinking about how structures affect agency. Do agents consciously negotiate their class and gender position? Or is it more likely that while some aspects of class are consciously considered, much of these ‘influences get beneath our radar, especially in early life, shaping our dispositions and responses without our even noticing them’ (Sayer in Archer ed., 2010, p. 113)? Thus, it is not sufficient to acknowledge that structures exist, we must go beyond this to be clear about how structures affect agency – and which agential capacities are implicated in the process. Accordingly, a dialectical approach to structure and agency, as advocated by Archer in her earlier work, is one that must grant structure and agency ontological independence; this, in turn, has implications for the concept of agency we operate with. Yet, if social structure is to affect agency, it must be able to influence agents in ways of which the agent may not necessarily be aware, hence the need for the unconscious. However, for Archer, structures are present to agents as sets of constraints and enablements, but they can only impact agents through their capacity for reflexivity. To be clear, for Archer, agents reflexively negotiate structure in relation to their concerns, life projects and the internal conversation. Such a position is deeply problematic because it negates the myriad forms in which social structure impacts agency, such as through socialisation (Caetano, 2015). It also has implications for how we understand socio-­political identity formation and the effects of structures such as class, gender and race on agency, especially when it leads to stigmatisation, exclusion and inequality (Skeggs, 1997; Reay, 2005; Sayer, 2005, 2009; Fleetwood, 2008).

Talking heads?   81 According to Bourdieu, structures such as class are deeply embedded within us as pre-­reflexive dispositions and enduring beliefs and norms, which we do not always have conscious mastery over. Some of the more interesting recent research on class extends the discussion beyond the material and economic determinants of class to highlight the subjective and dispositional experience of class. For example, Sayer (2005) discusses the moral and normative dimensions of class, which result in feelings of shame, guilt, fear and mistrust, while Reay (2005) highlights feelings of ambivalence, inferiority and superiority, which lead to inequality and stigmatisation. As has been noted by many of Archer’s critics, Bourdieu’s work on the enduring nature of dispositions and the habitus is a corrective to Archer’s over-­ emphasis on conscious reflexivity, yet Archer has been clear in her rejection of Bourdieu for precisely this reason (Sayer, 2005; Caetano, 2015, 2017; Farrugia and Woodman, 2015). As Farrugia and Woodman (2015) note, by negating the significance of dispositions shaped by social position in her theory of agency, it is not clear where values, which inform ultimate concerns, come from, nor why individuals pick particular life projects and not others. Archer’s agent then, emerges as a self-­transparent and increasingly sovereign individual, who has obvious parallels with neo-­liberal discourses of self-­ advancement through choice. Of course, such a view corresponds with Archer’s broader historical narrative regarding the shift from pre-­modern societies characterised by social reproduction (morphostasis), to late-­modernity where societies reflect the ‘reflexive imperative’ and are subject to rapid social change (morphogenesis). In sum, reinstating a more robust role for structure which works in tandem with a more realistic conception of agency is important; it would build on the principles established by the morphogenetic approach, but ultimately strengthen it. Having discussed agency and the role of structure in affecting agency, my concern and focus in the remainder of this chapter is on the internal conversation, because it offers a potentially very useful way to document the ongoing conversation with themselves that agents conduct as they go about their lives. I draw on Archer’s conception of the internal conversation, but depart from Archer in three key ways. First, I re-­emphasise the structural context to action, which she negates in her later work by privileging agency. Second, I argue that the internal conversation is also influenced by the unconscious and taken-­forgranted values, beliefs and attitudes, and so does not operate solely on the basis of reflexivity as it does in her model. Third, I take Archer’s account one step further, in that I suggest that the internal conversation offers us a useful model for thinking about political identity formation based on the agent’s internal political conversation. In the section that follows I discuss Archer’s engagement with the Amer­ican pragmatist tradition to explore her understanding of what the internal conversation is and is not, before focusing on the three areas of refinement listed here which need to be addressed, and eventually setting out my conception of the internal political conversation.

82   Part I

Archer mark II: the internal conversation The acknowledgement of agents’ inner lives is one of the most important aspects of Archer’s recent work on agency (2003, 2007, 2012) – and Archer’s formulation of the internal conversation is the key contribution. Archer presents the internal conversation as: (T)he modality through which reflexivity towards self, society and the relationship between them is exercised. In itself it entails just such things as articulating to ourselves where we are placed, ascertaining where our interests lie and adumbrating schemes of future action. (Archer, 2003, p. 9) Reflexivity and the internal conversation are clearly intimately related for Archer, and together offer us the means through which to add depth to the hollow concept of agency which, in Archer’s view, predominates in social and political theory. We are moving here towards a more detailed understanding of how agents interact with structure, or the mediation process or modality ‘through’ which structure affects agency and vice versa. Archer is clearly keen to emphasise that internal conversations are always negotiated in relation to the structural context, yet it is difficult to see how this can be the case, given Archer’s conception of agency. My understanding of the internal political conversation is developed from, but in key ways critiques, Archer’s understanding of the internal conversation (2003). Specifically, I highlight the importance of the structural context within which agents act, including the role played by ideas. Archer, in contrast, effectively ends up bracketing off structure, because she privileges agency, in the form of reflexivity, thus departing from the principles she established in the morphogenetic approach. I argue that the recognition of the role of the unconscious in agency would create a pathway through which structures can affect agents in ways of which they are unaware. Internal monologue, conversation or introspection? What is the difference between an internal conversation and an internal monologue? And what does ‘internal’ mean? It is worth exploring the differences between, and the meanings of, these terms before proceeding. [The internal conversation] refers to the mental activity all normal people experience and which is described as the talk all normal people have with themselves, within their own heads, usually silently and usually from an early age. (Archer, 2007, p. 2) According to Archer, the internal conversation is not an internal monologue because a monologue is presented by an actor to express mental thought and an internal monologue is a continuous speech presented by the actor to herself.

Talking heads?   83 An internal conversation must on Archer’s terms be a conversation because it entails conversing with oneself about one’s life. By this definition, a conversation is something that is dialogical: it involves an interaction of thought or communication through speech. The important point here is that it describes the dialogical interaction the individual has with herself in relation to the social environment. Equally importantly, the internal conversation refers to those inner dialogical experiences that the individual usually prefers to keep unspoken. Thus, when we refer to an ‘internal conversation’, we refer to personal properties which are known and are experienced only by the individual who produces them – they are first person in kind. The rest of the social environment is not necessarily, or even usually, aware of them. Often then, when we use the term internal conversation we mean the dialogical properties of inner life. Early versions of the internal conversation appear in the works of James, Peirce and Mead (Archer, 2003, pp. 53–92). Archer engages with, and carefully dissects, their work, finding shortcomings in all three, before distinguishing her own position. One of the key issues for Archer is that there is some confusion and conflation between internal conversations and introspection in the Amer­ican pragmatist position, which is related to a subject–object distinction and a criterion of observability. It is worth unpacking this before we proceed. The Amer­ican pragmatist tradition is criticised for remaining committed to an observational model, whereby we ‘look in’ (Archer, 2003, p.  93) on our own thoughts. As Archer notes: ‘thus Mead was still found repeating that he could not turn around fast enough to catch sight of himself in the act’ (2003, p.  93). The issue here for Mead is that we cannot be subject and object to ourselves, which in Archer’s view leads him to conceptualise an interior monologue, rather than an internal conversation. For Archer, introspection appeals to self-­knowledge, and she objects to the idea that this is hidden, as opposed to something that we produce internally and dialogically. Furthermore, and as a realist, Archer cannot accept the introspection model for two reasons. First, introspective observation remains bounded by a criterion of empiricism – ‘it thus precludes causality from being attributed to unobservable generative mechanisms’ (2003, p.  93). As she states, ‘Introspection is incorrigibly Humean and irredeemably actualist’.3 Second, for Archer, the internal conversation is something that must take place in relation to the world, or to social structure. Thus, she conceptualises it not as a psychological faculty of people, but as a personal emergent property (PEP), because it is relational; the relations in question are those between the mind and the world. Taking all this into account, the internal conversation has three key features for Archer: it is subjective, interior and causally efficacious. The internal conversation is something that shapes life projects and Archer presents it as a dialogic scheme entailing three Ds: discernment, deliberation, and dedication. Because of the internal conversation, we are said to prioritise our ‘ultimate concerns’ in the form of a modus vivendi:

84   Part I Ultimate concerns are sounding boards affecting our (internal) responses to anything we encounter, according to it resonating harmoniously or discordantly with what we care about most. (Archer, 2012, p. 22) Here, we have a realm that comprises ‘self-­doubt, criticism, correction, exploratory musings, with the aim of increased self-­understanding’ (Archer, 2003, p. 101). It should also be noted that the internal conversation, much like reflexivity, is fallible, so we may make mistakes, even if internal deliberations have taken place. The internal conversation is a potentially very useful concept for providing a more-­in depth conception of agency, but in its current formulation, as developed by Archer, it is overly reflexive and purposive and echoes key insights of rational choice theory. The next section looks in more detail at Archer’s empirical work documenting the internal conversation to identify some problems which stem from her conceptualisation of agency as outlined above.

Re-­configuring the inner conversation Archer suggests that her examination of the internal conversation is exploratory, so the potential for refinement exists. For example, Chalari (2009) argues for stronger links between internal and external conversations, usefully highlighting how our internal speech informs our verbal speech in the world (also see Caetano, 2017). More pressingly, however, one of the key issues we might note is that Archer’s agents must be subject to more external influence if the structure and agency dialectic are to have both autonomy and influence in interplay (also see Mutch, 2004; Brock and Carrigan, 2014, Sayer in Archer ed., 2010). Mutch (2004), for example, advocates a stronger emphasis on involuntary agential positioning than Archer’s position would imply, arguing that there is a disjuncture between Archer’s recent work and earlier work. The second area for refinement is to question the assertion that there will be complete consistency in the internal conversation. Because for Archer there is a link between reflexivity and the internal conversation, she sees it as completely geared to achieving one’s projects. I want to suggest instead that this realm may be subject to breaks, interruptions and meanderings that are not strictly attuned to achieving goals – and may be subject to the influence of the unconscious. This could lead to a focus on things we care about, for example thinking about how much one enjoys spending time with family or pets. However, there need not be a binary opposition between goal-­orientated and unconscious action. For example, Stone and Schaffner (1988) remind us that the psychical consumption of the environment involves conscious and unconscious motivations that prioritise personal interest. There may also however be fields4 (Bourdieu, 1977) of focus, and indeed reflexivity, for example in the case of political identity formation. Individuals may have an ongoing conversation about what they care about, how they can action such concerns and how these concerns may be realised in relation to the world. However,

Talking heads?   85 there need not be complete consistency in our internal conversation; rather, there may conceivably be overlaps, interactions and revisiting of familiar topics. To explore this line, it is worth drawing out the implications of Archer’s position here through discussing her empirical research into internal conversations. Archer: the different types of reflexivity Reflexivity is a universal characteristic for Archer, but, in investigating the internal conversation, she develops a scale of reflexivity, suggesting different types of internal conversations which indicate different modes of reflexivity. She points to the existence of communicative, autonomous, meta-­reflexive and fractured reflexives – as indicated in Table 4.1. The striking feature of the twenty interviews that Archer conducted into the internal conversation is how they all revolve around issues of purposive or instrumental action. The interviews all reveal projects, and how individuals have fared in realising them. The emphasis is on how individuals communicate with themselves about these projects, but there is little comment on anything other than realisation of these goals. As Archer states: (I)f the (first) three modes of three modes of reflexivity (communicative, autonomous and meta-­reflexives) – did absorb the entire population, as practitioners of one of the other, then society would be made up exclusively of purposive people. At any given rate, all its members would be pursuing clearly defined projects designed to attain (something) of what they care about, establishing practices, which helped to realise their concerns, and elaborating these into modus vivendi, which they found satisfying and sustainable…. (2003, pp. 301–2) In contrast to the communicative, autonomous and meta-­reflexives, fractured reflexives are described as ‘passive agents’ (2003, p. 302), because they are not Table 4.1  The modes of reflexivity Type of reflexivity

Key features

Communicative reflexive

Adopt a pattern of ‘thought and talk’. Resolve issues interpersonally often with friends and family before making decisions

Autonomous reflexive

Self-reliance – lone exercise of mental activity

Meta-reflexive

Are reflexive about their own acts of reflexivity. Internal conversation consist of asking questions and them answering them

Fractured reflexive

Unable to hold an internal conversation which has any practical efficacy

Source: adapted from Archer, 2003.

86   Part I capable of realising concerns or life projects. Fractured reflexives are ‘disorientated about their concerns, or about how best to realise their priorities or usually both’ (2003, p.  302). To emphasise the passivity of the fractured reflexive, Archer goes on to explain that she uses the word ‘disorientated’ to signify the ‘opposite of purposefulness’ (2003, p. 302). Instead of leading to purposive action, the self-­talk of the fractured reflexive is primarily ‘expressive’. It leads the subject to feel an ever-­more emotional distress about her condition. Thus, the fractured subject merely dwells with increasing misery and frustration upon the impossibility of realising any of his or her concerns (2003, p. 303; see also Being Human, 2000.) It is not that Archer denies emotions a role in agency – for her, ‘emotions are a commentary on our human concerns’ (2000, p. 193) – but they should not play a role in the internal conversation, which must remain purposive. Emotions seem to get in the way here. For example, when discussing Lara, a fractured reflexive, Archer suggests her ‘internal conversation is not really working for her although she admits to engaging in it quite often’ (2003, p.  307). Similarly, for Archer, Lawrence and Lara are said to share a common problem in that their current reflexive modes ‘exacerbate emotional distress without increasing their ability to control their own lives’ (2003, p. 313). There are clear parallels between Archer’s conception of the internal conversation and rational choice theory’s emphasis of instrumental rationality. At one level, Archer is aware of potential criticisms to her conception of the internal conversation. Indeed, she states: ‘[t]o designate the general orientation of the internal conversation as ‘instrumental’ is to endorse none of the assumptions about ‘rational choice’; purposeful actors need neither be maximising not satisficing’ (2003, p. 303). Yet, it is hard to see why we should agree. A role for emotions in agency, for mulling things over, but without strategic or purposive aims, seems important. Indeed, not all self-­talk is or should be directed towards instrumental action. Furthermore, I would argue both that Lara and Lawrence are indeed engaging in an internal conversation, and that documenting it as such is important. The broader point here is that reflexivity and rationality end up at the same end point – i.e. a focus on instrumental action – unless you accept that there are other factors affecting the internal conversation. Ergo, the internal conversation must be subject to a range of inputs, thus allowing for the role of the unconscious and the effect of the social. The latter at least is one of Archer’s foci. Situating Archer within the impressive body of work that she has produced to date (1995, 2000, 2003), should confirm the fact that Archer is not a rational choice theorist. She self-­describes as a realist, yet her conception of agency shares significant features with rational choice theory. Archer’s approach to agency ends up privileging decision-­making, but not all roads necessarily lead in this direction. In my view, it is imperative that we develop more in-­depth ways of understanding political behaviour beyond a focus on explicit decision-­ making. A more complex notion of the internal conversation will significantly help in this regard: the final section of the chapter spells out in more detail the

Talking heads?   87 role played by emotions and the unconscious in action and in the internal political conversation.

Re-­conceptualising the internal conversation: habitus, the unconscious and fields I have already outlined the concept of habitus in earlier chapters, but, for the purposes of delineating the key features of the internal conversation, it will be necessary to provide a brief overview here. Bourdieu offers habitus as a mechanism for understanding how agents negotiate social structures and are, in turn, affected by structures. Habitus reflects the ‘dialectic of the internalisation of externalisation and the externalisation of internality or, more simply, of incorporation and objectification’ (1977, p. 72 – emphasis in the original). What is crucial for the present discussion is to highlight how ‘internalisation’ occurs. For Bourdieu, agents do not engage with social structures through reflexive deliberation, or rational calculation. This is not to say that they are never reflexive, rational or intentional in behaviour, but that he wants to emphasise that for the most part, agents are engaged in ‘practice’. Practice is central to Bourdieu’s approach, because, for him, action in a socially structured world is often seamless, mundane and habitual. Indeed, this is why social structural reproduction is so enduring. What we have in habitus is a sophisticated conception of agency, and a convincing account of how agency operates in relation to social structure, such that both are involved in a dialectical interplay. In turn, this provides a useful frame for situating the concept of the internal conversation. To be clear, I am arguing that the internal conversation should be understood within the broader context of habitus. A few further clarifications are important. First, pace Archer, the internal conversation should be subject to the influence of the unconscious. I have argued elsewhere that habitus is partially premised on an unconscious basis, although this was not made explicit by Bourdieu (Akram, 2012, 2015, 2017). However, the unconscious is in fact necessary if habitus is to function in ‘the hand in glove manner’ that Bourdieu argues it does (1977). Thus, the internal conversation should also be subject to unconscious influences. This not only means that agency is affected by external influences because of social structures, but also allows a more in-­depth conception of history and the way in which the past affects the agent’s practice in the present. As Bourdieu emphasises, habitus is coterminous with temporality. He explains it thus: Practical activity … is an act of temporalisation through which the agent transcends the immediate present via practical mobilisation of the past and practical anticipation of the future inscribed in the present in a state of objective potentiality. (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 138)

88   Part I This is an important feature of the internal conversation as it means that the internal conversation is continuous, recognises the historicity and temporality which is specific to all people, and provides a means for encapsulating the past, the present and future. More broadly, I would argue that the internal conversation and the habitus should be premised on a platform that incorporates conscious and unconscious elements. It should also be subject to emotions and reflexivity – however one should not dominate at any point. Indeed, the more interesting literature on reflexivity highlights the relationship between reflexivity and emotion. Holmes, for example, argues that emotion and reason are not separate entities and offers a socially embedded model of the feeling and reflecting self (Holmes, 2010). Burkitt goes further to argue that feelings and emotion are central to reflexive processes. For Burkitt, ‘emotion colours reflexivity and infuses our perception of others, the world around us and ourselves’ as well as the way we reflexively monitor action and deliberate on the choices we face (2012, p. 458). It is important to clarify that the internal conversation is not a single conversation, but comprises various strands of conversation. Individuals meditate about different issues at different points of the day, and at different points of their life, as per the salience of external events and circumstances. My point here is that the internal conversation is not a continuous dialogue or a single conversation which is neatly coherent and orientated to realising goals, as Archer argues and is discussed above. Parts of the internal conversation may be coherent and purposive, but parts of it may not be. Thus, it makes sense to talk of multiple internal conversations. To this end it may be useful to highlight different features of the internal conversation as they relate to different ‘fields’. I use Bourdieu’s concept of field: A field may be defined as a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions. These positions may be objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon their occupants, agents, or institutions …, by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field.… (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 97) The key points to take from this are that, first, there is competition in the field for power, capital and authority and second, there are different types of fields – we can identify the educational field, the artistic field and the political field. What Bourdieu is doing here is highlighting that there are different fields, each with their own struggles over domination and subordination, rather than one over-­ arching struggle based on economic capital. Bourdieu’s concept of field is relevant to the internal conversation because it means that we can focus on different fields, as per the research question at hand. If the internal conversation extends as it were horizontal across the life course, it

Talking heads?   89 also extends vertically into different fields. Thus, it makes sense to think that individuals do not have a single internal conversation, but will have a range of specific conversations that comprise their internal talk – be they about family relationships, the state of the world, or their political lives. We must disaggregate the broader internal conversation into specific fields of conversation. This enables a focus on the internal political conversation as it relates to the field of politics. This is not to say that this conversation is insulated from being influenced by other conversations or fields, but that this is an identifiable and distinct conversation for the individual. Certainly, it is reasonable to think that there may be interplay and overlap between these different areas of the agent’s life. Disentangling them is therefore important and, for analytical purposes, it makes sense to identify distinct spheres for study. Towards a more in-­depth notion of political behaviour The current literature on political engagement and disengagement largely focuses on action and observation of this action as evidence of active political engagement. This may partly be attributed to the underlying conception of agency, or indeed a neglect of any reflection on conceptions of agency. However, in this chapter I have argued that political engagement should be conceived of more broadly and go beyond the active expression of political participation to include the internal conversations agents have about politics. Let us seek richer, more complex, accounts to reflect the multiple and intersecting influences on individuals as they make their political journeys. Such conversations are signs of engagement with politics and should be explored and studied, even if they do not lead to identifiable political action. Thus, political engagement, for the purposes of this book, is seen in terms of political actions, and it is argued that these actions may be further understood through focus on deliberation and internal conversations about politics and political behaviour. Internal deliberation may help people to think through what they care about, which is linked to outcomes, but should not be judged solely on that basis. A further key issue for debates on political engagement is that external actions on the surface may appear similar, but personal motivations or internal conversations may differ: thus, we must pay more attention to people’s internal political conversations.

Conclusion My aim in this chapter has been to provide a revised conceptual frame for the internal conversation. I have argued that this is a necessary task because Archer’s conception of the internal conversation is overly reflexive, geared towards purposive action, and neglects the effects of social structure on agency. My conception of the internal conversation contains a notion of the unconscious and is premised on a broader platform, including emotions as well as reflexive action, but it crucially recognises interaction and overlap in the internal conversation. The other key feature of the revised internal conversation introduced here is to

90   Part I distinguish the different aspects of the internal conversation, which may address different topics or fields – hence, I make the case for an internal political conversation. An exploratory empirical study into internal political conversation is discussed in Chapter 5 and reveals inner aspects of political thinking, while also examining the broader question of whether internal political conversations are experienced by agents. Chapter 5 explores agents’ inner conversations about politics and their political commitments, and how they may adopt various routes in relation to this internal conversation. For example, individuals may keep their internal conversations internal or unspoken, or the internal conversation may correspond with external talk and political action. Equally, the individuals’ internal and external conversations may differ, perhaps highlighting internal conflict about an appropriate course of action. In all these cases, internal conversations about politics are implicated and it is therefore argued that the internal conversation when combined with action or external conversations about politics provides us with a multi-­layered and more complex account of political action and the thinking processes that inform action. Questions of methodology are also crucial here: how do we access the inner conversation? Internal conversations are different to external conversations in that we are asking agents to reveal the underlying thinking behind their actions and behaviour; their thinking may be fragmented and require piecing together. I discuss this in more detail in Chapter 5.

Notes 1 For a discussion of the two strands of theorising represented by ‘modernity’s man’ and ‘society’s being’ see Archer (2000). Being Human, Chapters 1, 2 and 3. 2 For an extended discussion of agency and reflexivity see Chapter 2. 3 It is worth spelling out the critical realist ontology here, as it will help to explain what Archer means. Social or critical realism, with which Archer identifies, has a stratified conception of reality, based on three overlapping domains, the real, the actual and the empirical. The real realm of the critical realist ontology can be thought of in terms of ‘whatever exists, be it natural or social regardless of whether it is an empirical object for us, and whether we happen to have an adequate understanding of its nature’ (Sayer, 2000, p. 11). The real also refers to the realm of objects – their structures or powers. The actual refers to ‘what happens if and when those structures and powers are activated, to what they do and what eventuates when they do’ (Sayer, 2000, p.  12). The empirical realm of the ontology describes the ‘domain of experience’, and can refer to both the real or the actual realms of the ontology (Sayer, 2000, p.  12). In contrast, empiricism can be interpreted as collapsing this depth ontology into one level, which is established by the domain of experience and empirical investigation. 4 I take the concept of ‘field’ from Bourdieu (1977). Bourdieu argues that, in highly differentiated societies, social space is divided into multiple, relatively autonomous, fields, which are spaces which operate according to their own logic and necessity and which are different to other fields (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 97). I return to the concept of field later in the chapter.

Talking heads?   91

Bibliography Akram, S. (2017). Representative Bureaucracy and Unconscious Bias: Exploring Unconscious Dimension of Active Representation. Public Administration. 96(1), pp. 119–33. Akram, S. and Hogan, A. (2015). On Reflexivity and the Conduct of the Self in Everyday Life: Reflections on Bourdieu and Archer. British Journal of Sociology. 66, pp. 606–25. Archer, M. (1988). Culture and Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. (1995). Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. (2000). Being Human. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. (2003). Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. (2007). Making Our Way Through The World. Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility. New York: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. (Ed.) (2010). Conversations about Reflexivity. Abingdon: Routledge. Archer, M. (2012). The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bang, H .P. (2009). ‘Yes We Can’: Identity Politics and Project Politics for a Late-­ modern World. Urban Research & Practice. 2(2), pp. 117–37. Bennett, L. W. and Segerberg, A. (2012). The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics. Information, Communication & Society. 15(5), pp. 739–68. Bhaskar, R. (1999). The Possibility of Naturalism. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity. Brock, T. and Carrigan, M. (2014). Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 45(3), pp. 377–96. Burkitt, I. (2012). Emotional Reflexivity: Feeling, Emotion and Imagination in Reflexive Dialogues. Sociology. 46(3), 458–72. Caetano, A. (2015). Defining Personal Reflexivity: A Critical Reading of Archer’s Approach. European Journal of Social Theory. 18(1), pp. 60–75. Cateano, A. (2017). Reflexive Dialogues: Interaction and Writing as External Components of Personal Reflexivity. Sociological Research Online, 22(4), pp. 66–86. Chalari, A. (2009). Approaches to the Individual: The Relationship between Internal and External Conversation. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dalton, R. and Welzel, C. (2014). The Civic Culture Transformed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evans, G. (2004). The End of Class Politics? Class Voting in Comparative Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Farrugia, D. and Woodman, D. (2015). Ultimate Concerns in Late Modernity. The British Journal of Sociology. 66, pp. 626–44. Fleetwood, S. (2008). Structure, Institution, Agency, Habit, and Reflexive Deliberation. Journal of Institutional Economics. 4(2), pp. 183–203. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of a Theory of Structuration. Berkely and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

92   Part I Hay, C. (2002). Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hay, C. (2004). Theory, Stylized Heuristic or Self-­fulfilling Prophecy? The Status of Rational Choice Theory in Public Administration. Public Administration. 82(1), pp. 39–62. Holmes, M. (2010). The Emotionalisation of Reflexivity. Sociology. 44(1), pp. 139–54. Inglehart, R. (1979). The Silent Revolution. Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Inglehart, R. F. (2008). Changing Values Among Western Publics from 1970 to 2006. West European Politics. 31(1–2), pp. 130–46. Karpf, D. (2012). The MoveOn Effect. The Unexpected Transformation of Amer­ican Political Advocacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lopez, J. and Scott, J. (2000). Social Structure. Buckingham: Open University Press. McAnulla, S. (2002). Structure and Agency. In: Marsh, D. and Stoker, G. (Eds) Theory and Methods in Political Science (pp. 271–91). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Mutch, A. (2004). Constraints on the Internal Conversation. Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour. 34(4), pp. 429–45. Reay, D. (2005). Beyond Consciousness? The Psychic Landscape of Social Class. Sociology. 39(5). Savage, M., Devine, F., Cunningham, N., Mark Taylor, M., Yaojun L., Hjellbrekke, J., Le Roux, B., Friedman, S. and Miles, A. (2013). A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment. Sociology. 47(2), pp. 219–50. Sayer, A. (2000). Realist Social Theory. London: Sage. Sayer, A. (2005). The Moral Significance of Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sayer, A. (2009). Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stone, W. F. and Schaffner, P. E. (1988). The Psychology of Politics (2nd edn). New York: Springer Verlag. Skeggs, B. (1997). Formations of Class and Gender. London: Sage.

Part II

5 Exploring internal political conversations

Introduction There is a delicate form of the empirical which identifies itself so intimately with its object that it thereby becomes theory. (John Berger, quoting Walter Benjamin, quoting Goethe, ‘Understanding a Photograph’, 1967, p. 36) To what extent do people talk to themselves about politics – in their heads? How does this silent internal talk relate to external talk about politics or to more visible forms of political activity? What is an internal conversation and how does it differ from an internal monologue? To what extent can we access people’s internal political conversations? In the enquiring spirit of Goethe’s remark above, this chapter builds on the theoretical discussion of the internal conversation in Chapter 4 to explore agents’ internal political conversations as a way of enhancing our understanding of how people engage in political deliberations; how they think about the things they care or feel strongly about; and how they make sense of their own political behaviour in relation to the world around them. I take the concept of the internal conversation from Margaret Archer, but adapt it along Bourdieusian lines to address certain shortcomings – specifically the overly purposive nature of Archer’s internal conversation, as well as the neglect of the unconscious in Archer’s conception of the internal conversation. This chapter discusses the findings from qualitative research documenting internal political conversations. For an extended discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of the internal conversation, I recommend the reader turn to Chapter 4, although a summary is provided below. The chapter begins by defining the internal conversation and providing a discussion of the evolution of the concept, highlighting how it draws on, but also departs from Archer in significant ways before detailing a Bourdieu-­ inspired framework. Next, I provide a discussion of the methodology used to access the internal conversation as well as the research process undertaken. The chapter subsequently moves on to discussing the 12 in-­depth qualitative interviews that were conducted to document, explore, and understand what the internal conversation is and its potential role in understanding contemporary forms of political behaviour.

96   Part II

What is the internal conversation? A concern with concepts of agency and how they inform and extend our understanding of political behaviour provides the broader context to this chapter. It should be noted, however, that a focus on the internal political conversation extends but does not replace a focus on political behaviour that is directly observable, and involves documenting the choices or decision-­making processes that agents engage in. Rather, as will be shown, focusing on the internal conversation provides insights into political motivations and political thinking which are not always self-­evident from agents’ actions, or not always subject to articulation. To this extent, I suggest, documenting internal political conversations enhances the reach and scope of how we understand contemporary forms of political behaviour, and particularly that which is informal and personalised. The acknowledgement of agents’ inner lives is one of the most important themes of Archer’s recent work on agency (2003, 2007, 2012) – and Archer’s formulation of the internal conversation constitutes an important pillar of her more recent writing. Archer defines the internal conversation as: the modality through which reflexivity towards self, society and the relationship between them is exercised. In itself it entails just such things as articulating to ourselves where we are placed, ascertaining where our interests lie and adumbrating schemes of future action. (Archer, 2003, p. 9) As is clear from the quote above, Archer conceptualises a close relationship between reflexivity and the internal conversation, so the internal conversation is premised on one’s ability to be ‘reflexive’ about one’s life. Reflexivity is defined as: the regular exercise of the mental ability, shared by all normal people, to consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts and vice versa. (Archer, 2012, p. 1) I have argued elsewhere that Archer presents us with a concept of agency that is overly reflexive, downplays the role of the unconscious in agency and which, ultimately, makes it difficult to understand how structures influence agency unless agents consciously and reflexively negotiate their structural influence (Akram, 2012; Akram and Hogan, 2015). The overall effect of this is that agents are overly empowered in Archer’s work and a dialectical approach to structure and agency, as is argued for by Archer in the morphogenetic approach (Archer, 1995),1 where both structure and agency are autonomous and involved in interplay, is difficult to maintain. Archer’s more recent work on the internal conversation clearly reflects these problems, and brings her work closer to rational choice theory, an approach of which she is highly critical. Archer’s internal conversation is problematic for a

Exploring internal political conversations   97 series of reasons. First, the internal conversation is overly purposive, so it is primarily attuned to realising life goals. Second, Archer neglects the role of the unconscious in agency and the internal conversation, so the internal conversation is highly focused, whereas I would argue that it is subject to (unconscious) interruption, breaks, meandering and disruption. Thus, there is not a single internal conversation, but various conversations on different topics. For example, there may be ongoing conversations relating to family, work, politics – and the spaces where these fields overlap. Third, perhaps most seriously, and despite her earlier work on the morphogenetic approach, Archer’s concept of agency is overly reflexive and empowered and thus denies the independent powers of structures to exercise influence on agency. The overall effect of this is that it is not clear looking from Archer’s perspective how structures influence agents without agents consciously negotiating them. Bourdieu: habitus, unconscious, emotions, fields To address the shortcoming in Archer’s conception of the internal conversation, I propose re-­formulating the internal conversation by drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Bourdieu defines habitus as: the dialectic of the internalization of externalisation and the externalization of internality or, more simply, of incorporation and objectification. (1977, p. 72 – emphasis in the original) The foundational principle behind Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of habitus is to move away from a notion that agents engage with rules, resources, or social structures in a conscious and intentional manner. Instead, Bourdieu emphasises that action is based on practice, or the routine and seamless ‘hand in glove way’ that agents go about the world. The important point which needs to be emphasised here is that habitus is partially premised on an unconscious basis, although this was not made explicit by Bourdieu in his writing on the topic (Akram, 2012, 2014, 2017). Thus, to clarify, I am arguing that the internal conversation should be understood within the broader context of the partially unconscious habitus, which ensures that the internal conversation will be subject to unconscious influences and will influence behaviour in ways of which the individual is not aware. Establishing the internal conversation within the broader framework of habitus has several benefits. First, because habitus is coterminous with temporality, it encapsulates the life course; this allows for a more in-­depth conception of history and the way in which the past affects the agent’s practice in the present, meaning that the internal conversation has historical range. Second, although I emphasise the unconscious elements of habitus and the internal conversation, I do not do this at the expense of reflexive, intentional or emotional aspects of agency. Rather, I want to suggest that no particular aspect of agency is dominant; instead, a range of characteristics exist together on a spectrum, and the effects of individual aspects of agency will differ according to the situation in question. A

98   Part II further feature of the internal conversation is to emphasise the importance of identifying the various strands of the internal conversation. Individuals meditate about different issues at different points of the day, and at different points of their life as per the salience of external events and circumstances. The important point here is that the internal conversation is not a continuous or single conversation which is neatly coherent and orientated to realising goals, as Archer (2012) argues. While parts of the internal conversation may be coherent and purposive, others may be chaotic and unfocused. Thus, it makes sense to talk of multiple internal conversations – and the need to disentangle topics of conversation – although there may be overlap between topics. I draw on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘fields’ for this point, which helps us to think about structure in a more focused way as spaces where there is competition for ‘access to the ­specific profits that are at stake in the field …’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 97).2 For the purposes of this chapter, I am interested in disentangling the internal political conversation.

Devising a methodology for accessing the internal conversation The approach taken to investigating internal political conversations is a small in-­ depth study, biographical in nature, documenting how individuals think about and make sense of their political identity and behaviour. The aims of the study are twofold: first, to ascertain something about the nature of the individual’s internal conversation, to see if it exists in everyone and how it operates. The second aim is to explore the political dimension to this internal conversation – with a view to exploring how individuals understand and rationalise their political behaviour. By doing this we gain an additional layer of detailed understanding of political thinking as it informs action, but also of political thinking in itself. The decision to investigate a small number of individuals was prompted by issues of feasibility and a desire to capture depth through qualitative interviews. Thus, it was concluded that 12 interviews would suffice. The 12 interviewees selected were chosen to include as much range as possible, but are far from representative as in a study of this size, this would be unrealistic. However, I have tried to ensure that the subjects are diverse according to age, gender and occupation – see Table 5.1. Names have been changed to preserve anonymity. In terms of the approach taken in the interview, part one of the interview is more structured, as the aim is to explore the subject’s relationship to the internal conversation, and part two is less so as it explores the individual’s inner political conversation. For the latter, the conversation is subject-­led with prompts from the interviewer. Taking my lead from Archer (2003), interviews all begin with the same question: some people are aware that they are having silent conversations in their head – is this the case for the individual in question? I emphasise that there are no correct answers to this question, and that we all think differently, but then leave it to the interviewee to answer the question as they see fit.

Exploring internal political conversations   99 Table 5.1  Interviewee details Name

Gender

Age

Occupation

Sue Patrick Sarah Simon Alex Thomas Nina Maria Sam Kate Ellen Richard

Female Male Female Male Non-binary Male Female Female Male Female Female Male

53 56 54 33 23 31 35 44 35 40 28 27

Retired Cycling Instructor Project Manager PhD student Student Unemployed Unemployed (on maternity leave) Teacher Teacher Gardener Nursery Worker Unemployed

Conceivably some individuals may be aware of their internal conversation and others may not. Some may also be better at describing the nature of this conversation, while others may find it difficult to grasp its overall features and patterns. All the above requires a degree of self-­reflection on the part of the subject and access to the internal conversation will depend upon how effectively the subject can explain their internal conversation. This invokes the double hermeneutic as the ‘whole encounter involves the interpretation of interpreting subjects’ (Archer, 2003, p.  154). The internal conversation may not be directly accessible either to the subject or the interviewer, but the interviewee will explain their own internal conversation according to their own concepts and understanding, and the interviewer will interpret findings according to her own understanding. In many ways, the double hermeneutic and verstehen3 are issues which confront all interviewers who adopt in-­depth interviews; the subject speaks, and the interviewer will listen, but then must always (using verstehen), try to understand the material according to their own theories. When thinking about how people conduct their internal conversation Archer derives the following list of mental activities, which she argues feature in the internal conversation: planning, rehearsing, mulling-­over, deciding, re-­living, prioritising, imagining, clarifying, imaginary conversations, budgeting (2003, p.  161). All the above may conceivably be a part of the internal conversation, but the thrust of this list is in line with Archer’s understanding of the agent as someone who is wholly reflexive about maximising utility in relation to ‘ultimate concerns’ and ‘life projects’. No doubt it will be useful to explore decision-­making and more strategic aspects of thinking in the internal conversation, but there is much else which should also feature in the methodology. ‘[M]ulling-over’ and ‘imaginary conversation’ are salient features of the internal conversation, but the emphasis in the analysis of the internal conversation should be broader. With this in mind, and as illustrated in Table 5.2, I am interested in documenting and exploring the following features of the internal conversation.

100   Part II Table 5.2  Features of the internal conversation Features of the internal conversation

What to document

Shape of the internal conversation

Document continuity and discontinuity in the internal conversation – for example, how it dwells on different issues, or ‘fields’, such as family, education, employment. There may be overlap between these fields, but my focus in these interviews will be on the internal conversation as relates to political thinking.

Tone of the internal conversation

Document the interplay between emotions, reflexive thinking, memory and the unconscious.

Temporal dimension to the internal conversation

Document the relationship between looking forward, backwards and to the present.

More broadly, my approach to the internal (political) conversation incorporates a concern to document the individual’s habitus and the unconscious elements of habitus. As discussed in earlier chapters, individuals affect and are affected by the socio-­political world around them, which informs their habitus. Bourdieu defines habitus as ‘…  systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures …’ (1977, p.  76). Central to the approach developed here is to gain insight into societal influences, or ideas which affect individual thinking, but which the individual may not immediately ‘see’ themselves because of how deeply normalised they are – the influence of gender or class, for example. Such issues may shape how we think about our political behaviour, but may not be at the forefront of our minds. Accessing and encouraging the interviewee to reflect on these influences will be central to documenting the internal political conversation. It is worth pointing out that the partially unconscious habitus is not a dark box of negative thoughts, which necessarily adversely affects the individual. In my view, the unconscious is neither singularly negative nor positive – rather, it can be a home for all that exists below the surface of conscious thinking. Further, while we may consciously choose to dwell and mull over certain issues in the internal conversation, others may appear which we are forced to reckon with. For example, seeing someone unexpected, or being reminded of something by the interviewer may trigger a past memory which suddenly takes us away from the task at hand. This emphasises that we do not always filter all of our experiences though our conscious and reflexive capacities and that the internal conversation must also be affected by these. In terms of techniques for how to capture habitus and its unconscious elements, I will focus on the individual’s own understanding of their political behaviour and influences on it. To address the unconscious nature of this influence, drawing on Michael Billig’s work on the dialogic unconscious (1999), I will adopt a form of discourse analysis, looking for repetitions, digressions and silences in discourse as well as the things left unsaid – unfinished and the nearly

Exploring internal political conversations   101 said. From Billig, I take the idea that discourse obscures as well as reveals; it can have repressive functions which reveal an underlying unconscious, which the interviewee may reveal through language and conversation. The focus throughout the interview will be on the individual’s internal political conversation – and I will pose questions examining how often they think about politics, how they understand their political identity, and the frequency of their internal thought on this matter. The conversation on this will be subject-­led and I am also open to other themes beyond the political as they emerge, but the above guides my analysis – especially as I explore the shape, tone and temporal features of the internal conversation. Will this exploratory methodology capture the internal conversation or is it documenting someone’s thoughts on a matter? This is an important question and I will attempt to go beyond distinct opinions of political matters and document something deeper, internal and enduring. Again, as the opening quote to this chapter indicates, the role of the theory is fundamental here, as the internal conversation may not reveal itself completely, but we may see hints of it in fragmented form and, thus, can posit its existence with the help of theoretical work. It is important to be clear that my understanding of the internal conversation will depend upon the interviewees’ insights into their own internal conversation. More broadly, my overall aim is to go beyond the opinions individuals hold about the world and glean how they make sense of these things to themselves in the unspoken internal conversations that take place in their heads.

Discussion of interviews: the internal political conversation Of the twelve people who were interviewed, all but two voted regularly in General Elections. Notably, of those who did vote, all interviewees understood voting as an important, but ‘minimum’ (Simon) or ‘basic’ (Sarah) form of political engagement. For example, Sue, who is a regular voter, describes herself as follows: I think I’m probably quite political with a ‘small p’ these days because I’m not active in a political party, although I used to be, but I’m interested and aware and, you know, feel that it’s a very important part of life and I suppose I think I have a duty to take notice of what’s going on in life and react accordingly.… (Sue) One of the main findings from this research project is that for those who did vote, whilet voting was considered to be important, individuals saw it as one form of political activity amongst others and often sought additional opportunities to engage in other projects, be they local and community-­based or linked to transnational concerns. This suggests that there is not always a binary between arena and process or conventional and unconventional forms of political activity, as is often posited in the literature (see Stoker, 2006; Flinders, 2012). This also suggests the need for more detailed and qualitative accounts of political

102   Part II behaviour today, which explore how people may combine different forms of political behaviour, conventional or unconventional. Documenting internal conversations provides one such avenue for this. Identifying the internal conversation and stepping back from the habitus Before we discuss the interviews, let us first consider how interviewees responded to the task of reflecting on their internal conversation. This is a far from straightforward issue as it involves thinking about how one thinks and reflecting on one’s habitus. Bourdieu acknowledges the fundamentally slippery nature of habitus when he points out that the durability of habitus is tied to the fact that practices are often unconscious or ‘doxic’,4 so people are not always attuned to the working of their habitus, which is why it functions so well. Habitus comprises ‘dispositions’, which are understood as capacities to think, feel, and act in the world. Habitus, then, is revealed in the instances where individuals find a space to step back and see their dispositions and, in turn, their habitus. Such a position is often difficult because of the routinised and seamless nature of practice, so for example, one does not usually see the effects of class and gender, yet they inform everyday actions. For example, Bourdieu states: They can deliberately let [dispositions] ‘act’ or they can on the contrary inhibit them by virtue of consciousness.… But this work of management of one’s dispositions, … is possible only with the help of explicit clarification. (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 137) Stepping back from one’s habitus can be achieved through the ‘virtue of consciousness’ and reflection. Standing back, or ‘explicit clarification’ to see the habitus and dispositions extends to the internal conversation and was illustrated in the following comments from interviewees: Rare to be questioned in this way and debate your own thoughts … to have to plod through your own ways of thinking. (Alex, 23) Give me a minute, I’ll just have to think about it a bit – I don’t usually think in this way. (Simon, 33) How to start? … [prolonged silence] … erm … [more silence].…

(Ellen, 28)

As was anticipated by the methodology outlined above, and as is illustrated by these three quotes, identifying and then describing one’s internal conversation is

Exploring internal political conversations   103 difficult and involves looking in on one’s self. Respondents managed the task to different degrees. One respondent, Thomas (31), for example, did reflect on his internal thinking processes, but stated that he was ‘struggling to find the right words’. Yet Thomas was interesting because in place of articulating his own internal conversation, his response to the question ‘do you have internal thoughts about politics’ was to offer his viewpoints on the NHS and taxation; issues that he has devoted some thought to in the past and has formulated an opinion on. What we might take from this is that either there is no internal conversation, or that the internal conversation has been confused with Thomas’s opinions on political issues, which he was happy to share in the interview. Thomas aside, some of the other interviews were more successful in terms of being able to stand back and identify their internal thinking, as in the case of Alex, whom we turn to next. Alex Like many of the other respondents, Alex,5 a 23-year old university student, describes themselves as someone who is ‘not really politically active’. Yet, Alex feels strongly about voting at General Elections and regularly discusses current affairs with friends on social media. Alex also admits to reading newspapers and keeping abreast of politics because choosing who to vote for is a ‘long process’ and much more that ‘just picking a party out of a hat’. Alex was initially adamant that they did not think about politics much, or about any particular issues ‘in terms of day to day thoughts’, stating that issues like environmentalism are important to them, but do not pre-­occupy Alex’s thinking. However, it became clear throughout the interview that transgender rights and gender-­based inequality were issues which were important to Alex, as someone who identifies as non-­binary, who changed their birth name to reflect their non-­binary status and who has asked people to refer to them by using non-­ gendered pronouns. When asked whether they thought about transgender issues frequently, after prolonged periods of silence and frequent shifting around in their chair Alex eventually volunteered: Yes, definitely, because it’s hard to avoid being gendered by people out in the public or just in any kind of social interaction – it happens everywhere, someone getting me wrong.… I guess it does take up a lot of my thinking time, but it is also easy to just be thinking about it non-­stop, because it is like an unavoidable part of me.… It is easy to get so focused on it that it is the only thing that I can think about … – well it is just who I am … but you have to choose the battles you know, and try to focus on what makes you happy and stuff and … what keep you functioning as a human being. Alex spoke about an everyday reality of frequent episodes of mis-­gendering. Examples of this include people referring to Alex by their old (gender-­specific) name, which was a source of ‘hurt’, and regularly being denied access to gender­specific toilets. This information was volunteered after a long period of silence

104   Part II and shifting around in the chair as well as repeated statements along the lines of ‘I don’t think about anything really’. As Billig (1999) argues, silence in an interview is not always a sign of unconscious or repressed thoughts coming to the fore, but can be seen as such. What was apparent in Alex’s interview was that the issue of being transgender and non-­binary was something central to Alex’s habitus and internal conversation, but it needed to be helped to come to the fore through gentle probing by the interviewer. Alex is clearly aware of being transgender, but my aim in the interview was to explore to what extent, if any, this featured in Alex’s habitus and internal thought, and in relation to politics specifically. Alex did not see themselves as a political person but did dedicate a lot of time to thinking about transgender rights, injustices and inequality precisely because of Alex’s own experiences, which provide Alex with a lens through which to think about wider forms of structural inequality. The fact that such thinking was not revealed in response to the initial question ‘how political are you?’, suggests that Alex’s thinking about transgender politics forms a significant strand to their internal conversation, but its routine, partly unconscious and habitualised nature means that Alex is not always actively attuned to it. There may be good reasons for keeping this conversation internal: Alex suggested that they do on occasion challenge people who mis-­gender them, but such actions can be exhausting given the frequency of such incidents, stating that they were careful to ‘choose battles carefully in order to keep functioning as a human being’. Such an insight reveals how habitus operates seamlessly but often silently because of the emotional consequences of actively or reflexively engaging with it on a constant basis. Structures such as gender can shape an individual’s reality in powerful ways, but the precise ways in which they shape thinking may not be discernable or immediately accessible to the individual in question, unless the habitus and internal conversation is brought forth as it was in the case of Alex. Sue Now retired, Sue (53) perhaps comes closest to Bang’s (2005, 2009) conception of the everyday maker or someone who is heavily invested in the life of her local community, because it makes her ‘feel happy and useful’. Sue is a regular voter and used to be an active campaigner for the Labour party in her 20s. Since retiring three years ago, Sue now prefers to spend her time working on local community gardening, clean-­up and art projects. Sue describes a conscious shift in her political behaviour, as follows: I’ve moved over from political activity with a ‘large P’ to doing more community-­based things which I just feel there’s more reward for me. I know it’s a very small-scale thing and that, you know, everybody plays their part, especially by voting, but as I got older I realised that I don’t actually like doing it (political campaigning). That’s not how I wanted to spend my

Exploring internal political conversations   105 life, I decided … that it’s not for me as a regular activity. It wasn’t making me happy, but being involved locally does. In contrast, local activism is more meaningful to Sue because it renders clear results, as is illustrated by the following comment: Well, I can see the point of this because it’s having an effect on my surroundings and I’m interested in improving things. Sue is someone with a very clear internal political conversation, which she was able to identify when asked to do so. Sue suggests that she is ‘driven by basic principles of fairness and equality and justice’; these principles guide her approach to life and her politics, forming an underlying logic to her political engagement. When asked whether she is goal-­orientated or purposive in her internal thinking, Sue replied as follows: No, I’ve never been that person. I think I’m much more orientated in terms of just how things feel and how they relate back to basic principles. We can see that in terms of the tone of this internal conversation, value-­based principles and emotions are strong indicators of Sue’s politics. As an illustration of this point, Sue offered the following comment in relation to Brexit: I cannot comprehend what it is I need to know to be able to understand the discussion about it, it just seems so far away and nobody seems to be able to reduce it to principles. As per the table above (Table 5.2), in order to glean the shape of the internal conversation as it moves from different fields or issues, we must pay heed to the overlap between different topics, and how they are invoked in the interview. To this end, it is the job of the researcher to disentangle narratives as they move from topic to topic. Furthermore, the concepts of habitus and the internal conversation invoke issues of temporality and lend themselves to thinking across the life course – both of these issues feature in the interview with Sue. For example, after moments of hesitation when asked about which principles are important to her, we see an interesting confluence of values emerge, but also those that she identifies in herself but would rather mitigate against. Sue spoke at length about her childhood, describing how she was brought up in a ‘small C conservative’ household and was brought up to believe that ‘everyone should vote as a duty and has a responsibility to be a good citizen’ and how this has ‘stayed with me’. This, after some reflection, she suggests is clearly the influence of her grandparents, who raised her. Sue elaborates on this in the quote below: Because of that upbringing, I was brought up to do the right thing, although we didn’t talk about politics very much, a sense of … I don’t know [long

106   Part II pause], maybe it’s that kind, of lower middle class behaving thing, that you should conform and you should not upset people and you should … oh I don’t know [long pause]. It’s interesting … in my own parenting, I’ve tried not to emulate my grandparents who were very strict and unreasonably so without reason. (emphasis from Sue) Doing things because of a sense of duty, whether voting or contributing to the local community was important to Sue – and features as part of her internal conversation. Interestingly, we also see that the unconscious element of habitus and the internal conversation is apparent from the quote above in the repetition of ‘I don’t know’ twice, as well as the long pauses. This phrase functions as a verbal crutch of sorts, as Sue works out what it is she wants to say about something as slippery as class. It is worth noting that the unconscious as formulated here is not intrinsically a good or bad thing; rather, it suggests that there are influences on behaviour that the agent does not filter through conscious intentionality. Being a good citizen remains important to Sue, but her internal conversation and practice of politics today is mostly concerned with local community work. Sue admits to being guided by principles of social justice and equality, but we can also see that Sue’s internal conversation is informed by a residual class-­based narrative inherited from her grandparents about being dutiful citizens ‘who put something back in’. Sue seems wary of some of the ‘behaving’ or ‘conforming’ class-­based influence of her grandparents, but despite herself, she is aware that it is an influence on her politics. Such an insight reveals precisely why the partially unconscious habitus is so effective; we are conscious and intentional actors much of the time, but social structures such as class are powerful because they get in beneath the surface through the unconscious in ways which we cannot always control. What does the internal conversation allow us to see that would not ordinarily be available to political analysts? If we refer to the case of Sue again, we see that, on the surface, Sue is somebody who votes and is actively involved in her local community. Both activities could be documented by talking to Sue about her political engagement. What may not be understood without the theorisation of the internal conversation and documenting it is how her value system or her principles frame this activity and provide an underlying logic to it. Nor would we see how class and the role of being dutiful citizens inherited from her grandparents inform it. Documenting the internal conversation, then, provides a form of context for documenting politics, beliefs, actions and thinking – it helps us to situate individuals within a setting which better reflects internal depth and complexity. Nina Nina (35) has voted in the past but describes herself as an ‘occasional’ voter. She is currently unemployed and has a six-­month old baby. Nina worked as a nursery

Exploring internal political conversations   107 assistant, but left her most recent position once she became pregnant with her second child. Nina does ‘not think about politics much’ because in her view, ‘it doesn’t really affect her life’. Nina acknowledges that she should vote more regularly, but also says that she feels that the ‘political system doesn’t seem fair’, or ‘care about people like me’. When I asked Nina what kinds of issues or concerns she did care about, she spoke about an interest in children and children’s health and well-­being, explaining: ‘I guess that’s why I went into nursery work’. When asked what were the reasons for entering this line of work, Nina expressed a long-­standing concern with children’s rights and affairs, especially in the context of situations of poverty and social deprivation, something that she herself experienced as a child, as is illustrated by the following quote: We weren’t that well-­off growing up, and my parents struggled, especially my mum. I think children should have chances to improve their lives and not be shaped by the circumstances they are born into. In detailing this opinion, Nina was speaking from personal experience, which emphasises the importance of one’s past in shaping the habitus and in turn, the internal conversation. Again, in contrast to Archer’s work on the internal conversation, we see that actors are not always purposive in their internal thinking, or thinking about how their life projects can be realised. Instead, thinking can meditate on what matters to individuals – as opposed to strategic action directed to specific ends. As the mother of a young infant, Nina reveals concerns and anxiety about the future, expressing her desire to be independent and to be a good role model for her two children. After periods of silence, her internal conversation reveals that she is distressed and unsure about what the future holds: I don’t really think about things too much, I’ve never been much of a thinker … [silence] I do spend a lot of time worrying, I often find myself in these blind spots I call them, and realise that I’ve just been stressing out in my head – about all the things I need to fix – like finding a good job. (emphasis from Nina) Nina’s use of ‘blind spots’ to explore internal thinking is interesting and worth expanding upon. Nina went on to explain that a blind spot might be internal thought characterised by anxiety and stress, where she struggles to see ways out of her current predicament and can be ‘thinking to herself for a long time’, but often not finding a solution. Nina went on to elaborate that a particular issue which dominates a lot of her thinking is the difficulty of balancing child care costs with the low wages of nursery care work, which was the reason she left her most recent place of employment. Although Nina claimed that she did not ‘think about things too much’, we can see that Nina’s internal political conversation reveals a dissatisfaction with the political system, but also a long-­standing ethical concern with children’s rights

108   Part II and well-­being. Her internal thinking and her habitus, more broadly, is made more meaningful when we take Nina’s personal circumstances (‘we weren’t that well-­off growing up’) into account, but we should also see her signs of anxiety about the future as an important feature of her internal thought. Simon Simon (33) is a PhD student and thinks about politics frequently, explaining that he is very concerned about the environment and living ethically. Simon has a ‘constant internal monologue really’ as can be seen in the comment below: … there’s probably a fairly deep current of conviction that I guess would be the monologue, which is a real sense that there is injustice with quite a lot of political power attached to it and that, yeah, I’m opposed to. Simon’s use of the word ‘monologue’ to describe his internal conversation is interesting because it suggests the continuous nature of his thought. Simon’s internal conversation reveals somebody who is in touch with his internal thought, yet it also reveals someone who is often anxious and concerned about how to marry together his ethical commitments with his life choices. For example, Simon explains: I’ll have to think about this a bit … I think guilt probably as an emotion features a lot in relation to my thinking and then the decisions about what I do, kind of, I think I was quite resistant for a long time about just doing the … what was expected of me and feeling like I wanted to experiment with quite a lot of other ways of living and being.… Partly it’s to do with not knowing what my commitment is, you know, not … what is the best way to actually … if you believe things should be radically different, but you’re also benefitting from a world that is the same. In the case of Simon, we see that there is what we might call ‘purposive’ thought here in terms of reflecting on the question of how to live one’s life. More broadly, we see that Simon’s internal conversation and habitus revolve around emotional and ethical concerns, which lead to ‘feelings of guilt’, but also to a desire ‘to resist the status quo’. The point here, contra Archer, is not that agents are not purposive in their internal thought, but rather that this is not their exclusive focus, and certainly purposiveness is not a generalisable characteristic of internal thought. Indeed, as is shown in the case of Simon, someone who is able to step back from his internal thought to identify its features, we see that there is interplay between purposive thoughts, emotion and ethical commitments – and making sense of these forms the backdrop to Simon’s political practice.

Exploring internal political conversations   109 Sarah Sarah’s (54) internal conversation was interesting in terms of revealing an individual who in her professional work is a project manager, but also adopts a similar approach to life more generally. She ‘likes projects and getting things done’ and ‘enjoys finding solutions to problems’, so we might say Sarah is quite reflexive and strategic in aspects of her thinking. However, we see that her internal political conversation is often highly emotional, as can be gleaned from the quote below: Yes, I get very, very angry about social injustice, very angry and I still do, and I always have done, and I think some of that is a very personal thing as well, you know, you can’t go there because you come from here. Similarly to the case of Sue discussed above, Sarah’s internal political thinking and approach to politics stem from a set of ethical principles which frame her political thinking and practice, and constitute her life-­long commitments. These commitments, she suggests, make ‘her angry all the time’ and are something she regularly reflects on. Sarah admits to having a ‘gut reaction’ – a ‘mental and psychical reaction to’ social injustice. A ‘gut reaction’ invokes Bourdieu’s notion of bodily hexis,6 emphasising that habitus is an embodied mental ­construct. At root, Sarah’s internal conversation is framed by issues of social justice, inequality and specifically women’s rights, which guide her political activity and thinking to date. This is evidenced by Sarah working for a women’s refuge for 12 years, which she left because of ‘burn out’, before becoming a project manager. Gender inequality is something Sarah thinks about ‘constantly because it is all around me’ and it has shaped not only her upbringing, but also her professional life, as is clear from the quote below: When we were growing.… People didn’t have opportunities, women didn’t have opportunities, that was very clear. That caused my Mum a lot of issues. My Mum was very, very intelligent, she was born in the ’30s, she is still alive she is 82–83 or whatever, very, very intelligent and really she had no opportunity. She was just going to be a secretary, that was the most she could be. Having grown up in a former mining town, Sarah spoke about clear and demarcated roles for men and women, and how she has always found this deeply troubling. Echoing Sue and Simon, Sarah is a committed voter, but laments the fact that she does not have more time to dedicate to addressing the concerns and commitments that matter to her, and which she sees as ‘increasingly crucial in an era of austerity’. Sarah explained that once she retires, she would like to be more politically active and combine her project management experience with voluntary campaign work on the issues that matter to her. In the case of Sarah, we see

110   Part II that her internal conversation is long-­standing and is informed by her personal experience of gender- as well as class-­based inequality, among other factors, while growing up. Yet she seems highly attuned to what matters to her, and stated that when she has more time, she hopes to engage in more issue-­based activity.

Conclusion My aim in this chapter was to discuss internal political conversation. As the vignettes discussed above show, documenting the internal conversations actors have about politics enhances the reach and scope of our understanding of how actors make sense of their own political behaviour, as well as broadening our understanding of modes of political engagement today. In the context of broader narratives of democratic decline, these interviews offer an alternative picture of how individuals practice and understand their political behaviour. They are attempts to re-­shape and re-­purpose our understanding of political behaviour, and the complexity of the viewpoints speaks to the idea that to capture twenty-­first-century experience, political analysts must seek more detailed accounts of how people rationalise and make sense of their political engagement more broadly in relation to their principles, their concerns and lives. As the interviews reveal, finding the rights words to describe one’s internal conversation is not always a straightforward task, and some interviewees managed this better than others. What was also apparent from the interviews is that internal thinking is wide-­ranging because habitus spans the life course, encapsulating experiences from different periods of the individual’s life. However, habitus simultaneously ensures seeming consistency over a multiplicity of areas of identity ‘like a conductorless orchestra’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 80). Hence, it is the job of the researcher to disentangle and identify different fields of analysis, be they political or otherwise. The complexity and longevity of the habitus and the related internal conversation are intimately related to the unconscious, which helps to understand how influences from childhood, for example, feature in adult thought, as was clear in Sue’s interview with regards to the influence of her grandparents on her political thinking. What is abundantly clear from these interviews is that documenting internal conversations complements and extends our understanding of political behaviour today. Certainly, one finding from this research is that the majority of respondents voted, but it would be a weak conclusion if this were all we took away. Instead, these interviews reveal that individuals are concerned by a range of issues, whether transgender rights, or local community concerns, or gender inequality, and that these may translate to external and observable actions – but equally they may not. Internal conversations supplement our understanding of political behaviour, but do not replace more traditional methods of conducting research into political behaviour, such as measuring voting, nor do I advocate that they should. Instead, we should see

Exploring internal political conversations   111 the documenting of internal conversations as providing us with a further tool to add to the armoury for conducting political analysis. In many ways, discussion of the internal conversation reveals an interesting picture of cloaking and revelation – the idea of what one conceals and what one shows becomes ever more telling. The task may not always be to reveal and unmask the internal conversation but, at a minimum, we must acknowledge that it exists, as it provides a broader frame for how actors understand and make sense of their own political behaviour. In the case of research into political behaviour today, I would suggest that it enriches our understanding of political behaviour and documenting it is a task we should not shy away from. A more detailed engagement with the concept of agency, as is argued for in this book, does not imply a solipsistic approach to political behaviour. Agents, of course, matter but it is equally important to take into account the socio-­ political world in which agents live, and the influence it brings to bear on lives. As is clear from the interviews above, structures such as gender and class shape the lives of respondents such as Alex, Sue and Nina and must be taken into account when thinking about action and internal political conversations.

Notes 1 For a more detailed discussion of Archer’s morphogenetic approach see Chapter 2. 2 See Chapter 4 for a more detailed discussion of Bourdieu’s concept of field. 3 Verstehen is a concept that is associated with Max Weber, meaning to understand the subjective dimension of human conduct as it relates to others (Weber, 1947). 4 Bourdieu defines ‘doxa’ as what is taken for granted in a society (1977). Doxa, in his view, is the experience by which the ‘natural and social world appears as self-­evident’ (1977, p. 164). Doxa also refers to what falls within the limits of the thinkable and the sayable, or imposing limits on social practice, thus, doxa may lead agents to make comments such as: ‘that’s not for the likes of us’ (1977, p. 77). 5 Alex identifies as non-­binary and rejects gender-­specific pronouns. Hence, in the analysis that follows, I use third person pronouns such as ‘they’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’. 6 Bourdieu describes bodily hexis as the process whereby the material body is implicated in the functioning of the habitus; he also describes it as: ‘… political mythology realised, em-­bodied, turned into a permanent disposition …’ (1977, p. 93).

Bibliography Akram, S. (2012). ‘Fully Unconscious and Prone to Habit: The Characteristics of Agency in the Structure and Agency Dialectic’. Journal for the Theory for Social Behaviour. 43, pp. 45–65. Akram, S. (2014). Recognizing the 2011 United Kingdom Riots as Political Protest: A Theoretical Framework Based on Agency, Habitus and the Preconscious. The British Journal of Criminology. 54(3), pp. 375–92. Akram, S. (2017). Representative Bureaucracy and Unconscious Bias: Exploring the Unconscious Dimension of Active Representation. Public Administration. 96, pp. 119–33. Akram, S. and Hogan, A. (2015). On Reflexivity and the Conduct of the Self in Everyday Life: Reflections on Bourdieu and Archer. British Journal of Sociology. 66, pp. 606–25.

112   Part II Archer, M. (1995). Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. (2003). Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. (2007). Making Our Way Through The World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility. New York: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. (2012). The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity. New York: CUP. Bang, H. P. (2005). Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens: Active Participants in Search of a New Governance. In: J. Newman (Ed.), Remaking Governance: Peoples, Politics and the Public Sphere (pp. 159–78). Bristol: Policy Press. Bang, H. P. (2009). ‘Yes We Can’: Identity Politics and Project Politics for a Late-­ modern World. Urban Research & Practice. 2(2), pp. 117–37. Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society. London: Sage. Berger, J. (1967/2013). Understanding a Photograph. Penguin Modern Classic. Billig, M. (1999). Freudian Repression: Conversation Creating the Unconscious. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity. Flinders, M. (2012). Defending Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stoker, G. (2006). Why Politics Matters: Making Democracy Work. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Weber, M. (1947). The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by A. M. Henderson and T. Parsons. New York: Oxford University Press.

6 Rioting Criminal, political or post-­political act?

Introduction In 2011 there was rioting in a number of UK cities, including London and Birmingham.1 This occurred against a backdrop in which riots had taken place in 2005 (Birmingham), 2001 (Oldham, Burnley, Bradford) and 1981 (Tottenham, Brixton and Handsworth). Despite the relative frequency of riots in the UK, there is much contestation about what riots are and what motivates rioters to act in the way that they do. For some, most notably the media and politicians, rioters are bored youth who engage in opportunistic crime and violence (Clarke, 2011) and, indeed, we know that, in the case of the UK riots of 2011, there was $200 million worth of damage (Barentsen 2013) and 2,500 shops were looted (Treadwell et al., 2012; Barentsen 2013). For others, rioters are marginalised subjects whose actions are symptomatic of a post-­political climate, where political solidarity and action are replaced with rampant consumerism (Treadwell et al., 2012; Fitzgibbon, 2013). However, we also know that of the 1,344 people who appeared before the courts following the 2011 riots, 78 per cent were on the Department of Work and Pensions’ National Benefits Database (Berman, 2011). Further, these individuals were more likely to come from deprived areas, had below-­average levels of education and higher-­than-average levels of unemployment and uptake of free school meals (Berman 2011). Historically, rioting has largely been the preserve of such groups and often involves ethnic minorities, as can be seen in the 2011 UK riots (Birbalsingh, 2011; Barentsen, 2013). From this perspective, one might see rioting as a form of political protest in response to structural inequality. Of course, for scholars who emphasise the political aspect of rioting, there are a number of issues which make such a thesis difficult to sustain. First, what are the rioters’ motivations and grievances – if they are not clearly articulated, how can we know them? Second, how can an act that is largely spontaneous result from concrete grievances and demands? Third, how do you reconcile looting and criminality with legitimate protest? In this context, the literature arguing that there are political aspects to rioting has struggled to answer these questions and has reached an impasse, given it wants to argue that grievances are being expressed, but lacks the language or concepts to do so. In this chapter, I argue

114   Part II that rioting is a form of political protest and draw on concepts of agency to delineate a theoretical frame, which will help to address these questions. Specifically, I suggest that the rioter’s political motivations and grievances are located in their habitus (Bourdieu, 1977), with the riot representing a rupture of the habitus. Habitus is offered as a device for understanding how the agent’s life experiences collect, reinforce and inform everyday practice in a seamlessly mundane and unconscious way. The key point here is that because of the spontaneous and unorganised nature of these acts, and the fact that it is difficult, but not impossible, to change one’s habitus, the potential of the riot may be unfulfilled. I draw attention to the nascent political aspects of the riot which are often obscured by a focus on criminality and looting, without denying that the latter play a role. My aim here is not to argue that all rioters are political actors, or to deny the negative impact of looting or criminality, but to show there are spaces for politics in this act which deserve to be acknowledged. Recognising rioting as political is important, because denying these political aspects risks obscuring and recognising a form of action which represents protest by individuals against structural inequality. I suggest that recognising the politics of rioting depends on a re-­ conceptualisation of what ‘the political’ is, how agents engage in politics, and their reasons for rioting. These three questions form the key foci of this chapter. Locating rioters within the particular social and structural spaces in which they operate represents an important advance in understanding rioting and implicitly draws on structure and agency debates (Keith, 1993; Waddington, 2010). However, the rioting literature has only superficially engaged with this literature and would benefit from a more in-­depth analysis. In particular, the rioting literature has taken very little account of recent developments in the conceptualisation of agency which could enhance our understanding of the rioter. We can gain a better understanding of rioting as politically motivated action if we draw insights from Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and, in particular, its unconscious aspects. This frame enables us to locate the rioter within the particular structural conditions they occupy and understand how action is informed and framed by this context. From this perspective, habitus helps us to explain how unconscious grievances stemming from the individual’s life experiences, be they to do with experiences of social deprivation or antagonistic relations with the police, rise to the surface in the riot in an apparently spontaneous manner. This chapter is divided into four sections. I begin by discussing definitions of politics and political action, and outline an understanding of politics, providing a backdrop to the interpretation of rioting defended in this chapter. Next, I turn to the extant literature on rioting, focusing particularly on accounts which highlight the agential and structural factors that inform the act, and identify the developments in, and limitations of, this literature. Next, the chapter develops its theoretical frame for understanding rioters, based on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, while also making a case for its neglected unconscious element. The final section focuses on conceptualising change in habitus, which provides a basis for understanding why and how underlying unconscious grievances emerge within the riot.

Rioting   115

Defining the political What does it mean to describe rioters as political actors and riots as political and, moreover, why is it important to do so? The starting point of this chapter is the contestation about what riots are and why rioters act in the way they do. Ascribing political identity to riots involves making certain claims about the rioters and the act that are clearly different from claims that the acts involve criminality or looting. Certainly, those who see criminality in these acts do not also see legitimate political behaviour. Further, we know that rioting is clearly different to taking part in a protest – a more recognisably political act. In order to understand rioting as political, we must first broaden our definition of politics and of the political. By this view, politics should not be connected to a narrow ‘arena’ definition of politics which focuses on formal political actors, institutions or the state, but should be concerned with ‘process’ definitions, which are concerned with the ‘(uneven) distribution of power, wealth and resources’ (Hay, 2002, p. 73), which may occur in a range of institutional and social environments (Leftwich, 2004; Hay, 2002). This argument has often been made by feminists who argue that the private domestic sphere should be recognised as political; there, power relations operate to create negative outcomes for women, such as domestic labour not being valued as work. More recently, we see this argument being made in relation to alternative forms of political participation, such as online mobilisation or social movements which attempt to broaden out definitions of legitimate spaces for political action. As these examples illustrate, politics involves an uneven distribution of power, wealth and resources, which may, or may not, be (explicitly) contested, yet recognising them as political suggests recognition of an inequality or demand. Starting from such a definition, the political is seen as an aspect, or moment, of the social, which may be articulated with other moments, such as the economic or the cultural (Hay, 2002, p. 75). Westminster or formal political arenas are not excluded from such a definition, but the important point is recognition that politics has the potential to exist in all social relations. Are all social relations political? This clearly cannot be the case, because this would make the political an empty concept. The social is political where there is ‘(uneven) distribution of power, wealth and resources’ that does not occur in all social relations, yet does in some, which can therefore be described as being political. The key issue here is to recognise the diversity within this non-­formal space and I want to argue that it should also include rioting, which, of course, would perhaps be contested by others occupying this space. An alternative view of framing the political, and of understanding the riots, is that presented by the post-­political thesis. This thesis is theoretically sophisticated, drawing from the political theories of, most prominently, Mouffe (2005), Žižek (1999a, 1999b, 2011) and Rancière (1999), as well as being empirically rich and nuanced. This position is premised on a critique of the emergence in the post-­Cold War period of a politics of ideological consensus based on the acceptance of the capitalist market and the liberal state as the inevitable organisational

116   Part II foundations of society. Instead of aiming for consensus, Mouffe argues that democratic theorists and politicians should aim for the creation of a vibrant ‘agonistic’ public sphere of contestation ‘where different hegemonic political projects can be confronted’ (2005, p. 3). In this view, a consensual approach, instead of creating the conditions for a reconciled society, leads to the emergence of antagonisms which an agonistic perspective, by providing those conflicts with legitimate forms of expression, would have managed to avoid. This inherent antagonism is considered to be constitutive of the political. Proper politics, from this perspective, is seen as the institution of radical, active equality, while politics today, on the other hand, is post-­political because it is reduced to social administration, a ‘politics of self ’ and a new ‘politics of conduct’ that foreclose the possibility for truly political praxes to emerge. From such a perspective, the riots of 2011 exhibit ‘post-­political’ tendencies, in the sense that, while there may be aspects of resistance, they are subsumed under an overarching ideological framework of neo-­liberalism, from which individuals are unable to develop sustained forms of critique or ‘resistance’. For Treadwell et al. (2012), the riots exhibit post-­political tendencies and, therefore, cannot be political because ‘[t]here is an almost total absence of an alternative culture with anything like the same allure that might reanimate political being and recruit it to the cause of social justice’ (2012, p. 8). Treadwell et al. recognise that a political moment was present in the initial trigger event, the shooting of Mark Duggan in the UK riots of 2011, but this is seen to dissolve quickly as the riots progress into looting and acts of consumerism – acts which reflect the rioter’s absorption into neo-­liberal ideology. However, in viewing contemporary forms of protest specifically as post-­political, the concept of post-­politics arguably serves to blunt, rather than sharpen, our capacity to critically interrogate contemporary forms of protest, and their relationship to inequality. Moreover, the concept of post-­politics provides an unnecessarily traditionalist and unrealistic account of what constitutes ‘political action’, as well as a monolithic account of ‘neo-­liberalism’. In what follows, I show that rioting can be better characterised as an emergent form of politics that contests inequalities in a way which cannot usefully be explained under the banner of ‘neo-­liberalism’. The concept of post-­politics, then, ultimately obscures, rather than helps, our understanding of emergent forms of protest. As the discussion thus far shows, one’s conception of politics and the political frames how one understands rioting. Operating with a broader definition of political action enables us to recognise the ‘(uneven) distribution of power, wealth and resources’ which characterised the rioters’ lives, and thereby gave them cause to riot. In the next section, I consider how the extant literature has theorised riots and rioters, and identify some broad trends and recurrent problems in this literature which could be addressed through a greater engagement with the concept of agency.

Rioting   117

Rioting: criminal, political or post-­political act? Rioting has variously been understood as criminal behaviour by bored and inactive youth (Jahoda, 1982); community insurrections (Gilroy 1987/1992); and the power of the crowd mind (Tarde 1903/2011; Le Bon 1968/1897). Accounts of rioting also differ in terms of the emphasis they place on spontaneity, irrationality, political motivations, violence and criminality–factors which presuppose particular conceptions of agency. For those who argue that rioting is spontaneous, but includes political motivations, there is a significant problem in explaining how these agential capacities co-­exist in riots. The lack of organisation in riots also serves to depoliticise the act. The existing accounts of rioting have mainly arisen in response to actual riots and, therefore, developed chronologically following new riots (Gilroy, 1987/1992; Keith, 1993; Bagguley and Hussain, 2008), and through official reports (Kerner Report, 1968/1988; Scarman, 1981; Cantle 2001). There have also been attempts to construct a broader framework (Smelser, 1962; Waddington, 2010). There have been important shifts in this latter literature, most notably a move away from explanations of rioting in terms of a ‘crowd mind’ toward ones which acknowledge the importance of context and the political grievances of rioters. This section of the chapter identifies some conceptual distinctions in the literature on rioting, highlighting how, at various points, it has been overly structuralist and too focused on attributing causal blame. The more recent literature recognises the importance of focusing on individuals and their heterogeneity in the crowd; however, it fails to theorise agency–a move which could significantly help us understand this complex action. The early literature on rioting draws on social psychology and explains rioting through reference to crowd psychology (Tarde, 1903/2011; Le Bon, 1968/1897; Reicher, 2001; Drury and Stott, 2011). According to this position, individuals in the crowd develop group characteristics which act as a mechanism for collective violence. This approach has been heavily criticised for reifying and essentialising the crowd and for ignoring the heterogeneity and complexity of individuals involved in rioting (Keith, 1993; Bagguley and Hussain, 2008). Borch’s (2005; 2006) article on the 2005 riots in France and the work of Reicher (2001), Toews (2003) and Drury and Stott (2011) offer recent defences of this position. Essentially, this approach is problematic at both an analytical and a normative level, because it fails to explain the actions of individuals involved and privileges the accounts of the powerful, be they politicians or journalists, who often perpetuate the discourse about a riotous crowd (Bagguley and Hussain, 2008). While the crowd, as a collective object, may have some effect on individuals, it is important to recognise that crowds are made up of individuals and ‘the crowd’ does not have unique characteristics of its own. In Rude’s (1981) work, we see a historian’s attempt to add ‘faces to the crowd’ through an examination of the historical context and the actual participants in the riot. Documenting the demography of the crowd, its social origins, ages, occupations and politics (considering who, or what, they are attacking as

118   Part II indicators of political motivations), is considered important in this approach. Rude also notes the response of the police and focuses upon who was active and passive in the riot. This approach is generally recognised as an important development in the literature, as it goes some way to restoring agency, heterogeneity and complexity to the crowd. Indeed, Bagguley and Hussain (2008) are heavily dependent upon Rude in their study of the Bradford riots of 2001. Rude brings the issue of agency and context to the fore and, although his account of agency is largely descriptive, it succeeds in adding faces where before there was only a crowd. The Flashpoints Model of Public Disorder developed by Waddington provides a multivariate analysis which attaches great importance to the highly emotive ‘flashpoint’ incidents or events that serve as immediate catalysts for wider disorder (Waddington, 2008, 2010). This approach also highlights the importance of six other levels of analysis: structural, cultural, political/ideological, contextual, situational, and interactional. In his more recent work, Waddington (2010) has also highlighted the institutional/organisational setting within which riots occur as an important seventh factor in the analysis of riots. Keith (1993) welcomes contextualising descriptive typologies such as Waddington’s, but warns against the dangers of reification of disorders as diverse as football hooliganism, industrial strife and civil unrest and the neglect of the ‘complexity of individual intentions’ in this approach (Keith 1993, p. 81) – a point which is also echoed by Bagguley and Hussain (2008). Waddington’s typology is important in terms of identifying the context of the riot; however, as Keith argues, this account would benefit from paying more attention to the individuals involved. Keith’s work on the 1981 riots goes the furthest in developing an account of agency which acknowledges the role of social structures. His approach emphasises the importance of the trigger incident in the context of wider social relations. Keith is highly critical of a ‘recipe mode of analysis’ of riots, which, in a Humean fashion, attempts to identify different causal elements in the riot in order to apportion blame. This approach can be seen in all of the special reports following the riots: the Kerner Report (1968/1988), Scarman (1981) and Cantle (2001). Keith highlights the importance of the spaces in which riots take place and how the triggering events resound with symbolic and historical significance, when considered in relation to the histories and relations between the communities and police in the spaces in which the riots occur. A further compelling account which many have turned to in the context of the 2011 UK riots is that put forward by advocates of the post-­political thesis (Bauman, 2011; Moxon, 2011; Žižek, 2011; Treadwell et al., 2012), which was introduced earlier in the chapter. According to Treadwell et al. (2012), the 2011 rioters exist in a post-­political world where there is no longer any discernable political project and, in such a scenario, rioters, much like other ‘dissatisfied subjects’, ‘had nowhere to go but the shops’ (Treadwell et al., 2012, p.  1). For Moxon (2011), rather than signalling any breakdown in the norms of society, the riots of 2011 reflect conformity to the underlying values of consumer culture.

Rioting   119 This literature recognises the impact of broader social structural factors, such as unemployment, racism and marginalisation, that affect the rioters’ lives. However, the thesis here is that, in the context of a neo-­liberal ideology where consumerism dominates, a culture of excessive and selfish consumerism provides the dominant motivation for rioters. Treadwell et al.’s (2012) account provides an explanation of why riots end the way they do – namely in looting and criminality. One issue with this account, however, is that all rioters are tarred with the same brush, so everyone is denied political efficacy and there is no account of variations in actors’ motivations for rioting. Further, while this perspective does acknowledge the small act of resistance that is present in the riot at the trigger stage, which, in the case of the 2011 UK riots, involved protest against the shooting of Mark Duggan, it fails to explore or understand the reasons why this trigger event does not lead to further protest. Instead, the focus, from this perspective, is only on the looting and criminality that also characterise this act. Through a discussion of habitus and how it operates, I show that the riot, at the trigger stage and beyond, represents a protest by individuals, although this may be unfulfilled and the act may end in looting or criminality. Such a view requires recognition that rioters, and the conditions of their domination, are deeply embedded and difficult to change, because it involves challenging a highly connected inter-­web of inequality and domination. This is not a matter of saying that rioters do not have any agency or power to change their lives: rather, in Bourdieu’s terms, it is a question of arguing that it is very difficult to do so. Grievances relating to poverty, exclusion and structural inequality are acknowledged in some of the literature on rioting (Keith, 1993; Waddington, 2008, 2010). However, the accounts often struggle to link these to political motivations for rioting, or to explain why riots end in criminality or the loss and obscuring of the trigger issues which initiate the riot. Of course, responsibility for this could lie with the media, the police or the state; perhaps as social scientists we lack the language or the concepts to better understand and explain this action. In the work of Rude (1981), Keith (1993) and Bagguley and Hussain (2008), we see a clear move towards focusing on individual rioters and their motivations. This move towards agency is certainly to be welcomed. However, it runs into difficulties because it stops short of developing an understanding of agency at the level of ontology and thinking about the unique characteristics of agency which may help us to better understand how grievances and motivations operate. The other notable trend in the literature on rioting is towards recognition of the importance of context or structure, which is emphasised in particular by Keith (1993) and Waddington (2010). This is also an important observation, and the remainder of the chapter builds on both of these developments to offer an interpretation of rioting which brings together a contextual and an agency-­based approach. However, before I do this, I discuss the concepts of ‘motivation’ and ‘grievance’, which will inform the discussion of habitus later in the chapter.

120   Part II The search for political motivations and grievances It is difficult to deny that grievances about social deprivation, limited employment opportunities, racism and segregation, and the political motivations associated with them, are of concern to rioters. This is particularly so given that the riots considered here have occurred in areas with large ethnic minority populations disproportionately affected by socio-­economic inequalities (Keith, 1993; Amin, 2002; Tilly, 2003; Bagguley and Hussain, 2008; Waddington, 2010). However, if we accept that rioters are politically motivated, the central dilemma in explaining rioting is the tension between the spontaneity of the act and the lack of an explicit political strategy expressed by those involved, given that an articulated political strategy usually involves considered and organised actions (Akram, 2009). Gilroy suggests that rioting should be seen as a ‘long term strategic war of position’. However, he fails to explain how ‘long-­term strategies’ combine with spontaneous actions (Gilroy, 1987/1992, p. 233). In a similar vein, Keith (1993) argues that unless we can address the impromptu nature of rioting, we cannot account theoretically for what occurs during a riot. In response to accounts which privilege the irrationality of rioters, Keith describes rioting as ‘spontaneous rationality’ and distinguishes the riot from ‘self-­conscious deliberate strategy’ (Keith, 1993, p. 185). Unfortunately, his approach reaches an impasse, because he argues that there is a ‘seemingly irreconcilable mix of violence, looting and strategy’ (Keith 1993, p. 186). Despite these attempts to explain and link rioters’ grievances to political motivations, such accounts ultimately struggle to make the link between grievances and political motivations – clearly the crucial issue. Identifying political motivations for riots is a complex task, given that much of the literature describes rioters as irrational (Jahoda, 1982, pp.  96–7), while those who attribute rationality to the rioters struggle with the apparent spontaneity of the riot (Keith, 1993; Horowitz, 2003; Waddington, 2010). The focus on rationality in this discussion is telling, because it points to the way in which political science legitimates forms of political behaviour, given that rationality is associated with conventional forms of strategic political action. The ‘emotional’ elements of the riot also serve to strengthen claims about the irrationality of the action, as does a focus upon the criminality and violence involved (Keith, 1993). The extant literature on rioting also struggles to explain the apparent spontaneity of the riot. A focus on this issue is also important because it points to the need to explain how, in situations of relative stability, agents act and react in a relatively unorganised and unexpected way. This issue highlights the importance of theorising change in agency – a limitation of the existing literature on rioting. Of course, some rioters may express political motivations for their actions, whilst others may not, and it is important to acknowledge this variability. Notwithstanding this point, these accounts are often given in the heat of the action and actors may not have fully processed the reasons for their actions. This issue is echoed by Treadwell et al. (2012), who argue that direct questions to rioters

Rioting   121 may yield either defensive justifications or answers that reveal only the more superficial aspects of the complex overall set of emotions. It is important to emphasise that this chapter is not an argument for undermining the autonomy of the actors involved in rioting and that any analysis of rioting must start with rioters’ account of events. However, it is also important to point out that we must go beyond these initial accounts of rioting to explore the full range of motivations that inform it, because the rioter may find it difficult to access these motivations in the immediate context of the riot. Given the spontaneity of rioting, it is plausible that actors will not have processed the full range of motivations that inform their actions. Rioting, therefore, is a unique form of political action which requires an in-­depth engagement with rioters both during and after the riot, if we are to understand how political motivations inform it. Defining motivations and grievances Before we proceed, let us be clear about what ‘motive’ and ‘grievance’ mean. Motives are something ‘that cause a person to act in a certain way’, such that they may be thought of as the reasons for people’s actions (Oxford English Dictionary, 2011). Motives, then, can be seen to inform action because they lead to them. Motives can be known to the individual, so for example my motivation for running for the bus is that, if I do not, I may miss it and be late for work. Alternatively, motives may exist in a dormant state, until prompted by an event or trigger of some sort. These motives can be linked to grievances. Hence, an individual may not have previously reflected on long-­standing negative community relations with the police, because this is just an everyday part of their life, but these issues come to the fore once an event like the shooting of Mark Duggan occurs. I discuss habitus in more detail below, but it is important to point out that this latter understanding of motives draws on habitus, in that we know that habitus can remain relatively stable until there is a rupture which causes the individual to either, reassess and change their habitus, or remain with their former habitus. The account of rioting developed here asks us to consider the possibility that motivations do not need to be articulated to exist, but exist in the habitus nonetheless. From such a perspective, lack of articulated political motivations should not be seen as a sign of their absence. Grievances, on the other hand, involve ‘a wrong considered as grounds for complaint, or something believed to cause distress’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2011). The wrongs referred to here would relate to unemployment, poverty and social deprivation as experienced by the individuals engaged in the rioting. Grievances may refer to single events, such as a particular incident with the police. Understood in the context of the habitus, grievances may also draw on various memories and experiences over a life course. Given the capacity of the habitus to collect and consolidate such experiences, it is reasonable to think a grievance towards the police may draw on various memories, which may or may not be accessible to the agent in the event of the riot, but which cumulatively translate as a grievance. In rioting, there is a clear relationship between motives

122   Part II and grievances, because grievances may provide motivations for rioting. We can go one step further than this to suggest that motivations can become political motivations when actors decide to protest against such grievances. Returning to the question raised earlier about how we can identify motivations for the riot if they are not articulated, this approach provides political motivations for the riot because it shows how grievances and motivations are stored until they are triggered in the rioter’s habitus. This means that, while individuals may have concerns about issues, they may not feel able to do anything about them, or there are few channels to do so. However, the riot, or its triggering events, represents an opportunity for stored grievances to be expressed, because the riot represents a rupture in the habitus. The storing of grievances or motivations is an important part of the process, because it suggests that motivations and grievances remain dormant in habitus – unactivated, as it were – until there is an opportunity for them to be expressed. Once the rupture or riot occurs, motivations and grievances may not necessarily be articulated or translate into recognisable political actions, such as in recognised forms of protest, but we must recognise the rupture involved in the act, and its political potential. Of course, the political potential of these acts may not be at all fulfilled, which explains why they often end up as looting and criminality. As Bourdieu emphasises, it is very difficult to change one’s habitus, so although the rioter may have succeeded in rupturing the habitus, following the rupture through to achieve change is difficult, but not impossible (McNay, 1999; Adkins, 2003). The concept of habitus has been mentioned multiple times in this chapter thus far, but without being defined: it comes to the fore in the next section.

A theoretical framework for theorising rioters In this section, I outline a theoretical frame for understanding rioters. I do this in three stages. First, I consider Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and show how it successfully captures the highly complex, but mundane, nature of seamless everyday interaction between agents and social structures, which I argue should underpin our understanding of rioters. Next, I argue that there are unconscious elements of habitus which are integral to its operation. I argue that both Bourdieu and the wider literature on habitus do not deal sufficiently with this aspect, and consider why this is the case. The third section builds on this theorisation of the unconscious habitus to conceptualise the rioter. In doing so, I make two key claims: (1) I locate political motivation for the riot, and (2) I delineate processes of change in habitus, showing the complexity of change and how it can lead to ruptures or crises in habitus. Habitus For Bourdieu, our understanding of how to behave and interact on a daily basis as human beings is shaped by the habitus:

Rioting   123 … that system of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends of an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 5) It is from within the habitus then that one learns to live life in a taken-­for-granted and routine manner. For Bourdieu, it is within the habitus that one deeply learns the doxic nature of one’s society – the deeply held and practised, but perhaps not discussed, taken-­for-granted which is made up of so many givens in any particular society (Bourdieu, 1977). Habitus is all-­encompassing because it shapes ‘our overall orientation to, or way of being in the world; our predisposed way of thinking, acting and moving in and through the social environment that encompasses posture, demeanour, outlook, expectations, and tastes’ (Sweetman, 2003, p. 532). Moreover, habitus is the product of an individual’s upbringing and, more particularly, of her class. In Bourdieu’s view, habitus: brings about a unique integration, dominated by the earliest experiences.… Thus for example, the habitus acquired in the family underlies the structuring of school experiences … and the habitus transformed by schooling, itself diversified, in turn underlies the structuring of all subsequent experiences … and so on, from restructuring to restructuring. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 87) Agency, if conceptualised as habitus, offers a useful frame for understanding the rioter, because it can capture the interplay between structure and agency in a nuanced way, which reflects the reality of everyday interaction, or, as Bourdieu prefers to term it, our ‘practice’. Further, habitus offers a conceptual mechanism for understanding the interplay and consolidation of the agent’s various experiences over their life course. For example, a rioter’s experiences of racism or feelings of hopelessness arising from long-­term unemployment are stored in the habitus, which is constantly evolving ‘from restructuring to restructuring’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p.  87). As such, in habitus, we have an account of agency which recognises the impact of social structure, but which also incorporates a temporal dimension to agency, which can help to trace life experiences in rioters. The unique value of habitus is that it emphasises the importance of Bourdieu’s goal of focusing on the agent’s practice, as opposed to the theoretician’s interpretation of the agent’s actions. Agents do not go about the world engaging in an explicit way with rules and structures. The fact that they do engage with rules and structures requires a different principle of action, hence the habitus.

124   Part II The unconscious habitus One of the aims of this chapter is to argue for a notion of the unconscious in habitus, which is an argument that has been made elsewhere (Akram, 2012, 2017; Akram and Hogan, 2015). Neither Bourdieu, nor his critics, address this issue in a focused way, which represents a crucial gap in our understanding of how habitus operates. In this section, I provide a discussion of the unconscious elements of habitus and show how it has the potential to expand our understanding of agential actions and motivations and how these are informed by experiences as stored in the habitus. However, I begin with an important clarification. As will be shown below, Bourdieu makes references to the ‘unconscious’ elements of habitus, as indeed does much other literature. The unconscious as a concept has a particular history in psychoanalysis, with a meaning which is substantively different from that intended by Bourdieu. Indeed, one possible explanation of why Bourdieu neglected to discuss this issue is because of the rejection of Freud and psychoanalysis which permeates all his work (Bourdieu, 1977, pp.  92–3, 1999, p.  512). Yet, as will be argued below, a notion of the unconscious remains integral to habitus and, in not acknowledging it, we risk not understanding its true potential. Accordingly, this chapter suggests that the unconscious refers to that arena of influences which affects agency below the level of conscious action. Bourdieu’s texts contain repeated references to the ‘unconscious’ and, more frequently, to how actions are ‘not conscious’. As an example, in Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu writes: The ‘unconscious’ is never anything other than the forgetting of history which history itself produces by incorporating the objective structures it produces in the second natures of habitus…. (Bourdieu, 1977, pp. 78–9) In addition, many of Bourdieu’s supporters have commented on the unconscious aspects of habitus (Adkins, 2003; Sweetman, 2003; Adams, 2006). Other critics have argued that the unconscious elements of habitus reduce conscious actions (King, 2000; Jenkins, 2002; Elder-­Vass, 2007). Bourdieu, his admirers and his critics all seem to have accepted the existence of an unconscious element to habitus, although it receives very little attention in the literature. While the unconscious elements are important to how habitus functions, I believe that we can go one step further to argue that, in addition to actions occurring as a result of unconscious routines embedded in habitus, motivations, including political motivations, can also emerge from the unconscious habitus. Thus, the issue concerning the unconscious nature of habitus lies at the heart of the issue of rioting, in that it is a question about acknowledging that not all motivations or grievances must be articulated, or enter the discursive realm, in order to be recognised as existing. Instead, political motivations

Rioting   125 for rioting are conceptualised as existing at an unconscious level in habitus and, thereby, operating as motivations for rioting. Conversely, some rioters may articulate reasons and motivations for their actions, but, if rioting is a response to long-­term structural disadvantage, it may be difficult to articulate or even to understand the cause of anger and protest within the short time frame of the riot. Further, given the spontaneity of the riot, the rioter has limited time and resources to reflect on the act, the range of motivations that informs them and how precisely to ensure positive outcomes. However, as social scientists, in using habitus, we have a mechanism to scan back through the agent’s life and their experiences, to explore motivations and grievances which may lead to the riot. In this vein, experiences relating to racism, or other forms of structural deprivation, are conceptualised as having an impact on the rioter over the course of their lives. These experiences may impact at both a conscious and an unconscious level, as habitus operates across both platforms (Akram, 2012). However, in the context of understanding the rioter’s behaviour, it is the unconscious arena which is of particular relevance. It is also worth emphasising that acknowledgement of the unconscious and unarticulated nature of motivations and, further, the routinised nature of everyday life is important, because these stand in stark contrast to accounts which conceptualise agency largely in terms of reflexivity, decision-­making and actors who are unaffected by habit or anything below consciousness (Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992; Archer, 2012). The impact of the rioter’s past on the present during the riot Bourdieu places significant weight on the connection between the agent’s history and their ‘everyday practice’ (Bourdieu, 1977), which is important for identifying political motivations in the riot. He suggests that habitus has a hysteresis2 effect, in which the ‘disproportional weight of early experience in the generation of embodied dispositions creates a temporal lag in the logic of practice’ (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 59). In effect, as a result of this temporal domain, agency, defined as habitus, is capable of encapsulating the whole of an individual’s biography. The unconscious will have a critical role to play here, because, as Bourdieu suggests, ‘in each of us, in varying proportions, there is part of yesterday’s man.… Yet we do not sense this man of the past, because he is inveterate in us; he makes up the unconscious part of ourselves’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 72). The relationship between past and present, and various forms of structural influence, will be the site of much overlap, reinforcement and even contradiction. For example, an individual’s habitus might contain experiences based on the social structural impact of class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, as well as more particular forms of structural influence, such as their commitment to institutions or particular roles. These experiences from the past provide fertile motivations for rioting and, through the notion of hysteresis and an unconscious habitus, we can develop a more in-­depth account of how these motivations inform rioting. Crucially, it is the unconscious element of habitus which enables one to explain why

126   Part II the agent herself may be unaware of how these earlier experiences inform current behaviour. As a result of the hysteresis effect in the habitus, political motivations for the riot can be identified, if the riot is conceptualised as the (end) product of a ‘process’ and not a single ‘event’. This process definition of the riot is intimately related to the agent’s history, as contained in the agent’s habitus. Long-­term and embedded issues related to race and ethnicity may emerge in an apparently spontaneous way, but this does not equate to an agent’s political motivations being spontaneous and, thus, spurious. We must overcome a simple search for agential strategy and intentionality and, instead, examine agential political motivations over a longer time period, hence the need for a better understanding of change in agency. There is another piece in this puzzle which is crucial for understanding the rioter’s habitus, namely why the riot occurs at a particular point in time, and whether it will lead to a concerted effort on the rioter’s part to enact change in their life. From the perspective developed here, the riot occurs when it does because it represents a rupture in the rioter’s habitus. In other words, the trigger event of a riot represents a moment of critical reflection which may, or may not, be seized upon to create positive change in one’s life. Creating change, however, is difficult, and the utility of Bourdieu’s habitus is that it reflects the difficulty of change. As such, it offers a contrast to theories of reflexivity which suggest that we are living in an era where there are constant opportunities to redesign our lives and change as we wish. This is an important issue which is developed in the next section. Rioting as an attempt at changing one’s habitus If riots are informed by political motivations, why do rioters choose to express themselves by rioting and not in a protest, or through other means of expression, which arguably might be more successful? Similarly, if a riot is political, why are riots often isolated and irregular phenomena? In order to answer these questions, we must understand the inherent difficulty for rioters in acknowledging and addressing the need for broad-­ranging change in their lives. Bourdieu is useful here because habitus highlights the difficulty of acknowledging and instituting change in one’s life, given the deep level at which many structures, norms and habits operate in habitus, and shape rioters’ lives. For example, let’s assume the rioters’ grievances result from deeply embedded racism in society, as reflected in growing up in ethnically segregated ghettos, and/or from long-­term antagonistic relationships with the police. Rioters may be aware of these issues, but acting to change them is difficult because the problems are so great. Consequently, rioting represents an attempt at change or protest by actors in relation to issues which are ordinarily deeply embedded, so solving them may seem like a hopeless task. As such, riots are a successful rupture in the agents’ habitus and result from underlying grievances becoming salient. In such a scenario, issues of racism and an antagonistic relationship with the police are played out in ways that were not previously possible.

Rioting   127 The difficulty of change Developing an adequate theory of change which is reliant on a notion of the unconscious is central to understanding how agency operates and rioting occurs. Because habitus operates on an unconscious platform, change is certainly difficult, and intentional change even more so. By dint of this, the charge of determinism is often directed at Bourdieu (Alexander, 1995; Jenkins, 2002; Elder-­Vass, 2007). However, McNay (1999, p.  113) suggests that Bourdieu’s work is valuable because it demonstrates the difficulty of change: ‘… it provides a corrective to certain theories of reflexive transformation which overestimate the extent to which individuals … are able to reshape identity’ (see also Adkins, 2003; Sweetman, 2003; Adams, 2006). In an era of ‘identity mobility’ (Giddens, 1991), where agents are said to be engaging in lifestyle choices, we see that, at a unconscious level, class, gender and ethnicity structures are enduring, despite outward attempts by agents to change lifestyles. Habitus draws attention to norms that operate below the level of consciousness. We might suggest that it will take more than a simple ‘act of will’ to resist, or change, norms and, as McNay states, ‘no matter how many levels of consciousness one reaches, the problems always go deeper’ (McNay, 1999). In this vein, while the rioter may want to change their life, taking positive steps in this regard is an inherently difficult task, as it will involve making changes in a range of fields, such as in access to education, housing and employment. The existing literature examining the demographic background of rioters confirms this analysis (Keith, 1993; Amin, 2002). While change in habitus is difficult, it is not impossible and it is a continuous process. Bourdieu suggests that change is not only possible; it is ‘always already’ in progress (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 235). However, it is change within the limits of the structures and expressions of the habitus. The more unstable the habitus, the more it is confronted with novel situations and agents and, thus, the broader the scope of change, or the greater the ‘margin of freedom’ for invention (ibid.). Disruptions and ‘interventions’ in the habitus occur in at least two ways: changing circumstances in the habitus, such as a crisis, ‘make dispositions dysfunction’; also, dispositions may also ‘waste away or weaken through lack of use’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p.  160). In other words, the habitus ‘changes constantly in response to new experiences’ (ibid.). This approach to change provides a useful lens with which to conceptualise underlying struggles in habitus which emerge during the riot, as a result of either disruptions or interventions in habitus. The trigger event in a riot, such as the shooting of Mark Duggan in the 2011 riots in the UK, functions as a disruption or intervention in habitus. Hence, what may appear to be spontaneous action is, in fact, the underlying struggle within the habitus coming to the surface. The rioters’ grievances operate at the level of the unconscious, until they become visible during the riot, which leads to change and a possible new settlement in the habitus.

128   Part II

Conclusion Having discussed Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and shown how it provides a useful mechanism for understanding how underlying grievances and motivations are stored in the habitus until they find an outing in the riot, we can now draw together the insights from this chapter and present some concluding thoughts. The study of rioting, as it currently stands, offers various accounts of the act, most notably in the form of the post-­political thesis (Treadwell et al., 2012) or in the work of Keith (1993) or Waddington (2010). Yet, for those who recognise a political element to rioting, there are limited explanations of how to understand this spontaneous act, which often involves elements of criminality and looting. This lack of clarity also impacts on how wider society and the media respond to riots. In highlighting the importance of a theorisation of agency to this debate premised on Bourdieu’s unconscious habitus, I show that rioting can be a distinctly political action, where politics is defined as involving an unequal distribution of power, wealth and resources. A related key finding is that motivations and grievances do not have to be articulated to exist. While they may be articulated, their existence is not dependent upon articulation. Crucially, it is only through understanding how habitus operates that one can arrive at this understanding. Through providing an account of how change occurs in the unconscious habitus, this chapter explored the difficulty of creating change in one’s life, and the inherent difficulties rioters face in addressing the issues which constrain their lives. The broader point here is that, while the riot represents a rupture of the habitus, and a partial airing of issues, there are few positive outcomes from riots, as is reflected in the high numbers of arrests which usually follow (Berman, 2011). This is not only because rioting is characterised by looting and violence, but also because rioters are often unorganised and may be unclear about what their shared aims are. Rioting, then, is a form of protest, but it should be acknowledged that its fraught nature reveals the complexity of instituting change in one’s life, especially when faced by multiple and intersecting forms of structural disadvantage. As part of my argument, I highlight the neglect of the unconscious in habitus. Incorporating this aspect of agency broadens the scope of social and political analysis, because it enables the social scientist to probe motivations, or what may appear to be a lack of motivations for actions. Further, it helps us to recognise the existence of deep-­seated motivations which cannot be explained through intentionality or an explicit articulation of reasons for actions. Such a concept could significantly enhance research into rioting. Notwithstanding this, any analysis of rioters’ motivations needs to begin with an analysis of the rioters’ understanding of, and explanations for, their behaviour. This chapter is not arguing that there is no agential autonomy, as this would be indefensible. Instead, I advocate a theoretically informed and more nuanced approach to how we understand rioters and their accounts of rioting. Simply posing direct questions to rioters during, or immediately after, the riot about their motivations regarding such a

Rioting   129 complex issue is unlikely to encourage genuine self-­analysis or allow enough time to enable the interviewer to encourage such analysis. In such a scenario, the accounts received may be defensive or self-­justificatory and lacking in detailed consideration of the act or the motivations that led to it. While these accounts can be important and revealing, in order to understand rioting we must look deeper for motivations through an exploration of the agent’s unconscious habitus, which can be accessed using a detailed qualitative analysis of habitus, but which also necessitates a broader social structural analysis. One final point is important. If it is accepted that the unconscious habitus is important for understanding rioting, then this must be acknowledged in both theoretical and methodological discussions (Akram, 2014b). The main aim here has been to open up this issue for discussion. However, an important further avenue of research is to discuss the methodological implications of the concept of agency advocated here, and how these can be utilised in research into rioting. Rioters are a notoriously difficult group to access and the theoretical approach developed in this chapter would require significant time and resources, making this task even more difficult. This is a challenge with which the social sciences must deal if we are to better understand rioters and help to address their grievances.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this chapter was originally published in the British Journal of Criminology, see Akram, 2014a. 2 The term ‘hysteresis’ has its origins in physics and refers to the lag in response exhibited by a body in reacting to changes in the forces, especially magnetic forces, affecting it (Oxford English Dictionary 2011).

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Conclusion Contemporary political behaviour – looking forward

Political behaviour is changing in established democracies such as the UK, but it is not necessarily declining as is argued by the dominant narrative in the literature on political participation. Instead, people are engaging with politics in new and creative ways: it is imperative that we document and recognise the varied courses of action people take to mobilise today. The central argument of this book is that although it is indisputable that how people engage with politics is evolving, it is clear that to explore the range and extent of this shift requires new ways of thinking about politics and political behaviour. To do so also necessitates reflection on the conceptual tools we use for this task. Thus, this book ends with a provocation: we must reflect deeply on the concepts and theoretical tools we use in the pursuit of political analysis, as these necessarily both inform, and in some cases, obstruct what counts as political and what does not. A new set of tools, on the other hand, has the potential to make visible that which may otherwise be invisible.

Mapping the political As discussed in preceding chapters, central to the task of conceptual clarification is the need to focus on how we define ‘the political’, what is included or excluded from our definition and where we draw the boundaries. I argue for the need to move beyond arena or formal conceptions of politics – where activity is made meaningful, significant and worthy of investigation by virtue of the formal context in which it occurs – towards process definitions, or the idea that politics can and does occur in all contexts. It is concerned not with arenas, but with processes, and, more specifically, relates to the (uneven) distribution of power, wealth and resources. Adopting a broader definition of politics allows us to see the political potential of acts such as rioting, as discussed in Chapter 6. The case of rioting serves as a good illustrative example of political action which is unconventional in terms of activity and location, but by the process definition of politics provided above, can be distinctively political given that it represents a protest against structural deprivation by marginalised groups. Not all rioters are political actors, but some may be, and our definition of the political must be broad enough to capture them.

Conclusion   133 The case of rioting also serves to highlight the question of whether social issues can become political – and, if so, when. The boundaries of the political can operate to exclude social issues from the political realm, yet the contemporary climate is one in which there is increasing overlap between social and political issues, as individuals seek to mobilise on issues which are meaningful and personal to them. Again, as was explored in Chapter 6, it is hard to deny that grievances relating to poverty, social and political exclusion, and structural inequality have historically been motivating factors in riots. The relationship between the social and political is porous rather than binary; we need to recognise that individuals may engage on the borders between the political arena and its outside, but also on those between the social and political. For example, commenting on why she has moved away from ‘Big P politics’ to doing more local community clean-­up, gardening and art projects, Sue in Chapter 5 points out: ‘(W)ell, I can see the point of this because it’s having an effect on my surroundings and I’m interested in improving things’. Although a regular voter, Sue’s preferred mode of activism is localised, focused on improving her local area and creating a sense of belonging for local residents. As Bang (2009) highlights, individuals today are increasingly interested in localised forms of everyday engagement, where they see impact, work collectively with neighbours and feel useful. Crucially, however, and as was true in the case of Sue and some of the other interviewees discussed in Chapter 5, such activity does not always replace more formal activities such as voting. Rather, it supplements it, emphasising that there is not a dualism between arena and process definitions of politics as often posited in the literature. Formal and informal politics may co-­exist, intersect and overlap in people’s lives today. Clearly, we need to move away from binary accounts which document either arena-­based politics or unconventional modes of politics, and seek more complicated accounts of political behaviour, which would be more likely to reflect the lives of most if not all of the people interviewed in Chapter 5.

The difference that agency makes The other key theme of this book is that a focus on political behaviour makes little sense unless we are clear about what we mean by agency or, more specifically, the core characteristics of our underlying conception of agency. To this end, this book has been concerned with exploring the difference that a more detailed engagement with the concept of agency makes for our understanding of contemporary forms of political behaviour, and especially the insight it provides into alternative forms of political behaviour. An underpinning concept of agency is foundational to all explanations of political behaviour, yet it is often neglected, remains implicit or is based on a conception of agency which is overly purposive, instrumental or reflexive. While the focus in this book is agency, I have sought to make it clear that a focus on agency without taking structure into account is futile, as we end up with an overly reflexive or empowered agent who bears little resemblance to her real-­ life counterpart. If social structures such as class, gender and ‘race’ are to be

134   Conclusion acknowledged as influencing lives and outcomes then agency must be conceptualised in relation to structure. Equally important is the need to think carefully about how such structures influence agents. Hence, the concepts of agency which are of concern here are those which are formulated within dialectical conceptions of structure and agency, where both structure and agency are involved in shaping lives. To this end, Part I of the book highlights the dangers of narrow or reductive concepts of agency by rendering explicit conceptions of the political actor in the work of Stoker (2006), Hay (2007) and Norris (1999, 2011), before undertaking a rigorous critique of the more conceptual literature on agency. Rational choice theory and Archer’s work (2000) on the reflexive agent are highlighted as particularly problematic. Archer is held up for particular criticism because, despite offering a convincing account of structure and agency in her earlier work, her later work presents agents as overly reflexive and purposive and, thus, denies the effect of structural influence on agency. In contrast to partial accounts of agency, Chapter 3 introduced the work of Bourdieu as a useful approach for re-­thinking agency; it outlined Bourdieu’s concept of habitus whilst highlighting its unconscious features. The concept of habitus, it is argued, significantly enhances how we might understand everyday practice in a socially structured world. In my view, it offers a convincing account of agency, and offers a useful lens through which to view the political actor. We can go further still. A critical engagement with agency means not only making agency explicit, but thinking carefully about those characteristics of agency which we all recognise in ourselves, but are not reflected in the literature on agency or taken into account when discussing political behaviour. To this end, this book has been concerned with shining a light on two specific aspects of agency which have largely been neglected to date: the unconscious and the internal conversation. Focusing on the unconscious and the internal conversation respectively, Chapters 3 and 4 provide critical explorations of these two aspects of agency, showing how they enrich our understanding of what agency is and how it has the potential to enhance our insight into political behaviour. The unconscious has been much neglected not only in theories of agency, but also those relating to political behaviour. I argue that the unconscious is a useful concept for political analysts because it introduces a temporal aspect to agency, showing how the past exerts an influence on agency in ways which are not always within the control of the individual. The internal conversation, on the other hand, helps us to understand the internal conversations agents have about politics in their heads, which are distinct but may be related to external conversations. Acknowledging the internal conversation moves us beyond an explicit focus on a language of decision-­making, choice and explicit articulation of motives. It leads to the recognition that some thoughts are linked to actions, but others may remain internal. Such thoughts should be of interest to political analysts because they involve thinking about politics and may form the backdrop to political action. Part II of the book applied the insights developed in Part I to examples of contemporary forms of political behaviour to explore the difference that agency

Conclusion   135 makes. Chapter 5 explores the internal political conversations that agents engage in to show the value of documenting internal thinking and deliberation. In the broader context of narratives of widespread political dis-­engagement and democratic decline, the interviews in Chapter 5 offer an alternative picture of how individuals think through and reflect on their political behaviour. The complexity of the viewpoints documented in Chapter 5 speaks to the idea that to capture the contemporary political moment, political analysts must seek more detailed accounts of how people make sense of their political behaviour. A related key insight from documenting internal conversations is the need to move away from focusing on tangible and observable phenomena as evidence of political activity or of political impact. Instead, we need greater recognition that political activity may have a range of intensities – it may sometimes lead to a principled decision and action to vote a particular way, for example, but it also includes the thinking process, and the deliberations agents engage in. The extant literature is overwhelmingly concerned with impact, whether it leads to voting, taking part in a protest, or leads to an output of some description. Instead, I want to suggest that action can be political if it leads to a development in thought or to a political awakening for the individual in question. The internal conversations documented in Chapter 5 clearly show that the individuals interviewed often reflected at length on their political identities in their heads. Thus, paying more attention to internal conversations, I suggest, enriches our understanding of political behaviour today. The centrality of a notion of the unconscious to agency is made clear in Chapter 6, which discusses the London riots of 2011. Rioting presents us with an unconventional form of political behaviour precisely because it lacks articulated political strategy and bears little resemblance to more traditional forms of protest. Yet rioting is clearly political if we consider it as a form of protest against the social and structural deprivation which characterises the life of the rioters. The fact that riots have historically taken place in inner city areas with high ethnic minority populations and high levels of socio-­economic deprivation emphasises this point. A theory of agency has the potential to make all the difference to how we understand and explain the riot. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, I argue that a notion of the partially unconscious habitus is central for understanding how an act usually described as criminality and looting reflects a rupture in the partially unconscious habitus and the coming to the surface of underlying political grievances. This is not to deny that looting and criminality are features of the riot, but to indicate that a more detailed engagement with agency enables us to see the nascent political motivations of the riot, which otherwise might not be visible.

Agents of change? Engaging in a more detailed exploration of agency can help us to better navigate the evolving nature of political behaviour today. To recognise the extent of this shift we need to think carefully about the concepts and tools we use in our

136   Conclusion political analysis. Making our theory of agency explicit rather than implicit is crucial, but this does not necessitate a solipsistic approach to agency or to political behaviour. Agents, of course, matter but it is equally important to take into account the socio-­political world in which agents live, and the ways it constrains and enables their lives. As is clear from the interviews in Chapter 5, structures such as gender and class shape the lives of respondents such as Alex and Sue, and must be taken into consideration. Agency then only makes sense if understood in the broader context of its relationship with social structure. Thus, this book makes an argument for agency in relation to social structure, but also for more agency- and context-­based approaches to political analysis. Furthermore, a detailed exploration of what we mean by agency and by social structure and their core characteristics should necessarily be part of this exercise. Of course, with regard to agency, we may not be able to provide an exhaustive account of agency, nor was this my aim in this book. However, we can and must go beyond narrow accounts which are normatively or empirically motivated, i.e. by what we can observe and document. Questions of methodology are also important here and it is imperative to think through the methodological implications of a more in-­depth conception of agency. Certainly, the unconscious and inner conversation require new methodological tools. Although both the unconscious and internal conversation are not directly visible and might be thought of as difficult to access, they are penetrable, as is discussed in Chapters 5 and 6 of the book. Where does this leave the study of political behaviour? While it is clear that formal modes of political participation are declining, the situation is not necessarily one of pessimism, as is argued by some of the extant literature which often appears rather one-­dimensional in terms of adopting the position of defending voting against informal modes of political participation. Rather, and was clear from the interviews in Chapter 5, individuals often combine formal and informal modes of political participation and do not see these activities as mutually exclusive. It would be irresponsible to deny that voting is declining in the Western world: people should be encouraged to engage more with formal mechanisms of political behaviour, but there also needs to be greater acknowledgement of the varied ways in which people are engaging in politics today, and also how they make sense of this engagement. Documenting people’s understandings of political behaviour is a good starting point and we should spend more time doing this. Furthermore, it is vital that we look beyond conventional spaces for political activity: politics takes place in a range of spaces in relation to an array of concerns and commitments, be they social, political, or where the two overlap. We need to be more attuned to this if we are to acknowledge the complexity and vibrancy of the contemporary political moment. Engaging in such an exercise is an important challenge for political analysts, but is also essential for the health of democracy.

Conclusion   137

Bibliography Archer, M. (2000). Being Human. The Problem of Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bang, H. P. (2009). ‘Yes We Can’: Identity Politics and Project Politics for a Late-­ Modern World. Urban Research and Practice. 2(2), pp. 117–37. Hay, C. (2007). Why We Hate Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Norris, P. (1999). Critical Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, P. (2011). Democratic Deficit. Critical Citizens Re-­visited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stoker, G. (2006). Why Politics Matters: Making Democracy Work. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Index

Page numbers in italics denote figures. 38 Degrees 35 abortion 75 Adams, M. 60, 62, 64, 65, 70n5, 70n6, 124, 127 Adkins, L. 62, 64, 122, 124, 127 agency 4–5, 8–9, 33–4, 51–3, 133–6; dialectic see structure and agency dialectic; and political participation 35–9; and rioting see rioting; see also Archer, M.; Bourdieu; Giddens; rational choice theory agency and structure 39–42 Alexander, J. C. 59, 62–3, 69–70n2, 127 anti-politics 2–3; and democracy 2–3 Archer, M.: agency 42–5, 78–9; critical realism 54n4, 90n3; internal conversation 82–7, 96–7 (see also Bourdieu, P., internal conversation); morphogenetic approach 76–8; morphogenetic sequence 43; reflexivity 43–5; see also modes of reflexivity arena and process definitions of politics 5–7, 21 austerity 41, 109 Bagguley, P. and Hussain, Y. 117–19 Bang, H. P. 26–8, 75: ‘everyday maker’ 26–8, 104; Expert Citizen 29n2 Beck, U., Giddens, A. and Lash, S. 44, 75 Bennett, L. W. and Segerberg, A. 25; see also online Berger, J. 95 Bhaskar, R. 52, 53, 54n3; see also critical realism Billig, M. 2, 58, 10–101, 104 Bourdieu, P.: bodily hexis 60, 70n3, 109, 111n6; class 60; doxa 111n4; field 59;

habitus/unconscious habitus 60–5; internal conversation 87–9, 97; practice 59; unconscious 58; see also class; unconscious Brixton riots 113 Castells, M. 70n6 class 9, 39, 48–9, 51, 59–60, 75, 77, 80–1, 100, 102, 106, 110, 111, 123, 125, 127, 133, 136 Chicken Little 1 clicktivism 7, 24; see also online collective and connective action 25–6; see also online consumer boycotting 35 consumerism 6, 36, 113, 119 critical realism 52–3, 54n4 Crossley, N. 64 crowd psychology 117 Dalton, R. 24–5 de-traditionalisation thesis 65, 70 dialectic see structure and agency dialectic duality of structure see Giddens, A Dickens, C. 1 duty norms and engagement norms 24–5 Durkheim, E. 40, 53n1 efficacy-impact question 8 Elder-Vass, D. 62–4, 124 explanatory critique 53–4n3; see also critical realism extended reflexivity thesis 44, 65, 70n6; see also Archer, M Farrugia, D. and Woodman, D. 81 Flashpoints Model of Public Disorder see Waddington, D

Index   139 Flinders, M. 5–6, 101 Fowler, B. 58 Get-Up! 8, 13n1, 35 Giddens, A.: agency 45–8; duality of structure 50, 78; intentionality 45–6; on structure 50; structure and agency 78 Halupka, M. 24 Handsworth riots 113 Hay, C.: on agency 35–6; agency and structure 50–1; political participation 22; social and political action 35–6 Inglehart, R. 3, 75 internal conversation 10: methodology 98–101; interviews into the internal conversation 101–10; see also Archer, M.; Bourdieu, P internal political conversation see internal conversation Jenkins, R. 62–3, 65, 124, 127 Keith, M. 118 King, A. 62, 63, 124 Lopez, J. and Scott, J. 49 McNay, L. 64, 122, 127 memory 67 modes of reflexivity 85–7; see also Archer, M Mouffe, C. 115 Mumsnet 7 neo-liberalism 41, 116 Norris, P.: agency 37–9; critical citizens 3, 37–9; dissatisfied democrats 3, 24 online: Bennett L. W. and Segerberg, A. 25; clicktivism 7, 24; collective and connective action 25–6; Halupka, M. 24; personalization and individualism 25–6 ontology 52–3, 90, 119; see also critical realism O’Toole, T. et al. 6, 23, 28, 35 political, the 23–4, 132–3 political socialization 67–8 political participation: Almond, G. A. and Verba, S. 21; alternative forms of political participation 23–9; decline 20;

democracy 21; individualism 36; see also collective and connective action political non-participation 6; see also O’Toole, T. et al post-political thesis 115–16, 118–19 proto-political action 23–4, 29, 36; see also Rowe, P psychoanalysis 57–8; see also unconscious Putnam, R. 21 Ranciere, J. 115 rational choice theory 48–9 reflexive modernisation thesis 44; see also extended reflexivity thesis rioting 10; habitus 122–3; unconscious habitus 124–5; consumerism 113, 119; hysteresis effect 125–6; change in habitus 126–7; motivations 120–2; grievances 120–2; the political 115–16; see also Bourdieu, P Rowe, P. 23 Rude, G. 117–18 Sayer, A. 80–1, 84, 90n3 Shilling, C. 33, 70n3 social and political, the 7–8 social and political action 35–6; see also Hay, C social structure 49–51, 79–81 Stoker, G.: on agency 36–7; consumerism 36–7; individualism 36–7; on political participation 22 structure see social structure structure and agency see agency and structure structure and agency dialectic 39–42 Sweetman, P. 60, 62, 64, 123, 124, 127 Toxteth riots 113 Treadwell, J. et al. 116, 119 unconscious: Freud 57–8, 66; psychoanalysis 57–8; see also Bourdieu, P unconscious bias 67 UK riots of 2011 113 verstehen 111n3 Waddington, D. 118 women’s refuge 109 Žižek, S. 115, 118