The Individual After Modernity: A Sociological Perspective 9780367894405, 9781003019176

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The Individual After Modernity

Moving beyond the individualization paradigm in sociological theory, this book develops an approach to the analysis of human activities and the social phenomena produced by them that centres on the processes that generate coordinated behaviours among individuals. Emphasizing the relational and processual character of social phenomena, as well as the importance of a broader cultural and historical context for analyzing them, the author questions the view of contemporary society that sees individuals acting in a context in which social bonds are dissolving and unveils the rationale hidden behind the chaos of everyday activities. Through an analysis of the continued importance of cooperation and the consequent emergence in society of various kinds of communities, this volume examines the changing character of social ties. An overview of transformation of social bonds and the intensification of mutual influences among individuals as they seek to address social dilemmas in new contexts, The Individual After Modernity will appeal to social scientists with interests in social theory. Mira Marody is Professor of Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Warsaw and Head of the Centre for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Studies, Poland. She is the co-author of Transformations of Social Bonds: The Outline of the Theory of Social Change.

Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought

Ethical Politics and Modern Society T. H. Green’s Practical Philosophy and Modern China James Jia-Hau Liu Consciousness and the Neoliberal Subject A Theory of Ideology via Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek Jon Bailes Hegel and Contemporary Practical Philosophy Beyond Kantian-Constructivism James Gledhill and Sebastian Stein A Marxist Theory of Ideology Praxis, Thought and the Social World Andrea Sau Stupidity in Politics Its Unavoidability and Potential Nobutaka Otobe Political Correctness A Sociocultural Black Hole Thomas Tsakalakis The Individual After Modernity A Sociological Perspective Mira Marody The Politics of Well-Being Towards a More Ethical World Anthony M. Clohesy For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/RSSPT

The Individual After Modernity A Sociological Perspective Mira Marody

First published in English 2021 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 © 2021 Mira Marody Translated by Grzegorz Czemiel The right of Mira Marody 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. Published in Polish by Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar 2016 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-89440-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-01917-6 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Prefacevi 1 The individual in society

1

2 From the revolt of the masses to mass revolt

22

3 Generic experiences of our times

61

4 The social environment after modernity

91

5 The production of the individual

130

6 Processes of socializing individual actions

178

7 Producing the society anew

226

Bibliography256 Index274

Preface

For many years, discussing, at seminars for sociology students, the various theories of emerging “postmodern society” based on the concept of individualization, I had to deal with the problem of “psychological bias” inherent in those theories. After all, in sociological research the individual is nothing else but the product of society. And yet, the most popular accounts of contemporary society emphasized the image of autonomous individuals who freely make choices about their actions and independently construct their biographies in a society characterized by a progressing dissolution of social bonds. Certainly, one may assume that an individualized society should be described primarily at the level of individual struggle to establish one’s personal identity, maintain pure relations, or accumulate social capital. But even in an individualized society we have to cooperate with others when striving to achieve our individual goals. We also need others to anchor our identity projects in interactions with them and to consolidate our images of reality by sharing them with other people. All these social encounters tie us with others and “socialize” our behaviours into some more or less stable patterns that may become the germs of a new form of sociality. In this book individualization is regarded as a social phenomenon, with origins in some societal characteristics of modernity and transforming the ways in which both individuals and society function today. It shows how profound changes that have taken place in cultural and institutional contexts are contributing to the intensification of mutual influences among individuals, who are trying out different, formerly unknown ways of realizing their individual aspirations and solving the basic social dilemmas generated by the clash between competitive social requirements they are exposed to. By emphasizing the processual character of social life, the book returns to the question on which sociology was founded – how individuals and society mutually generate each other. Searching for an answer to this question seems particularly important today, when most of us feel lost in an ocean of possibilities offered by the contemporary society, torn between feelings of inadequacy and omnipotence. In that sense, this book is about you and me facing the endless challenges produced by our social environment. It should help us to understand what is going on with each of us. But it is also a book important for our societies that can no longer deal successfully

Preface  vii with socially produced individualism, as evidenced by the reduced effectiveness of the state, decreasing trust in democracy and growing waves of populism. Focused not on the specific movements (such as those based on gender, race or ethnicity), but on the individual problems and societal structures, the book hopes to capture the more general dynamics hidden behind ongoing social processes. The book has two main objectives. The first is to provide an account of today’s relations between society and individuals. I start with an analysis of generic experiences and institutional changes which are characteristic for the contemporary society, then focus on the individual features and basic behavioural dilemmas that are produced under the present societal conditions, and finish with searching for an answer to the question about the kind of sociality that is now generated by individuals in the course of dealing with the main problems of their life-worlds. The second objective of the book is to develop an approach to the analysis of human activities and social phenomena they generate that would go beyond the “individualization paradigm”, which prevails in sociology today. This approach focuses on the processes of socializing human behaviour, i.e. the processes that generate coordinated behaviours of individuals. At the centre of my analysis is the question of how, in the contemporary, individualized world, a shared knowledge, social identity, and social practices are produced. The strategy I adopted when writing the book was to formulate questions that would allow me to capture those features and processes of a “liquid” society that are important from the sociological perspective, rather than to offer answers that would assign to this society a specific shape. In my opinion, this shape is going to be formed for a long time yet in the processes of various social practices clashing. This also means that sociology – if it wants to successfully defend its claim to being a separate scientific discipline – must move away from habitually focusing on the descriptions of a “finished” society and must instead start looking for ways to describe and analyze society in statu nascendi. This book offers one such way – whether successful or not, I will leave it to the readers to judge. The ideas and analyses presented in the book have grown out of many years of studies. I would like to thank all those who accompanied me, even for a moment, on this exceptionally long road. I owe special thanks to Anna Giza, who helped me to establish the basic structure of this work and supported me throughout the process of writing. In finishing this book, the help of Małgorzata Jacyno was invaluable. She took the trouble to read and comment on six chapters and motivated me to finally dot the last one. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for any mistakes and imperfections that an attentive reader will find here. Warsaw, 29 March 2020 Mira Marody

1 The individual in society

What we lack – let us freely admit it – are conceptual models and an overall vision by which we can make comprehensible in thought what we experience daily in reality. Norbert Elias, The Society of Individuals

Man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is – history. Ortega y Gasset, History as a System

The year 2000 was drawing to a close. At the last moment, Joanna decided to accept an invitation from her former work colleague and join her New Year’s Eve party. Together with her friend Piotr, they set out for a villa just outside Warsaw, which, by the time they arrived, had already filled up with people from the world of advertising, journalists and artists. Unlike Piotr, Joanna knew most of the guests. They enjoyed themselves until three in the morning, Piotr being the life and soul of the party. Around three, however, going to the kitchen, she lost track of him for a moment. When she returned to the room, she found Piotr lying motionless behind a desk, undressed from the waist up and soaked in blood, his head battered and swollen. When he came to his senses, he kept repeating that they needed to flee because the others had said they would kill him. Both were in shock: he wanted to take off immediately while she tried to calm him down and get help. Asked about what had really happened, the other guests reacted strangely, either pretending that there was nothing unusual about the sight of the injured man, or aggressively demanding that he leave. The accounts of the guests who attended the party – collected by a reporter writing for the magazine Polityka (Kołodziejczyk 2001) – feature three recurring elements: firstly, nobody saw anything; secondly, Piotr was drunk and aggressive, so he probably fell down the stairs; and thirdly, “We have been peacefully partying together for years and saw nothing of this sort before”. In fact, the whole incident seemed an incomprehensible and troublesome memory everyone preferred to forget. The incident is equally troublesome and incomprehensible from the perspective of those who study theories of human behaviour. This is not because such

2  The individual in society theories fail to account for social situations like the party described earlier, but because here their application raises more questions than it provides answers. Let us refer, for example, to the concept of scripts – defined in textbooks as “mental representations of events, actions, or their sequences, e.g. ‘exam’ or ‘social visit’ ” (Wojciszke 2000, 30) – whose default standards for acting in a particular situation would help to explain human behaviour. Certainly, a New Year’s Eve party is a kind of “social visit”, but it would be difficult to match the described event to any known script, because it ended with a massacred man with broken ribs, concussion, subdural and epidural hematoma, fractured skull, and impaired vision. This should not come as a surprise, you may say, since the incident was not an implementation of the “social visit” script, but rather its violation. Hence, in order to understand it, we should first find out what contributed to this. Recalling the theories of frustration and aggression, we might consider factors responsible for the occurrence of heightened degrees of frustration within a specific social group represented by most people attending the party. Taking into account the fact that the victim was an outsider, we might conclude that he was the perfect fit – almost by definition – for the role of a scapegoat, and explain the later “memory loss”, even among the passive witnesses, as conditioned by their desire to protect the image of the group they identify with. We might also point out the growing approval for using aggression as a way of solving conflicts in the Polish society, recalling certain findings within crowd psychology, which can explain the ease with which negative emotions can spread within a group, or refer to the concept of dispersed responsibility. Finally, we might also utilize the concept of scripts, sifting through witness reports in order to locate contextual factors that could have contributed to the deactivation of the “New Year’s Eve party” script and the activation of the “dealing with the aggressor” script. However, none of these explanations eliminate the sense of incongruity between the knowledge provided by social psychology and the kinds of questions we are faced with in reality. Confronted with situations such as the one just described, we do not usually look for an answer to the question why an event of this sort would happen at all. What in fact bothers us is the question why it happened in this particular group of people. In other words, we would readily accept it as obvious and not demanding further explanation if a bloody fight broke out during a New Year’s Eve party at the house of, say, an unemployed welder. At the same time, however, we unconsciously assume that “people of a certain social standing” do not behave in this manner. It is the violation of such expectations that causes the entire situation to go beyond the boundaries of our cognitive schemata, causing it to be truly incomprehensible. Thus, the sense that what psychology has to offer us is inadequate does not arise from the lack of a proper explanation, but rather from the very nature of the social reality we experience. The latter changes before our very eyes in such a way that people’s actions are becoming incompatible with the basic cognitive schemata we are used to applying in order to describe and explain human behaviour. If the basic characteristic of such schemata is that they store general knowledge of features displayed by various categories of people and different types of situations, we

The individual in society  3 should not be surprised that, when confronted with the dissolution of formerly used categorizations and typologies, many scholars argue that it is the individualization of human actions that emerges as the fundamental feature of the social life at the turn of the twenty-first century. Taken literally, the thesis about individualization entails the assumption that the actions of every individual are so unconventional and saturated with their own personal, unique characteristics that we are unable to consider particular people as members of more general, socially defined categories, and regard their actions as defined by socially typified situational contexts. It is worth noting, however, that, seen in this way, individualization processes would have to be the outcome of a complete “withdrawal of society” from any attempts to normalize individual behaviour and relatively standardize it with relation to the person’s social position, role, or a particular situation. In other words, it would be synonymous with a complete de-socialization of human behaviour. Interpreted in this way, the individualization thesis is, of course, impossible to defend and I doubt that any of its proponents would be ready to endorse this version. Nevertheless, such an interpretation makes it easier to demonstrate that in the shadow of statements about the current dominance of individualization – statements that are repeated ad nauseam – we find a fundamental problem for human sciences, namely the question of the relationship between the individual and society.

The individual and society On first glance, the problem of the relationship between the individual and society seems obvious: the society is a collectivity composed of individuals. However, any such obvious ideas are in fact the result of long-lasting processes of becoming accustomed to something that is not obvious at all, and the bracketing of problems hidden behind seemingly banal statements. This society is an assembly of these individuals. At the same time, this society retains its identity even if these individuals are replaced with those who have already departed or who have not yet been born. At the same time, an individual can still be a part of this society even if he or she does not belong to it physically because they live in a different society. What is more, society is not only composed of individuals, but also includes institutions that exert various amounts of pressure on them, while individuals can be motivated in their actions by goals that have little to do with, or even outright contradict, the goal of ensuring the society’s existence. These certainly are not the kinds of problems that would concern an average member of society, but social sciences have been feeding on them since their beginning. Most solutions proposed within these disciplines can be categorized in two basic ways (Elias 2001). On the one hand, society can be regarded as the product of individuals, or the effect of individual actions, i.e. nothing more than the total outcome of all human activity. On the other hand, society is a self-­ contained, supra-individual entity whose shape and existence are determined by the spirit of History, Divine intentions, mechanisms of entropy or other impersonal

4  The individual in society forces. The first approach silently implies that individuals may intentionally shape society by adopting specific political solutions and designing particular institutions. The latter is characterized by a certain fatalism consisting in the belief that individual actions are determined by the society’s specific features or even follow predetermined scripts.1 One could naturally argue that these two approaches do not offer different answers to the question about the relationship between the individual and society, but rather provide different perspectives on social reality. In this case, we might assume that society is a collectivity of individuals who create it through their actions, and at the same time it is being shaped by the institutionalized products of these actions.2 Then, depending on our scope of interest, we might focus on either the individual or the social level of this reflexive process, which would generate – as a side product – these two “approaches” that would cease to have the character of ontological theses and which would merely reflect the division of research areas within social sciences. However, such reasoning disregards the fact that a significant consequence of this division is the creation of two ontologically independent entities: on the one hand, the individual, whose actions begin to be analyzed in isolation from the characteristics of society, and on the other – the society itself, whose changes are explained in terms of impersonal mechanisms. This inclines sociologists “to present the relation of individual and society as if the individual human being existed in the first place entirely independently of society, and therefore of other people, and only came into contact with other people in a secondary and, so to speak, retrospective way” (Elias 1994, 142). As a result, the existence of society is anchored in individuals – in their intellectual life, attitudes, and actions. Accepting this kind of “egophallocentric ideology”, as Jean-Claude Kaufmann calls it (2004), involves assuming that the individual is equipped with complete freedom to act on all levels of social and psychological reality, beginning with the choice of values as well as the formation of cognitive schemata and identity, through a regulation of relationships with others in accordance with the rule of maximizing one’s utility, and ending with the modification of the society that the individual is a part of. Paradoxically, however, since the features of society – understood as the product of human actions – cannot be reduced to the features of its producers, the emergence of a free individual driven by ego-forces would be accompanied in the social sciences by the emergence of an all-powerful society living its own life. One could say that each of those self-contained entities relies in its existence on merely one part of an analytically divided, reflexive relationship between the individual and society. The concept of an autonomous individual arises from the premise that society is the product of human actions. On the other hand, the idea of society as external to the individual is rooted in the belief that human beings are shaped by the social forces that affect them. Despite the fact that both parts of the overall relationship are retained, the individualization of people and the totalization of society make it problematic to join them back together on the grounds of these two mutually exclusive ideas.

The individual in society  5 To put it differently, in order for the problem of the relationship between the individual and society to emerge, it was necessary for these two concepts to be first mentally distinguished as separate entities. As it turns out, this happened relatively late in human history. Although some scholars are inclined to trace elements of individualism back to ancient Greece and early Christianity, most experts in the field argue that the extraction of the individual as a self-sufficient entity distinct from the collective totality occurred only at the threshold of modernity (cf. Taylor 2001). What some would be led to consider as early manifestations of individualism, had – at least due to the specific context of such actions – an entirely different meaning than the one ascribed to them nowadays. Magdalena Środa draws attention to this, arguing that “[j]ust like the Greeks would place the individual within the public sphere and inside the framework of a specific political community (it is only there that individuality could be revealed), Christianity located the individual in the eschatological sphere and within a strong relation of dependence on Transcendence” (2003, 44). She concludes by saying that “[j]ust like the Greek myths pictured man as a tool in the hands of the gods, in Judaism people would become God’s chosen people, and in Christianity – the children of God. Without those points of reference individuality would have little meaning and no individual could lay claim to much significance” (45). Similar arguments are invoked by Norbert Elias (2001), who writes that analyses of the category of the individual in ancient Greece and Rome demonstrate that it was predominantly understood in the “collective” sense, with individuals defined through membership of certain groups, while classical Latin does not show any traces of using the term individuum in reference to a person. In mediaeval Latin, in turn, words such as individualis or individuus were used to denote everything that is indivisible and constitutes the smallest unit of a certain categorial whole. The mediaeval term individuum covered not only human beings, but also individual representatives of all categorially distinguished species. Scholastic philosophers, Elias writes, were aware of the unique status of individual cases within the framework of a general species and developed the term in order to account for this. At the same time, they were convinced that due to their unique status, individua could not be subjects of general statements, which were reserved solely for an entire species (2001, 161–162). Even as late as the seventeenth century it was possible to say “Holy individual Trinity”. However, this period also saw new uses of the term, which were for the first time closer to its present-day meaning. That which is individual gained autonomous existence both in philosophy and in political activity. On the one hand, “[i]ndividual becomes res cogitans. The Self is not only a shelter or flight from the world, but also the point that supports the existence of the entire world or at least ensures verification of truths about it” (Środa 2003, 49). On the other hand, “the Enlightenment tradition of individualism”, with roots in the Renaissance, “built a body of beliefs that were soon to become the foundation of modern democratic states” (50). In both cases, the actions of free individuals, their experiences, desires and interests, were being elevated to the rank of basic building blocks necessary to construct a social world, both in material and in ideological terms.

6  The individual in society The “discovery” of the individual was accompanied by the discovery of society as a self-contained entity. An essential role in the future development of meanings shaping these two concepts was played, as Norbert Elias notes, by social movements contesting the state: “Inbuilt in the present meanings of both terms is not only the notion of a quite definite and obvious antithesis between individual and society, but also a common, if less obvious, antithesis to the state” (2001, 157). Accepting this argument, it would be worthwhile to note that the development of these oppositions was slightly more complex. Initially, the term “society”, along with the qualifier “civic”, was merely a synonym of the entirety of free, autonomous individuals3 equipped with “natural” and inalienable rights, including the right to oppose the arbitrary decisions of a ruler who embodied the state. It was only with the creation and consolidation of civic democracies in the nineteenth century that the concept of society would lose this extra element and become synonymous with a liberal state. However, since “the notion of the totally independent individual, of the absolutely free single being, forms the centerpiece of a bourgeois ideology” (Elias 1994, 137), the individualism of the dominant class began to be opposed to “socialist” and “collectivist” movements, reinforcing the opposition not only between the individual and the social, but also one between the social and the state-governed. Whereas Elias emphasized the role of social movements in the process of forming contemporary meanings associated with the individual and society, JeanClaude Kaufmann (2004) considers these meanings an inadvertent effect of the efforts by eighteenth-century intellectual elites to build a new nomos, a new meaningful order capable of replacing the religious order that had started receding into the past. Along with the enthronement of Reason as the fundamental principle regulating the social sphere, “revelation, which was intrinsically connected to historical religion, becomes unnecessary, because these ‘truths’ were held available to reason alone” (Taylor 2001, 274). At the same time, the newly introduced concept of Reason acquired a deeply religious character (Kaufmann 2004, 78), thus demanding that the way in which individuals are perceived be reformulated. As Kaufmann shows, “initially, the [real] individual appeared to the Enlightenment as a deviation from rationality” (79). Thus, to justify their statements regarding the rational order, both the philosophers and political thinkers were forced to construct the human individual as a certain rhetorical figure that could be inscribed in this order: “An individual capable of joining Reason exists outside the material world and is pure abstraction” (80). It constitutes the effect of rejecting everything that is concrete, material, historical or – one might be inclined to say – real and “individual” in the sense that the term carried in mediaeval scholasticism. What remains is a certain “essence” of human beings, their ability (or at least potential) to think rationally. With time, “the deepening of this fiction led to the reversal of images – the real individual becoming a mere epiphenomenon, its deeply hidden essence constituted only by abstraction” (80). According to Kaufmann, the failure4 of the fundamental project of the Enlightenment, which consisted in the creation of a new, Reason-based nomos, “gradually revealed [this] category which initially constituted a secondary deviation” (80),

The individual in society  7 namely the concept of an individual equipped with an abstract self. “Regarded as the new Religion, Reason eliminated the possibility of any religious integration of society, creating a critical reflexivity. At the same time, however, by bringing forth the individual, Reason created an abstract self: the foundation of the faith that is so typical of our time” (81). It is a faith of deeply religious nature because “it was not based on any foundation” of empirical character, but is nevertheless “currently the kind of idea that is most widely and most personally acknowledged by all of us” (83). At this stage of developing his argumentation Kaufmann draws on Elias, who emphasizes the depth and permanence of our contemporary faith in “myself as a Self”, by arguing that “The resistance to the obvious fact that, from birth, life within figurations of people is one of the basic facts of human existence . . . has its origin partly in a personality structure, a stage in the development of consciousness, which nourishes the illusion that the ‘core’ of the individual person is, as it were, imprisoned under lock and key in his or her ‘inside’, and is thus hermetically sealed from the ‘outside world’, and especially from other people or natural objects (Elias 1994, 137). According to both authors, this illusion – created at some point in the past for the purpose of philosophical and political argumentation, and shared by most people these days, at least in the West – constitutes a fundamental obstacle in the development of social sciences, because it prevents us from grasping the nature of the relationship between the individual and the society by establishing these two entities within a relation of exteriority. We could rephrase this by saying that those social sciences that were established relatively late, i.e. in the nineteenth century, such as sociology, psychology, social psychology and anthropology, are still limited in their development by this understanding of the individual inherited from the philosophy and political thought of the Enlightenment, along with its ideological baggage. They are still too engaged in upholding the illusion of an abstract Self, which precludes them from carrying out a detached analysis of the data they already have at their disposal (Elias 1987). In consequence, they are still awaiting their own “Copernican Revolution” (Kaufmann 2004), which would eliminate the autonomous individual from the centre of the social hemisphere they have created, introducing in his or her place the society as a dynamic figuration of people united by forces of attraction and repulsion. Both Elias and Kaufmann are of the opinion that numerous attempts have in fact been made to start such a revolution. Both also hold that the greatest credit in this area should be given to the pioneers of social sciences from the nineteenth and the early twentieth century: Durkheim, Simmel, Mauss, and Mead. If their efforts have not been successful yet, it is the effect not just of their excessive engagement with issues specific to their own societies (Elias 1987), but primarily of such social processes that turned the concept of an autonomous individual equipped with an abstract Self (as developed in writings by intellectuals of the Enlightenment) into the foundation of the psychological reality5 shared by contemporary people (Kaufmann 2004). The recommendation to consider humanity

8  The individual in society “from outside” – as Elias proposes, followed by Kaufmann – not only entails in this context a negation of the testimony offered by our senses, which clearly tell us that the Sun is revolving around the Earth and not the other way round, but also deals a blow against our deepest sense of identity, namely the internal conviction that “inside me” there exists a real Self that is autonomous in its reactions to the stimuli that come from “outside”. Let us attempt to silence for a second the protests coming from our own egos and try to apply this recommendation.

Dimensions of sociality The starting point6 for any forays beyond the sphere of influence of contemporary “egophallocentric ideology” is none else than the return to the actual individual who was expelled from considerations of humanity by thinkers of the Enlightenment, and who is systematically being deprived, within today’s social sciences, of the most crucial characteristic stemming from the fact of living among others. Although the claim that “man is a social being” belongs to one of the few certainties within this field,7 its sense has undergone such banalization that we have virtually forgotten what it actually means. And yet, its significance lies in the fact that human life is, by its very nature, socialized, regardless whether we consider its individual or collective aspects. In other words, both the individual and the collective is created by specific configurations of people that function on various levels of a socially produced reality. An individual’s entry into these configurations of “being-shared-with-others” takes place at the moment of birth and is conditioned by the well-known and unquestioned biological constitution of the human mind – by the fact that its development is not concluded at birth but continues throughout the subsequent years of infancy, a period of utter dependence on adults. During these early years, we become gradually independent in our actions. It is a time of forming the foundations of our knowledge about the world, our selves, and our evaluation systems.8 Without becoming involved in the “nature versus nurture” debate,9 it is possible to say that, generally speaking, all of our individual traits, skills, and feelings – including our deep sense of uniqueness – are the outcome of a complex process in which other people affect the genetic material we are equipped with. This material contains a certain, typically human and simultaneously individualized, potential, but its realization demands that we subject ourselves to the influence of others. “Paradoxical as it may seem . . . the special shaping and differentiation of mental functions that we refer to as ‘individuality’ is only possible for a person who grows up in a group, a society” (Elias 2001, 22). It is highly characteristic that the concept of socialization, which describes the sum total of such influences, practically disappears from social sciences in the second half of the twentieth century – a time when the individualization thesis comes to the fore in the field. This is not without reason, because in its heyday, the concept was infused with meanings entirely contradicting this thesis. Owing to the joint efforts of behaviourism and psychoanalysis, the process of socialization

The individual in society  9 appeared as one aiming to subordinate individuals to society, turning them into passive beings controlled through reinforcements and/or cultural norms. Even if individuals rebel against them (whether consciously or not), they do so at the cost of neuroses and behavioural disorders. The claim that human beings are socially made would amount, in this perspective, to negating individual autonomy, which would be more and more deeply felt in the widening circles of societies affected by contemporary culture. Looking at the changes occurring in that period within the sphere of culture (especially in the texts popularizing scientific achievements), one may be left feeling that we are witnessing the crowning of a process initiated in the Enlightenment. The gradual liberation of the individual from the influence of restrictive social structures was to conclude humanity’s long evolution, in the course of which a helpless creature, entirely immersed in images created by the primary community, goes through various phases of “disenchanting the world”, experimenting with gradually discovered possibilities of reason and rebelling against society, to finally turn into a fully conscious, rational individual capable of freely adapting reality to his or her needs.10 This “evolutionary” perspective on changes that have shaped a human being dominates to this day, marginalizing a large portion of our knowledge about people and their functioning in the world. Obviously, it has been ascertained that the biological evolution of humanity – which includes the evolution of the brain – concluded around one hundred thousand years ago. It is also well known that all of the typically human skills are acquired after birth, which precludes their transfer from generation to generation through biological heredity. All of these obvious points, however, are bracketed when we start to speak of “the process in which the individual is liberated from social ties”, leading to the historical emergence of the marvellous, sentient, independent and reflective beings we are. Meanwhile, including this otherwise disregarded knowledge into the considerations of the contemporary individual allows us to unambiguously state that the latter’s properties are not just the effect of some evolutionary changes in the human brain, but are rather the outcome of our minds being modelled through socialization. As a consequence, a range of basic images of the world as well as evaluations of its particular elements and the skills necessary to navigate in it become a “natural” mode of existence for individuals. Even if we assume that nowadays we (or at least some of us) know much more about the nature of reality11 – both the material and the social one – than the Cro-Magnon or even the Romans under Caesar did, then we owe this knowledge primarily to the cumulative properties of human culture, which stores the achievements of the past generations and makes them available to future ones. The fundamental vehicles of the social memory stored in human culture and transferred across generations to newly born individuals include language, tools, and behavioural schemata embodied in human habits. The content of each vehicle, made available in everyday interactions, is primarily a reflection of knowledge and skills developed by older generations, which are necessary to handle the basic problems posed by living in a specific community and functioning in a particular

10  The individual in society environment. In this sense, the basic knowledge and evaluation systems that individual minds receive thanks to these vehicles, along with skills “embodied” in actions, are always historically localized, while the individual as a “product” of socialization is invariably a human being of the time and place he or she lives in. While emphasizing the historical character of the socialization process, we should not ignore its two essential properties. The first consists in a specific “openness” that characterizes each of the three basic vehicles of social memory. It is an openness both to the past and to the future. The media for storing human achievements – language, tools, and habits – are not limited to the historically given present. On the one hand, they retain the memory of the solutions that ceased to be widely applied but can be easily recovered at any point. On the other, they allow us to include in the social memory those individual solutions that boost the efficiency of dealing with the new problems arising in the here and now. This is closely related to the second crucial property of the socialization process defined in this way, namely to the necessity it imposes on individuals to transcend the boundaries of knowledge, evaluations and skills transferred in the process of being socialized. It stems from the fact that the socially created world of collective representations has its material substrate. It includes primarily other people who belong to a given population and whose actions, even if they follow the same socialization patterns, are not entirely predictable, and who can become – due to the very size and structure of a population, specific to a given historical moment – a source of problems for the individual: problems that demand innovative solutions. This material substrate also includes the broadly understood habitat, i.e. the natural environment, as well as other communities and everything that comprises the infrastructure of the social life (devices, buildings, legal regulations, institutions, etc.). Human habitat had undergone changes even in the very early communities – though they were very slow, making them easier to be incorporated into a relatively stable system of collective representations – while today it constitutes a source of continuous impulses that stimulate individual creativity. As already mentioned, at least some effects of this creativity become incorporated into the social memory stored in culture in the form of new phrases, tools or behavioural schemata, thus turning into components of the socializing processes that affect not just the newly born, but also the adult members of the community. It is in this sense that the social is created as the outcome of individual interactions realized within a field demarcated by the properties of collective representations, population, and habitat – properties that are inherently changeable because they dynamically condition each other. From this perspective, socialization is not a process of “subordinating” individuals to the society, but rather a mode of equipping them with skills that allow them to participate in the continuous process of socializing human actions, which produce a historically specific form of sociality. Sociality is by no means the effect of some special instinctual or intentional motivation of individuals, but originates in the fact of irremovable mutual dependence of human actions. Born in the era of individualization and deeply convinced of being autonomous agents of our own actions, we tend to forget that their effectiveness depends on an unbroken chain of cooperation with other individuals,

The individual in society  11 who partake with us in the complex task of supporting the operation of that form of sociality which we call contemporary society. We are sometimes made aware of this when metro staff go on strike, or an official we are dealing with is in a bad mood. In such moments, our behavioural schemata, planned in elaborate detail, are disturbed and we are forced to seek out new forms of behaviour.12 Meanwhile, it is just the fact of mutual dependence of human actions that lies at the foundation of the socializing processes, whose basic result is the creation of a common framework for all individuals in a given system, one that consists in shared knowledge, values, and behavioural schemata. It sets up a specific vision of reality, in which certain actions are rational, while their evaluations are natural, thus allowing for the coordination of individual actions that in most cases do not have a biological, instinctual model. As should be clearly emphasized, such coordination does not consist merely in the automatic reproduction of the “social patterns of action”, but it has at its root the human ability to grasp the intentions behind individual actions even before these are fully realized, which allows us to adapt our own actions to them in anticipation (Mead 1972), as well as sharing these intentions, which in turn facilitates cooperation between many individuals when realizing various goals (Tomasello et al. 2005). By entangling individuals in a complex web of relations with others, the mutual dependence of human actions does not deprive us of a freedom to take action, nor does it strip us of our autonomy in making decisions about the course of these actions. However, that autonomy is always positioned in a system of meanings ascribed to specific actions and shared with others. In other words, our ability to read the intentions of others in anticipation is accompanied by their ability to anticipate our intentions and come up with adequate reactions. Disregarding this would therefore lead “sovereign individuals” to social isolation and, in extreme cases, to complete exclusion from a given community or society. This aspect of the mutual dependence of human actions, which consists in the individual’s ability to read the intentions of others in anticipation – not necessarily involving their acceptance – and adapt one’s own actions to them, is widely acknowledged in contemporary social sciences and forms the basic meaning of the concept of sociality. The claim that “man is a social being” is, from this perspective, equivalent to saying that his views of the world and actions are shaped by those of other people.13 This interpretation of sociality processes is, however, identical with meanings attributed to a broadly understood concept of socialization – not just primary socialization, but also the kind that takes place in adult life, especially because in both cases scholars refer to the same mechanisms to explain the course of individual actions: reinforcement by rewards or punishments, imitation, modelling, identification, or simply conformism. In both cases, however, we ignore the question of why these punishments, rewards, or models are effective. Omission of this question contributes to the consolidation of the individual’s vision as an autonomous source of actions. Despite the emphasis placed on how other people affect the individual, in the currently prevailing psychosocial discourse it is the individual who initiates actions, gives them their original direction through his or her motivations and intentions, and

12  The individual in society plans out their course, matching their means with their goals. The influence of other people can be regarded in this context as a factor that, at best, distorts the naturally rational operation of the mind, but does not undermine the view of the Self as a sovereign social actor. Meanwhile, as Elias aptly observes, “the individual person is only able to say ‘I’ if and because he can at the same time say ‘we’ ” (2001, 61). This “we”, however, is neither the effect of an individual’s decision to identify with a certain group of people, nor a random assembly of individuals who found themselves at the same time in the same place. It is rather the outcome of a network of connections arising from “being-shared-with-others” or “being-in-common” as described by JeanLuc Nancy (1991), a web of everyday actions during which specific techniques of living are created with the aim of sustaining human existence, along with a specific understanding of that “we” and a specific kind of shared knowledge that both provides a justification for particular actions and helps develop a sense that a given way of life is meaningful. These three fundamental products of being-shared-with-others – techniques of living, social identity and shared knowledge – constitute the essence of human sociality, while their transformations define the distinct forms of organizing social life, or different types of “societies”. One could say – paraphrasing Elias – that new forms of social life can emerge only when the individual selves are capable of creating, through their interactions, new, distinct techniques of living, a different understanding of “we” and a new kind of shared knowledge. It is worth repeating that the emergence of such new forms of social life is neither the effect of conscious choices made by individuals to shape it, nor a completely random process. It is rather the consequence of changing relationships between individuals who belong to an identifiable population, with specific features and functioning in a specific habitat – a process that occurs in the course of being-shared-with-others. The meaning of the concept of “we” – fundamental to an individual’s ­self-definition – is created in the communities and groups of a demic character:14 ones whose limited size allows any member to join another to form a team realizing particular “tasks” determined by the functioning of the entire population in a specific habitat.15 Such tasks might include biological reproduction carried out by the family “team” living in a broader social context, development of a marketing strategy by a team of employees in a large company, or attempts to find a solution to a scientific problem by a team of researchers.16 In each case, actions of particular individuals are interdependent, while their techniques of living, a sense of “we” and the general meaning ascribed to the tasks they realize are all derived from the knowledge about reality (collective representation) created by the demic group, as well as from social identity, which operates by juxtaposing “us” and “others”. Shared knowledge and social identity are thus created in the course of coordinating the work of separate teams by the base group, and are supported by the group members participating in collective rituals. Regardless of the particular form that the latter may assume (religious or secular), their basic function is to foster emotional “bonding” of individuals with the community and the collective

The individual in society  13 representations created by it. It is thanks to such emotional bonds that individuals accept the goals set by the base group as their own, allowing these goals to define the meaning of individual life. In contemporary societies this basic model of sociality becomes greatly complicated. There are three factors shaping the processes of historical change in the functioning of base groups that I would like to highlight here. First, along with the growth of the population, next to real demic communities (whose prototype were the primal, hunter-gatherer communities) there begin to emerge various “imagined communities”.17 These take over the functions of base groups, or supplement those functions that are related to the creation of collective representations and social identity. Second, the multiplication of groups that have a “communal” character leads to the multiplication of representations of a reality produced by them – a process in which an ever more significant role is played by specialized categories of “experts” whose basic function is to establish meaning in those areas of uncertainty that emerge as a result of individual actions. Third, along with the increasing complexity of the human habitat, in which an ever greater role is played by socially established formal institutions, individuals’ actions are incorporated into webs of interdependencies; although the efficiency of these actions requires some shared knowledge, they do not create a sense of “we”.18 Despite these transformations, the nature of the processes in which individual actions are socialized remains unchanged: both the collective “we” and the individual self are still created primarily through the participation of individuals in demic communities based on direct contact. It is within the framework of this type of base groups that the dispersed knowledge is processed into a common one19 – not only the kind that is produced by individuals in the course of actions taken by particular “teams”, but also the kind that is created through intentional efforts on the part of the specialized category of “experts”. It is also thanks to contacts with other people who share this knowledge – especially in a world where we are bombarded with rivalling behavioural patterns as well as explications of events and phenomena on a daily basis – that the individual becomes convinced that her actions are “natural” or “obvious”, while her vision of reality is “real”, “objective” and “the only right one”. This means that, in most cases,20 the influence that other people exert on the actions of an individual is by no means “general” or “random”, but remains subordinated to the specific form of ties that can be found in demic communities. The different kinds of shared knowledge produced by these ties, as well as various types of social identity, create a framework within which we subordinate (or not) to the influence of other people. They stabilize the activities of particular individuals within broader time frames, making it more probable that the specific social configuration that a given demic community is part of will be reproduced  – a configuration we used to call society. In consequence, it is not only the individual activity but also the shape of society that depends on the specific properties of ties forged in the course of the socializing processes understood in this way. Within the approach delineated here, demic communities are thus the basic form in which humanity exists as a species, and in fact, the only entity that deserves the

14  The individual in society status of being sui generis real. Both the social and the individual are merely the consequence of processes driven by the actions of people – actions conditioned, on the one hand, by ties existing between particular individuals, and on the other by interactions between them and the social environment created in the course of their past actions. In other words, what is constitutive of both group and individual life is the actual experience of living in a demic community, located in a specific historical context, while the categories of “society” and “individual” are mere intellectual abstractions derived from it. Naturally, we cannot abandon these abstract concepts in our discussion of the individual in a postmodern society, but the theoretical decisions discussed earlier allow us to define the basic area of further analysis with greater precision. If both “society” and “individual” are the products of a specific form of sociality – i.e. socialized actions realized in a socialized environment – we ought to be chiefly interested in finding out which of the currently observable actions and features of a contemporary environment to the largest degree contribute to the creation of these two entities. This research goal necessitates that we analytically differentiate at least two dimensions in the general process of sociality. The first dimension would primarily involve factors implicated in the ongoing processes of “producing an individual”. This dimension of the processes of sociality is basically identical to the classical understanding of socialization, especially the perspective, developed, for example, by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1991), according to which socialization means the process of internalizing a culturally created vision of the world – accepted in a given social environment21 – in the form in which it is transferred through the actions of significant others. However, even though this formulation does not define any temporal limits for the socialization process (and the two authors themselves stress that socialization is a process that encompasses the entire life of an individual), due to the terminological conventions that prevail in social sciences, and due to matters that shall become clearer in the course of further discussion, I will limit the concept of socialization to the influences exerted in early childhood, thus ring-fencing the other issues that merit consideration, entangled in contemporary processes of producing an individual. The second dimension of sociality processes analyzed in this book concerns mainly those aspects of individual actions that currently contribute to “producing the society”. In this respect, we will primarily be interested in answering the question about the kinds of conditions and modes in which the actions of individuals today undergo social standardization and consolidation, thus marking the emergence of shared patterns that stabilize the functioning of broader social systems. In this basic meaning the concept of sociality shall be adopted further in this book.

The relational character of social life Certainly, these theoretical decisions do not settle the problem of relations between the individual and society, but merely shift it to a lower level of abstraction. Despite distinguishing two dimensions of sociality, we are still forced to conduct

The individual in society  15 our analyses in terms of, on the one hand, individuals, who – despite being socialized – have not been stripped of their autonomy in terms of actions, and on the other, broader communities that are ascribed self-sufficient existence just like a “society”. One could even say that these decisions become an unnecessary complication – stemming from an excess of jarring scrupulousness – of a relationship that is fundamental to social sciences and that still calls for an explanation. If, as shown earlier, the distinguishing of these two ontologically self-sufficient entities – i.e. the autonomous individuals and the structurally defined society that is external to them – has been the source of most problems with grasping theoretically the relationship between the two, then we ought to seek such a way in which to reformulate this relationship that would re-unite the individual and the social. Appearances to the contrary, it is not easy to find the kind of formula that would guarantee achieving this goal. The most common strategy is to argue, in one way or another, that interactions between individuals and society are characterized by reflexivity. Reflexivity is invoked by Anthony Giddens, when he argues that “structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organize” (1986, 25; emphasis added). However, Giddens starts to develop his theory of structuration by characterizing the “active subject” whose main feature is “reflexivity”, which consists in “continuous monitoring of action which human beings display and expect others to display” (3). With all the reservations he imposes on the concept of reflexivity, the “active subject” constitutes a direct continuation of the Enlightenment concept of the human being, while the assumed reflexivity of interactions between individuals and society is given a sequential character, in line with the principle that “actions of individuals create social structures, which reflexively limit the actions of individuals, which in turn modify the shape of social structures” etc. The duality of structures becomes in this configuration a derivative of the duality of entities that are the subject of analysis. One could say that, in general, thinking in categories of temporally distributed sequences of interactions either begins with or leads to the separation of categories used in the analysis, because every subsequent sequence is thus considered as a unidirectional relation “from-to:” from individuals to society and (reflexively) from society to individuals. In other words, by dividing the interactions being analyzed into temporal sequences, the concept of reflexivity loses the idea of the simultaneity of a relationship between the individual and society – the idea contained in the statement that society is an assembly of individuals and all individuals carry society within themselves. At the same time, calling on the concept of reflexivity does not help us grasp the way in which individual actions are made “common” (i.e. become a cultural pattern) in the subsequent sequences of interactions between individuals and society. And yet, it was just the phenomenon of sharing, or the specific regularity and non-contingency of human actions, that has fascinated sociologists since the dawn of the discipline. Classic sociologists regarded society as the product of individual actions, but they did not reduce them to mere individual reactions to the environmental stimuli,22 but rather viewed them as integrated with and subordinated to a

16  The individual in society certain pattern, whose historical transformations would be the starting point for formulating the theses about the existence of distinct types of societies, different forms of organizing social life, or – to employ the terminology developed here – various forms of sociality. The diversity of behaviours experienced in e­ veryday life was accepted by the classics as an obvious and given fact, but they also sought behind it a more general principle that would integrate the different forms of behaviour into a superior whole called “society”, the study of which would be the proper object of sociology. The essence of how this principle functions is conveyed in the classic concept of social bonds (cf. Giza-Poleszczuk and Marody 2006). The concept was introduced in sociology in order to account, generally speaking, for a certain stable tendency responsible for individuals entering organized configurations of actions, not on a one-off basis, but with regularity. Both Durkheim (2013) and Tönnies (2001) consider bonds as responsible for making it easier to recreate a specific social configuration by repeating specifically oriented interactions on an individual level.23 It is also the transformation of the nature of bonds which link interacting individuals that allowed the classics to describe the processes of social change in terms of diverse kinds of societies. Finally, the dissolution of bonds understood in this way is addressed by Durkheim through the concept of anomie: a phenomenon consisting in none else but the distortion of the process of reproducing specifically oriented interactions. In those classical considerations of society, the concept of social bonds constituted both the effect of an intellectual synthesis of the differentiated properties of particular, historically localized, individual actions, and a category explaining these actions. However, it was that twofold methodological status, accompanied by the increasing role of the “egophallocentric ideology”, which favoured treating the concept of bonds by later scholars as one describing a psychological state whose source lies in intentional choices made by individuals who identify with specific social groups. Such psychologization of the concept of the social bond is today the most widespread interpretation in scientific literature on this subject. In Polish sociology, it was clearly expressed by Stanisław Ossowski, for whom a social bond constitutes an equivalent of the phrase esprit de corps, which includes “the approving awareness of belonging to a group, retaining the group’s crucial conformist positions, shared values, a consciousness of shared interests, and a readiness to give preference to the group’s interests over personal ones if such a conflict occurs, or at least the conviction that it would be the right thing to do” (1967, 153). However, departures from the intentions of classics were also made – though noticeably less often – by taking a different course, as in the case of Jan Szczepański, whose interpretation of the concept of social bonds refers to the society’s characteristics, and even replaces the concept of society itself insofar as he defines social bonds as an “organized system of relations, institutions, means of social control, which unites individuals, subgroups, and other elements comprising the collectivity into a whole capable of sustained existence and development” (1970, 239; emphasis added).

The individual in society  17 As is easy to note, these differences in the understanding of the concept of a social bond are closely related to the previously analyzed controversy of “individual versus society” as a major agent of social life, at the same time causing the ­constitutive feature of a social bond – its relational character – to become forgotten. Contrary to what might be suggested by the frequent use of the phrase “a sense of bonding”, bonds are neither limited to subjective feelings of individuals who identify with a specific group, nor are they a defining component of society. Rather, they describe the relation linking individuals and broader social configurations. Thus, they do not constitute a property of these two analytical categories, but a mechanism describing their relational complementarity. This property of social life was what Norbert Elias had in mind when, in all his works, he emphasized the relational character of social life. Following in his footsteps, we could say that although our language introduces an unambiguous division between an individual and a society, one also firmly rooted in our internal conviction about being the “autonomous authors” of our actions, and in the belief that society exists externally, taking the form of institutions imposing various limitations on our actions, even brief reflection allows us to grasp that these institutions continue to exist only thanks to the actions of people like us. Therefore, if we wish to avoid the contradictions inherent in everyday experience – which could be summarized by saying that “individuals are autonomous, but people who comprise society are not” – then we need to assume that the relational character of social life is its constitutive feature, one captured precisely in the concept of social bonds. Although it is individuals who co-create broader social configurations, the latter simultaneously provide the objective towards which individuals orient their actions. Thus, despite the fact that groups exist only insofar as people belong to them, people can be group members only as long as these groups materialize through their actions, which are coordinated for the sake of a group’s existence. Hence, bonds have a relational character in two senses: a bond is a relation between individuals, but one that exists in a specific context determined by previously created social configurations. Family is constituted by relations between the mother, father, children, and siblings (family bonds); however, the form of these relations, which “puts” these individuals in the roles of a mother, father, child, or sibling, is conditioned by what they consider to be obviously pertaining to “family life”. In other words, despite the fact that individuals and their actions are the material substrate of the family, the identity of these individuals as family members as well as the repeatability of their actions, which guarantees the family’s continued existence, depend on the nature of family bonds that unite them. The creation of such bonds – not only family bonds but also any other social bonds – occurs, among other reasons, thanks to the socializing processes described earlier in their individual and collective dimensions. In this perspective, social bonds form a specific mechanism that creates both social wholes and individuals as their constitutive components. Naturally, this process of “creation” regards, in the first place, processes of perception, because it is the existence of bonds that remains responsible for the repeatability of specific actions, by the same token allowing us to both distinguish certain abstract entities (e.g. society, family,

18  The individual in society political system) and speak of an abstract individual equipped with certain inherent properties. It needs to be remembered, however, that the social bonds – created in the course of the constant processes of socializing human behaviour, grouping people and things in coordinated streams of actions – are simultaneously, or perhaps even primarily, a mechanism responsible for the “selection” of only some forms of such grouping, and for the consolidation of only some forms of coordinating individual actions. It is precisely in this sense that its specific properties are responsible for particular features displayed by individuals and societies. Considering the social bond as the principle that underlies the reproduction of social configurations entails replacing a vision of the world composed of objectlike abstractions with a vision of the world in which an unceasing process of relational adaptations is establishing more or less permanent links between individuals. By the same token, this concept offers a solution to the analyzed controversy of “individual or society”. It consists in the transition from thinking in terms of self-contained entities, with relations added later, to thinking in terms of relations that bring these entities to existence. The difference between the two approaches is fundamental – whereas in the former case the features ascribed to each of the analyzed categories would explain the shape of relations linking them, in the latter case it would be the character of the analyzed relations that is responsible for the properties of categories that emerge from these relations. The transition from the former to the latter perspective means that an individual and a society cease to “condition” each other; instead, they become historically localized concepts through which we might try to account for certain regularities resulting from a specific form of socializing human actions. The approach outlined here – one that places the categories of socializing ­processes and relations created in their course at the very heart of sociological ­analysis – imposes some, more specific theoretical and methodological solutions, which ought to be mentioned before we can conclude the chapter and move forward. First, the processual character of social life assumed in this approach means that, if we wish to avoid the pitfall of restricting ourselves to a purely ethnographic account of the unceasing social activities, we ought to employ in our analyses some typifications of social life – those that already exist in social sciences, or have been created here for analytical purposes. This concerns the properties ascribed to both society and individuals, although it would be more precise to speak here of the types of social organization and the corresponding images of the individual. Such typifications, however, invariably ought to have a historical character, i.e. they need to refer to the actual properties of either society or the individual, not model ones.24 It is in this historical sense that I use the category of postmodern society as the equivalent of the concept of “contemporary society”. Second, we need to keep in mind that in the proposed perspective human actions always occur in an environment that has specific features and that generates specific experiences, and which thus constitutes – so to speak – a material basis for the human habits and representations of reality. It is for this reason that an analysis of the continuous processes of socializing individual actions, which are a response to the properties of this environment, must always have a contextualized

The individual in society  19 character. This involves, in the first place, a departure from such explanations of social phenomena that rely on stable, universal features of either individuals or collectivities. Instead, focus ought to shift to the mechanisms whose operation “creates” each time, in the context of a given environment, both individuals characterized by specific properties and broader social configurations. Third, the proposed approach entails the necessity to fall back on the knowledge of the past processes that have shaped the environment. As Norbert Elias rightly notes, “the problems and structures of a given society’s present take on the shape very different if they are seen in the light of the past, in conjunction with the long social processes leading up to them, than if they are seen shortsightedly and statically as a mere isolated present” (1994, 133). The contextual character of human actions, assumed here, means therefore that an analysis of the properties of a contemporary environment ought to take into account a wider historical context, since it usually contains the roots of contemporary problems that individuals face.25 The object of further considerations will thus consist – speaking in broadest terms – of seeking an answer to the question about the kind of sociality that is produced by individuals in the course of solving the problems imposed by our contemporary environment classified under the term “postmodern society”. Let us begin with an analysis of the processes that preceded the emergence of this particular form of social life.

Notes 1 The relative clarity of these scientific positions comes under threat when confronted with real-life individual actions. After all, the communists who believed in historical laws of materialism tried to intentionally speed up the course of history, whereas the liberally minded boards of the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank assume the role of supra-individual demiurges who impose on some states the kinds of institutional solutions that would enforce strictly defined actions of individuals. What is more, none of these approaches seem very effective, because History keeps surprising those who have supposedly uncovered its goals, while institutions affect individuals, but often not in the way their founders had intended. 2 This assumption lies at the foundation of the structuration theory developed in the 1980s by Anthony Giddens (1986), which takes the duality of structures as its starting point. Cf. the more detailed analysis of problems arising in social sciences due to such “ontological dualism” in: Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk (2018, 127–131). 3 It is worth remembering that large segments of the population had been excluded from this “entirety”. As Środa points out, “for some time these were foreigners and Jews, but always – women” (2003, 50); however, this account disregards a large portion of people practically deprived of the freedom to decide about themselves due to the property laws that effectively removed them from the public sphere 4 This is a relative failure when regarded from the perspective of today’s society, which belongs to a different stage of social organization. The Enlightenment-derived belief in Reason, Progress, and Development served as the foundation for social action at least until the middle of the twentieth century. 5 As Elias noted, of the contemporary social sciences it is only anthropology that succeeded, in its analyses of relationships between people, in reaching a level of accuracy that could be deemed to amount to a “neutral” position with regard to the discipline’s

20  The individual in society scope of study. Elias explains this by claiming that “anthropologists, in most cases, study societies to which they do not belong, [whereas] other sociologists mostly [study] societies of which they are members” (1987, 40). However, it seems significant that at the root of the anthropologists’ success we find a long-standing conviction that they are dealing with societies representing an earlier stage of development, or (to use a less politically correct term) “primitive” ones, which has made it possible for anthropologists to consider statements about these societies as not really pertinent to themselves. 6 The theoretical background to the approach proposed here is elaborated in greater detail in the book I wrote with Anna Giza-Poleszczuk titled The Transformations of Social Bonds. The Outline of the Theory of Social Change (2018; cf. also Giza-Poleszczuk and Marody 2006). Here I limit myself to a recapitulation of some of the assumptions made earlier – ones that seem indispensable to the aim of the present study. 7 This is confirmed by few, yet telling, instances of “wild children” who remained outside the social environment in their early childhood, and who have neither developed typically human competences, nor proven capable of fully acquiring them upon entering society. 8 According to various studies, the process of relative “conclusion” of brain development happens either between the ages of two and three (cf. Greenspan 1997; Tomasello 1999; Tomasello et al. 2005) or eleven and twelve (Piaget 1979). Naturally, this does not mean that our brain does not change later, but its further development usually occurs within the framework of those general assumptions about the world – including ones related to other people and our ties to them – that are formed in earliest childhood, or requires special effort in order to reorganize, which in some cases is referred to as “conversion” (cf. Berger and Luckmann 1991). 9 A detailed account of both sides in the debate can be found in the monumental study by Steven Pinker (2002). 10 This transition is clearly discernible in studies on infants. In the second half of the twentieth century, they have turned from wholly malleable and passive beings who merely react to signals from their surroundings into beings that actively affect the processes of interaction with adults (cf. Durkin 1995). 11 It could be said, however, that it is not that we know more, we simply know different things. In the course of social transformations, our knowledge about the world changes its character. Empirical knowledge of the beneficial properties of plants is replaced by a scientific taxonomy (available only to specialists). We can use complex tools but have lost some other skills, e.g. the skill of making sandals. We consider it obvious that there are certain competences necessary to survive in the “urban jungle”, but we cannot imagine living in a real jungle. It is impossible to select objective criteria for judging which of these kinds of “knowledge” are more valuable. Any such claims rely on value-based assumptions about the meaning of human life. 12 As Norbert Elias rightly notes, most examples supposed to illustrate the independence of our actions boil down to confusing freedom with the power each of us wields – to a varying degree – over others (1994, 139). Let me add that this power does not have to be institutional, but it can stem precisely from the mutual dependence of human actions. 13 This is the understanding developed by Eliot Aronson in his immensely popular book, The Social Animal (1972; especially chapter one). 14 The term deme comes from the Greek word demos and is used in biology to denote a population composed of animals living close enough to guarantee all equal chances to mate and reproduce (Hull 1990, 433). The counterpart to deme in anthropology would probably be “tribe”, while in sociology – “community”. However, the latter can be associated with meanings that refer to communities of strictly defined and historically specific character (e.g. “local community”), which makes it less useful in analyzing contemporary societies. Thus, in further considerations the following terms shall be used interchangeably: “demic community/group” and “base group”.

The individual in society  21 15 This part refers to the model of a “nested and hierarchic” organization of social life developed by Linnda Caporael (1995; cf. also Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018, especially chapter four). 16 In Caporael’s model these tasks are primarily related to sustaining a community’s biological existence; from the perspective of individuals living in contemporary societies, they should be identified with what is referred to here as techniques of living, especially in such fields as family and work. 17 These include the kinds of “collectivities” (“collections” to be more precise) that are considered today as “real”, despite being abstract entities created through intellectual syntheses of various criteria considered to be important for cultural and thus arbitrary reasons. These collectivities include, first of all, nation, society, race, social class and others created on the grounds of different ideologies or worldviews. 18 For instance, I do not have to identify with a supermarket cashier for us to have an interaction, one that makes our individual actions interdependent and demands a certain body of shared knowledge about reality, and that helps me achieve my goal of leaving the shop with groceries. 19 This process is perfectly captured by the theory of social representations developed by Serge Moscovici (1981, 1983). 20 The qualification contained in the phrase “in most cases” is related to the phenomenon of “social facilitation”, or the influence of the mere physical presence of others on individual behaviour (cf. Zajonc 1965). This phenomenon has been observed not only among people, but also among other species – in the classic experiments conducted by Zajonc the object of study were . . . cockroaches. 21 This “vision” of the world can be something we are more or less conscious of. However, at its foundation we always find some implicit assumptions regarding the nature of reality, which are contained in the language and tools we use, and in the habits “embodied” in our behaviour. This means that the image of reality always needs to be reconstructed by researchers from the layers of “obviousness” contained in the language, tools, and habits. 22 In this sense Norbert Elias is wrong when he accuses Weber of “complicity” in the individualization of sociology and when he criticises Weber’s definition of social actions (1994, 142). The well-known statement by Weber that the fact that many people open their umbrellas when it begins to rain is not an example of a social action (Weber 1978, 17) served him to underline the difference between actions that may be an effect of socialization, but that are not related to sociality in the collective dimension, because they do not involve dependence on the actions of others. 23 In this perspective, the system (whole) exists and functions only through – as Durkheim calls it – “individual manifestations”; supporting it requires these “manifestations” to occur in accordance with a certain pattern proper to the system. 24 This means, among other things, a programmatic renouncing of at least some theoretical concepts, including, for example, the theory of rational choice or the Homo economicus model, both of which could prove to be quite useful for explaining human behaviour under different assumptions. 25 I agree with Elias here that this perspective has been mistakenly called “historical sociology”, because this name suggests that such sociology is interested in the past for its own sake. Meanwhile, as he emphasizes himself, sociologists who assumed the historical perspective “asked sociological, not historical questions about the past” (1994, 133; emphasis added).

2 From the revolt of the masses to mass revolt

The knowledge of the past is indispensable for understanding problems of the present. Norbert Elias, Reflections on a Life

The end of one epoch is not necessarily coincidental with the onset of another. Geoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History

Sociologists do not like the concept of postmodernity. In many cases, observing my colleagues’ reactions to this term, I could see that they usually associate it with matters of discursive form – something they would typically call “postmodern gibberish”. The rejection contained in this phrase seems streaked with a note of grievance against those who – despite having access to precise, scientific concepts developed by sociology, such as class structure, institutions, attitudes, values, social identity etc., and to precise (at least because they utilize statistics) measuring methods – abandon them, turning instead towards such ideas as “fluidity of time and space”, “precession of simulacra”, “diasporic nation”, “visions of reality”, etc., and back various forms of epistemological relativism, thus publicly undermining the discipline’s hard-won scientific status.1 Without engaging in a defence of the sociological discourse developed by “the postmodernists”,2 and without attempting to judge which of their findings may survive the test of time, I merely wish to indicate that, even if we did not have any other data, the very fact of new terms rapidly flooding contemporary social sciences could be regarded as sufficient testimony to the deep changes currently taking place in social reality. As Norbert Elias observes, new concepts emerge out of a desire to articulate new problems that arise in a given epoch, while the meanings of these concepts are always forged in a synthesis “of many common elements that made a new, previously unknown entity accessible to communication, raised it into the light of understanding” (2001, 159) for the broader public. Accepting this assumption leads us to pose a question about the social conditions that make it possible and necessary for a new conceptual category to emerge.3 In the case of the term “postmodernity”, used to denote specific features

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  23 of contemporary society, it remains difficult to answer this question, and it is the least of our worries here that many of the authors who take up the subject of contemporary changes avoid using the term “postmodernism”, instead employing notions such as “late modernity”, “liquid modernity”, “second modernity”, or “reflexive modernity”. It is far more important that all of those terms, just like “postmodernity”, refer to the concept of modernity,4 which itself is largely ambiguous. On the one hand, modernity is used in reference to the strictly defined historical form assumed by the Western society in the nineteenth century. On the other, it can denote an abstract construct created by sociologists in order to describe a more general form of sociality characterized by its departure from traditional society. This duality of meanings emerges with great clarity in works by authors who study the properties of contemporary society. Ulrich Beck (Beck and Beck-­ Gernsheim 2002) writes about the “second” or “reflexive” modernity in terms of features that differentiate today’s society from that of the nineteenth century, whereas Anthony Giddens (1991) attempts to extract the essence of the “late modernity” by comparing the properties of contemporary society with those of traditional society, which began to crumble in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Certainly, each of those approaches can be justified with the right kind of argument, but this does not make it easier to identify which of the problems specific to our times could be synthesized with the help of these concepts. Settling this becomes even more difficult if we supplement the positions of Beck and Giddens with that of Zygmunt Bauman, who attempted to reach a compromise between their approaches (or avoid backing either view explicitly) by arguing that “[t]he society which enters the twenty-first century is no less ‘modern’ than the society which entered the twentieth [century]; the most one can say is that it is modern in a different way” (2006, 28; emphasis added). The matter becomes even more complicated if we add to these and similar contemporary diagnoses the findings of the past generations of sociologists, going back a century and a half to the moment when the discipline was first established, and tracing the transformations that the Western society has been undergoing since. After all, our society has vitally changed in the period spanning the birth of the concept of modern society and the moment when it began to be supplanted, at least partially, by the notion of postmodern society. Upon closer examination of the sociological literature of that period, it becomes clear that at different points of this historical continuum different concepts emerged that testify to the fact that the researchers have identified vital changes to the structure of social organization in relation to its “original model” – the nineteenth-century modern society. These concepts constituted an attempt to grasp from the stream of unceasing change such features which – by breaking away from the properties of previously dominant social forms  – would create a difference of great importance, affecting people’s everyday experiences and altering the dominant forms of sociality. By synthesizing these experiences, the various typifications that emerged in the course of sociological research would effectively become a basic framework at least for some behavioural schemas, which served as a background for explaining

24  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt individual behaviour, and which were used not only by sociologists but also by the wider public. Thus, let us first examine the works of our predecessors and attempt to answer the question of what variants of “societies” – understood here as certain typological models – may be discerned in the past one hundred and fifty years.

From bourgeois society to middle class society: transformations of modernity We should begin with at least a brief sketch of what was first called a modern society and what should be called, in historical terms, a bourgeois society, although terms such as “capitalist” or “industrial” society are also often employed. The first term emphasizes the role played by a specific class in shaping the modern society, namely the enriched bourgeoisie. The second accentuates the significance of economic processes, different from those encountered in traditional society, for the determination of basic structures in modern society. Finally, the third directs our attention to the specific character of the production system, which led to the emergence of social groups characterized by a different position in society. All three terms coexist in sociological literature – one might argue that they describe different aspects or dimensions of the nineteenth-century society. Daniel Bell attempts to synthesize these diverse dimensions in his well-known study, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. As he argues in the introduction, capitalist society differs from the earlier forms of social organization primarily in having turned business activity into a goal in itself – one divorced from individual or social needs. However, at the root of such activity we find, as he argues, two entirely dissimilar elements: the first would be the asceticism of Protestant ethics, greatly emphasized by Weber, while the second would be acquisitiveness, whose influence is described in works by Werner Sombart. As Bell argues, “whatever the exact locations of early capitalism, it is clear that, from the start, the two impulses of asceticism and acquisitiveness were yoked together. One was the bourgeois prudential spirit of calculation; the other, the restless Faustian drive which, as expressed in the modern economy and technology, took as its motto ‘the endless frontier,’ and, as its goal, the complete transformation of nature” (1978, xx). This account should not rouse much suspicion, though it requires only a moment of reflection to realize that asceticism and acquisitiveness were equally – or even to a greater degree – the properties of individual behaviour already in the Middle Ages.5 Consequently, identifying these characteristics does not add much to our understanding of the specific character of early capitalist society. Moreover, Bell’s diagnosis stands in sharp contrast to those images of the bourgeois society that are conveyed, for example, in literature of the epoch. Balzac’s protagonists certainly do not manifest the “prudential spirit of calculation”, while Galsworthy’s characters cannot be really regarded as displaying “restless Faustian drive”. If we are to assume the perspective from which bourgeois society was viewed by individuals living in it, this society would primarily appear as a system of

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  25 hierarchized social structure, whose upper layers consisted of the retreating aristocracy, merchants, as well as manufacturers and factory owners who were rapidly making themselves rich, whereas the lower layers comprised an undifferentiated mass of peasants, servants, and a quickly growing working class. In this society, social status was clearly marked by distinct clothes and norms that imposed – especially with regard to the upper layers – a far-reaching self-control in terms of expressing one’s feelings and desires. Furthermore, contrary to slogans professing equality, public matters were ultimately decided upon by wealthy men. At the same time, however, this society was relatively open in two dimensions. On the one hand, the elimination of birth-associated barriers paved the way to advancement for all people (at least potentially; I shall return to this later); on the other, the tensions inherent in its systemic nature favoured rapid evolution of its characteristic patterns of sociality. Such openness was made possible by fundamental changes in the general conditions of human activities, which facilitated a previously unimaginable expansion of individual entrepreneurship. As Paul Johnson demonstrates in The Birth of the Modern, most of these changes occurred in the years 1815–1830 – the period “during which the matrix of the modern world was largely formed. . . . The postwar years”, he notes, “saw great and rapid changes in Britain and continental Europe, and still more fundamental ones. . . . All over the world, the last wildernesses, in the pampas and the steppes, in the Mississippi Valley and Canada, in the Himalayas and the Andes, were being penetrated or settled by the advanced societies, and their peoples were being subdued, in some cases annihilated. Never before or since had so much cheap land become available, and the hungry peoples of Europe were moving overseas in vast numbers to possess it” (1991, xvii–xviii). The plenitude of land, which facilitated geographical expansion, does not in itself explain, however, why changes had accelerated so much in this period. Development requires money, but Europe and the newly formed United States of America (not to mention the young countries of Latin America) emerged from eighteenth-century wars with great debts, primarily to their own citizens (strictly speaking, their richer citizens), who could at any point demand that the debt securities issued by the banks (paper money) be converted back into gold. Lack of “real” or “metallic” money as well as rising inflation threatened to thwart the “natural” post-war economic boom. To counteract this, both governments and private institutions would take out more loans from the banks.6 “It was, in its own way, perhaps the key factor in the birth of the modern world because it made so many other developments possible” (851), Johnson observes, at the same time indicating the way in which political decisions accelerated the development of the banking system and financial markets, inspired by the bankers and financiers who were aiming to protect these “investments”.7 Paradoxically, these first manifestations of modern state interventionism were taking place in a period when the idea of the free market was being reinforced. Although the concept was not too popular at the time when Adam Smith formulated it in a fierce polemic with mercantilism, it became widely adopted after 1820. As Johnson shows, this was the moment when the “iron laws” of economy

26  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt became “as true and immutable as Isaac Newton’s” (863). Undoubtedly, the triumph of this idea as the basic schema explaining and simultaneously legitimizing not only the economy, but also the entire social reality, was aided by both the increasing prosperity of the society of the period (thanks to the flourishing free trade)8 and new state policy, which involved withdrawing from various forms of indirect taxation and fending off foreign competition to protect the interests of its own citizens involved in the “free” trade (cf. Polanyi 2001). As it soon transpired, however, the rapidly increasing prosperity of the society had a rather fragile foundation. In a world of globalizing economy based on metallism, gold and silver reserves secured by the largest European banks – a guarantee for the bank notes they emitted (paper money) – were obtained mainly from overseas colonies and new Latin American countries. Those almost immediately leaked out from the banks due to the loans taken out by the governments of these states, loans given to domestic companies investing in foreign mines, and the increasing importation of consumer goods. They were also stolen little by little at many stages of the process by multitudes of middlemen, plain conmen as well as smaller- and larger-scale profiteers. Under such circumstances, it did not take much to start a sequence of events leading to the bankruptcy chain of banks and companies, which would in turn bring ruin on individual lives.9 And indeed, this vast network of interdependencies was finally broken in December 1825. This first modern financial crisis started with a rapid crash that ended a ­fifteen-year-long boom and sent the economy into deep recession. It was simultaneously the crowning of the first of the business cycles whose rhythm would define the world’s economy for the next one hundred years, until the 1929 Great ­Depression. Economists differ in their assessment of the nature of these cycles. Some seek their causes in excessive state interventionism, while others – in ­insufficient interventions. Without taking sides,10 I merely wish to emphasize two vital factors at the foundation of this debate, both of which emerged precisely at the beginning of the nineteenth century and began to give shape to the conditions in which individuals would function in bourgeois society. The first one is the cyclical nature of development, as regarded from a long-term perspective of economic growth. The second is the change in the nature of political influence on society. Cyclicality in economic growth prevented the social structure from closing, because rapid changes in the economic situation – occurring every dozen or so years – favoured the advancement of at least some representatives of the lower classes and downgraded the status of some representatives of the upper classes. This would ground “empirically” the myth that success is available to all those who are bold enough to enter the free market of economic activity with their own ideas. This myth – whose roots can be traced in the eighteenth-century trouble with attempts “of reforming the workers to a pattern more suitable for factory production” (Anthony 1977, 76) – became a crucial supplement to other “educational” instruments used at the time to incline the lower classes to work harder: direct coercion, legal regulations, poverty, unemployment, or the influence of Protestantism.

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  27 In its original form, the myth of universal accessibility of success was formulated by Samuel Smiles in the 1859 book titled Self-Help, where he makes work the only moral and social principle that separates the rich from the poor, those who succeed from those who fail. According to Smiles, success “depends not upon wealth, nor birth, nor inheritance nor even talent – success is open to all who try” (Anthony 1977, 77). The title concept of self-help means, therefore, that those who wish to succeed should not expect to obtain help from anyone – they need to help themselves through intense effort, which is the only way to achieve anything in life. As Smiles sums it up, “[h]elp from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates” (after Anthony 1977, 78). As Peter L. Anthony underlines, it soon transpired that the naïve advice given by Smiles, taken with a grain of salt by representatives of the period’s elites, fills “a most serious gap in nineteenth-century ideology. The principle of self-help provided some prospects of hope for the most poverty-stricken members of society, as such it provided a motive force for society itself” (78). It needs to be added that, by becoming a basis for the universal accessibility of success, this principle would not only legitimize existing divisions, but would also lend meaning to the actions of individuals. Its impact is confirmed by the fact that it remains to this day a formative principle, one not only invoked to motivate individuals (cf. Larson 1989, chapter 7), but also located at the foundation of solutions implemented on a macroeconomic scale (cf. trickle-down theory). The “ideological” inclusion of social categories other than the bourgeoisie within the free market doctrine is related to the latter of the aforementioned processes, namely the change in the nature of political influence on society. It first needs to be recalled that the beginnings of state interventionism described by Paul Johnson fundamentally differed from contemporary interventionism. They differed in the same way that the nineteenth-century civic society differs from today’s democracies, namely in limiting the citizen status to a single social group.11 By the same token, this group monopolizes the state and its policies. Thus, early state interventionism was in fact limited to bourgeoisie itself, a group which would use political mechanisms in order to protect and foster their individual or group interests. Importantly, such “interventionism” involved, from the very beginning, not only acts of strictly economic character, such as introducing or abolishing tariffs, but also laws meant to “order” the broader social context that determines the conditions for business activity. Such “ordering” could take on a more or less direct form. When Sir Robert Peel introduced the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act in 1802, limiting the working hours for children and granting them some (minor) privileges, he primarily strove to eliminate the competition of companies that were economically weaker than his own (Johnson 1991, 865). However, reforms introduced in the 1820s by his son Robert Peel, which included a thorough reform of the law, courts, and the prison system – leading, among other things, to the legalization of trade unions – shook the very foundations of the social system constituted by the bourgeois society. This was because they brought other social groups under the influence of “economy’s iron laws”, thus being a

28  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt clear manifestation of a major change in the general philosophy underlying state “interventions”. The nature of this change is best captured by a metaphor coined by Ernest Gellner (2013) and developed further by Zygmunt Bauman, who argues that “the emergence of modernity was . . . a process of transformation of wild cultures into garden cultures” (1989, 51). This entailed the “appearance of a new role, oriented to previously unknown ends and calling for previously non-existing skills: the role of the gardener” (52) – a role which is the opposite of the previously dominant role of a “gamekeeper”. “Gamekeepers do not feed the vegetation and the animals which inhabit the territory entrusted to their care”, Bauman writes, “neither do they have any intention [of] transform[ing] the state of the territory to bring it closer to that of a contrived ‘ideal state’ ” (52). Their fundamental goal is not to protect the territory itself, but to protect the adequate share in the riches produced by it thanks to the habitual activities of its inhabitants. The role of gardeners, on the other hand, is to design and maintain a certain superior order that shapes the garden they are protecting. Without constant attention, weeding, fertilizing, and pruning, the garden might become wild at any time, returning to the “state of nature”, thus negating and endangering the high level of civilization achieved by the human race. “The pre-modern ruling class”, Bauman argues, “was, in a sense, a collective gamekeeper” (52), whereas the nineteenth-century ruling class metamorphosed into a collective gardener tending in a variety of ways to the budding garden of bourgeois, free-market society. It needs to be remembered, however, that the character of the ruling class changed as well. Taking Bauman’s metaphor further, we would have to conclude that – despite the elites assuming the role of a flower garden and an orchard, and the lower classes becoming a vegetable patch and a compost heap – both groups began to be subjected, in time, to intense efforts planned by the “head gardener”, i.e. the ever more powerful state. On the one hand, from the early nineteenth century “interventionism” ceased to have a purely economic character, gradually beginning to encompass all areas of social life. On the other, the state ceased to focus solely on protecting the interests of the bourgeoisie, who saw the rise of a mighty competitor in the form of masses, to which the state could appeal in search of support. This did not occur immediately, but already in the 1930s social sciences adopted the new typological concept in an attempt to succinctly capture the crucial features of the changing forms of sociality – the concept of mass society. Just like fashion trends, scientific concepts have their ebb and flow. The concept of mass society enjoyed the greatest popularity in the 1950s, when it was invoked to explicate the experience of European totalitarianisms (cf. e.g. Arendt 1979) and to identify the processes that were thought to endanger the American democracy (cf. e.g. Mills 2000a).12 In both cases, the reasons for society becoming a “mass” one were sought in the dissolution of class structures typical for the traditional bourgeois society. “Social atomization and extreme individualization”, Hannah Arendt observes, “preceded the mass movements which, much more easily and earlier than they did the sociable, nonindividualistic members of

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  29 the traditional parties, attracted the completely unorganized, the typical “nonjoiners” who for individualistic reasons always had refused to recognize social links or obligations” (1979, 316–317). C. Wright Mills echoed this view, emphasizing that the “growth of the metropolis, segregating men and women into narrowed routines and environments, causes them to lose any firm sense of their integrity as a public” (2000a, 320).13 In these criticisms of Western society in the first half of the twentieth century, authors who assumed the position of the defenders of democracy invoked the concept of mass society, which had its roots in earlier, nineteenth-century reactions of the period’s elites to the changes that introduced the masses, identified with the mob, onto the public stage. This earlier concept of mass society – an “aristocratic” one, as William Kornhauser called it (1961) – was underpinned by fear and a sense of threat posed to the social order by the dissolution of traditional social structures and norms. Fear of the mob was often mixed with fear of uncontrollable revolutionary masses that might overthrow existing political institutions. In this view, mass society was the society of a crowd governed by its own rules and blind to the good of the community or any rational rules of behaviour. As Gustave Le Bon succinctly put it, “[w]hile all our ancient beliefs are tottering and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving way one by one, the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing menaces, and of which the prestige is continually on the increase” (2002, x). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the fear of the masses turning into an uncontrollable mob gradually dissipated. This came as a result of stabilization within bourgeois society, in which masses were subjected to disciplinary efforts and were thus given a clear role and place. Divided into separate categories of workers, servants, and peasants, the masses ceased to be regarded as a permanent threat to the social order as well as to the solidifying liberal capitalism and democracy. However, this stabilization did not last long because the late 1920s and the early 1930s – the years of the Great Depression, which struck at the very foundation of the bourgeois society – brought the masses back onto the stage. This time they did not appear as a mob attacking the elites, but as passive crowds susceptible to the arguments of political demagogues aiming to limit democracy and gain power. Fascism, born at that time as an attempt to avoid institutional collapse faced by the liberal bourgeois society (Polanyi 2001), found support in the increasing authoritarianism of the masses seeking a leader or – as Erich Fromm put it (1969) – a “magic helper” who would solve all problems affecting the society as a whole as well as its individual members. This view of mass society – a “democratic” one, as Kornhauser terms it – has its roots precisely in the fear of the threat posed to the democratic order by fascism. It needs to be remembered in this context that even though before the Second World War fascist governments had been established only in three European countries,14 fascist movements had risen in all liberal democracies, including the USA. Most scholars of the time attributed the popularity of fascism precisely to the specific features of mass society, which was viewed as atomized, lost, and conformist

30  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt in its acceptance of slogans coined by the leaders that began emerging from the impoverished middle class.15 According to Kornhauser, although both approaches begin their accounts of mass society by analyzing the relationship between the masses and the elites, the “democratic” perspective describes this relationship in completely different terms than the “aristocratic” one. The “aristocratic” interpretation of mass society holds that the elites are marginalized by the revolting masses, while the “democratic” one claims that the passive masses are manipulated by the elites.16 The nineteenth-century origin of the concept of mass society was also emphasized by Edward Shils (1975), who reminds us that it constituted the reaction of the intellectuals to the role played by the mob in subsequent French revolutions – a mob identified with a passive and formless mass, repeatedly spurred into action by demagogues. In the twentieth century, these negative associations were additionally reinforced by the works of José Ortega y Gasset (1960) or Elias Canetti (2000). Both were worried about the overwhelming pressure exerted by the “common people” on the cultural and political institutions of the Western civilization; both considered this phenomenon as a new kind of barbarity. Finally, the concept of mass society gained more power thanks to the development of communication technologies, the effect of which has been collectively termed “mass communication”. The accidental convergence of terms favoured the shift in focus of attendant criticism from the intellectual and cultural content of mass press, radio, and television, onto their audiences, which began to be viewed as masses deprived of any standards, and thus defenceless. As a result of the impact of all these factors, the image of the mass society that dominated towards the end of the 1950s in social sciences acquired, as Shils argues, the form of “a territorially extensive society, with a large population, highly urbanized and industrialized. Power is highly concentrated in this society, and much of the power takes the form of manipulation of the mass through the media of mass communication. Civic spirit is low, local loyalties are few, primordial solidarity is virtually non-existent. There is no individuality, only a restless frustrated egoism. It is like a state of nature described by Thomas Hobbes, except that public disorder is restrained through the manipulation of the elite and the apathetic idiocy of the mass. The latter is broken only when, in a state of crisis, the masses rally around some demagogue” (1975, 92). Just like Kornhauser, Shils regarded this image as fundamentally false when applied to the Western societies of his time. However, whereas Kornhauser strove in his analyses to retain the critical weight of the concept of mass society and simultaneously demonstrate that it cannot be justifiably applied to describe the pluralistic American society,17 Shils undermined primarily the negative valuations of the concept,18 emphasizing that it heralds the emergence of a truly new quality in the history of human societies. As he writes, “the novelty of the ‘mass society’ lies in the relationship of the mass of the population to the center of the society. The relationship is a closer integration into the central institutional and value systems of the society” (1975, 93). The fact that social life becomes a “mass” one was considered by Shils as an indicator of the broadening of political and cultural possibilities, which became

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  31 open to all social groups, including ones that were previously voiceless and marginalized: “The mass of the population is no longer merely an object which the elite takes into account as a reservoir of military and labor power or as a source of public disorder. Nor does it any longer consist of a set of relatively discrete local societies occasionally in contact with the center under the impulsion of coercion and interest” (1975, 97). By entering the centre of society, masses became a part of it not only in the ecological sense, but also – and perhaps primarily – due to the fact that they will now participate in shaping and maintaining the society’s institutions and the systems of values that legitimize them.19 In other words, according to Shils mass society has both intellectual and material roots in the aforementioned processes initiated within the bourgeois society: economic development, stable despite being punctuated by crises, which brought a perceptible yet unevenly distributed growth in prosperity for the entire population; the state’s “social interventionism”, which – regardless of the intentions behind it – improved the level of education and health among the poorest; and finally, the gradual extension of the social base of politics, which was related to the extension of voting rights and the establishment of trade unions as one of the major actors in socio-political life. In this sense, mass society seems to be the direct heir to bourgeois society, one which has risen to a specific form of socializing individual actions. Studies by Shils and Kornhauser, published towards the end of the 1950s, were an attempt at sorting out the meanings that came to surround the concept of mass society. They also clearly demonstrate why, in subsequent years, it ceased to serve as the basic analytical tool for describing the changes of that typification of modern society. For it is easy to notice that the increasing popularity of the concept of mass society, especially in its “democratic” interpretations, culminating in the 1950s, was the consequence of an increasingly significant role of politics in inducing these changes in the first half of the twentieth century.20 These were the strictly political events and processes – two world wars, the rise and fall of fascism in Europe, the spread of communism, and the American response to it in the form of McCarthyism, to name just the most important ones – that finally put a definitive end to the nineteenth-century form of sociality called the bourgeois society. At the same time, they lent weight to some of the features of mass society, such as atomization or the specific interdependency that existed between political elites and broader masses. However, the same characteristics caused the concept of mass society to be much less suited to account for the changes that came into the foreground in the 1960s – induced primarily by technological factors – and resulted in the rise of new social structures. Daniel Bell was the first to draw attention to this in the book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973). The rise of post-industrial society was supposed to be demonstrated by the growth in the number of people employed in the service sector. In Bell’s view, this process was the consequence of transformations in the means of production, which encompassed a transition from technologies based on using various forms of

32  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt energy to technologies based on processing information whose source would be “theoretical knowledge”. However, the very name of this new typification clearly suggests that its theoretical frame of reference is the industrial society – not the mass one. The latter, having created a lot of commotion on the stage of history, silently disappeared, or – more precisely – it turned from a theoretical concept rich in sociological, political, and psychological meanings into a purely technical term allowing, at best, to locate the described phenomena on a timeline, just like it is the case with such terms as, say, “sixteenth-century society”. Along with this change, what disappears from the account of social changes is the specific analytical perspective – one usually called “cultural” – at the centre of which we find a key sociological issue: the question of the types of social bonds. Authors referring to the concept of post-industrial society and the synonymous concept of information society focus on analyzing those systemic changes that are or could be the consequence of technological changes. In this approach, the cultural dimension of social processes is either omitted or is analyzed at the level of change in individual people’s attitudes and lifestyles, which constitute their adaptive reactions to technological changes (cf. Toffler 1989; Bell 1978). This is clearly articulated by Bell himself, who often underlines in his works that out of the three dimensions that can be used to describe every society – social structure, politics, and culture – he chooses to limit himself to structural changes and those political transformations that arise from them. Although already in The Coming of Post-Industrial Society he posits that the processes leading to the rise of post-industrial society are intrinsically correlated with a growing disjunction between economy and culture, and in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, published three years later, he focuses directly on analyzing this disjunction, he nevertheless views these contradictions – as David Harvey rightly notes – simply as a departure from the middle class values of the bourgeois society. Harvey further comments, “Daniel Bell plainly regrets the collapse of solid bourgeois values, the erosion of the work ethic in the working class, and sees contemporary trends less as a turn towards a vibrant postmodernist future and more as an exhaustion of modernism that surely harbingers a social and political crisis in years to come” (Harvey 1995, 113). Although the concept of postmodern society which Harvey refers to leads us straight to questions that concerns us today, it needs to be emphasized that if postmodern society were to emerge from an antecedent type of social structure, then neither the concept of mass society, nor its successor, the concept of post-industrial society, suggest such a direct transition. In the first case this is because mass society, described in its classic form by Arendt and Mills, had left the stage long before the emergence of postmodern society, while in the second case – because the concept of post-industrial society refers to an entirely different level of analysis, placing it in the sequence arising from traditional (agrarian) societies, through modern (industrial) ones, to postmodern (post-industrial) societies, rather than in a chain of evolutionary transformations occurring within the modern type of social organization. What is more, one could say that if most scholars agree that

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  33 postmodernity (or some conceptual equivalent) emerged in the 1970s, then the two preceding decades, the 1950s and 1960s, ought to be regarded as crucial for the development of this form of sociality. However, this period rather appears to be a black hole in terms of concepts aimed to capture the processes of social change. Still, this may not be entirely accurate. The dictionary of sociological concepts contains one entry that fills this gap, although it functions in a different area of sociological discourse, namely one focusing on factors responsible for stabilization rather than change. It is the concept of middle class society. The category of the middle class belongs to those sociological terms that have always existed in the discipline’s discourse and which acquired many meanings, far exceeding their original designation. Moreover, as Henryk Domański shows (1994, 1999), the collectivity called the middle class is not, strictly speaking, a class or even a category homogenous enough to speak of its unambiguous position in the social structure. Treating it as a relatively coherent social category has been made possible primarily by its common lifestyle, norms, and preferences guiding the behaviour of those who consider themselves its members, as well as the stabilizing function it has played within the social system: “The middle class is regarded as the source of social order not only due to the very fact of the existence of many million consumers well adapted to social reality, but also because one sees in it a force that makes it easier to take the bends of history” (Domański 1999, 23). The thesis about the stabilizing role of the middle class in the political and economic systems, repeated in many studies, is one of those claims whose origin is difficult to establish, although it is possible to find facts that would confirm it. From our perspective, it is primarily vital that this view emerged relatively late. As recent as the 1950s, C. Wright Mills, who is considered a classic scholar of the middle class, wrote that it is “less the pivotal point of a balancing society than a rear-guard of the dominant drift towards a mass society” (2000a, 261). Similarly, the critics of mass society – both in its “aristocratic” and “democratic” ­interpretations – treat the middle class as a social group which, by supporting totalitarian movements, greatly contributed to the destabilization of pre-war social order in Western societies. The question of the roots of the stabilizing function ascribed to the middle class – both in sociological literature and in popular opinion – is also disregarded by Henryk Domański (1994), who expresses his helplessness in this matter by indicating that the question of the middle classes was a subject of interest not only for systematic scientific study, but also for those authors who “attempted, in the first place, to distinguish the specific features of the middle class against the background of specific realities: the phenomena and processes considered to be issues associated with a given epoch. These concepts”, he concludes, “as well as popular views and stereotypical notions, presented on the radio, on television, and in the press, created the popular knowledge of the middle class, its ideology and the class itself” (1994, 76–77; emphasis added). I wanted to emphasize the last phrase because it offers a key path we may pursue: if we seek the phenomena and processes that “created” the middle

34  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt class – elevating this social group from its hiding place and lending it importance – in the “epoch’s realities”, we ought to primarily point to the youth revolt of the late 1960s. It is the young people’s rebellion against the institutions that formed the structures of the society of that period that created the middle class as a cognitive category, bringing to the surface its cultural identity by articulating the values which stood in opposition to the values deeply cherished by the generation of their parents. The analyses of the 1960s’ revolt often underscore that its core was formed by young people from middle class families, who graduated from good schools and universities. “Make love not war” – the most prominent slogan of American students at the time – was a challenge to both the conventional norms regulating everyday behaviour of the middle classes, and to its most noble identifications, among which the concept of the nation certainly played a major role. At the same time, it made culture a fundamental sphere of gestation for the mechanisms of social change, applying in this field the Trotskyist goal of “permanent revolution”. As recalled by one participant in these events, who later researched this issue, it had seemed to be “a gigantic breakthrough from the existential, emotional and intellectual perspective – an entirely new lifestyle involving the development, for oneself, of an entirely new model of interpersonal relations” (Flores 2001, 20). However, it must have appeared as something completely different to the period’s establishment, who would seek support among the parents of “the spoilt children of a new prosperous class produced by the economic miracle” (Dahrendorf 2012, 111), and expose the youth’s actions as a danger not only to the social order, but to the very foundations of democracy. And find support they did, because in the conformist atmosphere of the 1950s and 1960s (cf. Riesman 1969) every deviation from the generally accepted middle class norms must have been regarded a challenge to the authority of these parents: “Rock ’n’ roll was a harbinger of the apocalypse to them, long hair – an insult to tradition, while sexual liberation – a sign of demoralization” (Krzemiński 2001, 25). It is worth drawing attention here to the fact that “conventionalism” – i.e. rigid adherence to the traditional values of the middle class – and “authoritarian aggression” – i.e. the tendency to take note of people who violate conventional norms, and then condemn, reject and punish them – are two fundamental components of the authoritarian personality syndrome first diagnosed in the 1950s, which constituted the basic product of mass society and was also its support (cf. Fromm 1969; Adorno et al. 1950). These attitudes were widespread, and not only within the middle class, as is attested to by the reactions of some representatives of intellectual elites. Ralf Dahrendorf recalls how shocked Raymond Aron, a leading representative of the French left, was at the events of the Paris May: “He never recovered from what he saw in those troubled May days in Paris” (2012, 110). In Germany, Jürgen Habermas accused the revolting students of “leftist fascism”, denouncing their lack of tolerance and inability to enter into a dialogue (Krzemiński 2001). Naturally, there were also others among the intellectuals who joined the youth revolt or even became its ideologues, but this does not alter the breakthrough character of the changes it advocated.

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  35 Comparing the 1960s’ youth movement with the events of the nineteenth-­century Spring of Nations, Marcello Flores concludes: “The year 1968 certainly had a lesser impact because it did not appeal to such strong values as independence or the nation. However, let us consider our everyday life and customs. Their present forms would be impossible without the breakthrough year of 1968” (2001, 21). Other commentators of these events emphasize that the influence of the youth revolt was not limited to the sphere of customs. Adam Krzemiński draws attention to the fact that “the generation of 1968 changed the style of politics. During its ‘long march through institutions’21 these people retained a preference for grassroots democracy, rotation of [political] positions, and transparency in decision-making” (2001, 27). Ralf Dahrendorf goes even further. In summarizing his evaluation of the sixties, he writes: “All governments of whatever persuasion tended to be social democratic for a while. They all subscribed to the consensus of the majority class on the beneficent role of government, the mixed economy and the social state. 1968 symbolizes the triumph of social democracy, but it also marks the beginning of the end. . . . the changes which happened after 1968 have altered the scenery and the subject matter of the modern social conflict” (2012, 113). What began to crystallize at that point was the postmodern society. The actions that came to constitute it were characterised by: a search for originality, nonchalance with regard to socially legitimized ideals, and the struggle to overcome constrains imposed by social norms. In other words, the framework for the most desired individual characteristics and the key to popularity were contained in the concept of rebellion. “Countercultural rebellion”, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter write, “rejecting the norms of ‘mainstream’ society . . . came to serve as a source of considerable distinction. In a society that prizes individualism and despises conformity, being ‘a rebel’ becomes the new aspirational category” (2010, 216). Thus, rebellion became a mass phenomenon. Nevertheless, middle class society did not leave the stage immediately in 1968, but rather took its time, while the concept of postmodern society – one that is, chronologically speaking, the last typification of the process of unceasing change – emerged much later. Moreover, as I already mentioned, its status is still not precisely defined, as many scholars continue to speak of the contemporary era using the concept of middle class society, merely highlighting the fact that the new middle class differs in many respects from the old one, which set the tone of the bourgeois society. The new middle class, which emerged in the course of transformations of the modern society that have occurred since the nineteenth century, is a complex outcome of changes in the spheres of economy, politics, and culture. These would primarily include a steady increase in production, the growth of the number of white-collar workers, preceded by the universal access to education, the increase in the bargaining power enjoyed by the working class, the general increase in prosperity in Western societies, which was most intensely felt after the 1950s, the increased number of jobs in the service sector, and mass access to culture. It is vital that the development of the new middle class that started in the nineteenth century introduced into social life entirely new axes of division and

36  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt mechanisms of stratification. If the most fundamental division of the bourgeois society – and the source of hottest social conflicts – was the division into factory owners and workers, then in the society of the new middle class some speak of the disappearance of the social conflict. This seems understandable insofar as the middle class now includes both CEOs from smaller companies and workers on better wages. Furthermore, if entry into the old middle class depended on securing sufficient capital through inheritance or intense economization, then the new middle class is open to those who have received proper education, whereas the formalized system of promotions in bureaucratic organizations allows individuals to constantly move up the social hierarchy ladder. This expands the principle of social equality and acts as a countermeasure to the escalation of social conflicts. Thus, the society of the “new” middle class is, in its structural properties, something entirely different from bourgeois society, yet it simultaneously emerges from the economic, political, and social processes that operated in the period when mass society was dominant. I shall later return to the question of the extent to which the same could be said of contemporary society. First, however, we need to examine how exactly modernity has shaped the relations between the individual and society, and the meaning of the distinctness of that form of sociality, which we came to view as opposing the traditional one, and which was formed in the process of transition from bourgeois society to mass society and then to middle class society.

Transformations of modernity as a specific form of socializing human actions In an attempt to provide a concise characteristic of modernity, Daniel Bell (1978) distinguishes three distinct realms which can help describe society as such, attributing to each an axial principle and an axial structure that are present in the m ­ odern society. Accordingly, for the techno-economic realm – which is ­“concerned with the organization of production and the allocation of goods and services” and which “frames the occupation and stratification system of the society” (11) – the axial principle is functional rationality, which is rooted in the rule of frugality, i.e. striving to achieve efficiency by dividing all activities into the smallest ­components of unit costs. The axial structure is, in this case, the system of bureaucratic coordination based on specialization and hierarchy. This necessarily favours treating the individual not as a person, but as an instrument of maximizing profit, which causes that individual to be reduced to his or her functions, or – to employ a language closer to sociology – the individual’s behaviours are strictly determined by the role he or she plays in the economic process. The second realm is the domain of politics. The axial principle in the polity realm is legitimization based on the idea of equality. As Bell explains, “the idea of citizenship which embodies this conception has in the past 100 years been expanded to include equality not only in the public sphere, but in all other dimensions of social life as well – equality before the law, equality of civil rights,

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  37 equality of opportunity, even equality of results – so that a person is able to participate fully, as a citizen, in the society” (11). The axial structure of politics is the system of representation and participation, while its guarantor and instrument – “the existence of political parties and/or social groups to express the interests of particular segments in the society” (12). Finally, the third realm is culture – the domain of “self-realization (or selfgratification)” (xxxi), which encompasses “the realm of symbolic forms” (12) and constitutes the instrument of shaping individual identity. This realm has undergone the greatest transformation in the course of modernity, as a result of which culture’s axial principle of self-realization – initially subjected to the axial structure of personality focused on self-control and delayed gratification as well as on intentional striving for socially defined goals – became transformed into a personality whose “concern . . . is with its individual authenticity, its unique, irreducible character free of the contrivances and conventions, the masks and hypocrisies, the distortions of the self by society” (19). For Bell, the tensions between these three realms of social life, especially the tension between the techno-economic realm and culture, are the fundamental factor responsible for both the internal evolution of modernity and its crisis, which has started in the 1970s. He argues that this is a result of the contradictions piling up between the requirements inherent in the roles that create the social structure and the requirements of self-realization, contradictions which shape individual identity. Contemporary society, on the one hand, “emphasizes functional rationality, technocratic decision making, and meritocratic rewards”, while on the other – it emphasizes “apocalyptic moods and anti-rational modes of behavior” (84), which stems from the fact that contemporary culture favours “anti-cognitive and anti-intellectual modes which look longingly toward a return to instinctual sources of expression” (84). The approach proposed by Bell may be seen as a specific attempt to overcome the kinds of problems that emerge when we analyze individuals and society as separate entities. However, he swaps these problems for a different type of incongruity: one between the isolated domains of human life, which create separate structures. Individuals are moving between them like knights on a chessboard, forced on each occasion to follow different rules of behaviour specific to a particular domain. Meanwhile, as I have attempted to demonstrate in the previous chapter, the processes of socializing individual actions encompass the entirety of our lives. Although in different domains of life they may produce different, more specific rules, all more or less concrete attempts to typify the ongoing, ceaseless process of human actions ought to be subordinated to the identification of what unifies these actions (and the rules these actions give rise to) – not what separates them. My aim is not to negate the existence of contradictions, tensions and conflicts, but to search for the possibility to extract from the complex tissue of human behaviour that which is social and which – by being reproduced in human actions – ­creates a distinct form of sociality. The processual perspective assumed in this book demands that we treat social life as – by its very nature – composed

38  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt of elements of continuity and change. In this sense, every form of sociality contains – already at the moment of its crystallization – the seeds of the processes that will destroy it in the future. However, to speak of the emergence of a new form of sociality it is not enough to show that processes of change introduce new elements into the social life. It is also necessary to demonstrate that these changes transform the existing elements of continuity in a way that gives a qualitatively new form to the entirety of the individual life.22 This form cannot be the effect of the evolution of particular components – it has to be the result of a fundamental breaking away from those techniques of life, as well as modes of defining identity and ways of substantiating the meaning of life, that dominated earlier. From this point of view, these typifications of changes in the modern society during the past two hundred years are characterized by a predominance of continuity elements rather than those related to a breakaway. Regardless of which specific type is taken into consideration, techniques of life are shaped within it through the dominance of what occurs in the domain of industrial production and politics, individual identities are shaped in reference to their place in the class structure, while the meaning of life is substantiated through the concept of progress, subjected to clearly defined values. Naturally, social life undergoes transformations, but these have an evolutionary character and do not undermine – at least not until the emergence of postmodern society – this basic pattern of s­ ocializing individual actions. To put it differently, modern society – understood as a specific form of sociality that differs from the traditional one  – created a space in which prominence was achieved by entirely new factors that were shaping social life. These most general conditions of social actions and their gradual transformations, which find expression in subsequent typifications described earlier, mark the transition from the moment when the modern form of sociality has first emerged to the present moment. Therefore, the answer to the question about the specific social factors that initiated the process of transforming the modern society is hidden in these more concrete typifications. Consequently, they also hold the possible answer to the question whether the contemporary society is its continuation or a fundamental breakaway. Thus, let us examine these typifications, focusing on those of their social innovations which may prove crucial from the perspective of the three fundamental elements determining the specificity of the processes of socializing individual actions. From this perspective, undoubtedly the most important “invention” of the bourgeois society in the area of social life was to complete the process of separating the private sphere from the public one, thus elevating privacy to the role of a fundamental domain of life. Mass society, in turn, seems to be responsible for another “invention”, namely replacing the needs and obligations with desires in the role of the basic factor driving people’s actions. Finally, middle class society could be viewed as the “inventor” of lifestyles as the basic structuring factor, one replacing such classic determinants of social divisions as birth or class membership. This catalogue naturally demands a broader analysis, to which I shall turn next.

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  39 Discovering the charms of privacy – the bourgeois society When we speak today of the opposition between the private and the public, we usually mean the difference between that which concerns collective actors in social life and takes place in societal institutions or organizations, and that which is individual and takes place at home. However, this difference is relatively new, because, for a long time in human history, public matters were settled in private spaces (the king’s castle, the lord’s mansion), while private matters remained in everyone’s plain sight (cf. Elias 2000). One could therefore say that this kind of opposition in fact refers to two dimensions that do not necessarily overlap. In the first dimension, the individual is juxtaposed with the broader community, while in the second, that which is open is juxtaposed with that which is hidden from view.23 Merging these two dimensions, and the resulting separation of the private sphere from the public one, is a relatively new invention of the bourgeois society. Scholars of the modern society who have been analyzing this process, often tended to concentrate on the first dimension because its transformations were connected to the processes that lay at the base of the emergence of that form of political institutions which is specific to modernity – a form that found its fullest expression in the concepts of civic society and representative democracy. According to Habermas (1989), the modern public sphere developed in the space between society and state. It was created by members of the bourgeoisie, who would reach an agreement on the content of their demands addressed to the authorities, which at that time began to need legitimization from the public opinion. A vital role was played in this process by the development of market exchange, which led to the emergence of a network of horizontal links, and weakened vertical ones, thus facilitating the rise of the civic society – one autonomous from the authorities and striving to exert pressure on them. Political critique was made possible thanks to the broad distribution of information by the press and the development of public institutions such as clubs, cafés, or associations, in which the members could exchange opinions on a variety of topics. The characteristic feature of most of these institutions was the presence of people who had a different social status, yet remained on an equal footing. Hailing from both the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, participants in those debates would not consider themselves a closed circle, but rather part of a wider public, and they were guided by their own interest rather than a sense of some general good of the political community. However, since most of them occupied a similar position, they could reach agreement and negotiate demands whose fulfilment was in the interest of all. The demands they made would be justified by the very process of their development, as they arose out of discussions based on the criterion of rationality, in line with the principle that it is not the authority of the government but objective “rightness” that decides about the validity of an argument. For Habermas, such historical references are merely a pretext that serves him to develop a normative model of a “discursive public space”. This may be the reason why he focuses on the British context and disregards that of the French Revolution, which – it seems – had a far greater influence on the modern understanding

40  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt of the division between the private and the public. French revolutionary activists regarded the said opposition as one necessitating the separation of the interest of the whole from the personal interest of the individual. “In the midst of revolution, private meant functional, and privacy was equated with the secrecy that facilitated plotting” (Hunt 1990, 13). This is why revolutionaries aimed to bring under the control of the “people” everything that was formerly regarded as the domain of strictly personal decisions: the wealth that the individuals had at their disposal, the friends they chose, the clothes they wore, and the kinds of entertainment they indulged in. It is in this process of deep politicization, which preceded the formation of the bourgeois society, and simultaneously one of making private life public, that we can trace the roots of later attempts to strictly separate these two spheres of social life, and the basis of linking that which is public to that which is strictly political, i.e. that which does not concern other forms of human activity, even if such an activity is carried out in full view of others. As Michelle Perrot observes, in writing laws that were to regulate post-revolutionary society, French liberals “contrasted the ancient world, whose citizens lived to take part in politics and war, with the modern world, in which individuals, properly encouraged by an attitude of laissez-faire, engaged in commerce and industry. In order to concentrate on their private activities, citizens entrusted public affairs to representatives. The separation of complementary public and private spheres required representative government, and the specialization of political activity required skilled and ultimately professional practitioners” (1990, 102–103). In Littré’s nineteenth-century dictionary of the French language, the concept of the public is already defined as that which “belongs to an entire people, that which concerns an entire people, that which emanates from the people” (Duby 1988, 3), whereas the meaning of the concept of privé includes the idea of a “particular person” to whom something belongs as his or her property, and notions linked to the home; the adjective “private”, “in a more general way, also suggests the family, the home, the domestic interior” (3). These semantic associations reflect the social processes that began changing the bourgeois society at the time. At the threshold of modernity, the transformation of the state, understood as the domain of monarchs and the officials they appointed, into a society identified with the nation, made it unnecessary and obsolete for an average citizen to become engaged in public life. This foregrounded the problems of individuals’ private life – i.e. ones unrelated to politics – as well as family as their basic environment.24 According to Richard Sennett (2002), it was the enclosing of life within the family  – omnipresent, all engulfing and predominantly ruled by women  – that put an end to the development of public life and the citizens’ engagement in it. Many factors contributed to this triumph of the bourgeois family. Certainly, one of the more important ones – as Sennett emphasizes – was that the social transformations, which resulted in the influx of thousands of people into cities, made family the only group that remained a unity joined by common interests, identity, and emotional ties. As Alexis de Tocqueville already noted, “[d]emocracy relaxes social bonds, but it tightens natural bonds. It brings family members closer

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  41 together at the same time that it separates citizens” (2010, 1040). However, a vital role was also played by transformations of the family unit itself, which made it so dear to philosophers, moralists and reformers, who regarded home as the basis of all morality and social order, endangered by the changing social conditions and accompanying changes in customs. The nineteenth-century family becomes a nuclear family, supplemented at best with a small number of servants in the case of the increasingly powerful bourgeoisie. It also becomes the fundamental and perhaps the only group of the Gemeinschaft type, i.e. one whose members are “naturally” – i.e. without ­additional training – capable of sacrificing their individual interests for the prosperity of the larger group. As such, family secures the social order. It is in the family that the individual will be taught basic moral principles and instructed how to be a citizen. The conviction about the significance of the family for supporting the very foundation of the state should be regarded as the source of the dogma – born at that time – about the family being the basic cell of society. This conviction was particularly widespread among the representatives of English bourgeoisie, for whom “[e]vents in France were a warning of what was to come if a revolution in the ‘manners and morals’ of the nation did take place” (Hall 1990, 52), and which turned its moral, “family-centred” superiority into an additional weapon in its fight against aristocracy, which was still standing strong despite being in retreat. An important role in shaping this “moral revival” was played by the Evangelicals – a reformist movement born one century earlier within the Anglican Church. Its propagators argued that the spiritual and moral revival of the society ought to begin with the family, where individuals joined in prayer can support each other’s faith and reassure themselves in proper behaviour. The Evangelicals were not the only ones to undertake the work of “saving England from moral decline”. They were joined by other mushrooming offshoots of the Anglican Church as well as by the utilitarianists gathered around Jeremy Bentham and by individual politicians. As Catherine Hall rightly observes, “the material circumstances of life for middle class men and women were changing in ways that also contributed to a sharper division of labor between the sexes” (64). Hence, one of the crucial reasons behind the sudden interest in the moral condition of families was also the fact that the growing separation of workplace from home created a sphere of relative freedom and liberty for those members of the family who would remain at home, i.e. primarily women. Home, which was already associated with secrecy and confidentiality, became in this new arrangement a place that had to be subjected to special control. It was to be the centre of privacy, but one subordinated to the father, the only person capable of taming the instincts and bringing women under control. Without this, Kant writes, “[a] woman may turn into a vandal; a child, contaminated by its mother, may turn weak or vengeful; a servant may reclaim his liberty”. For Kant and his contemporaries, the woman is both the heart of the home and a threat to it. “If she escapes”, he forcefully argues, “she may immediately become a rebel and a revolutionary” (after Perrot 1990, 102).

42  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt The “escapes” of women were related to their entering the job market, though primarily among the lower classes, whereas in the bourgeoisie – to the budding feminist movement and those transformations in the sphere of culture that foregrounded the domains of emotions and feelings. The first process was successfully curbed. Although early capitalism was based on the work of women and children, the maturing, nineteenth-century capitalism did not only postulate, but in fact enforced – as Beck demonstrates (1992) – a strict division of roles as the necessary condition of its further development. In this division, men would work while women would run the house and raise children. The second process was much more dangerous because, first, it regarded the class that set the tone in bourgeois society, and second, it violated the grounds on which roles were divided among the sexes. In a patriarchal bourgeois family, a woman was incapacitated from birth. As a young girl, she would be locked at home, leaving it only in the company of other family members or servants. Her father would decide about her marriage, while her husband would control all of her actions. She would be treated as an underage child,25 basically enjoying rights similar to those of children: stripped of all financial means and unable to decide even about her own dowry, she could not meet any people on her own. The feminist movement was born out of the struggle for women’s elementary rights – the right to decide about one’s property, the right to divorce, and the freedom of actions. At the same time, the bourgeois family was still primarily an economic community – the culmination of efforts by two families of different origin. Marriage was subordinated to their interests or the interests of the family’s business. The well-being of a family depended not only on men, but also on women and their resourcefulness, frugality, and ability to tend to the servants. Women were tasked with running the house, caring for the comfort of the husband, and the upbringing of children. No place was left for raptures of the heart and passions, which at the same time were flooding the period’s literature, set to completely overhaul, in time, the perception of relationships between men and women, and of marriage. The nineteenth century, however, is still marked by the dominance of the patriarchal family. A  special significance is acquired in this context by the second dimension of the opposition between the public and the private – one juxtaposing that which is hidden and that which is in everyone’s plain sight. Reinforcing the family and its place in the process of socializing individuals’ actions cannot be based only on the idealization of this institution, but must involve the regulation of actual behaviours, especially those governed by biological drives since they pose the greatest threat to the family. Such regulation is achieved in two ways: through increasingly restrictive norms controlling the sphere of drives, and through strengthening the division between that which is public and that which is private. The first mechanism is an inherent part of a wider process of the transformation of manners in the Western civilization, well described by Elias (2000). By analyzing the contents of guides to good manners published prior to the emergence of the modern society, he demonstrates that the domain of everyday habits has

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  43 undergone gradual changes, causing certain activities that used to be public to be removed into the private sphere, including wiping the nose, excretion, copulation etc. The process of privatization – understood as one of hiding and concealing – encompassed not only particular actions, but also thoughts and the entire sphere of biological impulses. Elias links this process with the development of courtly life in late feudalism, indicating that the gathering of larger numbers of people at the court demanded from them that they bring their spontaneous reactions under control, developing “a more even self-control, a more stable super-ego” as well as new forms of behaviour in interpersonal contacts (2000, 397). These new skills were then swiftly adopted by the bourgeoisie, which was just beginning to climb the social ladder. As Elias makes it clear, however, “the people of the rising class develop within themselves a ‘super-ego’ modelled on the superior, colonizing upper class. But on closer inspection this super-ego is in many respects very different from its model. It is less balanced and therefore often much more severe” (2000, 430). This becomes particularly visible when we consider the norms regarding corporeality that dominated in nineteenth-century bourgeois society. Bodily matters became eliminated, so to say, from the public sphere, while everything that was connected with the body, especially the female body, became a deeply hidden secret. “In the nineteenth century modesty and shame were important determinants of behaviour. Behind these terms lurked two fears: fear of allowing the Other – the body – to express itself, and fear that an indiscretion might give away one’s most intimate secrets” (Corbain 1990, 491). This double concern influences the restrictive educational efforts, utilizes the fascination with spirituality – awakened by Romanticism, which reached the height of popularity at the time – and also finds its expression in fashion. “Never was the female body hidden as it was between 1830 and 1914” (487). However, all of these radical attempts to mask human carnality proved fruitless in the long run – repressed from the public sphere, it exploded with double force in the private one, taking advantage of its secrecy and the hiding of individual actions from the wider community. This concealment was in many cases superficial because within the narrow world of bourgeois high society word would spread quickly. From the middle of the nineteenth century26 the point was largely not to “flaunt” one’s offences against public morality, which is increasingly beginning to diverge from people’s actual behaviour due to the overidealized image of the family. The development of a double morality – double in two senses because of different standards applied to judge not only “open” and “hidden” actions, but also the actions of men and women, the latter far more strongly stigmatized for any violations – created a mode of socializing individual actions that would reinforce the division between the public and the private spheres. The private sphere became the focus of individual interests and efforts, not only because people felt less and less obliged to engage in public matters due to the growth in representative democracy and the increased activity of the state, but also – and perhaps primarily so – because the private sphere became the area where crucial matters unfolded – those lending meaning to individual life: building one’s social position, finding love, as well as achieving a sense of security and fulfilment.

44  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt Such elevation of privacy to the rank of a major domain in an individual’s life and – paradoxically, given all the restrictions imposed on family life – basically the only area in which one could feel at ease and capable of taking independent decisions, engulfed all Western countries and survived, along with the idealization of family, all changes in the modern form of sociality, beginning from the bourgeois society to the middle class one. However, as I have already indicated, the idealization of family was, from the very beginning, related to the growth of conflicts within it, especially ones affecting the relationship between men and women. These conflicts would gradually erode the traditional way in which families functioned, i.e. the mode subordinated to satisfying the basic existential needs and regulated by duties determining the actions of all family members. From the beginning of the twentieth century, this process was augmented by the fact that individuals’ desires began to gradually come to the fore. Democratization of desires – mass society The replacement of needs and duties with desires as the basic factor driving human actions is the “invention” of mass society. Certainly, just like in the previous case, one could note here the fact that this process is rooted in earlier changes and events. Undoubtedly, the most important ones would include the aforementioned growth of prosperity, which continued throughout the nineteenth century and benefitted all classes and estates (cf. Johnson 1991, 872–879). Its financial dimension released means that could be spent on more than merely satisfying the basic human needs or endeavours to increase wealth, while its technological dimension provided cheap goods and more free time that could be used according to one’s wishes.27 However, to find new uses for all of these changes in the material domain, it was necessary to free individuals from the vicious circle of duties to family and business, and consequently to basically change the language in which people could articulate their aspirations, describe their relationships with others, and formulate their life goals. Such a language was provided by Romanticism, to which we owe not only the first modern way of conceiving the entirety of our spiritual life (cf. Gergen 1991), but also the foregrounding of individual experiences and desires as the fundamental frame of reference for our actions. Romanticism rebelled against the Enlightenment, which it associated with the dominance of reason, logic, and rationalism. Thus, the Romantic language was primarily one of passion, inner experience, and deep engagement with interpersonal relations, or – strictly speaking – one specific category: love. Romanticism foregrounded love as the deepest communion of souls, alongside friendship, which demands unconditional acceptance and devotion, as well as patriotism, understood as the specific relation arising between individuals and their homeland, a relation assuming a readiness for the greatest sacrifice in the name of this abstract entity. Let us draw attention to the fact that the constituting factor in all these relations is what the engaged individual experiences deep inside. Poems that Byron wrote to the women he loved speak more of his own spiritual condition

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  45 than of the objects of his feelings, just like the subject of Goethe’s famous novel is “the sorrows of young Werther”, rather than the events that led to this emotional state. The patriotism of Romanic characters is not really based on identification with the people that make up any one nation, but focuses on their spiritual connection with the idealized Fatherland, usually personified, somewhat paradoxically, by a female figure. In this way, Romanticism introduced an enlarged and egotistic Self onto the stage of modern spirituality, which became a framework for judging everything that happens around it. This Self perceives reality primarily from the angle of idealized experiences that generate equally idealized desires. In a nutshell, Romantic spirituality does not seek the meaning of life in everyday hustle and bustle, but rather in the escalation of experiences produced by an exalted imagination working at full steam. This constitutes a profound change in relation to the spiritual life that preceded modernity. “Pre-modern spirituality”, Agata Bielik-Robson argues, “was not preoccupied with the meaning of life, but rather with finding the right place and path in an already laid-out cosmos” (2001, xiv). The belief that the order of existence contains a hidden answer for all people, and that all people have been assigned a proper place in it, is characteristic for the traditional society in all its diverse incarnations. Romanticism, on the other hand, rejects the existence of a natural order of things and introduces in its place a subjective, imagined ideal, without taking into account any material limitations while striving to realize it. Romantic love does not acknowledge any necessities arising from everyday life in a marriage, such as doing the laundry or preparing meals. Romantic suffering does not accept that one can be equally in pain due to toothache, while Romantic patriotism does not bother to consider whether the desired death for the Fatherland would actually benefit it in any way. This process of moving from notions of a natural order of things to notions guided by a certain desired ideal was naturally stretched in time and interspersed with reminders of a harsh reality, especially in periods of socio-economic crises. One needs also to remember that Romanticism did not develop in a cultural vacuum – its ideas had to compete with those proclaimed by religious and political reformers; moreover, while being disseminated, Romantic concepts would be intercepted and transformed by the broader public. Basically, the entire nineteenth century was an arena for the struggle between those referring to the “natural” basis of such historical social solutions as the level of wages, division of roles within the society and the family, the destinies of men and women, and those referring to the concepts of social justice, equality of all people, and the individuals’ right to freely shape their own fate. Throughout the nineteenth century, sophisticated ideas developed by poets and thinkers were being transformed and distorted in the process of being translated into a language more easily understood by the growing audience of popular, “mass” literature, constantly enlarged through increasing access to education. Regardless of the obstacles, the process of disseminating these ideas and their assimilation proceeded further, mainly fuelled by larger socio-economic processes

46  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt that uprooted individuals from their local communities and undercut the belief about any natural order that would predefine people’s position in life. Modernity thus arrived accompanied by “a sense of dislocation strong enough to shatter the image of the universe as the Father’s house, in which all beings have their place” (Bielik-Robson 2001, xiv). This all-encompassing sense of dislocation, involving not only increasing geographical mobility but also – and perhaps primarily – the deep social changes that shattered the society’s structural order, made it impossible to sustain the kind of image of the world in which the humanity’s only task would be “to identify one’s proper locum, which determines the shape of life and all duties of the individual” (xiv). This was augmented by the fact that cultural transformations driven by advancing secularization – extracting large areas of social life from the reign of religion – further hindered sustaining the universal meanings and values guiding one’s entire life. As a result of all these changes, individuals are no longer capable of finding their place in the existing plan of the universe, because it became obscured and fragmentary, with increasingly large segments subjected to human designs – not divine ones. This turn towards the human being as the major agent of life on Earth is naturally related to ideas introduced earlier, during the Enlightenment, which were further strengthened by the development of science, becoming the base for people’s nascent sense of agency. However, it is even more important that it directed people’s attention towards that which would constitute their unique identity. As Charles Taylor rightly observed, “the notion of individual difference is, of course, not new. . . . What is new is the idea that this really makes a difference to how we are called on to live. The differences are not just unimportant variations within the same basic human nature; or else moral differences between good and bad individuals. Rather they entail that each one of us has an original path which we ought to tread; they lay the obligation on each of us to live up to our originality” (2001, 375). Romanticism played a crucial role in elevating this individual difference and drawing attention to individual desires, which demanded the rejection of social limitations and the belief in a pre-set order of life. Its influence was strengthened by entirely mundane changes occurring in people’s immediate life space. The charms of privacy discovered by the bourgeois society, supported with doctors’ recommendations, led to the creation of separate rooms, personalized appliances and vessels, and most importantly – separate beds.28 As Alain Corbain emphasizes, “the new solitude of the single bed strengthened the sense of individuality and independence and made room for inner monologue. The modalities of prayer, the forms of reverie, the conditions of sleep and wakefulness, and the experience of dreams and nightmares were dramatically altered” (1990, 480). It is crucial that all these factors of change – ones related to both the sphere of ideas and the material dimension – extended to not just the upper classes, but the entire population, though to a various degree, which is a problem I shall return to later. At the beginning of the twentieth century, their collective impact resulted in what José Ortega y Gasset has called the revolt of the masses (1960).

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  47 In order to properly grasp this phenomenon, it is vital to recall that even though Ortega y Gasset juxtaposes the masses with the aristocracy, he develops both of these concepts not in structural but in psychological terms. In other words, he refers to the aristocracy of the spirit rather than the fact of being born to a noble family, and to the “massification” of psyche rather than being “of the people”. As he argues, “mass . . . is not to be specially understood as the workers; it does not indicate a social class, but a kind of man to be found today in all social classes” (1960, 108; emphasis added) – “strictly speaking, within both these social classes [upper and lower], there are to be found mass and genuine minority” (16). This minority consists of people who undertake tasks that go beyond elementary ­matters of everyday life – “those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties” (15), and thanks to these become unique. Masses, in turn, comprise people who are not distinguished in any way, people who are “just like everyone else”, merely “repeating in themselves a generic type” (14), and – perhaps most importantly – who are not worried about being average or bland; these are individuals “for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves” (15). At first glance it might seem that aristocracy would be closer to the Romantic ideals owing to the individual uniqueness of its representatives. However, upon closer inspection it becomes clear that what Ortega y Gasset calls aristocracy contradicts the Romantic individualism fuelled by the desire to seek ever newer experiences. Aristocrats of the spirit are individualized, but they are not individualists – they feel bound by the rules that are legitimized not by individual desires but by a certain superior moral order (not necessarily a religious one); moreover, they feel responsible for the shape of social life. Paradoxically, it is the mass that becomes the heir to Romanticism and its emphasis on “inwardness”, its concentration on the individuals’ internal experiences, which will ultimately constitute the only justification of their actions. It is an entirely different matter that these experiences have little to do with Romantic raptures. It could not be otherwise since – as Ortega y Gasset notes – massified individuals remain locked in the world of their superstitions, unable to confront their opinions with reality or to listen to other people and engage in discussions with them. They are, in a sense, a caricature of Romantic individualism, with which they are nevertheless connected not only thanks to becoming enclosed in an internal world and cut off from reality, but also due to another key characteristic – the fact of ignoring the higher ethical principles that place some obligations on the individual with regard to broader communities and societies as superior wholes. This is what the “revolt of the masses” consists of. As Ortega y Gasset argues, it manifests in the fact that “the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will” (18). The revolt of the masses, based on relative democratization of access to prosperity, therefore boils down to the specific democratization of desires, which cease to be based on the spiritualization of experiences and take root in the trivial “I want”.

48  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt According to Ortega y Gasset, the mass person emerging from the bourgeois society is akin to a spoilt child who is allowed to do whatever it wants and thinks it can demand anything. Guided solely by its own desires, the mass person is unrestrained by any higher principles due to the collapse of all authorities represented by the aristocracy of the spirit. Perhaps they might not even have collapsed entirely, but they are unable to develop under pressure of the prevailing masses. As Ortega y Gasset notes, “a characteristic of our times is the predominance, even in groups traditionally selective, of the mass and the vulgar. Thus, in the intellectual life, which of its essence requires and presupposes qualification, one can note the progressive triumph of the pseudo-intellectual, unqualified, unqualifiable, and, by their very mental texture, disqualified. Similarly, in the surviving groups of the ‘nobility’, male and female” (16). In the process of cultural transformations he analyzed, Ortega y Gasset discerned something that Sigmund Freud, his contemporary, could only have had an inkling of when he formulated his concept of an irresolvable conflict between the id and the superego, i.e. between natural drives and restrictions imposed by culture. Freud was an alarmed representative of the old order, one typified by the concept of the bourgeois society and based on indisputable principles culturally enforced on individuals. He bemoaned the psychological costs that individuals paid due to the dominance of the punishing superego, but simultaneously argued that unrestrained fulfilment of individual desires would lead to the collapse of society. Younger than Freud, Ortega y Gasset regarded the changes he himself participated in as a harbinger of the id’s triumph over the superego – a premonition of the dominance of unrestrained desires over the restrictions subordinating individuals to the superior social whole. At the same time, his writings herald the third social “invention” – one related to the concept of the middle class society and consisting in lifestyle as the basic factor structuring society, which replaced the classic factors that used to define social divisions, such as birth or class. What characterizes the masses, after all, is the individual susceptibility to adopt some innovations in customs, which are of secondary importance to the social life but can serve as an expression of the caricatured Romantic individualism. Vive la petite différence! – middle class society The concept of lifestyle was introduced to sociology by Max Weber (1978, 302–307) in his polemic with the Marxist account of social differentiation as ­universally based on the category of classes distinguished through economic relations. Weber concluded that the structure of the traditional society, based on the criterion of birth, opposed individual categories of the population not in terms of their interests, but in terms of “honour”. Cultivating a specific lifestyle was for him an expression of honour and hence a signal of belonging to a particular estate. He also drew attention to the fact that, despite changes connected with the transition to modernity, the differentiation of lifestyles at the basis of the class society never really lost its significance, although it ceased to be a structuring factor.

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  49 According to Weber, it even resurfaced in the democratized America of his times, where the upper classes attempted to retain the concept of high society, isolating themselves in their own circle determined by birth and sustained through marriages between the so-called “good families”. However, it is possible to argue that this was not a matter of revival – this tendency had never really gone away. As Norbert Elias demonstrates (2000), the distinctive functions of a lifestyle that is characteristic of the upper classes has always tempted the “low-born” striving to appropriate the symbols of high status. Elias perfectly captures this coupling, which has driven the transformations of customs in the West, by describing the unceasing efforts on the part of court elites to invent habits, rules of behaviour, and fashions that would be limited strictly to their own circle, thus testifying to their uniqueness, and the equally unceasing efforts on the part of ordinary people to raise their status by imitating these symbolic indicators of high social standing. Changes connected with the transition to modernity, which eliminated estate differentiation, did not stop the rush to pretend to be somebody of a higher status, which is perhaps best displayed by the group called the nouveau riche. However, it needs to be remembered that this rush would always involve the category of the population constituting an intermediate layer between the society’s “high” and “low” – one that could afford, at least due to having appropriate financial means, to imitate the behaviour of the upper classes. In the mediaeval society it was the burgher’s estate, which gained a dominant position in the nineteenth century, thanks to technological and political changes. However, along with the advancement of the Industrial Revolution, social differentiation kept undergoing further modifications. A new class division emerged, one locking the two basic classes in an irresolvable conflict: owners of the means of production, or capitalists, and the working class, or the proletarians, who – as Marx vividly put it – “have nothing to lose but their chains”. Beginning with the second half of the twentieth century, Marx’s diagnosis regarding the existence of a fundamental class conflict that threatened the stability of the capitalist society was accepted by practically all thinkers of the period, regardless of their political orientation.29 One needs to keep in mind that at the root of this conflict there are, on the one hand, backbreaking working conditions, and on the other – the appropriation of the entire profit by the capitalists. Philanthropy, self-organization within the working class, which gradually led to establishing the trade unions, and state legislation, caused the situation to change, gradually leading to the emergence of mass society. Nevertheless, “[u]ntil around 1950, the homes of the well-to-do differed markedly from those of the poor. The wealthy had spare rooms for receiving guests, a kitchen and other service rooms, a bedroom for each family member, and often additional rooms as well. . . . Working-class housing bore little resemblance to the grand apartments of the bourgeoisie. Workers and peasants often lived cramped into one or two rooms” (Prost 1991, 52). Differences in the social position were also marked in the arrangement of public spaces and interactions between representatives of the two classes. As Irena Krzywicka recalls in her account of life

50  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt in pre-war Warsaw, “[e]verybody in our tenement house had handmaids. The socalled “kitchen” stairs were built with them in mind. One could be a democrat, a socialist, or a communist, but the ties of old customs were so strong that it was unimaginable for a servant to use the main staircase, fail to kiss her lady’s hand, or allow herself to sit down in her presence” (1995, 92). Without negating the significance that Marxist class division had for the formation of differences in interests, and thus for shaping the fundamental conflict in modern society, we should underline here that it was simultaneously a deep cultural division, one manifesting in different lifestyles, goals, and ways of perceiving reality. It is even possible to say that these cultural differences contributed to sustaining the existing social order to a greater extent than the power monopoly of the bourgeoisie, which used the police and sometimes even the military to uphold “social peace”. This becomes especially clear if we take into account that both those segments of society had limited possibilities of contact. Neither the working class’s generalized distrust of the owners (cf. Hoggart 1960), nor the spatial segregation manifesting in the urban division into “better” neighbourhoods, housing developments near factories, and the slums,30 favoured closer interactions. Essentially, both groups came into contact mainly through lower-ranking clerks and minor representatives of state authorities. These people constituted a significant part of the gradually developing new middle class. It grew in size in the shadow of the fundamental class conflict, along with economic growth, the extension of the areas of state activity, and changes in production connected with what is referred to as the revolution in management or the revolution in productivity. It is the latter – the productivity revolution, which was largely the result of Frederick Taylor’s studies – that is regarded by Peter Drucker (1994) as a major factor helping to overcome “the inevitable contradictions of capitalism”, and to completely remodel the society. In the several years following a wider popularization of Taylor’s method, productivity began to grow about 3.5–4 per cent every year, which meant that production was doubled within about eighteen years. As Drucker emphasizes, it is important in this context that – contrary to the popular view – Taylor was not seeking a method to increase productivity, but was rather led to study work due to “his shock at the mutual and growing hatred between capitalists and workers, which had come to dominate the late nineteenth century” (1994, 31). Drucker draws attention to the fact that although the Industrial Revolution made production cheaper by introducing machines, workers themselves were no more productive than slaves toiling in the workshops of ancient Greece or building roads in the Roman Empire. When Taylor started his studies, nine out of ten workers would perform physical tasks – producing and moving wares in factories, mines, farms, and during transportation. Taylor’s approach to work as an activity that comprised movements whose performance can be made more efficient thanks to scientific analysis met with resistance on the part of trade unions that engaged the few skilled workers of the time, because they feared it would deprive them of the basis for claims to higher wages. However, it also sparked controversy among

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  51 capitalists, because professional management required consultations with workers and thus meant a departure from the model in which the owner retains direct control over production. Therefore, the growth of the middle class was related to overcoming this resistance and moving away from direct management of production by the owners,31 which was accompanied by the increase in the number of supervisory staff. However, the middle class was also growing numerically as a result of the changes in the role of the state as it took on more and more responsibility with regard to such areas as education, defence, healthcare, as well as maintaining order and administration of the modern society. The growth of the state apparatus and state-related institutions was therefore the second factor – beside changes in production – that contributed to the growth of the middle class. Finally, the third factor involved the aforementioned financial crises, which would recur throughout the nineteenth century, economically degrading parts of the old middle class, i.e. the bourgeoisie. The transition to mass society, which occurred in the 1930s, was not ushered in by workers pushing up the ladder, or – as Shils put it – by the periphery entering the centre of society. It was primarily caused by the pauperization of the middle class, and the growing anxiety of these minor clerks, traders, middlemen, shop assistants, and craftsmen, who were a group positioned in between the bourgeoisie and the working class. It was this new middle class that became – as Fromm demonstrates on the example of Nazi Germany (1969) – the main support of mass society in its most archetypal incarnation of fascist movements. All three aforementioned factors operating within the bourgeois society concern primarily the “prehistory” of middle class society, which finally emerged in the 1950s. However, it is important to take this prehistory into account if we wish to understand the role which the concept of lifestyle played in the development of the last typification of modernity’s transformations. After all, it is the struggle to differentiate itself from the lower classes and retain a distinct lifestyle in the face of changing economic conditions that has always characterized the middle class, whose representatives have lived under a constant threat of social degradation. This threat has been very real, especially for the lower strata of the middle class, forced to struggle in order to “retain social distance with regard to the workers” (Domański 1994, 135), to whom they would come dangerously close in terms of material conditions of life, which changed significantly along with the development of capitalism. Two phenomena played a particularly important role in this process. The first was the rise of the overall quality of life, which allowed Peter L. Berger to formulate the thesis that “[a]dvanced industrial capitalism has generated and continues to generate the highest material standard of living for large masses of people in human history” (1986, 43). The second was the accompanying decline in economic inequalities. As Berger emphasizes, “[a] s technological modernization and economic growth perdure over time, inequalities in income and wealth first increase sharply, then decline sharply, and then remain at a relatively stable plateau” (46). The co-occurrence of these processes

52  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt gave the lower classes access to material goods whose use would previously designate higher social status.32 This was particularly threatening to the lower strata of the middle class because they had similar financial means at their disposal and were thus unable to climb higher in the social hierarchy only through consumption. Consequently, in order to defend their social status, members of this social group would begin to emphasize the significance of second-order factors determining status, and adopt a specific lifestyle, which would involve cultivating good manners and adequate forms of behaviour in public situations, a particular way of dressing and styling one’s hair, furnishing their apartments and spending their free time in a way that attempted to imitate the upper classes. As Henryk Domański notes, “symbols of prestige . . . would give them a sense of superiority with regard to the lower classes, while members of the lower middle classes would try to prove, at all costs, that they are people of success and have achieved at least as much as is possible by having at the disposal [their] skills, ambition, and the will to advance” (1994, 135). These costs would be occasionally quite high because, given the limited resources, keeping up appearances must have often involved radical cutting of expenses in the private life led behind closed doors. However, along with the general rise in the quality of life, such sacrifices became less frequent, while having access to knowledge about the distinctive functions of style became more important. This was particularly underlined by Pierre Bourdieu (1986, 2010), who focuses in his works on the analysis of cultural and structural mechanisms that facilitated the reproduction of social inequalities in contemporary societies. The concept of “cultural capital” he has introduced (Bourdieu 1986; Bourdieu and Passeron 2000) emphasizes the economic significance of knowledge, qualifications, competences, and the resulting differences in the spheres of values, opinions, and preferences. It has allowed one to analyze how individuals struggle to improve their social position by manipulating the cultural representations of their place within the social space. I shall later return to Bourdieu’s model – based on the assumption that tastes and cultural preferences are used by people as signs of distinction and markers of social position.33 Now I would only like to emphasize that along with these contemporary transformations of modern society, which are referred to as the transition from “the inequality of privation” to “the inequality of wealth”,34 the lifestyle began to gradually lose its significance as a marker of one’s status in the objectified social structure (cf. Lamont 1992). This is because middle class society, which emerged in its contemporary form only after the Second World War, “during the great economic boom of the 1950s” (Domański 1994, 61), became the “majority class” (as Ralf Dahrendorf calls it) and its characteristic lifestyle began to disappear. Paradoxically, however, it was at that time that the concept of lifestyle began to serve as one of the key descriptive categories for sociologists used to account for the choices made by large numbers of people whose differentiation could not already be explained by referring to any “objective” determinants of social position.

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  53

Continuity or change – contemporary society “All around the world, society is undergoing radical change”, Ulrich Beck and Christoph Lau note in a text published at the beginning of the twenty-first century, “radical in the sense that it poses a challenge to Enlightenment-based modernity and opens up a space in which people choose new and unexpected forms of the social and the political” (2005, 525). A sense of profound change began to be acutely felt at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. A number of works were published at the time whose authors attempted to grasp the specificity of this change by referring to the concept of postmodernity. Some of them focused in their analyses on the transformations of the social structures. For example, David Harvey (1995) characterizes postmodernity primarily in terms of changes in production that engendered changes in the areas of work, ideology, and the role of the state, as well as in terms of ways of using time and space. For others, such as Zygmunt Bauman (1997), the fundamental characteristic of postmodernity consists in unrestrained individual freedom, and they focus on describing changes in how individuals function. However, as I already mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, the status of these changes and therefore the answer to the question whether we are really dealing with an entirely new form of socializing human actions or just another mutation of a basically unchanged modern pattern (as in the case of the typifications discussed in this chapter), remains open to a debate, in which Ulrich Beck plays the role of the most fervent defender of the latter position. Despite emphasizing the radicalism and depth of changes experienced today, Ulrich Beck and Christoph Lau argue that “all Western societies are still ‘modern’ societies . . . because there has been no clear break with the basic principles of modernity but rather a transformation of basic institutions of modernity (for example, the nation-state and the nuclear family)” (2005, 526). Among these “basic principles”, Beck and his colleagues list: the principle that “decisions can and must be backed up by rational reasons;” the lasting importance of the principle of statehood (despite the changes in the nation state) as the basis for socio-political organization; and finally, “the principle of individual reproduction through gainful employment, the principle of egalitarianism, the principle of functional inclusion and the demarcation of nature from society” (532). In another, slightly earlier text, “the premises of first modern society” are thought to include such characteristics as “programmatic individualization” and the “principle of functional differentiation”, which finds expression in the emergence of various social subsystems, leading to the increasing complexity of society as a whole (Beck, Bonss, and Lau 2003, 5). According to Beck and Lau, it is the presence of these basic principles that allows us to claim that modernity continues despite radical institutional changes to this form of sociality. These institutional changes should be treated merely as “unforeseen consequences, not of the crisis but of the victory of the first, simple, linear, industrial modernization based on the nation-state” (2005, 526; emphasis preserved). The “second modernity” that emerges from them arises in the

54  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt process of “reflexive modernization”, described as a process in which “radicalized modernization consumes the foundations of first modernity and transforms its institutions and its frame of reference, often in a way that is neither desired nor anticipated” (526). It may seem strange that Beck’s main argument supporting the thesis about the lasting modernity is the fact that it undergoes far-reaching changes. This apparent contradiction is resolved, however, if we assume that the basic feature of modernity is precisely the capability of reflexive modernization, i.e. of reforming itself, which consists in conscious and rational introduction of new solutions which are to eliminate unwelcome repercussions of the earlier solutions, and which would not only change the latter but also create other unwelcome effects, which call for further solutions etc.35 As a result of such “modernizing of modernity”, which has continued since the emergence of this form of organizing social life, modernity has been changing beyond recognition, nevertheless still retaining these basic principles that give it its identity and the ability to reflexively modernize itself. Without engaging in a more detailed polemic with the position represented by Beck and his colleagues,36 I merely wish to point out that the process of “reflexive modernization” understood in this way could also easily be ascribed to the traditional society or even regarded as characterizing the entire history of human societies. After all, it describes nothing else than the unceasing process of socializing individual actions, in the course of which some institutions are created, giving some parts of the population an advantage, which turns them into the object of “modernizing” endeavours by other parts of the population etc., with the whole process occurring in a specific environment and involving the use of particular symbolic representations which are themselves undergoing changes. As an entity created in the course of socializing individual actions, every society changes continuously by its very definition, at the same time retaining some of its properties, at least due to the intergenerational transmission of habits that sustain these actions. Thus, in the debate whether postmodernity is a continuation of existing forms of sociality or a radical breakaway from them, the fundamental question is not one about the degree to which contemporary society has retained certain features characteristic for the nineteenth-century variant of the modern one, but whether these features perform the same role today, or – to put it in slightly different terms – whether they have the same meaning. An identical problem emerges when we take individual characteristics as the starting point for describing the contemporary era. In an excellent book under the perverse title The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (1987), which refers to the famous work by Max Weber, Colin Campbell links the rise of contemporary consumerism with the emergence of Romanticism at the turn of the nineteenth century. This thesis might seem absurd at first, because one would rather think that there could be nothing more different than the exalted, spiritual Romanticism on the one hand, and the mundane consumerism oriented merely towards obtaining material things on the other. As Campbell argues, however, the conviction that today’s consumers are fuelled by an insatiable appetite for purchasing objects signals incomprehension of the mechanisms hidden behind

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  55 human appetite for goods. Campbell demonstrates that it is rather the other way around: what motivates us to buy more and more products is the desire to experience, in reality, those pleasurable or exciting situations that we had previously enjoyed only in our imagination. In other words, according to Campbell, individuals who indulge in consumerism do not expect any of their needs to be satisfied, but rather hope to enjoy the pleasure coming from imagined experiences they associate with the purchased products. “The essential activity of consumption is thus not the actual selection, purchase or use of products, but the imaginative pleasure-seeking to which the product image lends itself, ‘real’ consumption being largely a resultant of this ‘mentalistic’ hedonism” (89). Crucially, this pleasure is associated with things that are new rather than with the ones we already know. The novelty of the product helps us believe that purchasing it will bring the kind of excitement we have never experienced before, thus intensifying our experience of idealized pleasure. Actual consumption always brings disillusionment – real coffee is invariably less aromatic than the one shown in advertisements, the actual designer suit or costume usually looks worse on us than it does on models. The pursuit of novelty is in fact a pursuit of pleasures that keep eluding us and which we can experience only while imagining the act of consumption, not during its actual fulfilment. In Campbell’s view, it was Romanticism that contributed to the development of this approach. “In particular, romantic teachings concerning the good, the true and the beautiful, provide both the legitimation and the motivation necessary for modern consumer behaviour to become prevalent throughout the contemporary industrial world” (206). He does not limit himself to the thesis that Romanticism is the origin of this attitude, which would be concurrent with the thesis about moving from needs and duties to desires (as analyzed earlier), but goes further, arguing that “romanticism has continued in the two centuries or so since that time to work in such a way as to overcome the forces of traditionalism and provide a renewed impetus to the dynamic of consumerism. . . . One can observe such connections in the 1890s, the 1920s, and the 1960s; the “naughty nineties”, “the jazz age” and “the swinging sixties” all revealing essentially the same characteristic features” (206). It is thus possible to say  – given all the differences in terms of the scope of research and the essence of proposed explanations – that Campbell’s “Romanticism” serves a similar function as Beck’s “basic principles of modernity”, insofar as it supports the thesis about the fundamental continuity of social life throughout modernity. And just like it was the case with Beck, we should conclude that a demonstration of similarities between the processes that have occurred in different historical periods does not necessarily mean that these processes performed identical roles in their epochs.37 After all, in both cases, that which lends a specific meaning to the characteristics distinguished by scholars does not boil down to some immanent property – e.g. some inherent “romanticism” as the essence of Romanticism, or particular “basic principles” as the essence of modernity – but is related to the way in which they are incorporated into the ongoing, ceaseless processes of socializing individual actions. In other words, the characteristics

56  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt ascribed to individuals and the properties ascribed to society acquire their specific meaning only in particular contexts, in which relational ties are activated, reproducing specific configurations of coordinated actions. One could assume that for the contemporary society the broadest context of individual actions is determined by the three “inventions” of modernity discussed earlier. The dominance of the private sphere over the public one as the main area of individuals’ actions, the dominance of desires over needs and duties in the role of the fundamental mechanism driving these actions, and the dominance of lifestyle over “objective” determinants of one’s place in the social structure in the role of the factor defining the individual’s social position – all of these certainly affected the development of contemporary conditions for human actions, affecting their character and consequently the character of individuals who perform these actions. At this point we could conclude, therefore, that these conditions, which developed in the course of transformations of the modern society, are responsible for individualization processes and force people to ceaselessly make choices – a conclusion that currently seems to be the most popular way of accounting for how individuals function in today’s world. The temptation to follow this path can be resisted, however, once we realize that such a conclusion does not really fit the problem from which the present analysis began. Invoking the concept of individualization does not bring us any closer to answering the question about the specific “otherness” of contemporary society’s modernity, or the one whether (and to what extent) this “otherness” constitutes a new quality in the process of transforming the form of sociality developed by individuals. One could even say that this drives us further away from answering these questions because the accentuation of individualization processes suggests the existence of a far-reaching process of de-socializing human actions, both in an individual and in a collective dimension, which not only entangles us in a contradiction with the assumptions made in the first chapter, but also casts doubt on the very existence of society as such. Further engagement with the vast subject of individualization processes can also be prevented by this assumption regarding the contextual character of the features ascribed to society. All three “inventions” of modernity have been so far analyzed here within the frameworks of those specific historical contexts that are typified in the concepts of bourgeois, mass, and middle class society. One could thus assume in advance that “privacy”, “desires” and “lifestyle” – characteristics which lay at the foundation of contemporary forms of socializing human actions – are now something else than what they were at the moment when they first emerged. Thus, in order to steer clear of these reefs and make a safe passage between the Charybdis of psychologized individualism and the Scylla of ahistorical sociologism, we ought to begin our analysis of contemporary social life by distinguishing the generic experiences imposed on people through the shape of the present social environment. After all, they constitute the fundamental factor that activates specific habits and, as a consequence, contributes to the consolidation or alteration of cognitive schemes. By “generic” I mean here those experiences that are common

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  57 to all contemporary people – experiences that are not typified in social representations created in lower-order social milieus, such as particular societies, groups, or social organizations. It is the distinguishing of such generic, untypified experiences which are prototypical for today’s society that ought to become the starting point for the analyses of both currently prevailing individual characteristics that direct human actions, and the resulting structural properties of the specific form of sociality that is, or could be, the postmodern society.

Notes 1 The popularity of this attitude is confirmed by the reactions to the provocation engineered by the mathematician and physicist Alan Sokal, who submitted a hoax paper to a popular American journal of cultural studies, Social Text. His article – a parody of the discourse endorsed by the journal – was made up of quotations from works by representatives of so-called “postmodernism” in contemporary social sciences, and was published in all seriousness. As the authors of Fashionable Nonsense recall, “[m]any researchers in the humanities and social sciences wrote to Sokal, sometimes very movingly, to thank him for what he had done and to express their own rejection of the postmodernist and relativist tendencies dominating large parts of their disciplines” (Sokal and Bricmont 1998, 2). 2 It is perhaps fair to note here that scientific gibberish is a universal phenomenon that has existed since the dawn of science. Its “postmodernist” variant is in no way different from the “scientistic” one supported by statistical data and accepted in social sciences without any greater reservations. 3 This process could, at the same time, take the form of ascribing new meanings to ­currently existing terms, which was the case with “postmodernism” itself – originally, it referred to transformations that were taking place in culture and, in particular, in broadly understood art (cf. Harvey 1995; Lyotard 1983). 4 This has been observed by Krishan Kumar, who argues that “[t]he primary, or at least initial, meaning of post-modernism must be that it is not modernism, not modernity” (1995, 66). However, the only conclusion he draws from this is that “modernity is over” – though this may be true, the statement cannot be justified by its own premise. 5 Weber (2005) addresses this directly, introducing the concept of intra-world a­ sceticism, in opposition to earlier, dominant forms of asceticism that were oriented towards life after death. On the other hand, Huizinga points out in The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1996) that greed – a crude variant of acquisitiveness – was a key trait of that epoch. 6 “In the decade 1815–25 more securities were floated than in the whole of the preceding century. Most of this credit was raised in London, with the House of Rothschild in the vanguard”, Johnson writes, pointing out that “European financial techniques were quickly copied and embellished” in the USA (1991, 851). 7 For example, when David Ricardo, co-creator of the free market, started a campaign for reinstating gold currency, he was still an active financier who had a vital interest in supporting the stable foundations of the Bank of England, an institution that was a guarantor for the repayment of loans taken out by the state, which Ricardo, as a stockbroker, traded in. 8 Naturally, a major portion of that prosperity was secured by the upper classes. However, as Johnson argues (1991, 872–879), a relative increase in the standard of living was experienced by all social classes (cf. also Berger 1986). 9 During the crisis, the worst losses were suffered primarily by representatives of the upper classes and intellectual elites, who eagerly pursued financial speculation and played the stock market.

58  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt 10 Nowadays, this polemic has taken the shape of the debate between those in favour of radical economic liberalism, quoting works by von Hayek, and those in favour of various forms of interventionism, quoting the classical works by Keynes. As the latter emphasize, throughout the period when interventionism prevailed, shaping the policies of most Western countries, from Roosevelt’s New Deal to at least the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and then George Bush began to implement supply-side economics, Western economies managed to avoid crashes on the scale of the Great Depression or the 1825 crisis discussed here. 11 One needs to remember that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, England – the cradle of contemporary parliamentary democracy – was a country where only around 3 per cent of adult citizens had voting rights. 12 The first edition of Arendt’s book was published in 1951, while Mills’s in 1956. It is worth noting here that this “intellectual triumph” of mass society concept came at a moment when this form of sociality began to give way to the next one, which is discussed later. 13 Mills juxtaposes the classical, eighteenth-century concept of the public as a group of citizens engaged in free discussion on public matters with mass society understood as a group of individuals who adopt opinions, without any reflection, from the mass media, which they cannot in any way control. 14 Institutional solutions similar to those espoused by the fascists had been introduced two decades earlier by communism. 15 Characteristically, this approach enjoyed great popularity throughout the 1950s owing to a study titled The Authoritarian Personality, published by a team of scholars who emigrated from Nazi Germany. The study determined the basic research directions in social sciences for years to come (cf. Adorno et al. 1950). 16 Serge Moscovici moves beyond this division in his immensely interesting study titled The Age of the Crowd (1985), where mass society is presented as an effect of a specific “union” or even an amorous relationship between the masses and political leaders. 17 Kornhauser did not hide that regardless of theoretical contradictions within the very concept of mass society (i.e. the mixing of “aristocratic” and “democratic” ideas), what bothered him about it most was the fact that it could be employed to describe such vastly different socio-political systems as those of the USA and the USSR. In this light, we should agree with Antonina Kłoskowska, who argues that “in his characteristic of mass societies Kornhauser includes an apology of the American regime” (1980, 127). 18 According to Shils, such negative associations with the concept of mass society have their origin primarily in works by authors associated with the Frankfurt School, which had clear Marxist roots. Shils indicates that the earlier, “aristocratic” criticism of mass society was ignored in intellectual circles and it was only Horkheimer, Adorno, and Fromm who gave it a new meaning. Shils also claims that studies by these authors constitute a disguised ideological criticism of the modern capitalist society. In a nutshell, his argument could be summarized thus: when leftist intellectuals could no longer criticize the capitalist society for exploiting the working class, they began to criticize it for its aesthetic choices. 19 This assessment is entirely contradictory to the European tradition. Commenting on the disparities in how mass society is regarded, Jeff Goldfarb (1991) points out the differences in historical experiences among Europeans and Americans, which led to different interpretations of the concept of the masses. In his view, Europeans saw the rise of the masses as a process that brought in fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, while Americans associated it with mass politics, mass production, mass consumption, and securing a dominant global position. It is worth noting here that these differences would become blurred in the 1960s. Shils’s views on the masses were echoed by, for example, the French sociologist Alain Touraine, who wrote that “the entry into

From revolt of the masses to mass revolt  59 industrial civilization is as a general rule bound up with the access to power of the new industrial and urban masses” (1970, 342). 20 This relationship was clearly underlined by the very title of Kornhauser’s book (1961) and by his almost interchangeable use of the concepts of “mass society” and “mass politics”. This does not mean, of course, that events and processes of economic or ­cultural character were less significant. For example, it seems impossible to overstate the effects that the Great Depression had on the social changes and on the development of certain phenomena in the political life of the late 1920s (cf. e.g. Fromm 1969). However, in terms of their influence on the shape of social life, these effects were rather indirect or stretched out in time. 21 This was the slogan of one of the movement’s leaders, Rudy Dutschke, who argued that it is necessary to reform the state by assuming key positions in its institutions. 22 As Gestalt psychology shows, a new form can emerge not only through changes in the individual components that comprise the whole, but also through changes in the relations that connect them (cf. Köhler 1972). 23 For a more detailed account of these two dimensions and their interrelations, see: Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk (2018). 24 The shift that occurred within individual preferences is viewed by Charles Taylor as an “affirmation of ordinary life”, which he considers “one of the most powerful ideas in modern civilization” (2001, 14). 25 The Napoleonic Code defined the woman as “eternally minor”. 26 As Alain Corbain demonstrates, the year 1860 marked a special boundary, bringing together changes in various areas of privacy. “Locked in the private sphere”, Corbain writes, “the bourgeoisie began to suffer from its morality” (1990, 594). 27 In bourgeois circles this expansion of free time was primarily related to the increasingly less laborious character of everyday life, while among the working classes – to the gradually won decline in working hours. As late as the mid-nineteenth century, the average working week for labourers amounted to seventy hours and in many cases went even beyond that (Parker 1976). 28 The division of places to sleep could not have been universal even in the eighteenth century, since one of the guides to good manners published at the time recommends: “If you are forced by unavoidable necessity to share a bed with another person of the same sex on a journey, it is not proper to lie so near him that you disturb or even touch him; and it is still less decent to put your legs between those of the other” (after Elias 2000, 137). 29 It is worth emphasizing here, after Peter Drucker (1994), that an awareness of this division was, paradoxically, developing very slowly among the representatives of the period’s elites. Adam Smith, considered to be the father of capitalist economy, does not really devote any space in The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776) to machines, factories, or industrial production. The capitalism he describes was basically still one characterized by a craft-based mode of production. For Balzac, who wrote in the 1830s, capitalist France was primarily associated with bankers and shareholders. This kind of social blindness is even clearer in Jane Austen, who depicted nineteenth-­century ­English society, which was, after all, the cradle of the transformations that have shaped the modern society since the sixteenth or, as some scholars argue, even since the fifteenth century. Factories and industrial social relations do not emerge in literature until Dickens, whose Hard Times (1854) was the first work to describe a strike in a cotton factory. 30 This division is still visible in the form of cheap housing built by factory owners for factory workers. 31 Towards the end of the eighteenth century, owners constituted 76 per cent of business elite, while the so-called managers merely 5 per cent, but in the years 1891–1920 these proportions were practically inverted – the participation of owners dropped to 18 per

60  From revolt of the masses to mass revolt cent, while that of managers rose to 48 per cent. It is also crucial that whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century education did not differentiate these two groups (with the majority having secondary education), at the turn of the century the managers gained a decisive advantage, with 65 per cent attaining higher education, while a similar percentage of owners (62 per cent) would still have only secondary education or lower (cf. Bendix 1956, 228–230). 32 As Ulrich Beck reports, up until 1950 the price of food, clothes, and accommodation consumed three-fourths of a working-class family budget, but in 1973 this dropped to 60 per cent. In 1950 only 6 per cent of working-class families had their own house or flat, but in 1977–39 per cent. The sum of savings also increased significantly: from 1.2 per cent of income in 1907 to 12.5 per cent in 1974 (after the Polish edition of Risk Society, published in 2002, 118). The essence of these changes is well captured in an anecdote about Roosevelt, quoted by Alain de Botton: asked what book he would give the Russians in order to boast the American society’s advantage, he replied that he would choose the Sears catalogue (2004, 40). 33 All cultural practices, Bourdieu argues, “are automatically classified and classifying, rank-ordered and rank-ordering” (2010, 220). 34 At the level of entire populations, this transition was accompanied by an increase in the disposable income – i.e. what was left when all basic expenses, such as accommodation and food, have been covered – in the households of employees belonging to different social categories. 35 It ought to be noted that Beck, Bonss and Lau expressly emphasize that the concept of reflexivity should not be used in the context of individuals: “ ‘Reflexive’ does not mean that people today lead a more conscious life. On the contrary. ‘Reflexive’ signifies not an ‘increase of mastery and consciousness, but a heightened awareness that mastery is impossible’. Simple modernization becomes reflexive modernization to the extent that it disenchants and then dissolves its own taken-for-granted premises” (2003, 3; emphasis preserved, reference omitted). This makes Beck’s position different from Giddens’s (1991), who also opposes treating the contemporary era as a radical breakaway from modernity, and also uses the term “reflexive”, though he lends it a meaning that primarily accentuates the reflectivity (and not just reflexivity) of individual actions, ones undertaken at both individual and institutional levels. 36 It needs to be emphasized that such a polemic would not affect many detailed claims rooted in empirical findings, to which I turn in this book on many occasions. 37 This should not be regarded as a criticism of Campbell’s work. Unlike Beck, he does not tackle the problem of the “transition to postmodernity”, but rather focuses on demonstrating the “Romantic” character of consumerism as a more general form of human activity.

3 Generic experiences of our times

Interesting place, but there are too many people. Anonymous entry about Paris in TripAdvisor

But they won’t be able to sell it before the world ends! My husband’s reaction when he first entered an American shopping mall towards the end of the 1980s

Information, once rare and cherished like caviar, is now plentiful and taken for granted like potatoes. David Shenk, Data Smog

Threading through the crowd that fills the shopping centre, I feel like screaming. I have been trying to buy a present for my friend for two hours now. Unfortunately, her birthday is in the pre-holiday season. I have already rummaged through heaps of sweaters, earrings, bracelets, brooches, decorative pillows, glass and wood candleholders, utterly unable to decide about purchasing anything. I have tried out at least a dozen fragrances, face powders and lipsticks, and am now shrouded in a haze of nauseating scents. In my bag I am carrying a shawl I really liked an hour ago, but which now seems more and more like the one I bought a month ago and have had no opportunity to wear, because I simply forgot about it. I am now facing rows of television screens. Why would I go in there? Oh yes! I wanted to ask about an electric blanket, a possible Christmas gift for my mother. The TV screens attack me with news about the increasing threat to the Amazon rainforest, about a booby-trap bomb planted under a car in Iran (or was it Iraq?), about a man who invented an ingenious device for opening faulty zip fasteners, about the results of the latest polls (the overwhelming majority – i.e. 29 per cent – is for, with 28 per cent of respondents against, and the rest undecided). My cell phone tells me I have a message saying that 67 per cent of women prefer to buy a cake rather than bake one, and that holiday pastry fair has just started on the other side of the city.

62  Generic experiences of our times Each one of us has experienced the same on innumerable occasions, because we live in a time of excess. Regardless of how we wish to describe contemporary society, its existence has at its foundation great masses of people, goods, and information. It is this quantitative dimension of contemporary society that breeds the specific problems with which every individual has to cope, and which were virtually unknown a century ago. These three quantitative properties constitute the basis of today’s generic experiences. The contemporary society is, first and foremost, a mass of people living in big cities. However, it is not just about cities alone, because a sense of crowding arises not only when we enter a busy shopping mall or a metro station, or when we are stuck in a traffic jam or wander through an airport, but also when we seek refuge from others and struggle to find a spot at a “wild” beach, march in a column of tourists in a Tatra valley, or queue in a line of visitors lured in by the prospect of seeing “a charming chapel hidden in a deserted bend of the Loire River”. Although the experience of crowding has at its basis the multitude of people we come into contact with every day, its essence and consequences cannot be reduced to the purely physical dimension. As a social experience, it also involves a feeling of solitude experienced among a crowd of unknown and usually indifferent people. The second vital property of contemporary society concerns the mass of products on offer. Mass production of various goods both constitutes a factor that motivates us to take actions aimed at gaining access to them (actions that do not necessarily remain within the boundaries of prevailing social norms or relate to the multiplication of income) and creates problems arising from the necessity to make difficult choices when acquiring them. Mechanisms that regulate individual actions in the “economy of excess” are different from ones that were shaped in contexts of shortage, because there has been a change in the functions that consumer goods play in our lives. Finally, the third essential property of contemporary times is the mass of information that reaches us on a daily basis. This phenomenon has not only a quantitative aspect, sometimes referred to as “information swamp”, but also a qualitative one in the form of cultural pluralism, i.e. a wide variety of cultural patterns presented in the mass media or experienced in everyday contacts with people who were raised in different societies. Thus, life in a mass of information on the one hand involves the necessity to develop a strategy that would allow us to process this information, and on the other – exposes individuals to problems arising from cultural diversity. As the foundation of our generic experiences, each of these three properties of contemporary society is doubtless a consequence of economic growth, which began with the emergence of modern society. Its earliest outcome was the growth of population. Already in the nineteenth century the number of Europeans doubled.1 The development of industrial production, especially assembly line production, brought with it an abundance of products. Finally, the contemporary transition from the economy based on production to one based on knowledge – a change induced by deep technological transformations – is accompanied by an abrupt increase in the volume of information. Nevertheless, although all of

Generic experiences of our times  63 these objective transformations have their roots in past economic and technological processes, the generic experiences of modernity are not conditioned only by these processes. Nor is their present reception a simple accumulation of experiences in the bourgeois, mass, or middle class society. As I shall show further, the shaping of these generic experiences is fundamentally conditioned by previously unknown social factors related to the dissolution of formerly dominating modes of socializing individual actions.

The sense of crowding – life in a mass of people As early as the late 1920s, Ortega y Gasset wrote: “Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travellers, cafes full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room” (1960, 11). Reading this passage today, we cannot help but smile ironically, since Ortega y Gasset had little idea what, a hundred years later, it would mean to say that a place is “full” or what could be the trouble with finding one’s place in a crowd of people. He never attended a popular artist’s concert at a football stadium, nor was he forced to get up at four in the morning in order to queue in a line at the office of a doctor who cannot even claim to be “famous”.2 Further, he could not experience the rising frustration, helplessness and aggression that surge when, returning by car from a weekend trip and crawling at the speed of four miles per hour in a tight stream of vehicles, we have to calm down our small children who wish to leave the car (one of them actually has to), at the same time reminding our spouse that it was his or her idea to “take a rest in nature’s bosom” and casting hateful glances at other desperate drivers attempting to squeeze into our line after taking the hard shoulder one mile earlier. Still, it does not suffice to quote the data revealing the quantitative growth of the population, expansion of cities, or intensification of traffic, to conclude – after confronting the observations made by Ortega y Gasset with our own – that it is only today that we are dealing with a “real” escalation of crowding. As psychological studies have shown, a subjective sense of crowding is not necessarily related to the presence of masses, while the presence of masses of people does not automatically lead to a sense of crowding. Certainly, it is easy to arrive at the conclusion that there are too many people in situations when we are directly confronted with larger groups. An average big-city dweller who commutes, at least twice daily, between home and work or school – “with hundreds or t­housands of others, pressing and being pressed toward trains, squeezing and being squeezed into compartments, packed tightly in cramped cars, being moved rather than ­moving” (Kruse 1986, 118) – might fully embrace the opinion expressed by a columnist in a popular daily, who writes that in our collective life we can observe the emergence of symptoms characteristic of concentration camps.3 However, the same average city-dweller could experience entirely different feelings in a crowd

64  Generic experiences of our times of people attending the concert of a popular artist, squeezing through the densely packed pride parade, or going on a pilgrimage to Lourdes alongside thousands of others. The hatred or at least hostile indifference to others gathered in the same limited space could yield in such contexts to a sense of unity, friendship, or at least kind sympathy. Members of such crowds cease to be perceived as competitors and seem more like companions. Although we still do not know the overwhelming majority of the people around us, and nothing relates us to them apart from a superficial similarity of goals that made us gather in the same space (e.g. reach place A and listen to the performance of X), “they” somehow become “we”. This raises the fundamental question of what it is – apart from the objective process measured by the growth of the population – that shapes our sense of ­overcrowding. Answering this question is not easy, because even a brief glance at the literature on this subject reveals that how a subjective sense of crowding is articulated is somewhat related to what particular researchers claim to be the fundamental problem of a given type of society, or its constitutive property. Thomas Malthus, who was the first to study the social effects of the demographic transition accompanying the rise of modernity, regarded the demographic boom experienced by the bourgeois society that was emerging in front of his eyes as a catastrophe not only because it entailed “crowding” access to “naturally” limited means of sustaining humanity, but also – or perhaps even primarily – because it unleashed actions that would endanger, in many ways, the development of the free market that he staunchly supported. Deeply believing that only the free market can solve the problem of poverty, “Malthus denounced the extreme ignorance and folly of many of the higher classes . . . particularly the clergy” (Johnson 1991, 363), i.e. the people who blamed the middle class for scarcity and incited the masses to rebel, thus indirectly inclining the middle class to act in order to lower the cost of food, thus corrupting “pure” market mechanisms. On the other hand, Ortega y Gasset, as quoted earlier, was alarmed not just by the purely quantitative rise of the population, but by the movement of its particular segments within the social space. As he writes, “looking in any direction our eyes meet with the multitudes. Not only in any direction, but precisely in the best places, the relatively refined creation of human culture, previously reserved to lesser groups, in a word, to minorities” (1960, 13; emphasis added). The sense of crowding was related in his view to the necessity of tolerating the presence of “clumsy” people in places that previously attracted only the representatives of “aristocracy of the spirit”. In other words, writing at the time of the formation of mass society, Ortega y Gasset was not concerned with problems of either ­feeding the growing population or reinforcing the free market – he saw crowding primarily as an effect of increased social visibility of the masses. Still other aspects of overcrowding came to the foreground for researchers in the period of the emergence and domination of middle class society. They would not be outraged at the presence of masses in “the best places”. For example, according to Paul M. Insel and Henry Clay Lindgren, “crowding is an inescapable feature of life in an overpopulated world. It is the inevitable result of runaway birth rates, of the burgeoning of great cities and metropolitan areas, and of rapid and

Generic experiences of our times  65 efficient modes of transit” (1978, 1). They immediately add, though, that “crowds are always composed of faceless others. . . . The crowd that is ‘they’ may be quiet and orderly, but pent up within its formless body it holds the possibility of unbridled destructiveness” (2; emphasis added). That last statement carries echoes of anxiety about the potential dangers to orderly, conventional values that were so dear to the representatives of the middle class. This anxiety was also fuelled by the shocking results of a spectacular experiment carried out in the late 1940s by John Calhoun (1962; cf. also E. Hall 1990), who placed a population of rats in an old barn, allowed it to breed uncontrollably, and then observed the intensification of pathological behaviours, which later came to be called “behavioural sink”. Right now, we are seeing another change in how the sense of crowding is problematized. In contemporary psychological research it is assumed that the shared property of such experiences is a sense of losing control – a feeling of being blocked or at least hindered in terms of one’s (potential) actions (Kruse 1986; Werner and Altman 1995). In this approach, a sense of crowding emerges “when individual movement is restricted, behavior alternatives and freedom of decision are limited by spatial and material conditions as well as by overload of social or informational stimuli that exceeds the individual’s capacities” (Kruse 1986, 122). However, this definition does not bring us any closer to solving the problem formulated earlier because it provides no hints that would help us to answer the question why people accept such limitations of control in certain situations, and can even derive some satisfaction from crowding.4 On the other hand, it is easy to notice that emphasis on the loss of control as a basis of the sense of crowding perfectly fits the accentuation of individual autonomy, so characteristic for contemporary social sciences, as the fundamental feature of postmodernity. Let us therefore reverse the direction of analysis: instead of inquiring into the nature of the psychological sense of crowding, we shall examine in detail those social situations which give rise to it. Such a shift of perspective foregrounds two characteristic properties of those historical moments in which crowding began to be the dominant social experience. Richard Sennett draws attention to the first one (2002). Analyzing the processes that occurred in the middle of the eighteenth century – those leading, in his view, to the development of certain important properties of modernity – he ­demonstrates that the fundamental impulse behind them was the rapid influx of “strangers” to London and Paris, the two largest Western cities at that time. Thousands of young people arrived from distant regions of England and France in search of work, attracted by the rapid economic growth in both metropolises, caused by the expansion of international trade, which led to the creation of new jobs and professions in the financial sector as well as in trade and administration.5 This mass of socially uprooted migrants formed a crowd of individuals whose social identity could not be defined anymore in terms proper to the traditional society, i.e. through universally recognizable family names, relationships with other people, or inherited professions. These individuals would be regarded as a growing group of strangers, understood as unknown rather than actually alien.

66  Generic experiences of our times These days we are facing a similar phenomenon. As Manuel Castells shows (2001a), one of today’s characteristic features is the rise of mega-cities: multimillion metropolises that have been growing abruptly since the 1970s.6 They serve a function similar to that played by London and Paris in the period of transition to modernity; as Castells argues, the mega-cities “are the nodes of the global economy, concentrating the directional, productive, and managerial upper functions all over the planet” (434), while being “centers of economic, technological, and social dynamism, in their countries and on the global scale, they are the actual development engines” (440). Just like in the eighteenth century, their development is driven by the influx of people attracted by new  – both real and imagined – perspectives of employment related to the changing directions of economic growth. Still, although this phenomenon is clearest in the case of mega-cities, it also affects – to some extent – all urban organisms that are becoming local centres of gravitation, sucking in and amassing people from less urbanized areas. The sense of crowding experienced under these conditions is thus related not just to the loss of control over one’s actions, but primarily to lack of any clues that would help to localize, possibly unambiguously, other individuals in the social space. Since newcomers bring their own, local habits and are forced to function in new roles even before they have become fully accustomed to them, they cannot be easily classified in social terms on the basis of their clothes, behaviour, and expression, thwarting those processes of social categorization that are at the heart of our contacts with others. This causes them to be regarded as an undetermined mass, especially in situations of anonymity in places where large crowds gather. In this configuration, the sense of crowding ceases to arise from the presence of excessive numbers of people in a given space. On the contrary, as the effect of being bombarded with stimuli that cannot be ordered, it becomes the reason for perceiving these people as a mass. This is related to the second (besides social strange-ness) property of situations giving rise to a sense of crowding: the blurring of social entitlements. Through the classifications we use, we not only categorize others in terms of their social status or belonging, but also hierarchize them in terms that establish the social counterpart of the pecking order. Naturally, depending on their position in this “pecking order”, individuals have greater or lesser control over the actions realized in the presence of others, or – to put it differently – they are more or less dependent in their actions on the co-presence of others in the same social space. From our point of interest, however, it seems much more important that the functioning of social entitlements is an expression of a complex system concerning social recognition and confirmation of all that comprises an individual’s social identity – not only the formal status, but also its evaluation. This aspect of the sense of crowding, most clearly voiced by Ortega y Gasset, comes to the fore when the entitlements enjoyed by a certain social group are appropriated by “unauthorized” people, or when we are denied the entitlements we had thought we deserved. Let us draw attention here to the fact that such social entitlements constitute not only a formal proof of the social recognition of one’s individual status (as in the case of state decorations) or of institutionalized

Generic experiences of our times  67 privileges protecting specific individuals from being lost in the crowd (e.g. VIP lounges at airports), but also – or perhaps even primarily – a large array of behaviours that can be interpreted as more or less clear signs of respect (or disrespect) in more or less random interactions occurring in public places.7 Whether such behaviours are triggered depends, on the one hand, on the explicitness of the system of social norms that regulates any claims to respect, and on the other – on the aforementioned explicitness of external signals that make it possible to socially identify individuals. Both of these properties of social life, which are at the foundation of the sense of crowding, condition and reinforce one another. The ambiguity of external signals that allow for social identification of individuals leads to the appropriation of the entitlements traditionally tied to higher status, in turn making it more difficult to clearly discern the status of others. The process causes the phenomenon that we can call, following Scott Lash, the “de-normalization of roles” (2002a, xi). It is true that, by introducing this concept, Lash wished to capture what he regards as the difference between contemporary times and the mature form of the modern society, which he designates as consisting in the loss of certainty we experience today with regard to the social norms and expectations related to key social roles – norms and expectations that seemed quite obvious no more than fifty or sixty years ago. However, if we adopt a broader temporal perspective, it becomes easy to notice that this de-normalization of social roles does not only characterise the present, but is an indispensable attribute of all transition periods when the basic techniques of living have undergone change, deeply remodelling the former social divisions and/or related grounds for claims to respect.8 It is in periods of intensified social changes of this kind that we observe – as Sennett shows – a rapid rise in the number of “people who are unclear about their own identities, losing traditional images of themselves, or belonging to a new social group that as yet has no clear label” (2002, 48). It is the blurring of former social identities that causes these people – immersed in a nameless mass of other, unclassifiable individuals – to be more inclined to experience a sense of crowding. On the other hand, it is also in these periods that we note the increased probability of forming some social group that begins to supplant the former elites, first by superficially becoming like them, and then by appropriating their rights to organize the social distinctions system, and thus also the individuals’ claims to social respect. As Sennett argues in reference to the formative period in the history of modern society, “[t]he appearance of a new class can thus create a milieu of strangers in which many people are increasingly like each other but don’t know it. There is a sense that the old distinctions, the old lines between one group and another, no longer apply, but little sense of new rules for instant distinctions”9 (49; emphasis added). It seems that we are now facing a similar situation. Daniel Bell (1973) – quoted in the previous chapter – already drew attention to the fact that the transition from the industrial to the post-industrial society entailed a drop in the number of people employed in production and a corresponding rise in the number of those working in services.10 However, as Robert Reich has shown (1992), the transformations of

68  Generic experiences of our times the social structure we witness today go much deeper; they are not limited to shifts in the proportions of the established classes, but lead to the dismantling of old social divisions. According to Reich, the emergence of the so-called “symbolic analysts” (171) – a social class that plays a key role in sustaining the informationprocessing economy and which already at the beginning of the 1990s constituted one fifth of the workforce – has fundamentally altered the rules of social structuration. Even the old professions acquire new meanings and begin to be diversified from within. Reich argues that currently used professional categories “date from an era in which most jobs were as standardized as the products they helped create. Such categories are no longer very helpful for determining what a person actually does on the job and how much that person is likely to earn for doing it” (180). A much more practical way to grasp the logic behind the processes that shape today’s social divisions would be, in his view, to distinguish three general ­categories of work comprising – apart from the already mentioned “symbolic a­ nalysts” – “routine production services” and “in-person services”. This classification shows that, for example, “[o]nly some of the people who are classified as ‘secretaries’ . . . perform strictly routine production work, such as entering and retrieving data from computers. Other ‘secretaries’ provide in-person services, like making appointments and fetching coffee. A third group of ‘secretaries’ perform ­symbolic-analytic work closely allied to what their bosses do” (180). Reich’s theory is one of many that attempt to capture contemporary transformations of the social structure (cf. also Castells 2001a; Florida 2004). Given the differences between detailed accounts of these changes, what links them is that they indicate the ongoing process of dissolving the former social divisions, ones that have thus far formed a recognizable map of social positions, and of introducing new divisions whose criteria have not yet crystallized, which makes it difficult to identify within them positions occupied by particular individuals in the space of social differentiation. It is this lack of clarity that leads to the “loss of certainty regarding social norms and expectations”, related not so much to particular roles (since they undergo identical processes of transformation), as to the most general social positions occupied by individuals in the system of social entitlements. Whereas the processes of transforming the social structure, which lie at the foundation of the “de-normalization of social roles”, are common to all periods of intense social changes, what we can currently observe is co-occurrence of two more factors specific to the contemporary era, which additionally bolster this phenomenon. The first is the rapid development of spatial communication, leading to increased geographical mobility. The popularization of air travel, practically unavailable before 1920, has made covering huge distances an everyday reality, not just for the Western upper classes,11 but for people from all classes and nations. It is important to note here that in Western societies the phenomenon of increased geographical mobility is often accompanied by social mobility, which places representatives of diverse ethnic groups in positions formerly reserved for whites. Thus, at all levels of social structure, we are dealing today with intermingling of people hailing from different cultural backgrounds and guided in their actions

Generic experiences of our times  69 by different norms, which – first and foremost – causes these norms to lose their obviousness, thus contributing to the intensification of the “de-normalization of social roles” on a larger social scale. The second factor is the unprecedented development of symbolic communication, which causes individuals to be confronted, on a daily basis, with innumerable new patterns of behaviour, usually completely isolated from their original social and cultural background. This is not only due to the popularization of the mass media, which expose us to people representing all possible views, locations and epochs (cf. Gergen 1991), and ceaselessly make new efforts to provide the mass audience with “new forms of tradition”, regardless how bizarre it may sound (cf. Thompson 1995), but also because of the intensification of individual communication connecting, via the Internet and mobile services, citizens of “deterritorialized nations” and “transnational communities” (Appadurai 1996). Writing in the mid-1970s, Daniel Bell noted that “[w]hat is distinctive, then, about contemporary society is not only its size and number, but the increased interaction – both physical (through travel, larger work units, and greater housing densities) and psychic (through the mass media) – which ties us to so many other persons, directly and symbolically” (1978, 89). It is this intensity of mutual influences, overlapping with the aforementioned processes of the former social divisions being annulled and replaced with new ones, that becomes responsible for the particular intensification of the “de-normalization of social roles” today, which does not, however, mean the disappearance of all norms, for as Scott Lash rightly argues, “at issue here is an ­individual that is not so much anomic as autonomic” (2002a, xi). In other words, individuals and even larger groups can still be guided in their actions by certain general principles that have social origins, but which are nevertheless no longer recognized and sustained through a corresponding behaviour of other individuals and groups comprising a given society, because they have either lost the status of norms accepted as proper or have not acquired it yet. Today’s experience of old norms departing and of newly emerging ones remaining unclear – caused by the fact that they are still being developed in an ongoing process of socializing human actions – comes to the fore most clearly in public places where large numbers of people who do not know each other are gathered, competing not only to obtain physical access to certain goods – including protecting one’s space, allowing to uphold what Edward T. Hall (1990) calls intimate space (whose violation by others can lead to particularly strong negative emotions) – but also to underline the significance of their status. It is in such places that, at least due to the limited number of clues allowing to socially identify the people who are present there, the sense of social strange-ness makes itself acutely felt. It is also in such places that – at least due to the fundamentally competitive character of interactions occurring there12 – a particular significance is given to the most general social norms that regulate individuals’ claims to mutual recognition and respect, which have today undergone auto-nomization. To put it differently, although the “de-normalization of social roles” affects, to a greater or lesser extent, all aspects of social life, it is most acutely felt in the area

70  Generic experiences of our times which Anna Giza-Poleszczuk has once called “the sphere of coexistence”, i.e. one encompassing “contacts occurring fleetingly and anonymously on the basis of being randomly co-present in the same place at the same time” (1991, 71). Although contacts of this kind occur in the purely expressive dimension and do not necessitate the activation of social roles proper to particular persons, they paradoxically constitute a hugely important factor in the process of developing our social identity – a process whose inseparable component is the mutual recognition and evaluation of the social status of individuals in terms of their membership in significant social groups (Augoustinos and Walker 1995), which are similarly founded, though not exclusively, on the basis of social roles.13 Therefore, it is not just the growth of the mass of people with whom we meet today in public places, but rather the fact that contacts with them ceased to be regulated through mutual recognition and shared rules of coexistence reflecting crucial aspects of social differentiation, that we can regard as forming the basis for the sense of crowding as a generic experience of the present. This feeling is all the more overwhelming because its frame of reference is not the “de-normalized” eighteenth century, but the modern society in the “normalized” form it assumed in the nineteenth and retained till the mid-twentieth century: a society of a clear structure and well-defined social roles, in which all individuals “knew their place”.

Consumerism – life among a mass of products If in the case of living amidst crowds of people it is possible to indicate premodern seeds of this phenomenon, living amidst a mass of products seems to be a relatively new experience in human history. Certainly, it is a phenomenon that had been known in the past, but it was limited to selected individuals who occupied particularly high positions in a society where scarcity of goods was a fundamental property. Elimination of scarcity through technological development, which facilitated mass production of goods, was only one of many factors in a complex process of transformations14 that led to the contemporary situation when life amidst a variety of things not only overwhelms, but also corners us. Although I do not consider myself to be particularly prone to the temptations of consumerism, and have the dreadful tendency to keep wearing outfits I once felt comfortable in, I am certain that I am buying more and more clothes, which mysteriously disappear the moment I put them in my wardrobe. It becomes impossible to locate them in the piles of other stuff I had bought before. My desk is covered with many dusty office items, while my kitchen cupboards and shelves host a large collection of chindogu,15 as Charles Handy calls them (1997), i.e. strange items whose function eludes me or which I never really use. Among these are: a special tool for piercing eggs before boiling (I am reminded about it when I see the egg white spilling out in water), a special spoon for eating grapefruits (a fruit I hate), and something you put in the pot to prevent milk from boiling over (I do not drink milk).16 The sense of an excess of goods surrounding us intensifies inconceivably when we enter any shopping mall, peek into one of many second-hand shops, or visit

Generic experiences of our times  71 a used car dealership. The vision of a world covered in piles of things, some new and some slightly used or lightly damaged yet still functional, can make our heads spin. In social sciences, this vision corresponds to the concept of consumer society, or even one of hyperconsumption. This last term, introduced by George Ritzer, denotes “a highly democratic form of consumption involving the vast majority of the population” (2005, 32). Other authors emphasize that consumption not only engages “the vast majority of the population”, but also becomes its main activity. We participate in it both directly, by spending more and more time and money buying things, and indirectly, by working in professions whose goal is to create as well as distribute products and services, and utilize unused leftovers. However, it is the first kind of activity that attracts the interest of researchers, mainly due to the specific feature of the present comprising feedback between a growing supply of products and accelerating consumption. One can even get the impression that consuming has now become the fundamental moral imperative of mankind, which tries to protect the world from overflowing with goods produced every day at an increasing rate thanks to ever more efficient factories, and that the victims of compulsive shopping are the martyrs of contemporary civilization. The excess of products, which confirms that we live in a time of abundance, when the only problem faced by individuals is that of making choices, currently constitutes, on the one hand, the goal that less affluent societies are trying to attain, and on the other – a source of deep anxiety expressed by those who study higherincome societies. They primarily draw attention to the fact that we buy more and more on credit, that profits from operating credit card systems far exceed profits from savings (Ritzer 2005), and that the stimulation of consumption has its limits, revealed for example in situations when many of the excessive products end up in the trash without actually having been used. This “economy of waste” contributes to the growing devastation of the natural environment, both in terms of increased use of natural resources required for producing unsold goods and in terms of the necessity to store and recycle them (Handy 1997, 47). Uneasiness is also aroused by individual consequences of living in consumer culture: changes in personality described as the prevalence of the orientation towards having rather than being (Fromm 2008), replacing people-contacts with object-contacts (Knorr-Cetina 1997), and finally engagement in the “rat race” that devastates people and has as its justification only the fear of being left out from the process of consuming (Handy 1997). However, even texts expressing concern with social and individual consequences of consumption clearly show that we really have no idea what lies at the basis of consumerist behaviour. Why do people engage in this kind of activity, one which is highly destructive in social and psychological terms? What inclines them to spend money they do not have on products they do not need? What makes them so ready to risk serious injury being crushed in a crowd of zealous buyers during the sale season? In most economic theories, consumer behaviour has always been treated as something that does not need an explanation – a “natural” activity fuelled by

72  Generic experiences of our times “the instinct to buy” and regulated by the laws of supply and demand.17 A similar approach seems to dominate in other social sciences (cf. e.g. McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb 1982; Ritzer 2005). Certainly, today we have moved far away from naïve theories of consumption, which treat it as an activity subordinated to satisfying the individual’s natural needs, especially needs related to living. It seems obvious that of the things we buy, most are not something we really need, or at least not something required to support our physical existence, and that a large portion of our market “needs” is created through the advertising, marketing, and manipulating of cultural symbols. Still, the very possibility of such “creating” or “manipulating” refers to some vague set of in-born needs and instincts, on top of which more or less “artificial” needs are then constructed. As a result, the processes of satisfying needs are still supposed to explain consumer behaviour, which allows economists to consider consumption in categories of maximizing individual usefulness. However, as Collin Campbell emphasizes (1987), utility is the last feature that we can ascribe to contemporary consumerism,18 since it now bears all marks of “luxury” consumption in both senses first defined by Werner Sombart. First, it is luxurious insofar as “luxury is any expenditure in excess of the necessary”19 (after Campbell 1987, 59). Second, it is also luxurious in the sense related to sensual and pleasurable sensations that accompany the consumption of certain goods or some forms of consuming them.20 It is the difference between utility and pleasure that became for Campbell the starting point for developing a theory of contemporary consumerism mentioned in the previous chapter. At the basis of this theory there lies the distinction between traditional and modern hedonism. The former arises from purely sensual experiences accompanying the satisfaction of living needs, and is related to the control over the objects that serve to gratify specific needs. The latter arises from the excitement caused by anticipation of imagined sensations, and is related to the development of self-consciousness and self-control. Whereas the former is characteristic for societies in which scarcity permanently prevents full satisfaction of living needs, the latter characterizes societies that have reached the point when these needs are relatively satisfied. Traditional hedonism based on the cycle of deprivation and satisfaction has its own natural limitations  – eating the most refined food that brings a deeply sensual pleasure from the first bite, at the end of a long feast can become a nauseating torture. In contrast to this, the emotion-based modern hedonism depends solely on the individual’s imagination, which – even if limited in terms of content – is nevertheless capable of infinitely recreating ideas of pleasure that we might derive, for example, from buying another pair of shoes or a tie, as long as they are different from the ones we already have. According to Campbell, this explains the key feature of today’s consumerism: the specific insatiability and ceaseless pursuit of novelty. It is easy to demonstrate that, given the innovativeness of Campbell’s theoretical approach, its proposed explication of consumption behaviour is basically not much different from those accounts that consider it in terms of satisfying needs. Campbell simply introduces, through the back door, a specific meta-need: the

Generic experiences of our times  73 need for pleasure. His argumentation leads to the conclusion that, in the course of historical transformations, ways of satisfying this need have undergone a significant evolution, and at the root of the transition from the sensuality of traditional hedonism to the imagined emotions of modern hedonism we find the ideas of Romanticism. Campbell submits that Romanticism placed individuals and their psychological (not carnal) sensations at the centre of the world, thus significantly contributing to the change in the way we experience or think about pleasure.21 One undeniable achievement of Campbell’s was to draw attention to the larger historical context of the birth of modern consumerism. However, as Frank Trentmann indicates (2004), acknowledging this dimension – also in strictly historical analyses – is usually subordinated to the search for the moment when the consumer society was formed, which causes the basic frame of reference to be not just consumption itself, but the question of “modernity” (and/or “postmodernity”) considered as a certain ideal type. In other words, individual researchers tracing the beginnings of consumer society are typically guided in their analyses by assumptions – most often incommensurable and made implicitly – regarding the nature of modernity. At the same time, they treat it as obvious that people want to amass more and more goods22 and entirely disregard questions that are fundamental to the problem of consumption: “What is being consumed, by whom, why, and with what consequence” (373). Meanwhile, it is by posing such questions that consumer behaviours can be included in the broader context of social life, because – as has been aptly noted by Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood – the fundamental “sin” of most contemporary theories is that they consider consumption in isolation from its other aspects (1996, viii). This blinds them to the fact that consumption is not a purely individual act, but remains part of a complex system of meanings generated in a given culture, while one of its fundamental functions is to regulate relations between individuals through marking their positions in a dense web of social connections. If we adopt such a perspective – one that is not narrowed to tracing the moment when the “consumer society” was formed – to examine historical patterns of consumption, they reveal a rather intriguing regularity that links the basic principles of establishing social divisions with values that govern consumption behaviours. This is most difficult to discern in the case of pre-modern societies, among other reasons because notions about this aspect of their culture have been largely shaped by the well-known theory developed by Thorstein Veblen (2008), in which “conspicuous consumption” that characterizes all historical incarnations of the “leisure classes” serves to acquire and retain the social prestige associated with amassed riches.23 However, as Aron Gurevich observes, accepting this interpretation would lead us to completely misunderstand the role played by “conspicuous consumption” in traditional societies. Gurevich demonstrates that in the Middle Ages the system of hierarchically ordered positions was not so much based on wealth as on personal connections: “[m]embers of the society entered into direct personal contacts with each other, relations were based on kinship, on marriage, on proximity as neighbours and on common membership of a group, and on patronage or dependence on and subordination to the lord” (1985, 254).

74  Generic experiences of our times Consequently, the basic determinant of high social position was not wealth per se, but the generosity with regard to those who remained reliant on the person enjoying such high position. As Gurevich writes, the status and “power of a noble seigneur is determined by the number of persons serving him and owing allegiance to him” (253); therefore, conspicuous sometimes even extravagant, consumption always involved participation of others because “[f]or the feudal lord, wealth was a means of retaining his social influence” (249), “one of the ways in which the proceeds of the exploitation of the servile classes were distributed among the members of the ruling class” (248). In this respect, the feudal society upheld the relation to wealth prevalent in the earlier societies, where conspicuous consumption was closer to potlatch than to individual displays of wealth that accompanied the birth of the modern society.24 “A seigneur is behaving ‘normally’ when he is generous, careless of cost, open-handed and spendthrift, and indifferent as to whether he is spending more than he receives” (247). At the same time, Gurevich emphasizes, in the Middle Ages “[t]he split between wealth and the joy of dispensing it is tantamount to the collapse of universal harmony, for avarice is the mother of all vices, while generosity is the core of all virtues. A man is weighed in respect of his generosity, round which the whole ethical system of chivalry revolves, and which even takes precedence over prowess on the field of battle” (250; emphasis added). This system of connections based on personal dependencies began to crumble and radically transform during the transition to the modern society, as a result of which the positions of individuals in the webs of connections began to be determined by the roles they would hold in the complex structure of the division of work: “individuals are distributed within it in groups that are no longer formed in terms of any ancestral relationship, but according to the special nature of the social activity to which they devote themselves” (Durkheim 2013, 143). Paradoxically, although – as strongly emphasized by Émile Durkheim – we are dealing here with a system of functionally coordinated tasks, this mode of “grouping” favours perceiving an entire society as an entity composed of opposing classes, while patterns of consuming serve to underline the differences in the individuals’ social positions rather than to eliminate them on both sides of the main class division determined, as Marx claims, by the ownership of the means of production. This seems obvious in the case of the owning-classes who continue the tradition of manifesting their higher social standing, though rely on a different principle. As Rene König observes, “[b]asically the only way to distinction left to the new bourgeoisie was segregation, for according to the law which established it differences of birth, the distinguishing mark of the aristocrats, were abolished. The bourgeoisie thus had to place artificial emphasis on the distance separating it from the rest” (1973, 150). This would explain the career of the concept of taste. As Pierre Bourdieu demonstrates, taste has become the basic tool used by the bourgeois society to determine and sustain class boundaries.25 A similar thesis was proposed by König, who argues that the age of the bourgeoisie began with emphasising the difference between what is “refined” and everything else. Still, the “artificiality” in marking

Generic experiences of our times  75 that distance manifested even more clearly in the creation of isolated spaces. “The tendency of distinction of the bourgeois upper class now spread to life as a whole. Everything was ‘first’, ‘second’, ‘third’ class: on the railways and the seats in the theatre” (149). As Richard Hoggart shows, the tendency to isolate can be discerned among the working classes as well. In his outstanding book The Uses of Literacy, Hoggart notes that one of the fundamental properties of the working class culture was the division into “us” and “them”, capturing the attitude of this class to the social world. “[T]he world is divided into ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ ”, Hoggart writes, while “[t]he world of ‘Them’ is the world of bosses, whether those bosses are private individuals or . . . public officials” (1960, 53). Thus, even though in case of the working class the style of consuming was determined primarily by living necessities,26 it was accompanied not by the tendency to mimic the style of the owning class, but rather by the conviction about the bizarre character of all that comprises that style and the necessity to create their own. One could thus say, employing the metaphor coined by Robert and Helen Lynd (1929), that for much of the twentieth century the styles of consuming determined by social divisions of modernity resembled a series of plateaux – ones not only located at different rungs of the social ladder, but separated with steep walls, which could be scaled only by a handful of adventurers. The diversity of consuming styles, serving to identify the individual with groups and mark his or her social position in a system of impersonal roles, would not be eliminated by either individual changes of position (a figure of an “impoverished gentleman” or a crude “self-made man”), or by large-scale shifts in access to certain goods due to the emergence of mass production. As Hoggart observes in his discussion of England in the 1950s, “[c]heap mass-produced clothing has reduced the immediately recognizable differences between classes, but not as greatly as many think. A Saturday-night crowd leaving the cinemas in the city centre may look superficially one. A closer glance from an expert of either sex, from a middle class woman or a man particularly conscious of clothes, will usually be sufficient even nowadays for them to ‘place’ most people around them” (1960, 10). A relative elimination of the differences separating these social plateaux was slow. It followed the growth of wealth in society as a whole, the increased availability of cars and other means of transportation, and, perhaps most importantly, the rapid development of cinema and other media of mass culture, which liberated people from the influence of those patterns of consuming that used to be transferred from generation to generation in relatively closed groups of local communities (cf. Hoggart 1960; Bell 1978). As a result, changes would also affect the basic frame of reference determining consumption.27 “Fashion set a person in social space, linked to and differentiated from social groups. It also located a person in social time – in relation to others, being avant garde or au courant or behind-the-times”, Michael Schudson writes (1994, 33), at the same time indicating that, along with the increasing role that the mass media have played in shaping the patterns of consumption, desires have become democratized, followed by the process of “democratizing envy”.

76  Generic experiences of our times It is thanks to the popularization by the mass media of a lifestyle which accentuated personal traits rather than the social status, that the web of social connections could be remodelled in the way that led to the confrontation between the young people and adults at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, simultaneously demolishing most consumption-related marks of class membership. The refusal to trust anyone over thirty-five meant that age became the basic criterion of social positioning. At the same time, however, the function of the basic determinant of “age” was slowly taken by specific styles of consuming, or rather a range of styles organized around ostentatious rejection of all that might be associated with the lifestyle of the “old” establishment.28 As noted by the authors of The Rebel Sell – Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter – rebellion as the basis of social distinctions foregrounded the difference between the “old” and the “new”, consequently accelerating the “ageing” of all goods whose use could be treated as a signal of refusal to become incorporated in a system that homogenizes people and eliminates individuality. “In this way countercultural rebellion has become one of the major forces driving competitive consumption” (2010, 217). According to Heath and Potter, the driving force of this competitiveness is now the desire to be placed in the central hierarchy of status conferred in today’s urban society by being “cool” (or whatever else it is called, now that “being cool” has ceased to be cool). The essence of being cool is being a non-conformist and exhibiting a specific form of individualism in which “to be an individual is understood not as being who you want to be, regardless of what other people are doing, but rather as doing whatever other people are not doing” (319). However, since the things that people are not doing yet, or at least are not doing on a mass scale, are currently dependent on the tempo in which subsequent fashions are assimilated, being cool becomes a commercialized variant of rebelling against a system in which an individual’s place in the webs of social connections is determined not by their position acquired by birth or the role they play in the division of labour, but by the similarities and differences between their and other individuals’ lifestyles, which are created on a mass scale by advertising and which constitute the basis of social identification. As is easy to notice, what links being cool with earlier forms of positioning through consumption is the fact that it refers – just like generosity or natural taste – to those individual traits that can be regarded as in-born: “you have to be cool to know cool” (315). Still, unlike traditional and modern forms of consuming, which were only a means of communicating social identities that were in fact determined by the place occupied in the social system or by one’s social role, being cool is not rooted in any objective, i.e. socially institutionalized and consolidated system of social divisions because – as I already mentioned – these divisions have now become blurred. In consequence, blurring also affects the meanings of messages we create through our consumption behaviours, since they cease to be a component of socially shared knowledge. As Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood underscore, “consumption is a ritual process whose primary function is to make sense of the inchoate flux of events. . . .

Generic experiences of our times  77 The most general objective of the consumer can only be to construct an intelligible universe with the goods he chooses” (1996, 43). However, to achieve this goal at all, individual goods as well as more general patterns of consumer behaviour have to have relatively stable and socially recognizable meanings determined in broader processes of socializing individual actions. Actions that, by definition, due to their individualized character, carry an inherent potential to modify meanings. Thus, “[t]he main problem of social life is to pin down meanings so that they stay still for a little time. Without some conventional ways of selecting and fixing agreed meanings, the minimal consensual basis of society is missing. As for tribal society, so too for us: rituals serve to contain the drift of meanings. Rituals are conventions that set up visible public definitions” (43). Given today’s virtually programmatic lack of such consensus – which not only stems from the dissolution of former social divisions (and thus past rituals of consumption), but is also reinforced by contemporary culture’s emphasis on striving to be highly individualized and cool – the things we choose to consume, the way we consume them, as well as the question of who we invite to participate in our individualized acts of consuming,29 cease to form a message legible to any broader public, a message that makes us into a certain kind of people, giving us a socially recognizable identity in social interactions. One could thus say that it is not the increased supply of goods, but the fact that the choices we make between them (even if this means refusing to buy more and more things) carry meanings which we cannot be certain about and are unable to control, that lies at the foundation of the generic experience of living among a mass of goods.

Problems with producing meaning – life in a mass of information Out of the three generic experiences described here, the experience of living in a mass of information is relatively the most recent. Most works on this subject began to appear as late as the 1990s, with most researchers tying the phenomenon of exponential increase in the volume of information to the astonishing development of information technologies, which have been conquering the world since the 1980s. This development, whose essence in global terms would be to utilize the economy’s capacity “to generate, process, and apply efficiently knowledgebased information” (Castells 2001a, 77), in an individual perspective is primarily linked to a sense of being overwhelmed by a flood of information whose volume eludes any attempts not just to use it, but simply to process it. Every day I receive several emails about cultural events or conferences I will not attend, and special offers to buy various kinds of pills I will never take. When I open a newspaper, I am bombarded with information about the lives of exotically named people such as Leroy, Madonna, or Lady Gaga, without which my life would not change one bit. After tuning my radio to the music I like, I have to first listen to news from the stock exchange, while turning on the TV to casually watch a film I usually stumble upon commercials which – due to the homogenization

78  Generic experiences of our times of style – could just as well be advertising cars, sanitary towels, or vitamin supplements for the elderly. I will never know which product it really was as I keep zapping from channel to channel, producing for myself a collage of images which have only one thing in common: the aggressiveness of their message. My room’s floor is littered with professional magazines I have no time to read, and I sometimes catch myself buying a book I had already put on the shelf a month ago, hoping that I will be able to read it at some point in the future. As Thomas Eriksen claims, “the unhindered and massive flow of information in our time is about to fill all the gaps, leading as a consequence to a situation where everything threatens to become a hysterical series of saturated moments, without a ‘before’ and ‘after’, a ‘here’ and ‘there’ to separate them” (2001, 2). This happens, in his view, because “new information technology leads to acceleration and demands for further information, until time – seen as duration – approaches zero” (76). In this configuration, the greatest problem faced by those creating information is how to catch the attention of potential audiences, while the greatest problem faced by the audiences is how to protect themselves from useless information, the kind that one could do perfectly well without. Information that used to be treated as a precious resource, in line with the principle that who has knowledge has power, has now become something that brings associations with environmental pollution. It is not without reason that David Shenk employs the term “data smog” to refer to our being oversaturated with news we seek out for ourselves or are stuffed with when we least expect it. At the same time, he points out that, just like real smog, data smog is harmful to the people who live in it. It not only causes overstimulation, which entails various negative consequences of psychological and physiological nature,30 but it primarily makes people lose the ability to control and diversify the incoming flow of information. Despite these reservations, given our unlimited access to information, we usually fail to put up resistance and eventually yield to the temptation to use it. Or – to put it more precisely – we are lured to seek out information due to the very nature of the tools used for its creation and distribution, or at least this is the conclusion we can draw from Neil Postman’s discussion (1993). He assumes that every tool contains its own encoded “ideology:” opening up new possibilities before us, it simultaneously imposes on us certain actions. Holding a hammer in hand, we look for a nail to drive in, while sitting in front of a computer screen we seek information – not just the kind that we need at a given moment, but also that which can “come to us” on its own. Such actions elicited through the logic of the tool are what Postman considers to be the source of cultural transformations that have a much deeper meaning than it would appear from a superficial glance at the adaptive reactions provoked by the necessity to cope with the overstimulation engendered by the excess of information. According to Postman, a truly meaningful technological shift has an “ecological” character, since it creates a new environment that affects all of our actions, not just those that are directly related to a specific invention. “A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything” (1993, 18), he

Generic experiences of our times  79 argues, quoting the well-known passage from Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy: “hand-loom gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist” (21). What does the development of information technologies give us then? Postman argues that it has brought a new type of culture: technopoly. Its origin, he says, goes back to Frederick W. Taylor’s book on scientific management, which contains the explicitly formulated assumption that efficiency is the goal of human work and thought. Technopoly is the subordination of all forms of cultural life to the rule of technology and science reduced to the role of an information factory. At the basis of technopoly’s dominance we should place the development of the means of mass communication, which thrive on information and distribute it at an unprecedented speed. The last of these inventions – computer – completely changed our image of a human being, from a creature seeking the meaning of the world and life to an information processor, as well as replaced the image of nature as one that humans coexist with or conquer, with one in which nature is a bulk of information that needs to be processed. The new, audio-visual media favour fast and small packets of information, without leaving much place for reflection, whereas computers allow us to gather and utilize more and more of these disjointed packets.31 In consequence, as Thomas Eriksen vividly describes, “[t]iny fragments – information lint – fill up the gaps, invade coherent bodies of knowledge and split them up, and seem certain to displace everything that is a little old, a little big and a little sluggish” (2001, vii). David Shenk in turn warns us that we are one step short of “paralysis by analysis” because the increasing ease of producing and processing information makes us addicted to it – we can always assume that additional information will enhance the efficiency of our actions, ultimately making us unable to make any decision. Although all three authors similarly describe the consequences of using new tools by linking them primarily to the growing sense of information overload, Postman’s theory is distinguished from others by focusing on broader, cultural repercussions of the ongoing information revolution. He assumes that all technological changes “alter those deeply embedded habits of thought which give to a culture its sense of what the world is like – a sense of what is the natural order of things, of what is reasonable, of what is necessary, of what is inevitable, of what is real”32 (1993, 12; emphasis added). He further claims that “embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another” (13). Thus, the point is not only that the refining of information tools transforms the entire world that surrounds us into a set of information ready for potential processing, but also, and perhaps most importantly, that we are led to believe that the more information we process, the better and more efficient we will be in our attempts to provide answers to the earlier quoted questions. Meanwhile, as Postman argues with passion, such a conviction is an illusion. After all, information cannot replace our own choices, which are by definition arbitrary as well as grounded in broader knowledge and moral reflection. Although

80  Generic experiences of our times made by individuals, choices are, in each instance, a derivative of a more general vision of the world – a vision that is socially constituted and sustained. These are the general images of the world that lend meaning to information, ordering it in terms of relevance and facilitating its selection in situations of overload. Though phrased in slightly different terms, a similar thought was expressed by Peter L. Berger, who writes that “the socially constructed world is, above all, an ordering of experience” (2011, 45), while the fundamental effect of society’s existence is the creation of a nomos33 that subordinates the individuals’ disjointed experiences and meanings to a larger, objectified body of social knowledge, giving the surrounding world the character of something taken for granted.34 As Berger emphasizes, the obviousness of the socially constructed world is a derivative of the relation between nomos and the nature of the universe: the effect of projection of a socially created order on the universe as such, regardless whether it is understood in religious or scientific categories. Religion or science provide us with merely generalized convictions that legitimize the nomos, convictions that allow people to justify the rules it sets by indicating some general principle(s) governing the world. Although it derives its legitimacy from religion and/or science, nomos is not identical with either. The order it sets up has a secular character primarily related to everyday life. Its principles first of all regulate the image of a “normal” life – one led in harmony with the nature of surrounding reality. In other words, that which is obvious concerns primarily the means of solving the individuals’ basic existential problems: obtaining means to support one’s existence in the purely physical sense (labour), finding a partner (love), having children (reproduction), relating to other people (cooperation and competition) etc. These obvious principles that are part of common knowledge constitute the framework of our actions, because all forms of behaviour that do not fit in it, though they may be logically possible, not only cannot find support in existing social institutions, but carry the danger of “violating the world’s nature”.35 Undoubtedly, the earliest historical source of such overall nomic visions of the world was religion. Not only did it impose the conviction that the world’s order and one’s place in it are indisputable matters, but it also introduced a specific interpretation of this order in religious terms. By doing so, it established codes of wisdom and standards of knowledge, which act as tools of selecting information that comes from the environment. Regardless whether it was actually based on belief in some eternal, omnipresent power, belief in the creation of the world by God or gods, belief in some kind of fate or predestination, or belief in the individuals’ capacity to work out their place within the cosmic order, religion would lend meaning and significance to the information coming from the environment, at the same time limiting its load and helping people remember only its select, individual pieces. Along with the autonomization of different systems of human activity and their liberation from the influence of religion (a process usually called secularization), the function of religion as a means of making the image of the world cohesive began to be overtaken by various ideologies. As Serge Moscovici shows, by

Generic experiences of our times  81 serving as “secular religions” these ideologies have created “a total view of the world as a palliative to the fragmentary and divided nature of all science and technology and indeed of knowledge in general”. In everyday life, Moscovici argues, we need “an overall view with a single cause (social class, race etc.), a universal principle (the class struggle, natural selection and so on) and a definite picture of the human and non-human world. What secular religions essentially do is provide us with a total view of that kind. They offer us a concept of the world in which every problem has its solution” (1985, 355). Although such solutions have assumed different forms depending on the particular ideology, it is fitting to agree with those scholars who argue that there was a common element found in most of these “secular religions:” the belief in Progress. It has provided the budding modern society with a higher system of meanings that brought cohesion to often contradictory explanations of phenomena that have begun to emerge in the shape-shifting social space, as formulated within particular ideologies. For the belief in Progress would not be rooted only in the conviction that – as Postman writes – “one could discern a purpose to the human enterprise, even without the theological scaffolding that supported the Christian edifice of belief” (1993, 60), but also, or perhaps even primarily, in the assumption that this purpose consists in solving – owing to the development of science and technology – all problems that trouble mankind. One needs to remember, however, that the actual progress made by science and technology has been subjected to selective processing by ideologies, which have mediated these achievements to shape comprehensive images of the world. Just like religion before them, ideologies have not only created their own standards of knowledge and criteria of wisdom, but have also controlled the flow of information by imposing such standards and criteria which helped to select only the kind of information that did not strike at the foundation of the assumed image of reality. Also, ideologies influenced science, which came to the fore in the case of the two mightiest totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century: communism and fascism. Still, in more indirect ways (e.g. by selecting study topics or through selective financing of research projects), they have affected science in countries all over the world. In his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, Raymond Aron heralded the end of this cohesion-bringing power inherent in ideological visions of the world. “The Westerners, especially the intellectuals”, he writes, “suffer from the fragmentation of their universe. . . . The specialist has control over but a limited field of knowledge; present-day science seems to leave him as ignorant of the answers to the ultimate questions as a child awakening to consciousness” (2001, 322–323). Aron, who wrote this at the height of the Cold War, associated the end of the age of ideology with the Western intellectuals’ (and his own) disillusionment with communism. From today’s perspective, however, we could say that the fragmentation of reality he discusses was not related only to the operation of political factors, and that the fall of communist ideology, fully made visible only in the 1980s when it also entailed the enfeeblement of liberal ideology, gave his fifty-year-old thesis a prophetic character. Indeed, we have just embarked on an age without

82  Generic experiences of our times ideologies, or more precisely – an age when there are no overall visions of the world that would lend meaning to current events and that at the same time would control and order the vast expanse of information flowing from all around us. The point is not that, back in the day, there was less information and today we suffer from its overload. The task of memorizing all the saints and martyrs, along with their attributes, at a mediaeval monastic school probably demanded a similar effort (if not greater) to the one made these days by students who are supposed to learn, for example, about the variety of approaches to the concept of a nation in theories developed by scholars in this area. The point is rather that the former would regard this information as a part of a coherent vision of the world, one in which martyrs and saints not only have their assigned place but also set patterns of behaviour and moral standards, whereas the latter can feel that the very existence of different conceptions of a nation undermines, somewhat by definition, the existence of any coherent vision, while knowledge of these conceptions does not provide any clues on how to act. It was Aron who emphasized that “secular religions dissolve into politicoeconomic opinions as soon as one abandons the dogma” (2001, 323). Similarly, Postman indicates that today there are no pieces of information that could surprise us for long: “we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world that would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction” (1993, 58; emphasis added). However, this lack of a coherent vision not only breeds indifference to even the most incredible news, either in science or relayed through generally accessible means of mass communication, but also, or perhaps primarily, arouses a sense of anxiety regarding the meaning of our aims and actions we plan to take based on the information available to us. For man is not an autonomous processor of information limited only by “bandwidth”. Our capacity to rationally deal with stimuli from the environment does not chiefly depend on their volume or our individually developed adaptive reactions, but rather relies on socially transmitted comprehensive images of reality, which serve as the main mechanism of selection, indicating the contents we find important, interesting, or difference-making. It is thanks to emotions and values encoded in these comprehensive, nomic images of the world (cf. Damasio 1995; Monroe 2001) that we are able to control the overload of stimuli coming to us from the environment by differentiating their meaning on the basis of our aims. Still, the aims themselves are not derived from information, not even from its most detailed kind. They are derived from the socially produced, nomic vision of the world, which arbitrarily differentiates the natural, the rational, and the obvious from that which is unnatural, irrational, or weird; the desired from that which does not move us; the right, proper and good from that which arouses social repulsion. One could thus say that at the basis of that generic experience of modernity which is living in a mass of information, we find not so much its quantitative growth, but the violation of the ordering, nomic structure of the social reality, which entails the dissolution of the images of the world that we take for granted and that give meaning to our aims and in consequence – to our lives.

Generic experiences of our times  83

At the foundation of generic experiences – the sense of excess At first glance, the grounds of the generic experiences identified in ­previous sections refer us back to the three great subjects of contemporary s­ociology: individualization, identity, and – hidden in the shadow of these two – the ­ ­problem of reflexivity. It is easily demonstrable (as has often been done) that de-­normalization of social roles leads to the individualization of actions, while the blurring of meanings related to consumer choices results in the blurring of identity, and finally that the dissolution of comprehensive images of the world imposes on individuals a heightened level of reflection. It is in the growing sense of individualization, in widespread problems with identity formation, and in individual reflexivity that much of contemporary sociology seeks the causes of the observable social regularities. Assuming such a perspective, however, leads to reductionism, because it enforces a mode of explaining social phenomena only in terms of individual people’s characteristics. In such a perspective the weakening of social bonds that is currently manifest is explained in reference to growing individualization, the increased significance of lifestyle in the role of a structuring principle appears to be the outcome of processes of forming individual identity, while the variety of ways to look at the world becomes a consequence of reflection. As described in Chapter 1, the division of sociology into two “complementary” currents (micro and macro, focused on individuals or on social structures) protects us from discerning this danger but does not diminish the threat it entails. After all, it is not difficult to notice that despite the dissimilarity of concepts appearing with subsequent theoretical steps, explanations of this kind not so much reflect the principle of feedback between the two levels of social life as create a sort of vicious circle.36 Thus, the concepts of individualization, identity, and reflexivity – located at the heart of contemporary sociological discourse – become, as Alfred Schutz has put it, a kind of “intellectual stenography” that conceals the fact of explaining social phenomena in terms of subjective feelings we experience by entering the roles of actors in social life, and which themselves demand explanation.37 What is more, this seemingly convincing pattern of connections between the main sociological problems of today does not really fit the real contents of generic experiences identified earlier. Let us note that at the basis of the experience of living in a mass of people there lies, first and foremost, a specific individualization of others, not necessarily of the experiencing individual. Given that our contacts with others are no longer regulated by mutual recognition and shared rules of coexistence, it is the necessity to treat other people individually that constitutes the foundation of the sense that we are surrounded by an anonymous mass. The same can be said about problems arising from living amidst a mass of goods, whose selective use is a way of manifesting social identity. An increased number of goods goes hand in hand with the process of blurring the meanings they generate. Thus, the problem is not that we do not know who we are,38 but that we are not certain how our choices in the domain of consumption will be interpreted by others.

84  Generic experiences of our times Finally, moving on to problems arising from information excess, first it is necessary to indicate that the uncertainty ascribed to contemporary individuals is not an effect of a lack of coherence-producing visions. Paradoxically and contrarily to the opinion of Raymond Aron, we live in a reality that is characterized by an excess of ideologies rather than their lack, or by the lack of overall visions of the world. Each one of us, if there is only desire to do so, can choose to become a Buddhist, an orthodox Catholic, a follower of Confucius, or – to move to regions beyond religion – a believer in creationism, communitarianism, alter-globalism, feminism, etc. However, the problem is that an individually chosen faith or ideology does not have the power to produce a coherent vision of the world if it is not accompanied and sustained by other people acting in accordance with it. Indeed, one cannot be a Catholic, an alter-globalist, or a follower of feng-shui individually and only once in a blue moon. More precisely, one can try, but at the cost of these systems losing their status as ultimate truths determining the entirety of both individual and social life as well as providing the kind of a social control apparatus that facilitates harmonization of social practices with the image of the world propagated by a given system. In all three cases, we are thus dealing with experiences that may be rooted in material transformations of reality,39 but that primarily concern the sphere of social ties and meanings. In other words, if the essence of all these generic experiences is the sense of excess, then it is born not so much out of the literally “physical” number of people, goods and information, as of the fact that these people cannot be classified in socially defined categories, these goods do not carry easily recognizable, socially established meanings, and this bulk of information cannot be differentiated in terms of its relevance. It is crucial, at the same time, that our cognitive inefficiency does not stem from some individual intellectual deficits, but is rather the outcome of a ceaseless undermining of credibility of the socially constructed world through actions of other people, who either question the systems of meaning we endorse, or in fact negate them. In somewhat different terms, one could say that at the basis of generic experiences of today’s world we find a concentration of such actions that lead to questioning the assumption, one that is proper to common knowledge, about the reciprocity of perspectives (cf. Schutz 1953). This in turn disturbs the intersubjective obviousness of the social world: a world in which, as it turns out, you can be beaten unconscious by well-educated people at a New Year’s Eve party; a world in which I cannot be certain whether the man who just passed me on the street, wearing an old T-shirt, is Bill Gates or an unemployed plumber; a world in which we find ourselves more and more often faced with a question whether what we have devoted our life to has any sense at all. Accordingly, it is this fracturing of the intersubjective obviousness of the social world that is the main source of the problems that contemporary society places before individuals. In order to fully grasp the nature of these problems we ought to remind ourselves that the dissolution of the intersubjective obviousness of the social reality is the essence of Durkheim’s concept of social anomie, which he characterizes as a state effected by the fact that “[o]ur beliefs have been disturbed. Tradition has lost

Generic experiences of our times  85 its sway. Individual judgement has thrown off the yoke of the collective judgement” (2013, 317). In Durkheim’s understanding, anomie becomes a “sickness of the society”, because – as he writes – “society cannot exist without cohesion and regulation”40 (11), which derive their power from a shared image of social reality. In light of the findings of Chapter 1, I would put it in even stronger terms, arguing that society is nothing else than a certain system of coherence and rules binding individuals into a supra-individual, nomic entity whose existence is experienced primarily through the intersubjective obviousness of social reality, sustained and confirmed in the course of people’s actions. In this sense, the lack of obviousness of today’s world can be regarded as a symptom of anomie,41 and by the same token, as a manifestation of advanced deterioration of the form of sociality we call modern society. In other words – if the essence of sociality consists in limiting the potentially available ways of acting to a narrowed-down set of living techniques, the potential modes of identifying with groups to selected forms of identity, and the potential ways of constructing social knowledge to specific forms of “real” knowledge – the sense of excess we experience today, which lies at the foundation of all three generic experiences of the present, suggests a fundamental breakaway from the formerly dominant form of sociality, which – given all its historical transformations – we have come to call modern society. Therefore, we can assume, with considerable certainty, that contemporary society has become a post-modern one, although it may not necessarily be “postmodern” in the sense given to it by its scholars. We ought to point out two consequences of this conclusion – ones that are crucial for further analyses. First, one essential feature of the changes occurring during the transition from one form of organizing social life to another is their abrupt, non-cumulative character (Nisbet 1972; cf. also Castells 2001a, 28): a new social order does not emerge gradually from smaller changes that precede it and mutual adaptations developed in various areas of social life, but rather from the chaos of preceding actions, which are the outcome of, on the one hand, diminishing effectiveness of former forms of sociality, and on the other, a search for new forms that would be better suited to the changing reality. Thus, although a fundamental breakaway from the formerly dominant forms of sociality makes it possible to treat contemporary society as post-modern, we simultaneously have to remember that this breakaway moment is not the zero point from which we can count the rise of a new, already mature form of organizing social life. It is not even a moment, strictly speaking, but rather a process stretched in time, where elements of continuity and change are interwoven with old forms of sociality existing alongside new ones. Secondly, it arises from this that the state of anomie accompanying these transformations is not tantamount to utter arbitrariness of individual behaviour.42 To invoke Durkheim once again, even if the state of anomie is a sickness of society, it does not mean its death. The increased tempo of changes which characterizes periods of transition primarily involves individual actions and firstly leads to the state of blurring those obvious meanings that legitimize the basic rules determining a

86  Generic experiences of our times given type of social order. Thanks to this, new rules begin to emerge and come into effect locally, created in the ceaseless process of socializing human actions. They compete with the former rules that begin to lose their dominant status (cf. Merton 1968). Thus, anomie is first and foremost a state in which social coherence is shattered, a state experienced in terms of a crisis of basic social institutions, which cease to provide us with an unambiguous framework for individual actions. It is a state in which individuals become aware that there are alternatives to the rules that previously seemed natural and did not need any justification. People either embrace these alternatives or try to defend the old rules. In either case, their reactions significantly affect the basic properties of the social environment in which people realize their actions. Certainly, the main factor facilitating the emergence of the alternatives is the development of technology. We find it at the foundation of all greater and lesser social transformations.43 The transformation we are currently experiencing is also tied to these kinds of changes. In most theories analyzing the topic, it is assumed that the most important factor in effecting contemporary transformations is the emergence of new information technologies. Their development and impact on various spheres of human activity is identified as responsible for transformations occurring on all levels of social life, beginning with economy and politics, through labour relations and social structure, and ending with individual eating and sexual habits. However, as Manuel Castells rightly notes, emphasizing the significance of technological transformations should not amount to accepting that they explain the entire dynamic of social changes. “Of course, technology does determine society. Nor does society script the course of technological change, since many factors, including individual inventiveness and entrepreneurialism, intervene in the process of scientific discovery, technological innovation, and social applications, so that the final outcome depends on a complex pattern of interaction. Indeed, the dilemma of technological determinism is probably a false problem, since technology is society, and society cannot be understood or represented without its technological tools” (2001a, 5; emphasis preserved). Or, in other words, “technology does not determine society: it embodies it. But nor does society determine technological innovation: it uses it” (5). And so, by using it, technology fundamentally changes the basic parameters of the social environment in which people realize their individual actions. It is the recreation of this social environment’s properties that constitutes the subject of the next chapter.

Notes 1 For more detailed information about the so-called first demographic transition, see Okólski 2002. Cf. also Barraclough 1969. 2 This is by no means only the ailment of post-Communist countries, but also a reality in some high-income Western democracies, such as the UK or Canada, which decided to offer public healthcare.

Generic experiences of our times  87 3 “The Konzentrationslager symptom, or rather syndrome, is clearly discernible: it consists in intense overcrowding”, Sławomir Mrożek wrote in a column titled “Auschwitz” in Gazeta Wyborcza (28 February–1 March 1998). 4 Additionally, this approach goes beyond the concept of crowding concerning a mass of people because the “obstacles” or “barriers” limiting the kind and scope of behaviours can be both physical and social: both things and people can hinder us. It would make difficult to specify the three kinds of generic experiences which are of interest to us here, because all of them would have to be considered instances of “crowding” (e.g. of people, products, and information). 5 According to Sennett, these changes initiated the process of re-crystallizing the social structure and led to the dominance in the bourgeois society of people engaged in distribution rather than production, merchants rather than factory owners or Marxian “capitalists” (2002, 101). 6 Some of them doubled their population between the early 1970s and early 1990s. According to Castells, in 1992 thirteen such mega-cities had over ten million inhabitants, and predictions were made at the time that four would have much more than twenty million by 2010 (2001a, 435). 7 Even the necessity to queue in a supermarket checkout can seem like an insult to our self-esteem. Becoming furious because “I am stuck here, although I have so many things to attend to” is basically a sign that one thinks him- or herself more important than the others who stand in the same line (and who probably think along similar lines). 8 The process of shaping the new social elites in the bourgeois society, as described by Sennett, is essentially similar to that which occurred, many centuries earlier, in the feudal society, which was well captured by Norbert Elias (2000). 9 It is worth noting here that this description is very close to the Marxist account of “a class in itself”. 10 It needs to be emphasized that, according to Castells, “while analysts were proclaiming the de-industrialization of America, or of Europe in the 1980s, they simply overlooked what was happening in the rest of the world” (2001a, 220). Globally speaking, in the years 1963–1983 the number of people employed in production rose by 72 per cent and it keeps rising. 11 As Kenneth Gergen reminds us (1991), already in 1970 the number of air passengers in the USA amounted to 160 million. This figure doubled in the next decade. All of this happened even before cheap airlines entered the market, which incredibly boosted the number of international flights. In 1980, 3.5 per cent of the world’s population was composed of travelling tourists, while in 2010 it was as much as 14 per cent (Naim 2013, 61–62). 12 That the character of public places is fundamentally competitive stems not only from the aforementioned unequal distribution of social entitlements, but also from the fact that the interactions that occur in such places primarily serve to express our unique identity, at the same time having a very superficial and impermanent character (cf. Giza-Poleszczuk 1991). Perhaps this is why we can spend hours ruminating on a (supposedly) contemptuous glance cast by some stranger as we are unable to convince him or her – precisely due to the type of interaction – how admirable a person we are. 13 In contemporary sociology the concepts of social role and identity are often used interchangeably, which leads to a complete blurring of the fundamental difference at the foundation of these two concepts. In a nutshell, although social roles are socially constructed, they are the properties of individuals, whereas identities, although formed individually, are the properties of groups. It is in this sense that I use these two terms in this book. 14 This process included changes in the understanding of the concept of wealth, causing money to become more abstract and standardizing prices (cf. Simmel 2005), which constituted a necessary condition for initiating the process of relative democratization

88  Generic experiences of our times of needs, in the course of which an important role was assumed by changes related to urbanization (cf. especially Benjamin 1999). The “creation of the consumer”, as Zygmunt Bauman emphasizes (2005), was an indispensable part of transforming the capitalist economy. 15 “Chindogu is a Japanese word for all the useless things we might be tempted to buy – windshield wipers for your spectacles . . . slippers with mops underneath so that you can polish the floor as you walk around the house. I have all those ties that I’m never going to use” (Handy 1997, 45–46). 16 After some consideration I have arrived at the conclusion that the only reason for keeping all those things is the unconscious fantasy of becoming, at some point, when time will allow, a “good housewife”, i.e. a woman who boils eggs without making them spill out, prevents milk from boiling over, and serves grapefruit with a special spoon that makes eating it easier. And, of course, who serves coffee in small cups (I have yet to unpack the ones I bought five years ago). 17 Kenneth Galbraith (2007) was one of the few economists to point out the fact that consumer behaviour is not obvious; he also emphasized that in many cases it is the production that creates needs rather than the other way around. 18 Campbell rejects the definition of utility, adopted by the economists, as subjective pleasure, usefulness, or satisfaction derived from purchased goods and services, arguing that it blurs the boundary between needs (satisfaction) and desires (pleasure) (1987, 60–65). He believes that needs are related to the physiological “state of being”, while pleasure is associated with the psychological “state of experience”. Hence, he consistently limits the concept of utility to the “benefits” derived by consumers from a certain consumed object in the process of satisfying one’s living needs. 19 One needs to remember that – as Sombart already knew and as is underlined by authors of studies on the birth of consumerism – yesterday’s luxuries become today’s necessities (McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb 1982, 98). 20 At this point of his argumentation, Campbell utilizes the formal similarity between the terms “luxury” and “luxuriate”, to show that “the common feature is the enjoyment of the pleasurable dimension of an experience” (1987, 59). 21 This might be the weakest link in Campbell’s argumentation, because by introducing a variant of Cartesian dualism in the form of the distinction between bodily and spiritual needs, he does not answer the question about the relations between these two entities. 22 This is best seen in George Ritzer who noting the rise of consumerism after the Second World War, contents himself with the claim that “[p]eople want and can afford more goods and services. The means of consumption have proliferated to give people what they want, to create new wants, and, in the process, to allow those who satisfy those desires to profit” (2005, 26; emphasis added). 23 As Veblen notes, “the consumption of these more excellent goods is an evidence of wealth, it becomes honorific; and conversely, the failure to consume in due quantity and quality becomes a mark of inferiority and demerit” (2008, 53; emphasis added). His focus on wealth as the primary dimension of social differentiation was a clear reflection of the views held by the bourgeois society in which he lived and worked. 24 In light of Gurevich’s analyses, it is particularly striking how “psychologized” an interpretation was that offered by Veblen, who argued that the tradition of organizing sumptuous feasts by the leisure classes stems primarily from the fact that, “[a]s wealth accumulates on his [lord’s] hands, his own unaided effort will not avail to sufficiently put his opulence in evidence” (2008, 53). 25 “The ideology of natural taste owes its plausibility and its efficacy to the fact that . . . it naturalizes real [class] differences . . . it only recognizes as legitimate the relation to culture (or language) which least bears the visible marks of its genesis, which has nothing ‘academic’, ‘scholastic’, ‘bookish’, ‘affected’ or ‘studied’ about it, but manifests by its ease and naturalness that true culture is nature – a new mystery of immaculate conception” (Bourdieu 2010, 68; emphasis preserved).

Generic experiences of our times  89 26 “Necessity imposes a taste for necessity which implies a form of adaptation to and consequently acceptance of the necessary, a resignation to the inevitable”, Bourdieu writes (2010, 372). His account of the taste of the working classes in the late 1970s is very similar to that of Hoggart’s. 27 Naturally, the tempo of these changes differed from country to country. It needs to be recalled that processes whose seeds the Lynds observed in the USA in the late 1920s became accelerated in Europe only after the Second World War. 28 In other words, inventing ever newer styles of consuming was a specific form of refusing to grow old among representatives of the former youth revolt, which gave rise to the currently dominant cult of youth. 29 Consumption is typically defined as “buying and using goods”, which naturally does not exclude the occurrence of some forms of “mass consumption” in the sense of collective participation in decisions to buy or share a certain good. However, “to consume” is derived from the Latin term meaning “to eat”, which is in itself a necessarily individual act. Even when we share bread with someone – or a fashionable piece of clothing – we “consume” it individually (it is my hunger, or my desire to feel fashionable, that is satisfied through eating bread or dressing up). 30 According to Shenk, it is the main source of chronic stress, which affects three-fourths of Americans, and which became responsible in the past century – at least partially – for the three hundred per cent increase in the number of depression cases. For more on the social consequences of overstimulation, see: Milgram 1970. 31 According to some estimates, “from the beginning of humanity to 2003 we have produced five exabytes of information but today we produce just as much in two days and still keep accelerating” (Stec 2012, 22). As IBM claims, we create 2.5 trillion bytes of data every day, which means that 90 per cent of currently existing data was produced only in the past two years. Sources of these data include information such as card payment records, GSM devices logging data, geolocation coordinates of various GPS transmitters, posts, photos and videos published in the social media, or data sent by sensors measuring climate changes, current weather etc. 32 Naturally, some of these changes are shallower, while others are deeper. An example of the former is provided by changes caused by the introduction of clocks, responsible for habits that discipline actions in temporal terms. An example of the latter could be the more complex and far-reaching changes caused by the introduction of print. For more on some of the consequences of this invention, see Anderson 2006. Cf. also Goody (1978, 1986), who examines the consequences of introducing alphabetic ­writing – another fundamental medium of European culture. 33 The concept of nomos was introduced by Berger as a positive counterpart to Durkheim’s concept of anomie. Both terms reference – through their etymology – the Greek idea of order. 34 The process of social objectification of knowledge about the world is described by Berger and Luckmann (1991). 35 “For example”, Berger notes, “the sexual program of a society is taken for granted not simply as a utilitarian or morally correct arrangement, but as an inevitable expression of ‘human nature’. The so-called ‘homosexual panic’ may serve as an excellent illustration of the terror unleashed by the denial of the program” (2011, 56). 36 The “weakening of social bonds” is basically identical to the phenomenon of de-­ normalization of roles (cf. Giza-Poleszczuk and Marody 2006), just like the “diversity of ways to look at the world” is just another way of saying that there are no comprehensive images of reality anymore. As far as the “growing significance of lifestyle” is concerned, it is one of the symptoms of the blurring of meanings related to consumption, and it does not add much to our understanding of the changes in mechanisms that structure contemporary society. 37 The reductionist character of such explanations is even more acutely felt when we take into consideration the fact that they are accompanied by the multiplication of ad hoc

90  Generic experiences of our times concepts used to describe society – we live in an individualized society, a consumer society, a society of choices and of experience, a society of reflexive modernity etc. It is yet another manifestation of the aforementioned “intellectual stenography”. 38 As experiencing individuals, we usually have little trouble – disregarding the liminal cases – with identifying our own identity described in social categories. I know that I am a woman, I am aware of my age (sometimes a little too much), I know that I am a Pole living in Warsaw, a professor of sociology, etc. Most people would find it easy to assemble a similar list of unquestionable indicators of their own social identity. 39 When speaking of material transformations of reality, I mean both the quantitative growth of the population, goods and ideas, and the aforementioned changes in the character of cities and the organization of labour, changes in social living standards and individual income, and changes in means of communication, which today offer, for the first time in history, access to all of the contents amassed by humanity in the course of its history. 40 According to Durkheim, a rule “is above all an obligatory way of acting, that is, one to some extent not subject to individual arbitrariness” (2013, 11; second emphasis added). 41 The autonomy of individuals we see today, discussed by Lash, should be viewed in this context as a clear signal that we are dealing with the dissolution of characteristically modern ways of socializing human actions. Another signal – in line with the Durkheimian tradition (2005) – could be the suicide rates, rising since the 1950s. According to WHO, during the past 45 years global suicide rate rose by 60 per cent, with predicted total number of suicides in 2020 at 1.5 million (after Matusik 2005). The World Health Report 2001 also mentions that in 2000 suicide was the cause of death for 814,000 people, which is estimated to be more than that year’s combined numbers of the victims of war (230,000) and homicide (500,000) (after Matusik 2005). 42 Human actions were very rarely (if at all) entirely de-socialized in the history of mankind. Even in periods characterised by a high degree of social anomie – e.g. early Middle Ages – the necessity to cooperate among individuals created certain regularities in their actions, excellently analysed, among others, by Karol Modzelewski (2015). Revolutions would also create – though not for long – their own institutions, their own division into the elites and the masses as well as their own nomic justifications and ranks of “experts” on revolutionary purity. 43 Some scholars include among the “great transformations” – besides the aforementioned transition to modernity – the move from primal communities to traditional societies sensu stricto. However, apart from these great transformations that alter the basic principles of social life, the history of human societies features a range of important changes that were of lower order, so to speak, but whose rise was also crucially affected by technological innovations. It suffices to recall the significance ascribed by some authors to the invention and popularization of radio, which contributed to the rise of fascism, or the invention and popularization of cars, which changed the face of American society. In both cases we see transformations that did not radically undermine the fundamental principles of the modern social order, but still managed to reshape some of its parameters.

4 The social environment after modernity

No “beds” are furnished for “re­embedding”, and such beds as might be postulated and pursued prove fragile and often vanish before the work of ‘re-embedding’ is complete. There are rather ‘musical chairs’ of various sizes and styles as well as of changing numbers and positions, which prompt men and women to be constantly on the move and promise no ‘fulfilment’, no rest and no satisfaction of ‘arriving’, of reaching the final destination, where one can disarm, relax and stop worrying. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity

Tel Aviv police have detained Rabbi David Aharon, who sold parcels in paradise to the faithful. A hidden police camera recorded the negotiations he held in a synagogue with people wishing to purchase a plot of land in heaven. Plans and copies of contracts were found in his office. The forty-three-year-old rabbi would also sell guarantees of entry to paradise, charging fees for erasing sins. For example, wiping out adultery cost $200. The rabbi was charged with corruption and fraud. A news piece from the daily Gazeta Wyborcza, 21 November 2003

Among the many concepts employed to grasp the specificity of contemporary times, one seems particularly pertinent: the metaphor of “liquid” modernity proposed by Zygmunt Bauman (2006). It perfectly renders the fact that the form of the social world keeps changing and the growing sense that we are witnessing the disappearance of more stable points of reference, ones that would lend purpose and coherence to individual actions. In liquid modernity there are no positions simply waiting to be taken. Individual identity shifts from being “given” to something we “create”. It becomes increasingly apparent that we are suffering from a deficiency of “patterns, codes and rules to which one could conform, which one could select as stable orientation points and by which one could subsequently let oneself be guided” (7). Fluidity and “liquidity”, i.e. lack of a stable form, not only constitute the fundamental properties of “risk society” or “fragmented identity”, but also permeate all dimensions of social life, beginning from fashion, which seems to be losing its primary function by admitting a multiplicity of trends that emerge largely

92  The social environment after modernity from consumerist behaviour, through science and politics, which are moving away from seeking truth and realizing the common good, leaning instead towards volatile scientific and ideological fashions, and ending with ever stronger turbulences within the global distribution of power accorded to particular societies. The metaphor of “liquid reality” seems to be particularly appealing to sociologists and other social scientists who struggle with describing today’s world. This includes both those who endorse Bauman’s diagnosis and those who oppose it by attempting to find more stable points that would help them grasp the forms taken on by contemporary society. However, this metaphor fails when it comes to conveying the experiences of individuals who live from day to day within a network of institutions, relations and norms that regulate their existence in ways that have nothing to do with formless “liquidity”. After all, regardless of the number of texts arguing either in favour of or against the thesis about the disappearance of the state due to globalization, most of us still have to contact state authorities in order to perform certain actions, and most of us still need a passport in order to travel. Every year there comes a time when we think about our nearest and dearest on the occasion of important holidays, or begin to nervously organize our documents in order to file tax returns. Despite all the blurring of social structures, we still regard certain positions as higher and pursue them, while the autonomy of our actions does not make us immune to criminal responsibility for those deeds that could be regarded with good faith by our environment, but which violate the institutionally supported vision of the world (or even of the afterlife, as demonstrated in the case of the rabbi quoted at the top of this chapter). In other words, society still constitutes a certain system of rules and principles, which affect individuals who take actions in the local “here and now” of social reality, and who consequently do not have to be aware of the underlying processes that lead to the increase of the social order’s “liquidity” in the broader perspective. This is especially true because social life understood as an unceasing process of socializing human actions not only dissolves their current forms, but also continually creates new ones, which are becoming the new binding frameworks for individual actions. Even if researchers working in the area of social development regard these forms as “unfinished”, transitional and liquid, from the perspective of individual life they are considerably stable road signs that indicate the directions of people’s actions. Thus, even though the period of formational transition can, when analyzed from the perspective of mankind’s entire history, be described as a point of complete breakaway from the old form of organizing social life which signals a transition to a new one,1 and although when we focus on “late modernity” it becomes a time-stretched2 process of transformations in which “liquidity” and changeability emerge as key characteristics of the fundamental elements of the social order, from the perspective of individuals living in the period of transition it is characterized by the prevalence of elements of continuity rather than change. This is simply because different elements of the social order undergo transformations to a varying degree and at different paces, while these transformations are, on the one hand, continuously utilized in the ongoing processes of socializing individual activities, and on the other – often treated as manifestations of a temporary crisis affecting unchangeable, “natural” forms of social life.

The social environment after modernity  93 Thus, accepting the thesis about the “liquidity” of post-modernity does not have to come into conflict with the search for more permanent properties that provide the society with its current form and are reproduced – more or less successfully – through individual actions. Although from the long-term perspective these properties still have a temporary character (in the sense that they are no longer a full reproduction of properties specific to the modern society, but have not been consolidated yet into a newly crystallized, different form of social order), from the perspective of human life they constitute the essential social context for all actions. This is because they establish certain rules and limitations, acquired in socialization processes, and reveal new possibilities that are utilized in ongoing processes of socializing individual actions, pushing the formational change forward, though the direction may not be clear yet. Understood as the context of human behaviour, society appears to individuals living in it primarily as a system of certain institutions, social divisions, and beliefs regarding the nature of the world, which create the nomic framework of undertaken actions. Thus, in order to identify the fundamental features of postmodernity’s social environment we shall examine, one by one, changes to the three fundamental elements of social order created in modernity.

Transformations of social institutions In modern society, the organization of life rested on three fundamental institutions: state, paid labour, and family. The state guaranteed the safety and sovereignty of society as a nation. As such, it had the right to speak in the name of society: inflict punishment, form alliances, declare war, and at the same time it had the right to demand various tributes from its citizens: from taxes to the sacrifice of one’s life in defence of the homeland. Most citizens would secure their existential basis through paid labour in more and more specialized occupations. The occupational career would determine the main stages of life, constituting the basis of individual identity and determining vital social divisions. At the same time, the increased significance of paid labour led to the consolidation of the nuclear family, along with its division of roles according to sex, with men providing the means, while women – the services indispensable for supporting individual life on a daily basis. Through coordination of individual actions, these three pillars of the modern society determined the dominant techniques of living as well as provided the basis for the development of social identity and the justifications for the meaning of life, by the same token creating the foundation of social integration. During the past thirty years, however, these three institutions have been deeply reshaped, which fundamentally altered their mode of operation and the role they play in organizing contemporary social life. Transformations of state At first glance, the statement about the fundamental reshaping of social institutions seems entirely inadequate with regard to the liberal-democratic state created in the

94  The social environment after modernity period of modernity, which still constitutes the basic political form of organizing the post-modern society.3 Based on the system of social representations selected during general elections, focused in its aspirations on the vision of social development and limited in its actions by provisions of law, the contemporary state appears, in terms of its premises, to be a continuation of solutions developed by eighteenth-century activists of civic society who challenged the absolute power of the monarchs. In fact, the only symptom of its potential crisis seems to consist in the collapse of the very idea of the civic spirit, which finds expression primarily in decreasing voter turnouts.4 However, if we do not limit ourselves in our analyses of the condition of contemporary state to its formal and legal properties but treat it as an institution emerging from, and adapted to, a broader context of social actions, we might note the widening gap between the contemporary character of such actions and the assumptions lying at the foundation of the modern state. Three of these assumptions are particularly important, having played a special role in determining both the state’s internal character and the tasks it was supposed to realize. First, the modern state was, in principle, a nation state. This made it different from earlier forms of state organization, which would sometimes refer to the concept of ethnicity but regarded it as based on the bonds of kinship and as a criterion of exclusion rather than inclusion.5 Meanwhile, as most contemporary scholars unanimously claim (cf. Breuilly 1985; Hobsbawm 1992; Anderson 2006; Gellner 2013), the concept of nationality, so obvious for us today, has an entirely different character. It was intentionally formed as a platform for integrating various local societies in the processes of moulding the modern state, whose elites were able – thanks to many measures such as homogenization of language through general education, introduction of secular rituals, the activity of the growing bureaucracy etc. – to create national identity and promulgate the kind of vision of the world “in which the interest of the state constitutes the common good, with regulations introduced by this body offering the basis for individual and collective actions” (Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018, 313). Second, a major task of the modern state was to protect the sovereignty of the nation thus created, which meant that it existed in the permanent shadow of war.6 This stemmed directly from the fact that national sovereignty had two different foundations: on the one hand, it was determined by the boundaries of state territory, and on the other – by the range of all those who would identify with this state (or who would be identified by the state as such). This iunctim between state, nation, and territory became a permanent hotbed of armed conflicts incited both by peoples and nations deprived of their own state structures7 and by states taking military steps in the name of protecting their minorities remaining under foreign rule8 or protecting their own territory from any threats posed by their neighbours. In such a situation, state policy was subordinated to the expansion of military power, while the highest civic virtue was patriotism and the greatest honour for any individual (especially for men) was dying for one’s fatherland. Third, through its (increasing) engagement in controlling the economic development – which was initially related precisely to the creation and reinforcement

The social environment after modernity  95 of military power – the modern state was becoming to an ever greater degree a welfare state. Beginning with early, humble attempts at state interventionism aimed to protect domestic, “free” trade from foreign competition, through first attempts at creating a socially oriented state, and ending with the rise of contemporary welfare state, the model would continually depart further from the liberal notion of state as a “night watchman”, which accompanied its creation. The citizen was supposed to feel protected not only from attacks (economic or military) from the neighbouring countries, or from ordinary criminals who could assault one on the street, but also from any adversities of fate. The price paid by the citizens in exchange for this protection was an increasing interference of the state in their private and occupational life, which was regulated to an ever greater extent by state legislation. These three properties that lay at the foundation of the modern state, and determined the social context of its policies and the functioning of its citizens, are currently becoming blurred at an increasing pace by the processes set in motion by technological changes. First, the relationship between the state, nation, and territory was shattered. According to Arjun Appadurai (1996), this was mainly the effect of two processes characteristic for the globalizing world and related to the changing means of communication: mass migrations and electronic mediation of interpersonal relations. The former has been motivated by the necessity to travel for work and made easier by the availability of various means of transport. However, the sheer scale of mobility causes the nation – a concept that was, in a sense, artificially constructed for the purposes of the state (cf. Anderson 2006; Żelazny 2004) – to undergo deterritorialization, turning it into a network of diasporas, which are often separated by great distances. At the same time, the nation state is becoming more or less multi-ethnic. As Appadurai demonstrates, the process of weakening the relation between people and state-as-territory does not necessarily have to involve weakening their relationship with nation as an ethnic community. The current development of communication technologies gives diasporic individuals and communities the ability to become engaged and make contact with their nation, even impact its fate, despite living far away from it, possibly even in another hemisphere. Virtual contacts between representatives of national minorities with compatriots back home facilitate dialogue, while the establishment of various associations creates support for the actions of minorities and the policies of members of the diaspora, the latter developed independently or at least outside the scope of state policy. The separation of national origin from the fact of living within the boundaries of particular state increasingly often makes being a member of a nation a matter of an individual sense of belonging. Manifesting it depends on individual choice and a willingness to engage. In other words, the sense of national status becomes a private matter. This is also favoured by the fact that mass migrations led not only to the deterritorialization of the nation, but also to the transformations of “locality”. People change their place of living for many reasons, not just economic ones but also professional; they move as a result of natural disasters, because they seek

96  The social environment after modernity a better climate or for thrills. By moving, they create communities that belong, in some sense, to a specific nation state, but which are also transnational, extending beyond its boundaries. Bonds created through marriage, work, business, and leisure connect diverse, mobile populations, creating “localities” that are not necessarily tied to a given territory – they are no longer “given” but are “produced”, making them qualitatively different from the way in which they were traditionally understood. One of the consequences of the emergence of “deterritorialized nations” and “transnational communities” is the loss of state control over the collective imagination. “The state’s capture of historical time through its appropriation of tradition and the (re)construction of national identity is challenged by plural identities as defined by autonomous subjects”, Castells writes (2002, 243). In the flow of information, opinions and ideas, the greatest role is played by globalized media, but its participants also include a Tibetan doctor seeing Polish patients to the accompaniment of Buddhist chants played from a record player, a Filipino nanny hired by an American business woman to care for her child, or patrons of a bar at New York’s Greenpoint, who eat their soup while watching the Polish president’s press conference broadcast by a Polish news channel. All of them bring a part of their ethnic culture to their new communities, at the same time transferring cultural elements derived from the place they live in through contacts with their home country. In this way, they intensify the process of creating new “mythographies”, which are beyond state control and, as Appadurai observes, “move the glacial force of habitus into a quickened beat of improvisation for large groups of people” (1996, 6). The combined impact of all these processes entails the weakening of patriotism as the principal social virtue describing the individuals’ duty to the community of the nation-state. At the root of the process of blurring this notion, however, we find deeper transformations of technological and politico-economic character, which have been fundamentally affecting, since 1945, the transformations of both state policies and individual value systems. These include: the rise of nuclear weapons, which has established an effective countermeasure against the strongest states’ engagement in global military conflicts; the globalization of economic processes, which has begun to replace power struggle with financial cooperation as the basic political principle; and, most importantly, the revolution in information technology, which shifted the power of individual states to rely more on intellectual achievements than military ones. These transformations have led to the relative disappearance of wars as the dominant way of settling conflicts between countries. Or, more precisely, they removed military conflict from the awareness of societies in democratic, technologically advanced Western countries.9 As Manuel Castells observed, in many societies today there are already several generations that have not experienced war during their lifetime. Aside from the implications of this fact for the culture of masculinity, intersexual relations, attitudes towards death, and even contemporary military strategy,10 this “fundamental discontinuity in the human experience” (2001a, 489) has profoundly influenced the relation between individuals and state. The state has ceased to be regarded as the sole guardian of the society’s potential

The social environment after modernity  97 for self-determination, i.e. its “armed arm” protecting individuals from demise. In other words, it ceased to be a value in itself and began to be assessed mainly on the grounds of its efficiency in settling everyday social problems and satisfying the needs of its citizens. However, the effectiveness of realizing these “welfare” functions of the state has also been severely limited in recent years due to many factors. Three of them deserve to be looked at in greater detail. The first one is the globalization of risk – technological, ecological, economic, social, etc. – which not only transcends state borders, but also, due to its very nature, cannot be brought under control through employing standard state policies (Beck 1992). Certainly, it is possible to tighten medical controls at airports, as it happened during the panic over the bird flu pandemic. Importation of beef from countries affected by BSE can be banned. The most dangerous pesticides can be made illegal to use with domestic crops. Still, as for instance the Chernobyl experience shows us, it is impossible to protect oneself from contamination that travels in, so to speak, natural ways. Nor is it possible for any single country, even the most technologically advanced one, to successfully address such effects on their own, as is the case with global warming. The impotence of the state in dealing with dangers against which it was supposed to protect its citizens is all the more overwhelming because most such threats are interconnected in a way that makes addressing one risk exacerbate others. For example, it is possible to alter the norms of pollution generated by “dirty industries” in order to export them to other countries (usually poorer ones), but this comes at the cost of increasing unemployment in one’s own country, thus increasing the risk of social conflicts. It seems viable to employ certain legal measures to protect a given country from potential outcomes of global financial crashes, but the price of this is to exclude that state from the global capital flows, which constitute the basis for the development of contemporary economies. Finally, we can strive to minimalize transnational terrorist threat by stripping citizens of certain rights they were formerly guaranteed,11 but this entails the risk of creating vital threats to democracy. This specific effect of particular policies cancelling each other out and becoming counterproductive is closely related to the second factor that lies at the foundation of the breakdown of the state’s welfare functions: the increased diversity and complexity of contemporary social life. This factor is the outcome of both the aforementioned processes of deterritorializing nations and the accompanying emergence of transnational communities, which in turn attempt to shape state policies, as well as new challenges created by a networked economy, globalized crime, new social movements, and the accumulation of dysfunctions produced by policies adopted in the past. All of this leads to the breakdown of the effectiveness of Weber’s model of bureaucracy as the basis for organizing the state apparatus, because a deficit of knowledge becomes apparent within state structures along with the increasing complexity of the social order. To put it differently, traditionally organized states cease to be capable of processing information to the extent that would help them adopt measures adequate

98  The social environment after modernity to the degree of complexity in a given situation. Weber’s rationalization begins to be replaced by a defence of bureaucracy’s position as an organized interest group. The increasing “ungovernability” begins to manifest in different ways, e.g. through decreasing support for political leadership, increase of political radicalism, weakening of traditional political parties, development of new social movements, surge in crime and the related reprivatization of security means, etc. (cf. Hausner 2007; Kooiman 1993). Ulrich Beck draws attention to the same set of issues in slightly different terms when he writes that “the unforeseen consequences of [modern] functional differentiation can no longer be controlled by further functional differentiation. In fact, the very idea of controllability, certainty or security – so fundamental to first modernity – collapses” (Beck and Lau 2005, 526). Finally, the third factor affecting the breakdown of the state’s welfare functions is the deepening crisis of the modern welfare state. This idea had its earlier incarnations in the form of Bismarck’s social state, but it was fully developed only in the 1950s, taking advantage of post-war economic boom. A high economic growth rate allowed Western countries to finance broad-scale social projects, creating an elaborate system of care provided to citizens literally from cradle to grave: from maternity and family benefits, through unemployment benefits and pensions, to funeral allowances. In other words, welfare state insured citizens from basic life risks such as old age, sickness, disability, or unemployment, thus becoming a way in which the capitalist society could control the negative consequences of the free market without abandoning its main principles, at the same time strengthening the sense of solidarity and social integration.12 The first blow dealt to the idea of welfare state was the 1980s’ slump in the economy caused by the earlier oil crisis. Dwindling budget income and rising unemployment, which in turn exacerbated the costs incurred by social security systems, considerably endangered the state’s ability to deliver on its social promises. Despite the fact that this crisis was temporarily overcome, further social and economic changes occurring since the 1990s have elicited increasingly vocal arguments about the necessity of dismantling the elaborate welfare state. Increase of average life expectancy, labour deficits caused by the technological revolution, toughening competition on a global scale, demands formulated by various interest groups, and finally the demotivating influence of income security on the readiness to undertake work, accompanied by overstated wage expectations – all of this has questioned the possibility or even rationality of the state continuing its costly social programmes. Even though we still see debates on the possibility of realizing social security programmes and on ways of doing so, the idea of a welfare state has ceased to be the flagship political slogan and many politicians seem to be suggesting that citizens should not count on the state’s support too much.13 The breakdown of these structural and material factors lying at the foundation of the state’s welfare functions makes the nation-state – formerly considered to be the basic institution aiming to multiply common good, an expression of collectively shared responsibility for the fate and well-being of society-as-nation, and finally, a means of social solidarity – lose its special status in the eyes of citizens.

The social environment after modernity  99 It thus becomes one of the many institutions engaged in the creation of public good, e.g. roads, security, construction, education, anti-pollution measures, etc., and responsible for managing these domains.14 As a result, the state begins to be assessed primarily on the basis of the efficiency with which it satisfies the needs of individuals in these areas. This, in turn, entails a change of attitude towards the state, which shifts from civic to “consumerist”. Summing up, one ought to say that the late twentieth-century transformations described earlier disturbed the very foundations of state as an institution regulating the actions of social actors, both collective and individual. Certainly, state agendas – at least due to the state’s monopoly on means of coercion15 – still play a key role in determining basic techniques of living, but the state is gradually losing its ability to act as an institution that defines individual and collective identity, as well as one that establishes and sustains (among other things through organization of collective rituals) the kind of interpretation of reality in which the principal source of meaning and justification for any actions would be located in the concept of the nation, specifically its survival, interests, and development. In other words, contrary to announcements made by certain theoreticians of globalization, the state as a form of political organization is still standing strong; however, as a specific institution emerging from the modern form of socializing human actions, as well as an expression of “social contract” and a mode of establishing “general will”, it is gradually eroding. Thus, the very foundation of the “citizenship” is undermined, questioning its status as the basis for subordinating the interests of individuals to general principles of social action developed with the mediation of the democratic state’s institutions. This means that collective and individual social actors will more and more often orient their endeavours towards other centres of social integration – ones that have not yet been created, but that will be different from the nation-state. Transformations of labour The ongoing transformations of labour are a widely discussed topic. Emphasis is frequently placed on changes to the very nature of labour, indicating that it is being dematerialized insofar as contemporary economies organize it increasingly often not around producing objects, but around handling ideas and abstract entities, which is related to the transition towards knowledge-based economy. By transforming the nature of labour, contemporary economy is also changing the way labour is organized, with the Fordist model replaced by a post-Fordist one16 and assembly line mass production replaced by the creation of short series adapted to the changing needs and tastes of clients. A key factor in these changes is naturally the proliferation of new information technologies, which facilitate rapid shifts of production. Apart from dematerialization and post-Fordism, the third concept describing contemporary transformations of labour is flexibility. It appears to be the most capacious category, because it indicates transformations in both the requirements the employees have to meet (flexibility to adapt to constantly changing tasks) and

100  The social environment after modernity in the way in which the production process is organized (since it is subordinated to the production of short series as well as based on just-in-time delivery and a flattened structure of management). On the most general level of analysis, the processes transforming the contemporary domain of labour are often collectively referred to as the transition from economies of scale to economies of scope.17 Although by accentuating slightly different aspects of how labour is being transformed today each of these concepts provides a rather broad review of changes currently occurring in this area, they share a certain flaw: they limit themselves to transformations of labour as such, thus isolating it from other areas of people’s actions. Therefore, to answer the question how these transformations influence the basic parameters regulating the organization of social life in contemporary societies, we need to reinstate labour into the broader picture of human activity. One ought to begin by saying that the significance of paid labour in determining the modern order was related to the fact that for most individuals it constituted a fundamental factor defining their place in society. Employment and unemployment, type of labour, and its pragmatic dimension not only determined access to means necessary for sustaining one’s biological existence, but also regulated one’s network of contacts and social capital, as well as identity, sense of individual value, life prospects, and possibilities to act in other domains. For this reason, as Ulrich Beck succinctly put it, “[w]age labor and an occupation have become the axis of living in the industrial age” (1992, 139; emphasis preserved). One needs to remember, however, that the subordination of life to labour did not occur right away but was rather a time-stretched process, in the course of which consequences of the transition to modernity were accumulating (cf. Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018, chapter 6). It caused the modern society – unlike the traditional ones, where the individual’s fate and opportunities were determined by birth – to define one’s fate and opportunities through “the chance of [selling] goods or services for themselves on the market” (Weber 1991, 183; emphasis added). To put it differently, as a result of the transition to modernity the place of a society organized in accordance with a divine plan was taken by one whose structure and functioning are the effect of anonymous market forces. “Monetization of labour” becomes – alongside private property – one of two alternative means of securing the means to live and defining the social position. At the same time, the division into “owners” and “the working people” not only determines the activities and life prospects available to particular individuals, but in time begins to create a categorial sense of community, which integrates the dispersed economic interests in the interest of “the capitalist class” and the interest of “the working class”. The task of reconciling these interests more and more often falls on the state. As Max Weber rightly notes, the significance of having or not having property for determining class divisions, and thus an individual’s status, is in this case a derivative of the dominance of market mechanisms, as a result of which “ ‘[c]lass situation’ is, in this sense, ultimately ‘market situation’ ” (182). The changes in how the market functions, which occurred in the course of modern society’s evolution and which are usually described in terms of transition from free-­competition capitalism to organized capitalism (cf. Lash and Urry 1993; Hirszowicz 2007),

The social environment after modernity  101 thus also substantially affect the changes in mechanisms determining the social position of individuals. Separation of ownership from control over the means of production, development of ever larger, hierarchically structured management, emergence of new professions related to handling ever more complex processes of management, and general increase in managers’ wealth – all of these mean that, among such mechanisms, “pure” ownership begins to diminish in significance, while one’s occupation begins to play an increasing role. The parallel growth of state’s functions, which led to the swelling of bureaucracy, additionally ­reinforces the significance of the new division, which begins to play the dominant role in determining the position of individuals: the division into physical and non-­ physical work. It was thus only the rise of organized capitalism that made Beck’s observation, cited earlier, become true, i.e. that in the industrial society paid labour and occupation constitute the “axis of living”. After all, it was the strengthening of capitalism and the accompanying rise of the new middle class (cf. Domański 1994) that caused “selling work” to be the basic source of income for the vast majority of the population.18 At the same time, social divisions began to refer to meritocratic criteria, while the individual’s place and opportunities began to be determined not by ownership but by the kind of work they performed. During the peak period of organized capitalism’s glory, i.e. the years 1945– 1960, labour as the basic area of human activity displayed at least three characteristic features. First, it would determine the basic circle of the individual’s social identifications. It was labour, or more precisely occupation, that determined the individual’s place in society. This certainly was the effect of the increasing specialization of work itself, but was additionally augmented by two factors. The first was the fact that working conditions (including the price for which it would be “sold” on the market) began to be negotiated as part of collective arrangements, where the “world of labour” was represented by organizations formed in accordance with occupational criteria. Trade unions, which were initially merely a collective voice of specific groups of workers in conflict with owners of industrial plants, began to be independent institutional social actors in three-way negotiations between employees, representatives of management, and the state – negotiations whose outcome would acquire the form of bureaucratic regulations. The second factor was the fact that paths of access to an increasing number of work positions began to be formalized in the form of specific certificates or diplomas. Such institutionalization of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986) necessary for performing a specific job not only extracted people from their groups of origin and networks of family connections, but also enforced advance planning and investing in one’s career. This is closely related to the second vital property of labour, namely the fact that in time it began to determine the basic framework of individual biography. From the end of the Second World War the sequence that comprised preparing for work, being occupationally active, and then retiring created clearly distinguishable stages of life that constituted a linear narrative. Preparations could span either a shorter period of training or a longer process that involved having to earn

102  The social environment after modernity a formal diploma. Occupational career had clearly determined rungs, with each rung entailing pay rises, while old age pensions could be calculated in advance. This not only lent individual biography the quality of being predictable, but also added a progressive character of rising to ever higher levels of social hierarchy. As Richard Sennett shows, even in the case of occupations where no direct promotions were available, time itself would become a means of accumulating resources thanks to the existence of a bureaucratic structure rationalizing its use. For a physical worker, “the seniority rules of his union about pay and the regulations organizing his government pension provided this scaffolding” (1999, 16). Thanks to all the interventions of organized capitalism in how the market functioned, employees at every rung could have the sense that their career has a stable and linear character. Finally, the third feature of labour in modern society was that it would clearly separate work time from one’s own time. On the one hand, as if by definition, women’s household activities were not considered work, despite significantly contributing to sustaining the family’s existence, because they did not create income or, to speak more broadly, were not subject to market mechanisms and regulations. On the other hand, besides the work time there emerged a distinct leisure time, which was becoming gradually accessible to ever greater circles of workers as time primarily devoted to relaxation and recreation.19 This division into work time and one’s own time would roughly correspond to the division into the public and private spheres; to a large degree it coincided with the division into activities in which individuals would fall under the jurisdiction of the management and had to comply with their decisions and company regulations, and ones in which individuals would be able to freely make their own decisions. Its significance increased along with the deepening divide between the logic underlying the functioning of individuals in these two spheres. It was in the difference between the principles governing the domain of economy, with their focus on efficiency, lowering production costs, optimization, functional rationality, and the principles governing the individual’s “private” life (life outside of work), with a focus on seeking pleasure, return to instinctual sources of expression, and rejection of rationality that Daniel Bell would locate the fundamental source of contradictions tearing apart Western societies in the mid-1970s (1978). From today’s perspective it is clear that the contradictions of capitalism mentioned in the title of Bell’s book were not so much systemic, but rather reflected the widening gap between time for work and time for leisure, thus foreshadowing the emergence of decisive changes in the area of labour. Today, these transformations are leading – just like in the case of state – to ever more apparent blurring of those properties of paid labour that were shaped in the course of modern society’s evolution. First, labour is losing its significance as a means of social identification for individuals. This is primarily due to the fact that labour itself is becoming blurred as one of the two (alongside ownership) ways of securing the means necessary to live and establish one’s social position. The emergence of alternative sources of individual income, apart from ownership and labour, is related not only to the rise

The social environment after modernity  103 of the aforementioned welfare state, which has been the source of benefits unregulated by market logic since the 1950s.20 Contemporary analysts of globalization indicate that the rise of global crime networks, which control incredible amounts of money obtained mainly from drug trade, facilitated financing entirely legal financial ventures. They also emphasize the considerable participation of speculative capital in contemporary financial flows – capital that was not created through labour or selling goods, but simply from capitalising on the differences in market rates (Castells 2001a). Equally significant, however, are those transformations of the more general labour environment which blur the relationship between labour and the occupational structures that used to be an important dimension of the individual’s positioning within a network of social ties. A flexible regime of production primarily entails the disappearance of work specialization, which begins to be organized around changing tasks, not specific activities. Taught occupational qualifications lose importance, as the basic requirements that employees must now meet are availability, the ability to adapt to constant changes, and an “emotional intelligence” that makes teamwork easier (Goleman 2006). Increased fluidity of employment and widespread outsourcing constitute a considerable obstacle for organizing permanent pressure groups (e.g. trade unions or professional corporations).21 In consequence, an ever greater percentage of employees are forced to negotiate their contracts individually on an incessantly transforming job market (cf. Castells 2001a, chapter 4). All of this makes it difficult – if not impossible – to identify with the work one is performing. Back in the 1950s a profession was chosen for the entire lifetime, and it would constitute a basic element of individual identity. Today, however, people are forced to change not only the place but also the type of job several times during their lifetime. “No jobs are guaranteed, no positions are foolproof, no skills are of lasting utility”, Bauman writes (1997, 23). It is more and more often the case that the question “Who are you?” – which would be answered by stating one’s profession – is replaced by the question “What do you do?”, underpinned by an assumption about the temporary character of a given kind of activity and a sense that it may not be necessarily tied to one’s identity. Second, and in connection to this, labour is today ceasing to determine the basic narrative framework of a linear individual biography. This is because, as discussed earlier, the flexible regime of production deprives more and more employees of job security, making them unable to plan their lives. People are hired and fired depending on necessity, while frequent reorganizations within companies – considered as ways of increasing their effectiveness – are, even for people holding high positions, an additional, uncontrollable risk factor. As Manuel Castells demonstrates in his analyses (2001a, 281–296), the dominant tendency on the job market is an increase in the percentage of non-standard forms of employment.22 Ulrich Beck argues (1992, 145) in turn that the new standard is employment interwoven with periods of unemployment, which individuals use to gain new skills. This objectivized liquidity of employment status is complemented by individual strategies developed by employees. Richard Sennett draws attention to this

104  The social environment after modernity when he writes that “[t]he most tangible sign of that change might be the motto ‘No long term’. In work, the traditional career progressing step by step through the corridors of one or two institutions is withering” (1999, 22). Sennett quotes Bill Gates saying that “positioning oneself in a network of possibilities” is the alternative to “paralyzing oneself in one particular job” (62). Zygmunt Bauman captures it in a vivid image, writing that today’s “place of employment feels like a camping site which one visits for but a few nights and which one may leave at any moment if the comforts on offer are not delivered or found wanting when delivered” (2008, 58–59). As a result of all these changes, the job market is filled with people who are drifting from one job to another, experiencing what Sennett has called “ambiguously lateral moves”, i.e. the situation in which employees believe that they are moving up the career ladder, but in reality are moving only sideways. This is stimulated both by an unclear structure of professions and by the criteria for promotion being blurred. Under the conditions of bureaucratic, hierarchic organization of labour, it sufficed to display necessary engagement and properly follow the orders of superiors bearing the responsibility for their subordinates. Today, however, the vertical pyramids of hierarchy have been replaced by loose, horizontal networks, in which both merits and responsibility are blurred, while direct contacts with the manager give way to periodical assessments by co-workers, thus becoming dependent on more personal, emotion-laden relations. Construction of a linear life narrative is not made any easier because, as various analyses show, since the 1980s it has been problematic for broad segments of society to accumulate material achievements. “Families are barely maintaining the living standards of a quarter of a century ago by putting in the contribution of two wage earners instead of one. . . . For the American worker and small entrepreneur, the age of globalization and informationalization has been the age of a relative, and often absolute decline in their standard of living, reversing the historical trend of the improvement of each generation’s material well-being over that of previous generations” (Castells 2002, 96). One specific symptom of this process is the emergence of the analytical category of the “working poor” in the 1980s, which includes workers who are formally employed but live below the poverty threshold23 (Ehrenreich 2001; Stanaszek 2004). This process culminates especially in repeated forecasts of the demise of the welfare state, and along with it – the piercing of the old-age safety net. As a result of all these changes, “the traditional form of work, based on fulltime employment, clear-cut occupational assignments, and a career pattern over the life-cycle is being slowly but surely eroded away” (Castells 2001a, 290). Although work still occupies a large portion of an individual’s life (in many cases it is an ever increasing portion), it ceases to bring order to people’s existence. Preparations for taking up an occupation are no longer concentrated in a clearly demarcated period of life, but begin to be dispersed in periods separating subsequent workplaces. The period of occupational activity itself is no longer a more or less successful trek along a beaten social path of a career, but rather resembles surfing on incoming waves, with all the falls this entails as well as attempts to

The social environment after modernity  105 climb back on board. In this light, retirement seems more like being irreversibly washed onto a rocky beach rather than a safe landing in a garden behind one’s own house in the suburbs. All of this leads to a sense of losing control over events and being unable to plan particular stages of one’s life, consequently causing individuals to face increasing difficulty in creating a coherent narrative of life organized around an occupational career. This is closely connected with the transformations of the third characteristic of labour in the modern society, namely the fact that it created two distinct areas of activity related to workplace and home. With respect to this, it is also possible to indicate several processes that contribute to blurring this division. The first is the lengthening of work time, especially within the occupational category that Reich has termed “symbolic analysts”.24 This is connected, among other things, to the aforementioned transformations of labour consisting in the transition from bureaucratic to flexible organization around tasks. Given that the general criteria for an employee’s advancement have become blurred, one of its more vital practical determinants is the time devoted to the realization of tasks, which often inclines people to stay longer in company offices or take work back home. Among the specialists, longer working hours can also be the effect of adding various consulting activities to the core of their professional duties. This can help boost salaries, which is not to be underestimated given the aforementioned problems with sustaining one’s present lifestyle. In both cases it comes at the cost of free time. The second process is a consequence of the specific “psychologization” of management. Along with the transition from individual posts to teamwork, management specialists discovered that the effectiveness of such teams depends to a large extent on “soft” factors of psychosocial character, e.g. trust, loyalty, readiness to make sacrifices, a sense of responsibility, etc. – ones that are “naturally” created in base groups (e.g. family). One consequence of this discovery is the ever more popular practice of organizing training and team-building events by companies, usually at the weekend. Not only does this rob employees of their free time, but it also often means that one’s private behaviour is forced out into the public, occupational life. The same result is obtained when relationships formed at work are transferred into the private sphere of social life. As Sennett demonstrates, in situations when “success consists in avoiding the reckonings of the accountant’s bottom line” (1999, 79), the habit of spending time after work on group outings to bars or clubs cannot be easily rejected in favour of pleasures derived from independent management of one’s free time. Paradoxically, the necessity to constantly remain visible and behave just like everyone else becomes the fundamental means not only of controlling employees, but also of forcing them to control everything that could potentially affect how they are being seen by their work environment. However, the most important process that blurs the division between work time and one’s own time is the aforementioned increase in the importance of availability as the basic characteristic required of employees. Availability in fact means that the time at the disposal of individuals is entirely subordinated to the time of

106  The social environment after modernity realizing their company’s tasks. This also concerns the place of their realization because along with increasing decentralization of production systems (Castells 2001a, chapter 3) individual companies begin to demand from their employees – especially ones holding higher positions – that they be always ready to move wherever company goals require their personal presence. Nevertheless, the demand for employees’ availability is also enforced by the contemporary job market, which has ceased to be local and increasingly often offers more or less profitable posts in places far removed from where one lives. Regardless whether it is an opening for a top position with a growing salary or a temporary contract for work in cleaning or construction (cf. Jaźwińska and Okólski 2001), they disorganize the clear division into time for work and one’s own time, which used to govern the everyday functioning of individuals in the modern society. All these transformations of labour undermine its significance as the axial principle determining people’s lifestyles. Instead of organizing one’s life, work is becoming one of the main sources of its disorganization due to necessary, frequent changes of jobs themselves and their location, lack of certainty regarding employment, and work encroaching on “private” time. All of these features, which are euphemistically called “flexibility”, make it impossible for individuals to put down roots in their social environment and establish more permanent relationships with others, or to steer their lives and sustain the division into the private and the public. Primarily, however, they affect the transformations of the third key institution of the modern society: family. Transformations of family The shape of the modern family was strictly connected to the significance that paid labour gained in modernity. Beck even holds that “[w]ithout the nuclear family, there would be no bourgeois society with its typical pattern of work and life” (1992, 104). This pattern not only equated life and family, but also introduced a strict division of tasks according to sex, assuming different treatment of production-oriented work and household work. The former was the duty of men, whereas the latter was considered the “natural” domain of women. The former would be governed by market and/or bureaucratic mechanisms, while household work would be free and subordinated to the survival of the family. However, the two would complement and condition each other. Men could not focus all their energies on occupational work if they were not provided “board and keep” in their family. Women would not be able to make ends meet and devote themselves to raising children if it had not been for the income of the husband, who would bear the honourable title of “the family’s sole breadwinner”.25 Thus, the modern family would create a specific contract between men and women – one whose basic aim was to make them support each other and work for the benefit of the family. The basic means to achieve this aim was the complementary division of tasks among men and women. At the same time, as the most primal source of the “we-identity” (cf. Elias 2001), identification with family would determine the most significant circle of loyalty and duty.26 In this

The social environment after modernity  107 sense, the ties between labour and family have formed the foundation of the modern order. Whereas paid labour determined the shape of the economic order, which was dominated by capitalist production, the significance of family was tied primarily to the fact that it became the basic institution responsible for social reproduction. It was the family that guaranteed the recreation of the modern society, both in the individual and in the collective dimension. Family home was the place where man would eat and relax, regenerating his ability to work. Family made biological reproduction possible, bringing children into this world and caring for them. Finally, socialization processes occurring within the family reproduced the social structure.27 Regardless of the function that the family played in sustaining the modern order, the kind of family that developed at the beginning of the twentieth century had several characteristics that made it different from both traditional and contemporary variants. Firstly, it was or was becoming a nuclear family (cf. Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018). This was favoured by migration from the countryside to cities, which severed ties with the family of origin, by changing customs, which demanded that newlyweds do not live with their parents (as facilitated by urban living conditions), and by increasing prosperity, which made such decisions easier. The nuclear family, comprising a mother, father and several children (usually two), was viewed as a certain whole guided by its own interests, which would be superior to the interests of both individuals that formed the family and their own families of origin. The father had the decisive voice in managing the family. He was the “head of the family”, deciding about its interests and rules applying to all its members. The social position of women and children was a derivative of the father’s position.28 Thus, secondly, the nuclear family was simultaneously patriarchal, although it needs to be mentioned that, due to the separation of the domains of work and life, the power of the father, who would spend most of his time outside the home, was largely symbolic. Although the father would make strategic decisions about the fate of both the family as a whole and of its individual members (regarding where they would live, expenses, choice of occupation for children, approval of their marital plans, etc.), he would usually have little say in relation to its everyday functioning. His authority would be at best used by the mother to discipline badly behaving children – it was the father who would wield the power to punish, as a result of which the very threat of “I will tell the father” or “Let us see what the father will say” carried considerable weight. Thirdly, the modern family was for the entire lifetime, with love supposed to cement its permanence. Certainly, there were marriages made out of reason or interest, but along with the strengthening of the modern society, love – especially its romantic kind – was increasingly becoming the cultural legitimization of marriage, efficiently concealing the economic foundation of the family’s function. Marriage established an indissoluble connection between two people joined by affection, but this affection could find fulfilment and become legitimized only through marriage. This meant that marriage, especially for women, was also

108  The social environment after modernity becoming a passport into becoming sexually active, although it needs to be underlined that it was considered mainly as a tool for procreation. For it was procreation, fourthly, that provided the main reason for the family’s existence. It created a shared context for the life of men and women, which consisted in having children. Childless families were regarded as a deviation from the norm, and could even be suspected of some hidden misdeeds. The inability to have offspring would be typically seen as misfortune or even punishment. The number of children, who were considered as an additional source of workforce in the early stages of the modern society, dwindled along with the development of that society. However, expenditure on their upbringing would rise, as would their significance for parents. The arrival of children motivated men to undertake even greater efforts to care for the family’s well-being, while bringing up children was seen as the fulfilment and life goal of women. All of these particular features of the family, as well as its basic functions in organizing the social order, underwent significant transformations. There is general consensus that a vital role in inducing these changes was played by the two world wars, which accelerated the process of setting women free from home. Reducing in each case the number of men in the workforce (through their engagement in wars and later casualties), the two wars forced women to take up paid labour. As a result, women ceased to be financially dependent on men. And although paid labour was initially primarily the domain of unmarried women, who would abandon it after finding a husband in order to focus on traditional, “feminine” duties related to housekeeping and raising children, and despite the pay gap that exists to this day, the percentage of women on the job market has been continually rising. The second important factor was brought about by technological changes, which on the one hand released women from most time-consuming household chores, and on the other led to – as Claus Offe put it – “deskilling of housework” (after Beck 1992, 110; emphasis preserved). As a result of these transformations, it became possible for women to reconcile work with household activities, while men ceased to be dependent in everyday life on skills that formerly constituted a part of women’s knowledge. Additionally, increased income, the development of various services available on the market and their becoming cheaper, as well as the introduction of processed foods – all of these diminished the significance of the kind of work delivered by the family with its characteristic division of tasks realized by men and women. Finally, the third important factor was related to changes in customs. Since the 1960s, or more precisely since the youth revolt, we have been dealing with a tremendous relaxation of social norms, primarily those related to sexuality. This was certainly ushered in by the introduction of the pill, which freed women from the fear of unwanted pregnancy, but it was equally important that sexuality began to be openly discussed in public, while the mature welfare state provided financial support in case of raising a child as a single parent. If we add to this the aforementioned increase in the rank of flexibility as the fundamental feature of the work environment, then Beck’s opinion that, “[t]hought to its ultimate consequence, the market model of modernity implies a

The social environment after modernity  109 society without families and children” (116; emphasis preserved) ceases to appear as shocking. Flexibility means, after all, that employees – regardless whether they are men or women – must be ready at any time not only to stay longer at work or move to the other side of the globe when it is expected of them, but also to take into account that they may lose their job. Family as a community whose existence demands constant engagement of its members and breeds duties extending beyond the present – e.g. raising children or paying off loans – can be nothing but a liability in the regime of such flexibility. As a result of all these changes, what primarily collapses is the fundamental function of the modern family: the creation of an existential base for the time of work. It is not only the question of work taking the time which used to be considered “private”, but mainly that of people no longer having to assign everyday existential tasks according to sex. This deprives the family of the significance it enjoyed previously due to the fact that it allowed to increase one’s chances of physical and social survival. Today, men do not have to marry in order to be served dinner or have their clothes washed, while women do not have to find husbands to support themselves and gain the right to sexual life. The family begins to appear chiefly as a source of limitations to individual freedom as it entails the necessity to subordinate individual aspirations and choices to the kind of superior whole over which individuals can never fully take control, not even men. In fact, along with all these transformations, the family ceases to be patriarchal. Equality in terms of the right to work, education, and sexual life deprived men of their “natural” upper hand, which they enjoyed in the modern family. Its particular hierarchic structure, constituting a specific counterpart to the hierarchy found in bureaucratic institutions, became flattened, while the flow of decisions from the father to the mother and children has been replaced with negotiations of particular behaviours. The basic standard regulating relations in the contemporary family is now the principle of partnership, which increasingly often covers not only partnership of sexes but also one formed between parents and children (cf. Sikorska 2009). At the same time, the presence of children has ceased to be an indispensable attribute of the family. This is related to the fact that procreation has been separated from sex, while having a child or children becomes the subject of individual decision. As statistics show, this decision may be postponed in time, sometimes ad infinitum, causing reproduction rates to fall and the average age of bearing the first child (often the only one) to rise (cf. Castells 2002, 153–154). American data show that “the archetypical category [of] ‘married couple with children’ dropped from 44.2 per cent of households in 1960 to 25.5 per cent in 1995” (223). If we add to this the increasing number of single parents, it becomes possible to argue that procreation has ceased to be the superior goal of the family. That goal is now viewed as the emotional fulfilment of the spouses. It is easily noticeable, however, that such a goal can be realized in other kinds of relationships, which in itself lowers the significance of the family; thus, another direct consequence of this shift is that the erstwhile stability of the family is now diminishing.

110  The social environment after modernity That the family has ceased to be a “lifetime” duty is primarily confirmed by the rising number of divorces. One could say that the contemporary family is just as easy to start as it is to end. It thus becomes a temporal contract whose goal consists in “regulated exchange of emotional comfort” (Beck 1992, 89) and which runs its term when affection at its base ceases. As Beck puts it, serial monogamy becomes the new norm. Moreover, it is complemented with a great variety of forms of living together whose basic function is now the same as that of the family, i.e. the emotional fulfilment of everyone engaged. From this property – i.e. the temporal limitation of the stability of a ­contemporary family – stems its last feature that needs to be mentioned here, namely the departure from the nuclear family model. This occurs in two opposite directions. On the one hand, as already mentioned, from the 1970s we are observing all around the world a systematic rise in the percentage of single-parent families (usually single mothers) (cf. Castells 2001a, 148–149). As Judith Stacey mentions (1996, 6), towards the end of the twentieth century the number of single mothers in the USA was twice the number of full families with non-working mothers.29 On the other hand, given the growing number of divorces and postdivorce relationships, not necessarily formal ones, we can observe an enlargement of familial connections based on the principle of affinity. It becomes something normal that a child has, for example, six grandparents: four from her biological parents and two from the family of her mother’s or father’s new partner (if both enter new relationships, the number rises to eight). Such a quasi-extended ­family does not necessarily gather everyone who is related through the principle of affinity – being a part of the family can depend on personalized emotional relations with particular individuals (Stacey 1996). To sum up, one ought to repeat that just like in the case of other institutions, the contemporary family, regardless how we define it, also ceases to be the framework for the integration of individuals’ actions, no longer subordinating them to a superior goal that used to be constituted by the good of this social unit. It is rather the good of individuals that becomes the condition of the family’s existence. The realization of this good, understood primarily as the emotional fulfilment of individuals, determines their identification not just with the family as a whole, but with its particular members. Maintaining the family’s existence is also no longer a source of the meaning of life for individuals. “Sacrificing oneself for the good of the family” is treated as a lack of assertiveness rather than a proof of maturity and responsibility.

Transformations of social divisions The claim that the basic division in the modern society was the class division – founded on capitalist ownership, control over the means of production, and political dominance – is so obvious today that it does not require broader argumentation. Regardless whether we recall Marx or Weber, and regardless whether we shall abstract from or underscore the historically changing fate of the differentiation into the world of capital and the world of work, this division constituted one of

The social environment after modernity  111 the fundamental aspects of modernity, defining the basic dimension of social conflict (Dahrendorf 2012). In other words, it was a structural division and as such would determine not only the shape of systemic solutions, but also the scope of individual identifications, techniques of living, and their accompanying legitimation. By the same token, it established the basic framework for the processes of socializing individual actions, and the structure of anchoring meanings ascribed to them, thus contributing to the reproduction of the entire system. This double role of the class division, which both structures social practices and is simultaneously structured by them, was foregrounded by Pierre Bourdieu, who introduced the concept of the habitus as a set of dispositions to act, which are created under the influence of repeating circumstances in life (cf. 2010, 2013). For Bourdieu the habitus was the product of objectively existing possibilities to act, which are related to specific social positions and incarnated in individual behaviour. At the same time – thanks to the social recognisability of the system of meanings it constructs30 – it was the basic mechanism of positioning individuals in society. As he writes, “habitus is both the generative principle of objectively classifiable judgements and the system of classification (principium divisionis) of these practices. It is in the relationship between the two capacities which define the habitus . . . that the represented social world, i.e., the space of life-styles, is constituted” (2010, 165–166). The description of this “space of lifestyles” in 1970s France, contained in Bourdieu’s seminal work Distinction (originally published in 1979), demonstrates that it was characterized by properties that could be considered as characteristic for modern societies in general.31 Three of those seem to be particularly important here. Firstly, in Bourdieu’s perspective, the differentiation of lifestyles created by the habitus, which he observed in his time, is a consequence of class differentiation, along with its fundamental division into the world of work and the world of capital. Although Bourdieu tries to avoid referencing this division directly – preferring instead to use occupational categories in his empirical analyses32 and employing enigmatic phrases such as the “dominant/higher class” or the “working/lower class” in theoretical parts of the book – at the foundation of his theory we nevertheless find a vision of social differentiation based on a sharp distinction between two structurally grounded social categories, which finds fullest expression in the division into the world of work and the world of capital. Secondly, in Bourdieu’s theory the basic dimension that differentiates habituses, and consequently provides symbolic markers of social position, is the attitude towards the products of high culture. In his view, the aesthetic disposition “is also a distinctive expression of a privileged position in social space” (49). Elsewhere he observes that “[t]aste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar” (xxix). These distinctions were anchored both in objective possibilities/necessities that are offered/imposed by the individual’s place in the social structure, and in socialization practices resulting in the differentiation of cultural capital.

112  The social environment after modernity Finally, the diversity of habituses established not just the difference but also social hierarchy, because patterns of behaviour proper to the dominant class, along with knowledge and values, are embedded in systems of education, work, and culture, becoming a symbol of position and simultaneously a tool in class conflict, one allowing people to maintain and reproduce the way some are privileged and some – underprivileged. In other words, class-based differentiation of forms of behaviour is reinforced trough symbolic violence – in which the elites enforce their own cultural forms as better by way of securing their value through institutionalization – and can be thus used not just to mark distinction but also to gain prestige. However, it is easy to demonstrate (as Bourdieu did himself) that the ability to impose symbolic violence depends on access to the means of economic and political violence, thus ultimately being a consequence of class differentiation proper to the modern society, along with its fundamental division into the world of work and the world of capital. Meanwhile, this relatively clear division already began to lose its sharpness during the transformations of modernity described earlier, which led to the creation of the middle class society. Along with the acceleration of this process during the last twenty years of the twentieth century, we can observe an ever quicker vanishing of those structural divisions that constituted the foundation of Marxian theory of conflict between two basic social classes. As a result of this, “[w]ho are the owners, who the producers, who the managers, and who the servants becomes increasingly blurred in a production system of variable geometry, of teamwork, of networking, outsourcing, and subcontracting” (Castells 2001a, 506). Thus, it becomes more and more difficult to determine the scope and composition of the “dominant class”. The dissolution of class divisions was accompanied by the blurring of the system of symbolic markers that defined an individual’s social position through participation in high culture. This is supported by research conducted by Michèle Lamont (1992). In her 1980s’ comparative study of American and French elites she demonstrated that although each of the sub-groups applied slightly different criteria in creating symbolic boundaries that establish the equality of positions,33 the differentiation in the sphere of culture was a relatively weak source of competition for status. Lamont also suggests that what appeared then to be specific to the American society – loose barriers in the area of culture, lack of a strongly defined and hierarchic system of culture, general acceptance of popular culture and ­participation in it – becomes a universal feature specific to the European societies and global culture. This blurring of symbolic boundaries has been certainly favoured by the phenomenon that Christopher Lasch (1996) termed the “revolt of the elites” and which, to employ Bourdieu’s language, could be regarded as withdrawal of the elites from their role as the main agents in establishing the rules of the social game. This withdrawal entailed, among other things, abandoning the ambition to articulate the rules establishing the symbolic boundaries between the elite and the rest of society because the “new class” found the financial barrier sufficient to separate itself from the masses. Thus, the end of the twentieth century saw

The social environment after modernity  113 the final dismantling of the relation between objective mechanisms and symbolic distinctions, which created the framework for the divisions characteristic for the modern society. One consequence of this process was a specific flattening of the social structure in the eyes of individuals: in place of a hierarchy of social positions arranged vertically in accordance with a certain moral principle legitimizing the superiority/inferiority distinction, there emerged a horizontal space of lifestyles that are differentiated yet equivalent in terms of prestige. Choosing between them seems to be limited only by income and individual preferences. As a result, the place of the concept of “lifestyles” also changed in sociological explications, advancing from a correlate of class position to the rank of a basic principle of differentiation. One could say that whereas the dominance of the class-stratification schema in the sociological discourse was connected with the dominance of the production sphere as the source of fundamental social problems and the generator of social positions, the turn towards the concept of lifestyles, observable since the 1970s, as an independent principle of forming social divisions was inspired by ascribing increasing significance to broadly understood consumption as the area in which decisions are made that are crucial for individuals, and which determines their social localization. Inequality in “access to the means of production” as a factor that structures the modern society and is responsible for its differentiation began to be replaced by differences in the “consumption of goods, ideas, and information” which are not anchored in previously existing class divisions. As a result of these changes, the “grammar of inequality” that dominated in sociological accounts of the social structure began to be forced out by the “semantics of differences”, because according to many researchers it was the set of social meanings given to individual choices that decided about the role those choices play in the social localization of individuals. In the mid-1980s, when Ulrich Beck published his seminal study introducing the concept of the society of risk into sociological discourse, he sought the source of these transformations in the general increase of prosperity in Western societies and in the development of the welfare state. In his view, “the dynamism of the labor market backed up by the welfare state has diluted or dissolved the social classes within capitalism” (1992, 88; emphasis preserved), contributing to “setting individuals free” from “the social forms of industrial society – class, stratification, family, gender status of men and women” (87). One effect of this was supposed to consist in the increasing individualization enforced by the structural properties of the contemporary society, which made it more difficult for more stable bonds to emerge, i.e. ones that could become the foundation for forming social groups negotiating the conditions for the realization of their interests in the public sphere. Beck’s thesis about the structural individualization of contemporary societies still provides a theoretical basis for all those research findings that can be synthesized in the form of the conclusion that “former class divisions have been [now] replaced by the ‘dispersed’ structures in relation to which people resemble drivers who travel non-stop along highways” (Hirszowicz 2007, 95). It also becomes a justification for the unceasing interest in lifestyles as the basic principle  – one

114  The social environment after modernity not connected to class – that differentiates people in post-modern societies. This principle would be the final expression of the victory in the “onslaught by the ‘culture’ against the ‘social structure’ ” (Bell 1978, 54) occurring since the 1970s and subordinating people’s actions to “life politics” in which individuals themselves make decisions regarding their identity (Giddens 1991, 215). Bearing in mind our previous findings (cf. Chapter 2), this principle would also be an expression of a specific victory of the middle class as the one for which lifestyle has been the main constitutive principle since the beginning of the modern society. Małgorzata Jacyno also draws attention to the fact that the current “culturalization” of social differences is strictly connected to the dominance of the middle class ethos (2007). Following Bourdieu in indicating that the position of the middle class favoured the creation of the illusion of “world as possibility” in which “one’s place in the world is simply a matter of individual choice” (46), she rightly claims that “the structural position of this class becomes to a large extent the effect of this auto-definition and the subject of a game” (2007, 45; emphasis added). Let us add, however, that this game acquires special importance in post-modern society, because the changes that occur within it strike primarily at the dominant position of the middle class – the position it achieved in the course of the evolution of modern society, and which it owed not just to its own auto-definitions, but also to the post-war prosperity in Western industrial societies. It was Ulrich Beck who  – declaring that class differences have vanished  – warned that “inequalities by no means disappear. They merely become redefined in terms of an individualization of social risks” (1992, 100; emphasis preserved). Later authors not only emphasize that social inequalities continue to exist, but also indicate that they have been considerably deepened towards the end of the twentieth century. As Castells writes, “[m]en’s average income has deteriorated substantially in the past two decades, particularly during the 1980s. . . . On the other hand, the top 1 per cent of households increased in average income from $325,000 to about $567,000 between 1976 and 1993, while average family income remains at about $31,000” (2002, 96). Towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century it is also being pointed out that regular workers will not earn in their lifetime the kind of money that their CEO makes in a year. Presidents of American banks currently earn six hundred times more than an average American, while thirty years ago the difference was only forty times. Lasch also holds that since the 1980s the entire industrialized world has been seeing a range of structural transformations that have led, on the one hand, to the crisis and relative pauperization of the middle class, the class that has formed the basis of “late modernity”, and on the other – to the emergence of a new financial elite comprising young professionals, higher public officials, and policy-makers. At the same time, he draws attention to the fact that of the many factors that deepen income inequality, change in the pattern of marriages plays a considerable role. In middle class society the dominant pattern involved marriage as economic advancement for women, as in the case of doctors marrying nurses, or directors and lawyers – their secretaries. Now we are observing a turn towards a pattern

The social environment after modernity  115 defined as “assortative”, which means that relationships are formed by people on a similar income. The wealth of the new elites is thus supported not only by sky-high incomes of the professional class, but also by the increasing participation of women in these professional groups, allowing them to accumulate income through marriage. And although the difference between 20,000 (dollar, euro, Polish zloty etc.) made by a low-ranking official and 60,000 made by a lawyer is in itself large, the assortative pattern makes it drastically bigger by becoming a difference between 40,000 and 120,000 as the collective family income. From this perspective, the place that lifestyle occupies in accounts of social divisions begins to appear not as an expression of the victory achieved by the “middle class ethos”, but rather as the final tribute to the version of the modern society based on it, and as a manifestation of a specific “symbolic violence”, or better still – a “symbolic curtain” that hides those structure-forming processes that gain new impetus and whose direction or final shape cannot be predicted yet. From the point of view of an average individual, it is also important that the basic principle guaranteeing success in life is inexplicable. Certainly, it is no longer the “hard work”, which used to guide careers in the early days of the modern society. Nor is it related to education, which was responsible for the success of the middle class. To individuals who have been “set free from the social forms” imposed by the social divisions of modernity, the fundamental problem is now how to answer the question “Who am I?” (or “Who do I want to be?”), while the only social resource they can refer to in search of this answer is constituted by different lifestyles, which are not rooted in structural factors but rather produced on a mass scale by marketing specialists and the mass media. Thus, they cease to be “given” by the very fact of being born to a specific social class, but are rather “chosen”, even if individuals are not aware of making such choices through their life decisions. At the same time, given that class divisions have become blurred, social inequalities present in society can be interpreted only as an aggregated effect of individual “investments” in life, which may be well aimed or not.

Transformations of nomic frameworks of action Were we to indicate a single property or characteristic determining the cultural specificity of modernity, it would certainly be the attitude towards tradition as a source of individual actions and beliefs. “Modernity is essentially a post-traditional order”, Anthony Giddens notes (1991, 20; cf. also Eisenstadt 1987). It would be difficult to disagree with him, especially while bearing in mind the fact that in sociology, since its beginning, the description of the modern order has been constructed by contrasting it with the traditional one, in which the basic justification of individual actions was the belief that “this is how things were always done”.34 However, departure from tradition does not always have to mean – ­contrary to what Giddens claims – “propel[ling] social life away from the hold of ­pre-­established precepts or practices” (1991, 20), because the latter are developed

116  The social environment after modernity in the course of an unbroken chain of subsequent acts of de-traditionalization and re-traditionalization accompanying the ongoing processes of socializing human actions and their standardization (cf. Heelas 1996). In other words, by rejecting tradition as the source of its legitimization, the modern order by no means resigned from creating its own nomos – a system of beliefs ordering human experience and lending certain actions the quality of obviousness. One could even say that it went in this matter much further than it was the case in traditional societies. This is at least what seems to be suggested in works by scholars such as Foucault (1995) or Bauman (1989), who emphasize those efforts of the modern state that aim to normalize and standardize individual behaviour. “According to this ordering logic, certain forms of social life (nuclear family), knowledge (scientific knowledge), work (paid work, regular work), statehood (nation-state, ­welfare state), subjectivity (criminal responsibility) are marked out as standard forms ahead of all other forms and are recognized both in law and in society” (Beck and Lau 2005, 535). At the same time, it is important that, as Beck and Lau underline, these delimitations and differentiations operated on the basis of the “either/or” principle, referring to stable and unambiguous criteria, and bracketing the actual differentiation of human behaviour. ­Consequently, lack of alternative forms of social life established as the standards of modernity made all manners of action that significantly depart from them to be considered a deviation, or at least a violation of decency, good taste, or r­ espectable upbringing.35 One could certainly say that every form of organizing social life orders human actions on a similar basis by normalizing some of them and marginalizing others. However, in this respect there is a certain fundamental difference between the traditional and modern order. The obviousness of beliefs lying at the foundation of the modern order was not anymore an obviousness of the “noble savage” kind, i.e. one subordinating actions to traditional forms of being mainly due to the unawareness of the existence of other forms. It was rather the effect of a meticulous choice referring to Reason and supported by the authority of science, religion, and ultimately the state, with its entire apparatus of coercion. More precisely, it was the outcome of choices made at the level of institutions – political, economic, educational, religious, charitable, etc. – by members of the elite: intellectuals, reformers, politicians, businessmen, who might have been guided by different goals but who shared the conviction that the superior goal is to rationalize the area overseen by a given institution in such a way as to make it more profitable, secure greater dependence of citizens, as well as guarantee more health, more virtues, and finally – more general happiness.36 It was the elites – not just the intellectual ones as Bauman would have it (1989), but also the political, industrial, or simply those of “high society” – that created the collective “gardener” pruning the overabundant sprouts of modernity, pulling up weeds together with roots, marking out straight paths for citizens to tread along, following tracks adjusted to their position, function, sex, and social role. One inseparable element of such ordering was hierarchization: knowledge obtained from experience was by definition worse than scientific knowledge, women were

The social environment after modernity  117 the “weaker sex”, the elderly were wiser than children, and societies (and consequently their members) were divided into primitive and developed ones.37 Thus, the effort to order social reality did not just boil down to classification, but would also establish clearly defined forms of acceptable behaviour for individual categories of people and for particular areas of the society’s functioning. As Beck and Lau underline, this facilitated precise ascribing of responsibility to active actors (or relieving them of it), thus developing the potential, inherent in modernity, to rationalize social life. It needs to be remembered, however, that the resulting Weberian “disenchantment of the world” by no means meant some general rise of individual rationality, but was rather, or even primarily, a systematic process in which the elites would impose patterns of action they deemed rational on the basis of their own interests and values. The state played a fundamental role in this process of rationalizing the social reality. Thanks to its monopoly on the application of coercion and introduction of legal regulations, it has provided tools for standardization of actions through establishing and sustaining institutions that operated in accordance with the patterns of rationality, developed in the course of political debates among the elites. And, thanks to its responsibility for the programme of general education, the state would control the content of the beliefs legitimizing particular institutional solutions;38 thus, it enabled using symbolic violence, to refer to the terminology proposed by Pierre Bourdieu. Naturally, the means of symbolic violence included not only the system of education, but also other institutions responsible for controlling specific areas of social activity. However, as Bourdieu shows, it is in the domain of education that we can see the transfer of what he calls “doxa”, which would delimit the sphere of undisputable or taken-for-granted convictions about reality, establishing the basis for individual actions.39 Thus, although one could say that the beliefs comprising the nomos of the modern society had at their basis ideas developed by eighteenth-century philosophers who would derive their sense of rightness, as Bauman shows, from specific properties of their “world of experience”, in the course of a long process of “naturalization” that disciplines the society and binds institutional solutions to everyday actions of individuals, these beliefs acquired the same degree of obviousness that was previously displayed by the beliefs held by the traditional societies. In other words, after the turmoil of the transition to modernity, which dissolved the very foundation of cognitive frameworks determining ways of experiencing reality, in the nineteenth century social life began to be reintegrated again, with individuals “knowing their place” in society, and their actions – harmonious with doxa – beginning to reinforce the obviousness of the experienced world. Taking into account the differences between class-conditioned habituses, the ideological differentiation of the discourses of modernity, and the internal evolution of this form of social order, described in Chapter 2, it would be immensely difficult to distinguish within the historically changing doxa a corpus of those elements which – combined with religious components, fortified with myths, and reinforced through collective rituals – underwent a kind of sacralization, ­creating that which Berger (2011) calls nomos, and what constituted the basis of the

118  The social environment after modernity modern order, legitimizing it and securing its reproduction. It seems, however, that since the 1970s, the “normalcy” of the experienced reality has comprised primarily the following convictions. The individual is born and dies as a member of larger collectivities, with which he or she is tied through origin and/or kinship, bearing responsibility for their survival and success. These collectivities include, first of all, family and homeland, followed by class and religious community. They have the right to demand that one sacrifices personal ambitions and happiness for the sake of protecting their vital interests. The foundation of existence and success is work, whereas the basis for fulfilment in life is raising children; striving to realize these goals is naturally differentiated in terms of sex. Success means climbing the rungs of a vertical ladder of positions defined by clearly determined hierarchies of power, wealth, and prestige. Relations between people are based on the principle of obedience to those who rank higher in a given area of activity – in private life this rank would be determined primarily by sex and age. Personal respect enjoyed by individuals also stems largely from their position. At the same time, however, it is the effect of how they regard the forms of behaviour that are proper to a given position. Though these forms can be differentiated in terms of class, sex, or age, in each case they precisely define the boundaries of what is proper or improper for a given social category. Finally, sexual promiscuity is “improper” for all categories (though to a varying extent and in different areas of activity), which means that such behaviour is subjected to the strictest social control. It was a set of such convictions that formed the basic framework of human actions and the outline around which class-differentiated habituses would be formed. It was also a set of problems arising from conflicts between duties to the homeland and to the family, between personal desires and responsibilities, between obedience to hierarchy and craving for success, between individual happiness and social convention, that nourished literature, both high and low. It was the questioning of these convictions, too, that constituted the basis for revolting against the system, inspiring both bohemian rebellions and those of the so-called “social margin”, and was one of the reasons for the failure of communist ideology in its international version. Finally, it was this set of convictions, with special emphasis on “conventional values of the middle class”, that formed the foundation of what has been afterward identified as the authoritarian personality syndrome (cf. Adorno et al. 1950). The similarity between opinions defining the authoritarian personality and convictions that are part of the modernity’s nomos is naturally not accidental. It reflects the internal evolution of the modern order, its transition from the bourgeois society – which created the foundation for the modern system of institutions and visions of the world legitimizing and maintaining them in direct contact with the intellectual achievements of Enlightenment thinkers40 – to the mass society and the society of middle classes, in which these visions became part of the nomic systems that establish the “natural” condition of the social world, whose continuation would be then endangered by the accumulating consequences of institutional solutions adopted earlier and referring to arguments formulated by Reason. It was

The social environment after modernity  119 in the authoritarian attitude of desperate masses in the 1930s, as well as in hysteric reactions of the “massified” middle classes of the late 1970s, that we can find the harbingers of all the changes whose manifestation led Ulrich Beck in the 1980s to claim – not without a certain emphasis – that “in its mere continuity industrial society exits the stage of history on the tip-toes of normality, via the back stairs of side effects” (1992, 11; emphasis preserved). Among these “side effects”41 a prominent place is certainly occupied by the dissolution of those convictions that formed the nomic basis of the modern world by giving it the character of “the only possible normality”. One may of course agree with scholars such as Bell (1978), Gergen (1991) or Harvey (1995), who locate the primary source of this process in artistic explorations, i.e. the emergence of new tendencies rebelling against modernity’s rationalism in painting, music, literature, architecture, etc. We need to bear in mind, however, that in the expansion of this process of deconstructing and fragmenting meanings ascribed to the surrounding world a vital role was played by the phenomena and social processes that were smashing up, much more directly than art, the internal coherence of reality experienced by individuals. Of greatest importance among them is certainly the emergence of new techniques of living as a result of technological, political, economic, and demographic changes, which initiated deep transformations in every area of human activity. Their dissemination and legitimization were favoured by processes described earlier, including the weakening of the state, the growing disparity of different types of logic governing particular social subsystems, exchange of the elites, structural individualization, and the growth of mega-metropolises characterized by increased levels of anonymity. The combination of these factors led to the lowering of control over individual actions by the immediate social surroundings, as well as to transformations of labour, causing new posts to be created at all qualification levels, posts that were independent from great industrial organizations, where it was easier to regulate individual behaviours.42 Apart from these processes directly caused by changes in the social “base”, a crucial role in propagating new techniques of living was also played by four additional factors strictly connected to the functioning of the symbolic sphere. The first of these was an immense growth of the mass media and their liberation from state control. “Until the early 1980s, with the major exception of the United States,43 most television in the world was government-controlled, and radios and newspapers were under the severe potential constraints of government good will” (Castells 2002, 254). Control over the media facilitated control of opinions and beliefs, offering also a basic tool used by the state (or more broadly, by the dominant class) to affect the collective imagination of the modern society. Along with the development of new technologies of mass communication, the media not only grew at an incredible rate, but also entirely freed themselves from state oversight. After becoming a part of the larger branch of the media industry,44 the mass media began to be guided by their own logic, based primarily on audience ratings and/or profits from advertising. Leaving for later the discussion of what the expansion of advertising entails, it suffices to signal here that one of the

120  The social environment after modernity more important elements of this logic involves, on the one hand, emphasis on novelty, i.e. that which causes excitement or can even shock the average viewer, and which – out of definition – extends beyond the framework of the currently dominant nomos,45 and on the other – emphasis on references to emotions rather than rational thinking. The second, closely related factor was the development of communication technologies, which provided minority groups with broad access to the public sphere, giving them the chance to voice their arguments – a chance they did not have before. We can better grasp what Shils describes as “the entry of the mass of the population into greater proximity to the center of society” (1975), if we understand these “masses” as a multitude of marginalized groups, which were deprived of their own voice under the conditions of symbolic violence perpetrated by the dominant class with the help of the state. It is the increasing presence of such differentiated voices speaking to the whole society that played the biggest part in undermining the modern “either/or” logic, which rejected as unlegitimized everything that would not be accepted by the society’s basic institutions.46 As Kenneth J. Gergen rightly points out, “in light of the increasing availability of ‘other voices,’ we find an increasing range of ‘other truths’ ” (1991, 94), while by absorbing “multiple voices, we find that each ‘truth’ is relativized by our simultaneous consciousness of compelling alternatives” (16). The third factor was comprised by transformations of religion. Despite changes induced by the transition to modernity – summarized under the term “secularization”, meaning the liberation of particular social subsystems from the authority of principles originating in religion – in modern societies religion still played a major role in the process of exerting control over individual behaviours. The concept of sin still performed a superior function in disciplining individuals, reinforcing the recommendations contained in philosophical and scientific reflection.47 The transformations that occurred in this respect towards the end of the twentieth century, and which can be tied to the reaction of churches to the increasing individualization of religious faith, can be briefly summarized as “God grew milder in his old age”.48 This captures well the crucial shift of accents that finds expression in the transition from sin to love as the main concept around which the fundamental meanings of the religious outlook would be organized. Let us draw attention, however, to the fact that “God’s mellowing” means that religion loses its ability to control human behaviour through a sense of guilt or shame (cf. Shott 1979). Without the concept of sin (or its counterpart) these sentiments disappear, leaving behind at best an easily rationalizable physiological equivalent of negative emotions provoked by the reactions of others. Finally, the fourth important factor was comprised by transformations occurring in the domain of science. It can be generally said that, on the one hand, natural sciences have become increasingly esoteric, conducting their own debates in a language(s) that is (are) less and less understandable to an average person.49 On the other hand, progressing specialization visible within individual disciplines50 has caused the body of knowledge to be fragmented into pieces that do not fit together and sometimes even contradict each other.51 These two processes blurred

The social environment after modernity  121 the coherent and holistic vision of the world lying at the foundation of the modern project of managing society.52 If we add to this the relativization of classical understanding of truth – which was closest to the concept of obviousness53 – as well as the increasing complexity of the social (and physical) world, explanations of which move further away from the everyday experience of individuals, the devastating effect carried by primitive constructionism to the sense of obviousness, increasingly blurred rigours of the scientific process, and the invasion of elements derived from diverse, sometimes entirely dissimilar ontological systems of explaining the world based on disparate assumptions54 – if we take all of this into account, it might be easier to understand how science ceased to be the main factor in legitimizing the foundations of modernity, turning instead into one of those factors that have crucially contributed to its dismantling.55 The key consequence of the combined effect of all these factors was the specific legitimization of those new techniques of living that emerged and are still emerging in the unceasing process of socializing human actions. As Beck and Lau claim (2005), these new techniques, which differ from modern standards, have ceased to be marginalized – as they used to be – by the institutional system, which now embraces and normalizes them, thus turning them into a sanctioned alternative to the earlier techniques. The “either/or” logic characteristic for modernity is being replaced by one of “both/and”, which equates forms of action formerly deemed contradictory. The specificity of such logic, however, consists in the fact that new techniques of living do not derive their legitimization from a sense of obviousness or “normality” that created the social nomos of modernity. Furthermore, one might say that the very fact of their institutional legitimization contributes to the ultimate demise of all those convictions and principles that comprised the nomic vision of reality in the modern society. The nomos derives its obviousness from the facticity of the social world, from the belief, reinforced by everyday experience, that “this is what everybody does”. However, as Berger rightly observes, “the facticity of the social world or of any part of it suffices for self-legitimation as long as there is not challenge. When a challenge appears, in whatever form, the facticity can no longer be taken for granted” (2011, 68). In other words, the very coexistence of families that are deemed “normal”, relationships based on cohabitation, homosexual relationships, contractual marriages, etc. (cf. Slany 2002) causes that none of those relationship forms – including the old-style marriage – can boast the quality of being “natural”, i.e. anchored in nomic obviousness. As a result, every one of these forms has to become the object of an individual choice, and needs to be individually legitimized. The ideology of individualism is thus the logical complement of the actual pluralization of lifestyles and as such holds the primary place in the post-modern vision of reality. It is a world without “natural” groups or communities and without “obvious” forms of behaviour. Thus, interpersonal relations are determined and regulated in it not through moral duty but through individual predilection shaped on emotional grounds. Emotional attitudes also play a crucial role in determining individual actions because – as Beck and Lau rightly note – “in the

122  The social environment after modernity context of a completely unstructured plurality of options, it is no longer possible to make decisions based on a rationale” (2005, 544). This rings especially true if we consider the fact that the very concept of rationality is losing its unambiguous character grounded in the authority of science, as was the case in modernity. The demise of the authority that science used to enjoy is accompanied by the process of “democratizing knowledge”. This means – contrary to what Alvin Toffler holds (1991) – not just increased access to strictly scientific knowledge, but also, and perhaps primarily, that all ways of explaining reality have been equalled, or have equal claim to legitimization on the rapidly expanding market of ideas ushered in by mass communication.56 And first of all, it is a world primarily deprived of the internal coherence that permeated the nomic vision of modernity, in which even conflicts would constitute a “logical” consequence of the “natural” organization of society. This breeds the question of what integrates it, not allowing it to break into unconnected individual actions guided by diverse, individualized principles.

Dimensions of (dis)integration Taking into account the entirety of these transformations that have shattered basic institutions, divisions and nomic systems of modernity, we should not be surprised that, according to most studies of the contemporary era, its only stable principle is the conviction that there are no principles, while the only directive guiding individual actions is more and more often the belief that – as one of my students put it – the meaning of life boils down to “hanging around here for a bit and passing away with dignity”. The tempo of transformations experienced in individual life undoubtedly favours the kind of perspective on post-modernity which foregrounds flexibility, randomness, and lack of structure in human actions. Although the processual approach adopted here leads to the conclusion that social reality is always – to some degree – “liquid”, we need to bear in mind that in periods of stability the lazy current of changes usually escapes the notice of onlookers. At best, it would become a pretext for nostalgic grumbling about “today’s corruption of customs”. Moreover, in these periods most changes have “local” character in the sense that they affect either isolated societies or their specific subsystems. The social reality is thus “frozen” thanks both to the locality of the innovations that emerge within it, and to the continued existence of basic institutions and social structures, changing which would require violence in the form of a revolution or coup (cf. Skockpol 1979). Even such turbulences, however, are usually short-lived, and reality “goes back to normal” afterwards, restoring that form of social world which – albeit fundamentally changed – still appears obvious and natural. Contemporary changes are different – they not only occur at a rapid pace but also have global character and basically affect all areas of social life. However, this process of breaking away from the past is not accompanied by some spectacular events that could be treated as symbols of transition from one form of organizing social life to another.57 Furthermore, we observe a range of phenomena that seem

The social environment after modernity  123 to be a continuation or revival of the basic features of modernity. Although the nation-state clearly lost the function of being the basic “unit of survival”, which it gained in modernity, this does not weaken in any way the activity of nationalist movements. Despite the transformations of labour, which made it more “flexible”, people are still striving to find stable, full-time jobs. Despite the mushrooming of various new forms of intimate relationships, happy family life still occupies the very top of value rankings in social surveys. Despite ever clearer lack of confidence in science, scientific potential is universally acknowledged as a resource of crucial value to society. Reversing the claim made by Habermas, one could thus say that even if modernity is dead, it is still dominant.58 The institutional structures it has created continue to form the basic frame of reference for individual actions. However, this dominance takes place in an environment that is entirely dissimilar from that which characterized the modern society in its heyday. The transition from the “either/ or” logic to that of “both/and” entails not just the multiplication of institutions attempting to coordinate and synchronize individual actions, but also, or perhaps primarily, the multiplication of principles of behaviour enforced by them, which cancel each other out. Thus, the post-modern reality loses the internal coherence that was formerly guaranteed by the integrating influence of the modern state, which would subordinate particular areas of social life to its rule by applying symbolic violence. The feeling of “liquidity” thus originates not just in accelerated changes in basic social structures, but also in the synchronically experienced volatility of rules and principles that coordinate human actions within particular institutions, and often in particular areas of activity. By lending me money, the bank demands rational planning, but simultaneously persuades me to take risks by offering profitable investment programmes. My students expect that they will receive copies of texts for classes, but my publisher asks me to sign a plea against the “piracy” that infringes also my own copyright. My boss is offended when I hold a different opinion even in the most trivial matter, but my therapist repeats with emphasis that it is paramount that I be myself. While planning to eat at a high-end restaurant my only worry is whether I can pay the bill, but while planning a night out at a fashionable club I cannot count on my money because the entrance is guarded by a bouncer who, for some reason, does not like my outfit. Moving from one area to another, we are constantly forced to adapt to rules that have no common denominator, to exhibit mutually contradicting features, and to refer to mutually exclusive justifications. Thus, it is not the case that my actions depend solely on my choices. The “liquidity” of the post-modern reality we are experiencing by no means erases social limitations and determinants, although it often makes them less visible, more ­difficult to grasp, and more discrete in their influence than they used to be in their crystallized forms of modern or traditional way of organizing social life. In postmodernity, as many authors claim, control over individual actions has not weakened but has, in fact, increased (cf. Lyon 1994; Bendyk 2004; Wyszyński 2007). Institutional surveillance facilitates – thanks to widespread mobile phone

124  The social environment after modernity usage – immediate localization of every individual, and reconstruction of their every step thanks to ubiquitous CCTV cameras. Systematically gathered data make it easy to detect even the slightest deviation from the statistical norm or personal profile. Our “spontaneous” actions are steered by a host of advertising professionals, experts in each field of activity, and life specialists. Our behaviour at work, in offices or shopping centres is structured by strict regulations, while our relationships with others are subject to legal protection. Paradoxically, none of this contradicts the increasing “liquidity” of social life because – as Edwin Bendyk writes – if “the outburst of multiplicity is irreversible, there can be only one reaction to it: increase of control” (2004, 78). At the same time, however, we are dealing here with a thorough change because, under post-modern conditions, control over our actions is specifically “de-socialized” or rather “de-humanized”. It is exercised not by instilling and enforcing the norms and values that are institutionalized through “symbolic violence” and/or created by one’s social environment, but rather by using technological means of surveillance, made possible through the development of information technologies. The place of “normalizing” individual actions through multidimensional disciplining measures, perfectly described by Foucault (1995), is now taken by procedures of “managing social risk” (cf. Lianos and Douglas 2000; Lianos 2003). At their basis we find what Lyon terms the “anticipatory, preventative, algorithmic surveillance that has a highly complex and unprecedented form” (after Wyszyński 2007). A crucial role in this surveillance is played by the concept of “categorical suspicion” (Lyon 1994, 112), which means that certain social groups are subjected to more intense IT supervision and are “selectively disconnected” from social networks when necessary (Bendyk 2004, 78). However, if the thing that integrates contemporary society, not allowing it to break down into a number of unconnected individual and group actions, are surveillance techniques, it remains an open question what actually stands behind them, not in the technological sense but in the strictly social one. What kinds of individuals are created in these post-modern conditions? What causes some new patterns in life to become popular and spread, while others are “selectively disconnected”? What more general forms of socializing individual actions emerge from them? Subsequent chapters attempt to answer these questions.

Notes 1 We have to remember that, from the long-term perspective, “analytical units” (i.e. traditional, modern, and “postmodern” society) are distinguished by leaving aside a large number of more detailed properties that differentiate them internally, which I  have attempted to demonstrate in Chapter 2 based on the example of modern society. 2 In the case of the modernizing transition, this process lasted around four centuries, spanning the rise of early forms of capitalist economy in the fifteenth century (cf. Braudel 1992) and the emergence of the mature or “finished” form of modern society in the nineteenth. Thus, even if we were to assume – as some researchers do (cf. e.g. Polanyi 2001; Barraclough 1969; Harvey 1995) – that the phenomena marking the beginning of the postmodern transition surfaced already at the beginning of the twentieth century,

The social environment after modernity  125 that the final breakaway occurred in the eighties, and that special account needs to be taken of the acceleration of change-inducing processes we are currently experiencing, we would have to assume that, at best, we are still only midway on the course towards the emergence of a new form of social order or a new form of social integration. 3 One could even say that this type of political organization has spread significantly in recent years, because the fall of communism gradually allowed more and more countries to adopt the liberal-democratic system of government. 4 This trend has become especially noticeable since the 1990s, although one needs to keep in mind that this is not the only manifestation of the breakdown of civic society diagnosed by scholars. For more on this subject, see for example: Putnam 1995. 5 I use the concept of ethnicity in its contemporary meaning, which oscillates between “nationality”, “race”, and “people”. The term ethnê itself was introduced by the Greeks in reference to the community that was Greek in dialectological and cultural terms, but which was incapable of organizing itself politically into a city-state and thus fell under the rule of tyrants. In social sciences the term “ethnicity” emerged in the 1930s and was first used mainly to highlight foreignness (Żelazny 2004, 25–27). 6 “Nation states, one might say, are born in wars and for wars”, Norbert Elias writes (2001, 208). A similar thesis was also formulated by Charles Tilly (1975, 1990). 7 For more information on the development of those European nations that were deprived of their own state structures in the formative period, see: Marody and Mandes (2005). 8 Naturally, the real causes of the outbreak of wars were far more complex and deeply rooted in economic processes, but – as Walter Żelazny argues (2004, 65) – almost all wars of the first half of the twentieth century were started on the pretext of protecting national minorities. 9 Certainly, wars have not disappeared entirely, not even from the repertoire of the arsenal employed by the most powerful states, but their military campaigns are usually launched far away from their own borders (e.g. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq), thus not engaging directly their entire societies. 10 In this context, “instant wars” discussed by Castells (cf. 2001a, 484–491) are a derivative not only of the development of ever more precise and effective military technologies, but also of the aversion of highly developed democratic societies to any engagement in military conflicts – a factor acknowledged by strategists. Seen on TV, instant wars make the experience of war even less real, partly because they resemble films or computer games. 11 Cf. the so-called Patriot Act passed by US Congress after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre. 12 In this way, the implemented idea of a welfare state was becoming a considerable trump card in the ideological conflict between capitalism and communism. 13 For a broader discussion of factors accompanying the creation and contemporary transformations of the idea of welfare state, see: Bauman 2005. 14 Bringing the status of the state to the level of any other institution is best expressed by the idea of public-private partnership, which abolishes the idea of separating subjects of public authority (state) and private economic subjects (market) – an idea that accompanied the birth of the modern state. For more on this, see: Hausner 2007. 15 More precisely, this regards the monopoly on the legitimized use of coercion, because even the modern state never really had actual monopoly in this matter. If we take into account the role played today by organized crime and international terrorism, the state has been recently especially stripped of this monopoly. What is more, we are now observing the rise of organizations and forms of action that undermine even this legitimized monopoly, from civic militias (cf. Castells 2002) to private security companies. 16 An elaborate account of this transition is contained in: Harvey 1995; Kumar 1995. Cf. also Hausner 1994.

126  The social environment after modernity 17 A more detailed analysis of contemporary transformations of labour, with references to these concepts, can be found in: Harvey 1995; Castells 2001a; cf. also Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018 (chapter 6). 18 In the hundred year period between the end of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth, in Western societies the percentage of people working independently (including family members), and thus belonging to the broadly understood class of “owners”, dropped from almost 40 per cent to 14–9 per cent (Domański 1994, 282). 19 A fundamental change occurred in the 1930s when paid holidays were introduced by law (Roberts 1978, 15). 20 For a discussion on the more detailed properties of the various kinds of logic of obtaining income, see: Marody 2000. 21 Additionally, it remains highly unclear who should the pressure groups oppose, which stems from the fact that the category of “owners” is becoming blurred – an issue I shall return to later. 22 According to his estimates, in 1999 only 43 per cent of all workers in California were employed in accordance with traditional rules, i.e. performing a single, full-time job and were paid by the company they worked for, not working at home or as an independent contractor. This percentage would be as low as 22 per cent if we additionally applied the criterion of at least three-year period of employment in a single company. 23 It is a substantial percentage of the working class, which amounted, for example, to over 6 per cent of all those employed in the USA in 2014 (www.bls.gov/opub/reports/ working-poor/2016/home.htm#tableA). These people often have so-called McJobs: low-paying jobs requiring few skills, based on uncertain conditions, and without any prospects for development. 24 The higher the occupational status, the longer the working week. As Castells writes, referring to data obtained in 1999 in California, “while 29 per cent of all workers worked over 40 hours a week, among those at the top of the salary scale ($60,000+), the proportion climbed to 58 per cent” (2001a, 287). 25 Naturally, this does not occur immediately, because the development of the “modern” family was inseparable from the process of shaping “modern” work. In the initial period of capitalism, when wages were minimal, women and children worked just like men did, which was – in a sense – a continuation of the traditional order. It was only the general rise of prosperity and the strengthening of capitalism that led to the emergence of the pattern that currently seems to be the most effective and “natural” division of tasks, at least from the perspective of capitalist production. 26 The popular view that the modern family subjugated women by bringing them under the authority of men stems from misunderstanding the logic of mutual dependence that lies at the foundation of this division of tasks, and can make sense only in relation to upper-class families whose position was not dependent on work but on ownership. One needs to remember that, in this limited circle of upper-class families, women did not do any household chores because domestic service attended to all such matters. 27 As Melvin Kohn’s theory of parental values shows (Kohn and Schooler 1983), along with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social capital (1986; cf. also Bourdieu and Passeron 2000), it was the difference in upbringing between working class and bourgeois/­middleclass families that was largely responsible for the replication of the class structure. 28 This was visible both in the habit of addressing women by using the husband’s name or profession – “Mrs. Robert Smith” or “Doctor Smith’s wife” – and in defining the position of adolescents or even mature children through indicating that they come from a “good/decent family”, which again would refer to the position of the “head of family”. 29 According to her earlier estimates, towards the end of the twentieth century the classic model of the modern family, comprising a married couple with children, with the man as the only breadwinner and the woman as a full-time housewife, was found only in 7 per cent of American households (Stacey 1990, 28).

The social environment after modernity  127 30 “Habitus allows saving, or as Bourdieu puts it – economy of action. It captures only those features that are socially significant, i.e. common to given groups (individuals, actions, objects) or differentiating them. It transforms things into discrete and differing . . . ‘distinction marks’. It facilitates moving from the physical order of bodies to the symbolic order of crucial distinctions” (Sztandar-Sztanderska 2010, 42; emphasis preserved). 31 Bourdieu uses empirical data from a particular society at a particular historical moment as an illustration of theses phrased in the language of timeless generalizations. 32 However, he makes the reservation that “this is not a way of reverting to a pre-­ constructed variable such as ‘socio-occupational category’ ” (Bourdieu 2010, 96). 33 In choosing their friends and acquaintances, the American study subjects focused on moral judgements (regarding friendliness, honesty, and loyalty) as well as socio-­ economic factors, while the French ones underscored the importance of cultural refinement, which they assessed by referring to a hierarchically ordered system of cultural forms. However, in both societies cultural barriers proved to be less clear and rigid than Bourdieu’s theory would suggest. 34 Cf. the detailed account of tradition-directed societies in: Riesman 1969. 35 Ian Hacking draws attention to the obsessive interest in the statistical analysis of various kinds of deviations from around 1820. He also indicates that the growing tendency to categorize the population in all sorts of manners “creates new ways for people to be. People spontaneously come to fit their categories” (2004, 100); cf. also Halawa (2013). 36 As Bauman demonstrates, the belief that “[r]ational organization of society should assure satisfaction of everybody whatever his or her position within this hierarchy” (1989, 76) lay at the foundation of the Enlightenment vision of Reason at the service of politics. The idea of the welfare state, as developed from the 1950s onwards, seems to be a direct continuation of this thought. 37 According to Bauman, “[t]he self-confidence of the enlightened elite of Europe was projected on adjacent categories of mankind, in measures strictly proportional to the perceived closeness of kinship. Thus the group distinguished by an enlightened way of life was seen as decidedly superior in relation to their own ignorant and superstitious working classes or villagers. . . . Rather than deriving its own self-confidence from its belief in progress the educated elite forged the idea of progress from the untarnished experience of its own superiority” (1989, 110). 38 This is not limited only to beliefs. As many scholars have shown, the education system was the fundamental means of accustoming people to those kinds of behaviour that would be seen as the basis for the functioning of modern industrial society; cf. Toffler 1989; Foucault 1995; Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018. 39 The way in which Bourdieu uses the term “doxa” (cf. Jacyno 1997, chapter 2) refers, on the one hand, to the way of discovering reality contained in Greek philosophy, based on experiencing it sensually on a daily basis, and on the other – to the concept of nomos, as used by Berger (cf. Chapter 3), due to the emphasis on the obviousness and the indisputable character of beliefs comprising doxa. 40 For an immensely interesting and detailed account of this process, see: Frykman and Löfgren 1987. 41 I would prefer to avoid the discussion about the extent to which it is justified to use the term “side effects” to a range of new, unpredictable phenomena emerging in the course of an ongoing, ceaseless process of socializing human actions, which continues to create not only new possibilities, but also new threats. As Norbert Elias shows (2001), this is what the phenomenon of social life consists in – it comprises almost solely the “side effects” of individually taken, rational actions, which interweave and generate effects that individuals could not foresee when they were undertaking these actions. Taking this perspective, one ought to say that every kind of social order generates its own “side effects”. Attempts to eliminate them lead – sooner or later – to upsetting that social

128  The social environment after modernity order, finally shattering it and creating conditions for the emergence of new forms of organizing social life. 42 Castells refers to this factor, among others, in his explanation of the development of homosexual movements in Western countries (2002, 243). 43 However, “[e]ven in the United States, the Federal Communication Commission exercised a close control of electronic media . . . and the three major television networks monopolized 90 per cent of the audience, framing, if not shaping public opinion” (Castells 2002, 254). 44 Cf. a broader discussion of this in: Thompson 1995; Castells 2002 (especially chapters 5–6). It is worthwhile to note here the role played – according to Habermas (1989) – by the free press, i.e. not controlled by the absolutist state, in the final dismantling of the traditional order. 45 The role of the media in upsetting the obviousness of everyday life was already indicated by Bell, who writes that “[t]he media are geared to feeding new images to people, to unsettling traditional conventions, and the highlighting of aberrant and quirky behavior which becomes imagos for other to imitate” (1978, xxv–xxvi). 46 One needs to remember that, for the most part of the modern society’s history, basically the only “voice of minority” offering an alternative to the dominant order was that of the working class. The feminists, ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, as well as various subcultures and exotic religious cults gained social visibility only in the last decades of the twentieth century. 47 This becomes clear upon analysis of nineteenth-century catechisms. Wojciech Pawlik conducted such a study (2007, chapter 1) and showed that the catechisms accord a fundamental place to the accentuation of not just norms related to sexuality (this area was taboo through concealment and silencing; cf. Frykman and Löfgren 1987), but the requirement to remain obedient to the authority of power and social position, thus reinforcing the legitimization of the socio-occupational structure as well as of the social and legal order. It was only in the 1970s that “carnal sins” began to be decisively dominant among the sins revealed at confession. 48 A comment of unknown person to changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council, quoted after Jacek Prusak (2005). 49 Cf. the interesting discussion on this subject in: Heisenberg 1975. 50 As Kenneth J. Gergen informs us (1991, 87), in the years 1978–1988 over 29,000 new scientific journals were created, almost four times the number that existed before, which demonstrates the tempo of specialization. 51 The best example of this is provided by the constantly changing and often contradictory recommendations regarding a healthy diet – a phenomenon examined often in scientific studies. However, it is an even bigger problem that the research conducted by “specialists” rarely impacts the discipline’s general paradigmatic assumptions. 52 One needs to remember that this vision combined the achievements of natural sciences and humanistic studies, bringing them into a harmonious whole, which – as Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist state (2002) – made science a potential ally and source of legitimization in politics. Meanwhile, already towards the end of the 1950s, Charles Percy Snow argued in the well-known essay “Two Cultures” (1961) that natural sciences and humanities have entirely parted ways and lost any previously shared language. 53 Aristotle’s classic definition of truth, which assumes that it is the agreement between judgements and actual states of affairs, naturally does not take into account the ever richer body of knowledge about the social factors influencing the process of “agreeing” judgements with “the actual states of affairs”; cf. e.g. Latour and Woolgar (1979). 54 The current tendency to look towards the “Eastern thought” is not limited to adopting the principles of feng-shui in home decoration, but involves representatives of the natural sciences. In the first half of the twentieth century, the renowned physicist

The social environment after modernity  129 Wolfgang Pauli, one of the creators of quantum mechanics, wrote that “at the present time a point has again been reached at which the rationalist outlook has passed its zenity, and is found to be too narrow” (1994, 147). In the 1980s, works by the physicist Fritjof Capra – The Tao of Physics (1975) and The Turning Point (1982) – gained huge popularity. Capra argues it is necessary to depart from the Newtonian foundation informing the Western vision of the world, which contradicts the vision emerging from contemporary research in physics, where results are parallel to the assumptions found at the basis of the Eastern thought. 55 Ulrich Beck notes that “[a]s they become more differentiated . . . the sciences, including the natural sciences, are transformed into self-service shops for financially well endowed customers in need of arguments” (1992, 173; emphasis preserved). 56 Among the best-known ways of explaining the world that form an alternative to science we find the concept of the “intelligent project”, which rejects Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the immensely popular theories developed by Erich von Däniken, who explains the rise of mankind through extra-terrestrial intervention. For more on the current, widespread pseudo-scientific theories, see Wheen 2005. 57 I disregard here the popular phrases such as a “technological” or “information” revolution, which are metaphorical and cannot replace the symbolic role that actual sociopolitical revolutions played in establishing the new order. 58 According to Habermas, “modernism is dominant but dead” (after Gergen 1991).

5 The production of the individual

If asked to name the most important invention of modern times, I should have no hesitation in saying that it was the individual. Serge Moscovici, The Age of Crowds

However certain it may be that each person is a complete entity in itself, an individual who controls himself and can be controlled or regulated by no one else if he does not do so himself, it is no less certain that the whole structure of his self-control, both conscious and unconscious, is a network product formed in a continuous interplay of relationships to other people, and that the individual form of the adult is society specific form. Norbert Elias, The Society of Individuals

Beliefs about human personality are mainstays of contemporary life; they are infused within all manner of relationships, propelling them this way and that. Kenneth J. Gergen, The Saturated Self

Formulating general theses about the human individual has never been a particularly safe endeavour; today, however, it appears to be especially risky. In scientific enquiry the individual is the kind of subject that everyone has direct access to, which facilitates verifying scientific findings through introspective analysis of one’s own experiences. Furthermore, it is a subject particularly dear to us, which has made it easy to hurt anyone simply through a careless choice of words.1 In the era of individualism, the very use of the term “production” in the title of this chapter can make the reader dislike the author, offering an excuse for accusations of propagating a dehumanized vision of the human individual. Everyone’s deep sense of subjectivity, autonomy and uniqueness shudders at this, deeply touched by the assumption that all of these qualities could be a specific “product” of cultural adaptation processes, which ultimately have a mass character, and that there is nothing, not even a smallest part, that could not be reduced (“Well, now she is a reductionist too!”) to the combined effect of various social factors.

The production of the individual  131 At this point I can only reassure my readers that, as I am writing these words, I have a deep sense of individual agency, although I have to admit that I no longer believe so much in individual uniqueness and autonomy. After all, I have borrowed the title of this chapter from Kenneth J. Gergen (1991), while its contents are the product of my reflections on many works by other authors who touch upon the properties of the individual in contemporary times. Although these are my own reflections, they can be hardly deemed entirely original at a time when the individual constitutes the basic subject of enquiry in social sciences. Even when we reject someone’s statements as senseless (of course!), we become indebted to these authors, as they have forced us to seek arguments that would support our criticism. Naturally, there are also other authors with whom we agree, either entirely or partially and with additional reservations. Thus, even such a singular achievement as writing a book such as this one, which is protected by copyright law, can be hardly regarded as proof of uniqueness. The book is rather the result of a specific dialogue – one in which both our individual sense of uniqueness and scholarly theses about the contemporary individual are inevitably subjected to the influence of some cultural notions that have come before and which in turn are the effect of even older notions that . . . and so on, ad infinitum. Certainly, for analytical purposes we can interrupt this dialogic chain at any point and consider (taking our cue from the authors invoked in Chapter 1) when individualism was born, what factors favoured the creation of a culture of individualism (cf. Jacyno 2007), and the origins of notions that contributed to our sense of having a unique self (cf. Elias 2001; Gergen 1991). The last issue seems particularly interesting, because – as Gergen argues – the way in which we conceive of ourselves and others today is a direct consequence of Romantic and modernist visions of the world.2 One of their effects was the discovery of psychological depth and subsequent reinforcement of the conviction that every object in the world can be reduced – in the course of scientific enquiry – to a specific essence or “the thing in itself”, which reveals the scientific truth about it. With this assumption, “individuals [also] possessed a basic personality or character, and in most normal relationships this essential self was made known” (Gergen 1991, 83). One could thus say that our individual conviction about a “real self” inherent to each and every one of us is rooted in the essentialist approach developed in Romanticism and modernism. This conviction is so strong that it is not affected by contemporary theories maintaining the illusory character of modernist faith in the possibility of reaching the “essence of things”, and emphasizing an irremovable dependency between the form of this “essence” and the language employed in its description.3 The lasting character of this conviction is also favoured by the fact that most scientific analyses of the post-modern individual are still grounded in the assumption regarding the existence of a “real self”, the only caveat being that this self would now be equipped with different properties than the one prevailing in modernist accounts. Thus, in place of standardized, analytically distinguished personality types, contemporary analyses introduce a unique individuality that strives for self-fulfilment; the place of a culturally conditioned process of cognition is taken by individual reflexivity; and finally, the rational effectiveness in

132  The production of the individual striving to reach culturally developed goals (values) is now supplanted by selfexpression through engagement in consumer choices. Individualism, reflexivity, and consumerism are the three properties of postmodern individuals that contemporary authors bring up most frequently. At the same time, however, these three concepts do not have an exact and clear theoretical status. This is primarily due to their semantic ambiguity, which is best visible in the case of individualism. This concept is used to describe both people’s efforts to emphasize their individual uniqueness and the consequences of such structural processes, which – to invoke Beck’s expression again – free the individual from “the social forms of industrial society” (1992, 87), regardless of their will or often even against it. A similar ambiguity characterizes the concept of consumerism. According to many scholars, “involvement with material culture is such that mass consumption infiltrates everyday life not only at the levels of economic processes, social activities and household structures, but also at the level of meaningful psychological experience – affecting the construction of identities, the formation of relationships, the framing of events” (Lunt and Livingstone 1992, 24; after Miles 2002, 9). Finally, the concept of reflexivity describes, on the one hand, the structural aspect of reality that manifests in the reflexivity of actions, both individual and institutional (Beck, Bonss, and Lau 2003), and on the other – the dominant feature among individuals, which takes the shape of living with “a calculative attitude to the open possibilities of action, positive and negative” (Giddens 1991, 28). Therefore, in all three cases we are dealing with concepts whose meaning not only changes dramatically when moving from one theory to another,4 but also encompasses both individual traits and structural properties of the contemporary society, without providing any explanation of how these two levels are connected. It remains unclear in what way the structural individualization would translate into, or be the effect of, the individualization of particular people. Nor do we know how the reflexivity of institutions would intensify the reflexivity of individuals. The same goes for consumerism, where the existence of specific individual mentality traits is deduced mainly on the basis of the growth of special institutions oriented towards stimulating consumption (e.g. advertising, shopping malls), without indicating the mechanisms that tie these two levels of analysis together. However, even if we were to disregard these semantic ambiguities, limiting ourselves to the individual aspect of each of these concepts, we would not gain much, because the second crucial problem is their unspecified methodological status. It is unclear whether these concepts explain individual actions or should rather be treated as certain normative ideas that emerge in the symbolic dimension of contemporary culture, providing – under the guise of description – clues regarding social behaviour. As far as hints go, their effectiveness would have to be assessed in the course of empirical enquiry, though certain studies suggest that the conclusion would have to be negative. For example, the normative character of individualism, which assumes the form of a cultural imperative, is indicated by Bauman, who writes that “being an individual meant striving to be an individual” (2001, 103; emphasis added), whereas “the modern hell, the mass, is the punishment for the failure to perform

The production of the individual  133 that duty” (104). At the same time he points out that the imperative to be an individual, or even a “personality”, cannot be realized as if by definition, because the only way to do so, as promoted by contemporary culture, is to take the path of consumerism, which of course involves individuals acquiring identical objects. In this sense, people believe they are becoming individualized, whereas in reality they merely “reiterate” preformed scripts of individualism developed by marketing specialists.5 Further, the advancement of reflexivity – understood as the ubiquity of a calculative attitude to reality – is questioned, among others, by Jean-Claude Kaufmann (2004), who indicates the limitations imposed on people’s rationality and their moral sensibility by individual habits and social customs. Even if we disregard the question of the habitualization of human actions and assume that people reflect on their behaviour more often these days than they did in the past, at least due to constant anxiety over whether one has made “the right choice”, whether one did not pass over some “important possibility”, this anxiety should not be confused with reflection.6 In this configuration, Giddens’s “living with a calculative attitude” constitutes – just like individualism – a normative postulate rather than a thesis about the actual behaviour of individuals. Finally, when it comes to consumerism, the last of the three concepts discussed here, its normative character is established primarily by indicating its negative consequences understood as the obsessive habit of acquiring various goods (cf. Chapter 3). At the same time, as the British historian Frank Trentmann has argued, numerous conditions of consumerist behaviours – which have nothing to do with “excessive concentration on goods for their own sake” – cause many of them to be motivated by entirely down-to-earth pressures. According to Trentmann, the concepts of “consumerism” and “consumer society” are becoming less and less useful in both theoretical and analytical terms. Commenting on numerous examples of using market language in various areas of life – from family to politics and religion – he shows how much the concept of consumerism has been inflated, suggesting to focus on the ways of, and contexts in which, “historical actors have appropriated languages of consumption to make sense of their actions and described themselves and others as ‘consumers’ ” (2004, 401; emphasis added). This remark on appropriation could be extended to cover the language of individualization and reflexivity. Without a doubt, these concepts are more and more often being used to give meaning to actions of contemporary people, not only in scientific studies but also in the language of the media, advertising and popular how-to books. It would thus be possible to follow in Gergen’s footsteps and attempt to reconstruct the ways in which the contemporary language of public discourse “produces” the image of an individualized, reflexive, and consuming individual whose actions are in turn shaped by this image. However, would it not mean placing an exaggerated importance on the role that certain abstract and often incoherent ideas play in shaping human behaviour? What grounds do we have to assume that something which provides meaning to human actions (if it really does do that) is simultaneously their basic mechanism?

134  The production of the individual Living in the company of sociology students who have assimilated this terminology to the greatest degree, one can of course forget that not everyone reads Bauman and Giddens, while in the course of studying major works by theoreticians of post-modernity it is possible to forget that the process of producing individuals and socializing their actions begins long before they learn to read and consider abstract ideas7 – i.e., that it occurs mainly through contacts with other people. Norbert Elias noted this already in the 1930s, underlining that “ideas, convictions, affects, needs and character traits are produced in the individual through intercourse with others, things which make up his most personal ‘self’ and in which is expressed, for this very reason, the network of relations from which he has emerged and into which he passes” (2001, 33). Thus, if we want to answer the questions about the kinds of properties that characterize post-modern individuals, and about the mechanisms that lie at the base of their actions, we have to peek behind the curtain of culturally created meanings and examine the patterns of relationships that underlie the processes in the course of which members of contemporary society are produced.

Processes of socializing individuals Sociology textbooks usually describe the processes of socializing individuals by using the concept of socialization, which – as I have mentioned in Chapter 1– does not enjoy much interest in social sciences these days. This may partially stem from its banalization. After decades of studies and thousands of publications, the very existence of this process, once considered a discovery, seems to be now regarded as something obvious and not worth thinking about. One can even have the impression that mechanisms of learning, modelling and introjecting have all become part of common knowledge. Even before we go on to study psychology or sociology, we already know that everything starts with “toxic parents” who adopt inadequate patterns of reward (or do not reward at all), that our bad choices are the effect of imitating the wrong role models and/or internalizing improper (or misunderstood) cultural imperatives. Sources of such knowledge include the school psychologist, popular press, television series, and talk shows – in other words, the whole of contemporary popular culture, which is deeply rooted in the culture of therapy. Regardless of the knowledge that has accumulated in this area, the departure from the problem of socialization was also impacted by the fact that the processes of socialization traditionally understood as the adaptation of members of society to its conditions, i.e. a specific cultural imprinting that facilitates reproduction of the social order on the level of individual actions, did not match the vision of an individualized, reflexive and autonomous individual, which has prevailed in social sciences since the 1960s (cf. Wrong 1961; Gecas 1981). This vision is well founded in research from the early 1980s. Analyses of video footage showing interactions between parents and infants led researchers to conclude that children are not merely passive recipients of stimuli coming from the environment, but actively shape the course of social interactions from birth. Although the claim

The production of the individual  135 that this has led to “greater emphasis on the active role of the child in constructing an understanding of the social order” (Durkin 1995, 617) may be considered a little far-fetched, it nevertheless does clearly announce the ultimate victory of the vision of an autonomous individual. It seems, however, that this victory came at the price of completely burying the problem of socialization, because equipping infants with features formerly ascribed only to adult members of society – autonomy, intentionality, and subjectivity – has made reflection on socialization processes superfluous. Still, this may not be entirely true. As Kevin Durkin notes, not without a tinge of melancholy, “asserting the active role of the child does not in itself address the question of how a particular way of social life is sustained and reproduced” (1995, 617). And because this question, which constitutes the essence of the sociological approach, could not be answered by indicating a unilateral process of cultural imprinting, the issue of socialization was moved to the level of cultural analyses (cf. Sikorska 2009), where it is not individual people who are of interest but the entire social groups creating specific habituses and lifestyles. In this approach, the concept of cultural capital began to act as the fundamental category used in explanations of human behaviour (Bourdieu 1986), giving individuals far greater autonomy with respect to the system in which they live and act. However, along with the acceleration of social changes, described in the previous chapter, this approach also lost much of its explanatory potential derived from a specific vision of social differentiation, while the very concept of cultural capital became one of the many empty notions that the battlefields of social sciences are strewn with. Though it is difficult to negate that everyone acquires knowledge, experiences and skills characteristic for their family of origin, it is simultaneously difficult to ascertain – under the conditions of deep changes in all areas of life – what part of this inheritance can become a source of cultural capital in the future. The most promising way out of this conceptual impasse may have been indicated by Niklas Luhmann, who returns in his theory of social systems to the concept of socialization, defining it as the “process that, through interpenetration, forms the psychic system and the bodily behavior of human beings” (1995, 241). At the same time, he links the concept of interpenetration to the relation between systems (in this case – the psychological one) and the environment. Apart from his specific language, this definition perfectly matches the traditional, handbook definitions of socialization as the influence of the environment on the individual. What distinguishes Luhmann’s concept, however, is the different distribution of focus in his analyses of this influence. Firstly, he emphasizes the reciprocity of influences in the individual’s relation to the environment, concluding that each of the systems8 engaged in the interpenetration contributes its own complexity to the construction of the other (216). Secondly, he considers socialization as a process that “comes about simply by living in a social context and does not require special attention” (1995, 205), by which he means the contingency and specific non-intentionality of socialization events, which differentiates them from planned educational efforts. Thirdly, he argues that socialization “presupposes participation in communication, especially the possibility of reading the behavior of others

136  The production of the individual not as mere fact but as information – as information about dangers, disappointments, coincidences of all kinds, about realizing the relation to social norms concerning what is appropriate in a situation” (193). This kind of approach seems to be particularly useful when analyzing contemporary processes of socialization, because it allows us to not limit ourselves to traditionally understood “agents of socialization” such as family or school, which – at least due to the educational functions inscribed in them – are characterized by a certain conservatism, as well as take into account the properties of the entire, rapidly changing social environment. At the same time, this approach provides us with two hints orienting further considerations. First, by forcing analyses of socialization processes to be conducted from the perspective of those relations of individual with the social environment that determine the dominant patterns of communication, it defines the basic area of research in terms of focusing on who the individual is in contact with, how often, and in what ways.9 Second, it allows us to discern a specific trap that stems from excessive specialization in the existing theories of socialization, and effectively cuts them off from more general concepts of the individual’s functioning. As Luhmann aptly notes, the “indisputable fact that human beings distinguish themselves according to social circumstances in which they grow up stimulates ever-new research that cannot acquire clear contours without conceptual support” (1995, 241). Attempting to sidestep this trap, we must refer to the more general conceptual framework sketched in Chapter 1. In this framework, processes of socializing individuals involve forming specific habits that reflexively determine the basic techniques of living; they are accompanied by defining a circle of significant others, who become the main source of behavioural patterns assimilated in later stages of life; finally, they culminate in the formation of an individual identity, which becomes a source of meaning.10 In each of these three cases, the course of socializing processes is fundamentally affected by patterns of communication that stem from them and that reflexively shape the relations between individuals and their social surroundings. The next sections focus on identifying such patterns. Producing habits – primary socialization The essence of socialization consists in channelling the infinity of possible human behaviours into specific forms adapted to the shape of the society a person exists in. This general statement, though entirely correct, can be incredibly misleading because it inclines one to focus on properties of society as a kind of meta-agenda of socialization processes. It becomes entirely deceptive when we are dealing – as in the case of post-modern society – with an entity undergoing fundamental reorganization, whose future shape and direction are not specified yet. In this context, the factors that stabilize the social actions of individuals are primarily the general customs and individual habits, especially those developed in the course of primary socialization, because – as empirical data show – they are particularly resistant to change.

The production of the individual  137 The concept of habit, in the form proposed by Jean-Claude Kaufmann (2004), largely corresponds to the perspective on socialization processes assumed here (cf. also Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018, 107–112). Habits are shaped in action, which entails the involvement of objects and other people as vehicles of social memory. Their non-reflective character11 stems from the fact that habits are an “embodied” tendency to act. This is further strengthened by the non-intentional character of socialization’s influences. Another crucial aspect is their specific “openness”, because in Kaufmann’s view “habits are not satisfied with recreating the past but also register that which is new” (152). Finally, their stabilizing effect stems not so much from the repeatability of particular individual actions, as from the ongoing process of adapting individual habits to one another: within their broader structure, in relation to the habits of other people, and in contacts with the material world. In this process of adapting, communication with others plays an important role. It is not only the main tool of drawing attention to vital aspects of reality, but it also serves, perhaps primarily, to convey meanings ascribed to this reality, and consequently to ensure the translatability of perspectives that determine the course of human interactions. It is on this plane that individuals gain the most important experiences for the formation of habits, especially those that regulate cooperation with others. If we adopt this perspective to consider the conditions that determine contemporary patterns of communication, we ought to draw attention to at least several factors that differentiate them from earlier conditions characteristic for modern society. First, today we are witnessing such transformations of the family and the patterns of raising children that lead to the decrease of contacts between children and their direct social environment. This stems both from the fact that more and more women work and from the decrease in the average number of children in the family, as well as from the parents’ desire, especially among the middle and upper classes, to protect their children from unwanted contacts. An additional factor reinforcing this tendency is the development of new technologies that, according to many scholars, contribute to the social isolation of children.12 All of this limits children’s access to situations in which they could practise, in a natural social environment, the kinds of skills that facilitate establishing contacts13 and cooperating effectively within broader social groups. Surely, this does not deprive children of the possibility to master specific “techniques” of affecting others, because these can be acquired through observation. However, this makes it more difficult to learn hidden meanings of behaviour and to develop the kinds of identifications that are grounded in well-developed communication and which helps to obtain the skill of seeing oneself as a member of a specific community or society, for the existence of which we are to some extent responsible and which consequently provides a foundation for coordinating behaviours.14 As Richard Sennett rightly notes (2012), mastering such skills of cooperation is not easy because it demands that the individual resign from full and unhindered self-expression, and accept other, often entirely dissimilar habits, views, and attitudes. On the most basic level, this skill assumes mastering the norms

138  The production of the individual of “good upbringing”, which ensure conflict-free coexistence. However, along with the tightening of social relations, such skills begin to encompass more complex competences such as empathy and preference for negotiating interests and worldviews rather than compulsively defending and enforcing them. Neither the “separateness” of contemporary family life, nor the dominant patterns of socialization, which enforce far-reaching permissiveness, supports the development of such habits. Temporal limitation of contacts with the social environment also involves other changes in relations established during the period of socialization. As Kenneth J. Gergen shows, contemporary changes in the lifestyle of an average family – work, school, and after-school activities, social meetings, entertainment – have deeply transformed the traditional model of family life, leading to the situation in which “the home is less a nesting place than a pit stop” (1991, 66). Forced to take on numerous individual duties, family members are incapable of synchronizing their activities, missing each other, and communicating through messages. “At the same time, however, many parents are loath to give up the traditional image of the close-knit family. As a result, a new form of relationship emerges in which family members attempt to compensate for the vast expanses of nonrelatedness with intense expressions of bondedness” (66). Gergen captures this vital feature of today’s socialization in the term “relationships from a microwave oven”, indicating that they are characterized by the belief that the intensity of emotional bonds can be converted into their higher quality. The development of “relationships from a microwave oven” in the period of primary socialization is also favoured by the rate of divorces. The parent who is granted only temporary custody of the child – usually the father – typically tries to organize his time with the children in such a way as to make them a time spent as intensively and attractively as possible. This means that the children begin to perceive that parent differently than if they were to observe his or her everyday behaviour in “normal” life – doing the dishes and shopping, talking about work etc. The parent becomes primarily a person who supplies emotional gratification. And because the other parent – the one who has permanent custody – also actively participates in heating up the emotional atmosphere due to the aforementioned time limitations and sometimes for purely competitive reasons, relations are redirected, with emotional factors playing an ever greater role in them and strictly cognitive ones being diminished. Instead of becoming an occasion to transmit social knowledge, communication between parents and children starts to primarily serve the function of revealing feelings to the latter, in intensified form.15 This shift from cognitive to emotional factors is also closely connected with the transformations of the family’s basic functions, described in the previous chapter. In the situation when one of its major tasks is to provide the spouses with the possibility of attaining emotional self-fulfilment, relations in the family are increasingly saturated with emotions, not only between spouses but also with the child. This is because, paradoxically, despite the fact that having children ceases to be the main goal for starting a family, and is even often regarded as an obstacle in realizing the primary function of emotional self-fulfilment, the position of the

The production of the individual  139 child in the family has been strengthened. As Ulrich Beck points out, in contemporary, post-modern society, “[t]he child is the source of the last remaining, unexchangeable primary relationship. Partners come and go. The child stays. Everything that is desired, but not realizable in the relationship, is directed to the child. . . . Here an anachronistic social experience is celebrated and cultivated which has become improbable and longed for precisely because of the individualization process. The excessive affection for children, the ‘staging of childhood’ which is granted to them – the poor, overloved creatures – and the nasty struggle for the children during and after divorce are some symptoms of this” (1992, 118; emphasis preserved). Let us add here that these are not just symptoms but also correlates of the situation that allows the child to enter the role of an autonomous actor who plays on the emotionally charged relations with parents for maximizing one’s own profits. The second factor is closely related to these transformations of the family, and involves the rapid development of new technologies. On the one hand, as already mentioned, it contributes to the social isolation of children. On the other, however, it entails the dominance of contacts with objects in processes of socialization. This turn from people to objects, which constitutes the second vital property of contemporary socialization processes, is particularly emphasized by Karin KnorrCetina (1997), who argues that in contemporary Western society individuals cease to be socialized to community and are increasingly often socialized to objects. The ability to “cooperate” with objects acquires even greater significance because they are replacing people on more and more occasions that would, by definition, require establishing social relations (e.g. in managing a bank account online, or in obtaining elaborate information about given institutions through special automatic call centres). Objects thus become major non-personal partners in interactions, creating the basic environments of belonging. By mediating interpersonal relations, objects make these relations depend on things, not people. Passing over the rather radical conclusions drawn from these observations by Knorr-Cetina,16 let us only point to the fact that socialization to objects is not something entirely new in the history of human societies. One could even say that it has accompanied us since the very beginning, constituting an important mechanism of transmitting social memory and passing down habits.17 However, it is certainly a new and important phenomenon that relations with objects begin to replace those established with people. It carries vital consequences for the development of our habits, because handling objects calls for different skills than those developed in relations with people. Objects do not have personalities, are characterized by a narrow scope of “communicative responses”, and using them involves a strongly marked technical component. Naturally, we can grow attached to objects or even love them (as some car owners seem to do), but Western culture clearly promotes an instrumental approach to them, assuming that they are supposed to serve us, make our lives easier, or – if needs be – become an outlet for our vented frustration. Nobody protests when I kick a vending machine that has just eaten my coin, but the same would be unthinkable in a situation when a seller insists that he received a less valuable banknote than the one I believe I gave him.18

140  The production of the individual Therefore, the scope of social adaptations that objects demand from us is, on the one hand, much more fragmented insofar as it includes specific functional spheres determined by the main uses of a given object, and on the other – rather narrow since it is limited to the “skill-related” aspect of the habit. Although this allows for the standardization of human behaviour – which certainly facilitates managing today’s complex society – the domination of object-contacts in socialization processes, accompanied by a relative fall in the number of contacts with the human environment, deprives us of the possibility (or at least highly limits it) to obtain specific knowledge derived from communication in social situations that include the use of objects: knowledge about the intentions, possibilities and dangers experienced by other people involved in social interactions. This deepens, in turn, the aforementioned deficit in social skills, especially because socialization to objects – or perhaps rather through them – contributes to extending the instrumental approach, typical for using things, onto relations with people. Charles Taylor called this tendency in contemporary Western culture “the primacy of instrumental reason” in guiding human actions, having in mind “the kind of rationality we draw on when we calculate the most economical application of means to a given end. Maximum efficiency, the best cost-output ratio, is its measure of success” (2003, 5). What is included in the scope of the ends themselves is to a large degree determined not by values drawn from the world of adults but rather by the third important feature of contemporary socialization processes: the dominance of peer groups. Since the publication of Florian Znaniecki’s Socjologia wychowania (The Sociology of Education) in 1928, it has been assumed that peer groups constitute the main environment helping to develop those competences that lie at the foundation of harmonious social coexistence and effective cooperation with others. It is in peer groups that individuals shape their self-esteem as well as learn how to be loyal, assertive, and solve conflicts, and finally – or perhaps primarily – to take into account the opinions of others. It is also in peer groups that they acquire the kind of knowledge that is hidden from children by adults, e.g. regarding sexual practices, informal institutional rules, forms of behaviour that are not approved of by the society etc. (Gecas 1981). Such perception of peer groups, i.e. assuming that they supplement the family in preparing the individual to full participation in adult life, may be still widespread but it does not take into account vital transformations of the socialization environment that occurred during the last fifty years. These include the emergence of a specific youth culture and the change of its position in relation to “adult” culture. One could naturally say that adolescents have always created a more or less distinct subculture, but until the mid-twentieth century one of its significant elements has been the anticipation of entry into adult social roles, which made these subcultures oriented towards adulthood. Meanwhile, the youth counterculture initiated towards the end of the 1960s not only created its own values, norms, tastes, language and patterns of behaviour,19 but above all rejected adulthood as a holistic model of life and, in time, as a desired stage in individual development.

The production of the individual  141 This specific characteristic strips the adult generation of the authority necessary to control the processes of socialization, and contributes to the rise of the significance of peer groups as an alternative source of socialization. If “adult life” ceases to be the desired goal of adolescence, the position of adults consequently loses its special status. They still have more power over the youth, especially in economic terms, but they are nevertheless deprived of the advantage resulting from access to those special experiences that were the prerogative of adult life. Entry into this kind of life is currently postponed by both the young (cf. Sińczuch 2002) and the mature, who attempt to imitate patterns developed by the generation of children, which – according to Margaret Mead (1978) – leads to the reversal of the direction of socialization.20 The process of destroying the “natural” authority of parents is augmented by two additional factors, which are strictly related to the development of new means of communication. The first one, chronologically earlier, was the transition from printed to electronic media, which eliminated obstacles limiting access to certain areas of knowledge about adult life (cf. Meyrowitz 1986; Postman 1982). In modern society, characterized by strict division into public and private spheres, children were largely isolated from the privacy of adults, and thus deprived of the possibility to gather information about adult behaviours. Access to other sources of knowledge about adult relations, as well as mature people’s aspirations, fears and failures, was very limited.21 This changed completely along with the invention of television, which systematically revealed before children the full extent of formerly hidden adult behaviours and dilemmas. As a result of this, Gergen writes, “the child no longer interacts with one-dimensional, idealized adults, but with persons possessing complex private lives, doubt-filled and vulnerable. In turn, parents no longer confront the comfortably naïve child of yesteryears, but one whose awe is diminished and whose insights may be acute” (1991, 64). Family relations thus cease to be straightforwardly related to dominance and subordination, and turn into ones characterized by adult efforts (usually futile) to enforce nominal power, and children using their knowledge about adults unscrupulously in order to manipulate parents to raise their own “payments”. The second factor is related to the currently experienced rapid development of new communication technologies, which leads to the emergence of an entirely new area of competences that children find easier to master. As a result of accelerated technological changes that occurred towards the end of the twentieth century, the younger generation today gains more than just new skills, which are often not available to a number of adults, many of whom still find it problematic to use smartphones, computers, or the Internet to their full potential.22 However, it seems much more important that saturation of the socialization environment with new means of communication also changes the dominant modes of processing information. Research has shown that, among other issues, the younger generation is less inclined to logical reasoning, preferring instead associative thinking (Stasiak 2010). One could of course assume that, along with subsequent generations maturing, this competence- and cognition-related difference will be diminished, although one could just as well expect that new inventions will uphold it.

142  The production of the individual However, this does not change the fact that today this difference contributes to the collapse of adult authority. Fourth, the collapse of adult authority has been further exacerbated by the increasing inefficiency of other institutions of socialization, with school playing a fundamental role in the modern society. The process of transmitting habits essential to the functioning and reproducing of this society would typically unfold in schools: not so much through educational programmes developed in them and for them, but rather through “hidden” programmes disciplining behaviour and creating general attitudes such as being oriented towards achievement, independence, or individualism (cf. Gecas 1981; McClelland 1967). The effectiveness of such influences was based on the unquestioned power and authority of teachers, who would be supported in their actions by the authority of parents. Today teachers have to confront, on their own, not only schoolchildren, who are primarily interested in gaining the recognition of peers (or at least in avoiding being rejected by them) by opposing school authority, but also parents, who try to improve their position in the eyes of their children by supporting them emotionally in school conflicts. Although the dominance of peer groups as the basic framework for individuals being socialized significantly contributes to lowering the status – and consequently, effectiveness – of other agents of primary socialization, such as family or school, the general direction of the influence exerted by these groups on relations with others is, surprisingly, to a large extent similar to that described earlier. Socialization in peer groups strengthens the orientation towards emotional aspects of relations with others, because adolescents focus largely on determining their group position by manipulating emotions (envy, pride, recognition etc.), which often go into overdrive. A significant role in these power games is also ascribed to objects. Owning particularly desirable items helps to boost one’s self-esteem, and they can be used instrumentally to forge intra-group alliances. At the same time, at least due to the fact that groups based on relations of friendship and acceptance put different demands on their members than groups encountered in broader public situations, peer socialization does not contribute to the development of more general skills that would facilitate establishing contacts and functioning in new social contexts.23 Considering these transformations of communication patterns typical for the earliest socialization environment, one can conclude that it is primarily characterized by a dramatic narrowing of the scope of those situations in which intergenerational transmission of norms and values could take place, supporting those social structures that were created earlier. Such transmission demands a developed ability to communicate with adults, focusing on cognitive and symbolic aspects of actions. This is not favoured nowadays due to the narrowing of contacts with adults, objectification of socialization, or the dominance of peer groups, which create a subculture whose fundamental feature is the rejection of adulthood and consequently of adult authority. The rise in the temperature of children’s emotional relations mentioned earlier (not only among peers but also, or perhaps primarily, between children and adults) further limits the possibility of cognitive-symbolic

The production of the individual  143 learning, making emotions the fundamental factor determining individual wellbeing and the basic tool of controlling the behaviour of others. In effect, habits and customs shaped in the course of everyday interactions are deprived of their important meaning and symbolic background, which could help position them in broader social contexts, and they become more or less efficient tools of achieving goals by manipulating others. The escalation of the instrumental attitude to others should be thus treated as one of the symptoms of a more general deficit in social competences. At the basis of such competences, after all, we find not just mastery of certain patterns of conversation or behaviour in social situations, but also, and perhaps chiefly, the ability to “perceive oneself as somebody among others” (Gauchet 2000, 31), which is indispensable to the processes of socializing actions. Cognitive and symbolic aspects of communication are crucial for the development of this ability because they facilitate learning about and acknowledging the perspectives of other people, which is a necessary condition for treating social situations as an environment of actions formed by a tangle of interdependencies founded on the principle of reciprocity. It does not take a huge effort to note that this not only constitutes a particularly fertile ground for the development of habits marked by egocentricity (further strengthened by changes in more general cultural patterns, to which I shall soon turn), but also leads to blurring the boundary between the private and the public, created in modernity. Of special significance for this last process is the dominance of peer groups in the process of socialization. Although, as Victor Gecas notes, peer groups “typically lack clear-cut goals beyond the general goal of sociality” (1981, 186), forms of this sociality24 are shaped in situations that, on the one hand, are characterized by disregard for the broader social environment and require primarily superficial adaptation to changing rules, resulting from fluctuating group dynamics, and on the other lead to making public one’s most intimate features and problems inside the group. In other words, peer groups both obliterate the boundary securing the personal, i.e. that which does not fall under social scrutiny, and give a quasi-private (border-determined) character to social actions, i.e. actions directed towards other people. Such a degree of individualization and “privatization” of habits created in the period of primary socialization would endanger the very basis of sociality if it had not been supplemented by transformations of processes leading to the creation of more general models of action. Producing more general models of action – significant others Even at a time when primary socialization was ascribed a fundamental meaning in processes of socializing individuals, scholars were deeply aware that it was impossible to derive the entire complexity of human behaviour from childhood interactions. These early contacts would rather determine a fundamental cognitive framework and system of values, serving in later life to “sift” social influences occurring in the course of secondary socialization. A key role in supporting such frameworks and systems was played by significant others: a circle of people

144  The production of the individual important for the individual either due to their role in processes of primary socialization (parents), or because of the closeness of relations formed in adulthood (family, friends, close co-workers). This rather coherent vision of socialization processes began to crumble in the second half of the twentieth century. That happened not only because these transformations of primary socialization processes questioned the very existence of stable cognitive frameworks and values “instilled at family home” and serving individuals for the rest of their lives, but also due to far-reaching changes in the category of significant others. On the one hand, along with the development of mass communication – both spatial and symbolic – this category has been separated from the direct social environment of the socialized individual, while on the other it began to cover imaginary characters or even objects.25 In other words, the void created by emotional overdrive in communication occurring as part of primary socialization processes began to be quickly filled with contents and patterns of behaviour suggested by the mass media. On a mass scale, individuals fell under the kind of influence that not only failed to reinforce the habits and images of the world formed thus far, but would also actively participate in transforming them. To discern the essence of such effects we must depart from the most widespread model used to analyze the influence of the mass media, in which it is regarded merely as a tool for transmitting information, i.e. a “specific ‘repository of images’ or ‘bank of signs’ from which we derive cultural attributes in accordance with the adopted lifestyle” (Strzyczkowski 2005, 49; cf. also Kellner 1995, 257). Certainly, the media can function in this way, but it seems more relevant, as John B. Thompson argues, that its development “involves the creation of new forms of action and interaction in the social world, new kinds of social relationships” (1995, 4; emphasis added). By introducing the concept of “mediated quasi-interaction” Thompson indicates that although mediated interaction differs in many respects from direct interaction,26 it creates, just like the latter, “a certain kind of social situation in which individuals are linked together in a process of communication and symbolic exchange” (84). He also indicates that, despite the fact that mediated quasi-interactions do not usually facilitate responding directly to the senders, they can create in the recipients some kind of bond, such as friendship, love, or loyalty. A similar thesis was formulated by Kenneth Gergen, who regards the development of electronic media as only one aspect of the current expansion of “technologies of social saturation”.27 Refuting the potential counterargument that relations arising from mediated quasi-interactions are not as “real and important” as direct ones because “there is no give-and-take, no reciprocal interchange” (1991, 55), he claims that human history is full of examples proving that neither the tangible presence of another person, nor mutual exchange is a necessary condition for creating deep attachment to figures we are linked to only by mediated relations, and which often have only symbolic status.28 Thus, he concludes, “one must be prepared for the possibility that media figures do enter significantly into people’s personal lives” (56), while the fundamental question is not “whether media

The production of the individual  145 relationships approximate the normal in their significance, but whether normal relationships can match the powers of artifice” (57). Undoubtedly, these “normal relationships” today cease to be the basic source of our knowledge about the world: “Technologies of social saturation expose us to an enormous range of persons, new forms of relationships, unique circumstances and opportunities, and special intensities of feeling” (69). One consequence of this is certainly a blurred boundary between primary and secondary socialization. It would be difficult to defend today the claim – one that seemed obvious in earlier considerations of socialization processes – that in contrast to primary socialization “the processes of secondary socialization do not presuppose a high degree of identification and its contents do not possess the quality of inevitability” (Berger and Luckmann 1991, 163), since neither the knowledge acquired in childhood remains unchangeable, nor do later relations preclude strong identification. More and more scholars now assume that the processes of socialization continue throughout our lives, while the mediated experience of individuals plays an ever greater role in them. Mediated experience certainly still constitutes the main source of knowledge about all those aspects of reality we cannot experience directly, but both the functions of such knowledge and ways of using it have fundamentally changed. Primarily, it has ceased to play the role of a “bank of signs” that suggest and confirm the social status of individuals, because due to social transformations described in previous chapters any homogenous and stable social categories that could be “signified” are ever rarer, while the hugely accelerated production of signs has become uncoordinated, making their meanings lose coherence since they are no longer firmly established and shared. And since the patterns transmitted by the mass media no longer constitute “neat cultural packages” (cf. Hannerz 1992) or class-determined habituses, their use also ceases to be subject to rules defining the movement of individuals in social space. These patterns can be now assembled in all sorts of configurations that change in the course of a lifetime, depending on one’s current position, the problems one is facing, or even mood. Thus, whereas in the 1950s Daniel Lerner (1958; after Thompson 1995) could argue that in traditional societies the media acted as “multiplicators of mobility” by allowing people to indirectly experience events in faraway places, in today’s highly differentiated and complex societies we should rather speak of the media becoming “multiplicators of reality”. After all, their major function is to show and authenticate the existence of a whole range of available social patterns. In this way these patterns become socially legitimized by the very fact that someone – either a real or a fictional person – has already tried them out. Even if we do not immediately introduce them into our own actions, we can memorize them, analyze their pros and cons, and “try them on” by making little changes to our behaviour, resorting to them occasionally or in crisis. This multiplication of reality caused by the expansion of the mass media is in itself a significant factor affecting processes of socializing because it greatly contributes to the dismantling of obviousness characterizing the directly experienced world by introducing to it alternative realities that in turn become a context for

146  The production of the individual mediated experiences. The second, equally important factor is the very nature of such mediated experiences. It does not mean that they are less intense and thus less significant  – we have already refuted this. It rather concerns more general attitudes that are consolidated with the help of such experiences thanks to the specific character of relations established with figures cast in the role of significant others. There are three general channels or mechanisms of this kind of influence worth discussing here. The first is related to a new type of social relations created as a result of mediated quasi-interactions. According to Thompson, at least some of them can be maintained for longer periods, letting a sense of closeness develop in relation to characters that neither share space with us, nor are even aware of our existence in many cases. This phenomenon of “non-reciprocal intimacy at a distance”,29 as Thompson terms it, “provides individuals with an opportunity to explore interpersonal relations in a vicarious way, without entering into a web of reciprocal commitments. The distant others whom one comes to know through mediated quasi-interaction are others who can be slotted into the time-space niches of one’s life more or less at will. They are regular and dependable companions who can provide entertainment, offer advice, recount events in distant locales, serve as a topic for conversation and so on – all in a way that avoids the reciprocal demands and complexities that are characteristic of relationships sustained through face-toface interactions” (1995, 219–220; emphasis added). Although this description covers a whole gamut of medially created feelings of closeness and could just as well refer to the intellectual affinity we experience with regard to hosts of our favourite TV programmes, to the emotional resonance that ties the audience of a popular TV series to their favourite characters, or to the closeness based on erotic thrills (possibly including emotional engagement) caused by our favourite actor or actress, it seems that the key aspect of such relations is connected to lack of obligations to those significant others and their full “dependence” on the person engaged in intimate interaction at a distance. This is an entirely different situation from the one prevailing in the real world, where maintenance of relations, even intimate ones, entails many obligations. As Gergen rightly notes, “If two persons become close friends, for example, each acquires certain rights, duties, and privileges. Most relationships of any significance carry with them a range of obligations – for communication, joint activities, preparing for the other’s pleasure, rendering appropriate congratulations, and so on” (1991, 75). All of this evaporates when we deal with “mediated” partners. We do not have to remember about them – it is enough to remember them. We do not need to make any efforts for them because they love us the way we are, with all our real or imagined flaws. They send us flowers on our birthday without expecting anything in return. At a moment’s notice, they take us to the most exotic places, which we naturally recognize from television, and are capable of noticing our “true” and complex self, ignored and unappreciated by people who surround us. Unlike our real wives or husbands, children or friends, such characters have no other aspirations apart from those we assign to them and which usually boil down to being

The production of the individual  147 entirely at our service. They want nothing from us, never blaming, always agreeing, and invariably being in the right mood. This type of relation appears to be particularly attractive to contemporary individuals, who have been socialized – as I already demonstrated – under conditions that do not favour developing social skills, emphasizing instead an individualistic mindset. This allows people not only to replace real, unsatisfactory interactions with mediated ones, but also provides a subject to talk about while tending to their real relations (cf. Halawa 2006). At the same time, however, the ever more widespread engagement in such mediated relations – especially ones developed thanks to the Web, which could be called, by analogy, “temporarily reciprocal intimacy at a distance” – reflexively consolidates all the general characteristics created in processes of socialization today: focusing on oneself, being emotional, and a blurred boundary between the private and the public.30 In addition to favouring the creation of a new type of social relations, the second important channel through which mediated experience affects the development of individual habits is related to the contemporary fragmentation of knowledge coming from diverse sources and to the already described breakdown of the explicit character of social roles. Although the multiplication of social patterns we encounter in the reality of mediated experiences allows individuals to assume different perspectives and selectively refer to patterns and principles belonging to different, sometimes even contradictory systems of knowledge, the simultaneous lack of a clear-cut anchoring of these patterns in everyday reality becomes a source of overwhelming uncertainty. This feeling, rooted in free circulation of cultural contents, from among which individuals have to choose on their own depending on their present condition and problems, was already discussed in the 1940s by Erich Fromm (1969). Investigating the psychological consequences of negative freedom, i.e. liberation from limitations imposed in situations characterized by a high degree of social control and unambiguously defined social roles, he wrote of the increasing need for a “magic helper”. Identifying with such a helper could aid the individual in dealing with uncertainty and feeling lost. At the same time, Fromm indicated, this need laid the foundation for the development of authoritarian personality. Whereas in the case of authoritarian personality the function of such magical helpers could be held only by people wielding real power, today this role is played more and more often by people known from the media, both real and fictional. Mechanisms of influence have also changed insofar as the place of overall identification with a hero – a political or religious leader – has been taken by searching for hints on how to act in specific kinds of situations. Both of these properties find expression in statements by viewers who admitted in studies that their favourite talk shows or endless TV series have the fundamental advantage of “teaching them how to behave in different situations”. These do not even have to be specific situations, because one of the quoted reasons for watching The Bold and the Beautiful was that “I don’t really remember what this was about, but I do recall the way in which the situation was settled” (Halawa 2006, 125).

148  The production of the individual Media scholars have always been interested in mechanisms of translating unique or even completely unrealistic situations that protagonists of popular TV series find themselves in while living in a world of fairy-tale luxury or dealing with exotic family problems in far-flung countries into experiences of ordinary people. One of the more compelling answers to this question was provided by Ien Ang (1996). Analyzing statements made by viewers of the popular 1980s TV series Dallas,31 she identifies a significant yet apparent (as she argues) inconsistency that stems from their separating the denotative and connotative levels of this cultural “text”. “It is striking;” Ang writes, “the same things, people, relations and situations, which are regarded at the denotative level as unrealistic and unreal, are at the connotative level apparently not seen at all as unreal, but in fact as ‘recognizable’. Clearly, in the connotative reading process the denotative level of the text is put in brackets” (42). By introducing the concept of emotional realism to denote this mode of reception, Ang indicates that “what is recognized as real is not knowledge of the world, but a subjective experience of the world: a ‘structure of feeling’ ” (45). One could also say that identification with Isaura the Slave Girl or the protagonists of Dallas, even if it does occur, does not consist in adopting their behaviours and views directly, as was the case with the authoritarian personality or other, earlier forms of identification, but rather constitutes the effect of recognizing the protagonists’ situation as our own. The realism of such TV shows “is therefore produced by the construction of a psychological reality, and is not related to its (illusory) fit to an externally perceptible (social) reality” (47; emphasis preserved). The place of the significant other can be thus taken by any figure whose experiences or dilemmas approximate our own. The concept of emotional realism is also useful in analyzing the impact of talk-shows whose participants are real people with authentic problems, but which focus on extreme situations (suicide, depression, death of a child etc.) or feature “no ordinary” individuals (transvestites, homosexuals, obese people etc.). As Mateusz Halawa shows in his research, appeal in this case is also often made to the psychological similarity between the situation on the screen and that of the viewer. Significantly, he argues, these similarities not only facilitate developing certain reactions – e.g. dialogue instead of verbal attacks, or empathy instead of sticking to one’s own view of the situation – but also activate thinking in moral terms. More and more often they serve “not just to show the single proper solution but to explicate the issue in socially shared categories, honouring socially recognized assumptions. This role of problematizing and debating socially important topics is specifically assumed by talk-shows, which are sometimes regarded as a televised imitation of the public sphere” (Halawa 2006, 115). Reception in categories of emotional realism is also favoured by the third mechanism of influence, which constitutes the effect of what Thompson (1995, 119–148) calls “media visibility” and which is related to the mass media’s ability to create “heroes of mass imagination” by devoting special attention to specific categories of people. Whereas until the 1960s this category was comprised by people who, for some reason, have proven to be extraordinary, unique, or role

The production of the individual  149 models, since the 1970s the media began to be populated by “people like us” who stand out, but mainly as a result of what happened to them and not through their position, some unusual features of character, or ways of experiencing the world. This change is best visible in film production. Up until the 1960s production was based on a roster of stars, who focused the attention of the mass audience by both embodying certain social ideals – mainly beauty, but also, in case of men, bravery – and setting standard identity models related no longer to social status but to certain patterns of personality.32 Actors and actresses like Greta Garbo or Rudolf Valentino were stars not just because of their looks, but also because regardless of their current role they were always the same, personifying with their existence – both in films and in private life, as meticulously engineered by marketing specialists – a certain distinctive ideal personality type. Although this ideal character separated them from ordinary people, a shop assistant who imitated, through her make-up, the unfathomable sadness of Greta Garbo’s eyes, or a clerk who tried to mimic Rudolf Valentino by appropriately styling his hair would be both elevated to a slightly higher level, bringing them closer to their ideal, and could be certain that their message was clearly understood. Marilyn Monroe was probably the last star of this kind. Since her death we have had merely more or less handsome actors or actresses who play various roles, while the measure of their talent is simply their ability to reproduce different personality types. Dustin Hoffman or Meryl Streep do not really stand apart, in terms of their looks, from the average passer-by – they could live next door to us and we would be none the wiser. Moreover, their artistic creations do not help to classify them as a specific type. One could say that today’s collective film character are average persons whose problems do not differ greatly from ours, perhaps with the exception that they have been attacked by aliens, although even in this case they behave pretty much like we would if something of this sort were to happen to us. Less visible yet indicative of the same direction is the change that has occurred in the presentation of public figures. There are two aspects of this, and both deserve to be mentioned. First, the place of people who used to command the attention of the mass media owing to their important position (political, social, scientific, or artistic) is increasingly often taken by people whose high “media visibility” is a result of . . . high “media visibility”. In other words, the media has ceased to portray various social authorities, whose position used to stem from a system of social values external to the media industry, and began to track the actions of people who become famous either due to the unusual character of what happened to them and/or of their behaviour, or due to their relations with other public figures, which typically constitutes the major reason for the media turning its attention on them. This is closely connected to the second vital aspect of changes in the media’s functioning, consisting in the extension of “media visibility” to include everything that used to belong to the private sphere and constituted a well-protected secret. Not only tabloids but also serious media relay a lot of information on the sexual life, intimate relations, personal preferences, ailments, compulsions, blunders, and offences of public figures.33 Their lives hold no secrets for us anymore.

150  The production of the individual At the same time, these things are not even regarded from the perspective of a butler, but that of a family member who feels entitled to form judgements and become engaged in the personal affairs of these people.34 This is a significant difference, because the butler’s perspective on historical figures, described by Hegel in Lectures on the Philosophy of History (2011), juxtaposed the prose of everyday life with their achievements without eliminating the “natural” distance between the butler and his master, whereas the “domestication” of heroes cherished in mass imagination – the effect of the mass media – completely eliminates that distance. Even people in the spotlight become “people like us:” prone to weakness as well as full of petty transgressions, frustrations, and hang-ups. This provides sufficient ground to think that, perhaps, one day, we could be just as famous as they are. The basic effect of all these transformations is a fundamental shift in relations between audiences and personality patterns presented by the mass media. As Umberto Eco aptly notes, “for centuries, the prevailing models would surpass us in terms of strength or beauty, like Hercules and Apollo. Today, however, television promotes that which is common to all people so that, when they see this model, they can say: ‘Look, he is just like me, and to be completely honest, I might be even a bit better’. On the one hand, we are asked to adore film stars, but on the other we hear that ‘You could have your audience and adoration too, even if you don’t have the looks of Sophia Loren or the intellect of Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi-Montalcini’. We see that fame is won by people just like us, ones we might feel are slightly less intelligent and beautiful than we, so perhaps one day, who knows, I could become even more famous than they are” (2007, 53). It is this obliteration of the boundary between heroes of mass imagination and average individuals – occurring not just through changes in personality models, but also through the accompanying changes on the level of reception, which take the shape of “unreciprocated closeness at a distance” and “emotional realism” – that makes mass media one of the main agents of socialization. Not only do they now supplement primary socialization, consolidating attitudes created in its course – egocentrism, emotionality, instrumental treatment of others – but they also introduce new elements into the experienced reality: ones that expand the framework of individual experience and become referential for undertaken actions. At the same time, if individualization and “privatization” of habits acquired in the period of primary socialization change their meaning when elevated to the rank of a cultural model because they nonetheless facilitate certain standardization of individual behaviour, in order to assess the consequences that multiplication of reality carries for individual actions we must examine the processes at the foundation of identity formation. Producing meaning – the processes of identity formation In the traditional approach to processes of socialization, their fundamental goal and effect was to transmit certain patterns of behaviour from one generation to the next. It was assumed, usually implicitly, that the meaning of these actions is obvious to the individual because their legitimization is derived from a culturally

The production of the individual  151 determined tradition, elder authority, reinforcing schemata used in the processes of conditioning, and identification with significant others – in other words, from all that comprises the processes of internalizing a socially constructed reality (cf. Berger and Luckmann 1991, 149–182). In this approach, the obviousness of actions became a derivative of the obviousness characterizing the internalized reality, also encompassing individual identity. Who I am would be determined by the place I occupy within a more general, social system of actions. To employ the terminology developed by Jürgen Habermas (1979), individual identity would be a “role identity”. The question about the meaning of life could thus be interesting in reference to the whole reality,35 but became pointless in relation to the roledetermined individual meaning of life. Role identity is nevertheless strongly reliant on the stability of the institutional order. As Manuel Castells rightly notes, “roles (for example, to be a worker, a mother, a neighbor, a social militant, a union member, a basketball player, a churchgoer, and a smoker, at the same time) are defined by norms structured by the institutions and organizations of society” (2002, 7). Thus, as long as the system and its supporting institutions were stable and beliefs legitimizing them were grounded in the actions of other people, who would immediately condemn any departures from the basic pattern determining individual roles (workers, mothers, neighbours etc.), formation of individual identity could occur by way of attaching subsequent patterns to the structure of self, developed in the processes of socialization. However, the moment when this form of organization began to crumble under pressure from technological and social changes, while expansion of the mass media acquainted individuals with a variety of ways to perform specific roles, the latter were deprived of their guiding function in determining both individual identity and the meaning of life. The connection between identity formation processes and the meaning of life stems from the fact that “identity problems are orientation problems. Only someone who knows, at least to some extent, his location within the particular framework that defines sociocultural and individual possibilities for meaningful orientations in action and life, in short: only someone able to orient himself can have the sense and the experience of being able to be more or less self-identical” (Straub 2002, 62; emphasis preserved; cf. also Castells 2002, chapter 1). At the same time, it is significant that this ability to orient oneself is strictly related to the recognition of our identity by others. As Craig Calhoun points out, “self-knowledge – always a construction no matter how much it feels like a discovery – is never altogether separable from claims to be known in specific ways by others” (2003, 10). A similar conclusion was reached by Robert N. Bellah and others, who put this idea in different terms using a more expressive language. “We find ourselves not independently of other people and institutions but through them. We never get to the bottom of our selves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love, and learning” (1986, 84). Thus, identity is always a “collective” product, even if it is chosen individually.36 It is not just the effect of our personal decisions, but also – or even ­primarily – of our relations with other people, their response to our actions, and their readiness

152  The production of the individual to acknowledge that we are what we intend to be. This in turn means that the troubles experienced these days by individuals in the process of identity formation are caused by a fundamental change in the character of these relations. First of all, our relations with others are increasingly mediated and dispersed. “A century ago, social relationships were largely confined to the distance of an easy walk. Most were conducted in person, within small communities: family, neighbors, townspeople. . . . If one moved from the community, relationships were likely to end. From birth to death one could depend on relatively eventextured social surroundings. Words, faces, gestures, and possibilities were relatively consistent, coherent, and slow to change” (Gergen 1991, 61). It is thanks to the permanence of relations that social roles could become “normalized”, in both their behavioural and symbolic dimensions, with the directness of contacts guaranteeing the effectiveness of social control that would secure their stability. As Kenneth Gergen correctly observes, under the conditions of post-modernity, characterized by an immense increase of interpersonal contacts, or – to employ his term – by “social saturation”, both of these features disappear. “Because all ­relationships are constantly being disrupted, it is more difficult for any given relationship to normalize. . . . Further, because relationships range far and wide, largely through various electronic means, they cannot easily be supervised by ­others who care” (1991, 67). This contributes to the phenomenon I describe in Chapter 3, namely the “de-normalization of social roles”, and in turn strips these roles of the power to determine individual identities. At the same time, changes in relations with others are accompanied by a creeping disintegration of superior social systems that regulated the behaviour of ­individuals in longer time frames by defining their duties to variously determined categories of other people. The emergence of a deterritorialized nation and the consolidation of transnational communities undermine the definitions of national identity coined in terms of duties to the “homeland” (cf. Appadurai 1996). On the other hand, the changeability of social positions in individual biographies – related to relatively frequent changes of work or even occupations – also does not favour self-identification in terms of relations with specific occupational groups (cf. Sennett 1999). The same may be said about contemporary changes in the family. The growing variety of relations referred to as the family, the fundamental transformations of their functions, and their increasing impermanence, all interfere with the process of forming identity in categories of stable family roles. Positioning oneself inside a system of social relations is not favoured either by the aforementioned blurring of the social structure, which obliterated all formerly recognizable points of reference determining the individual’s position in social space, leading to the weakening of social barriers. As opinion polls show, when asked about their social class most people consider themselves members of the middle class, which practically means resorting to what is viewed as the average in a given society. This does away with the key structural dimension of differentiation, which provided answers to questions about identity in modern society.

The production of the individual  153 Another process that unfolds before our eyes is the considerable blurring of those dimensions of social differentiation which seemed to be relatively unchangeable due to being rooted in biological properties. To tell oneself today that one is a woman or a man does not provide any clues as to the formation of identity because models of femininity and masculinity have undergone incredible multiplication, while the very difference between these two social categories becomes fluid given the prevailing androgynous personality pattern in psychology as well as unisex patterns in fashion and life (cf. Szlendak 2005). The concept of gender has accustomed us to the belief that in this dimension of social differentiation everything is negotiable; however, this simultaneously made it more difficult to seek clear identity models in cultural constructs such as “femininity” or “masculinity” (cf. Gromkowska 2002; Melosik 2002). A similar process can be observed in the case of another biologically determined dimension of differentiation, until recently constituted by the division into age categories such as children, adults, and the elderly. In the modern society it was a rather clear division related to precise rules of behaviour determining the transition to subsequent identity stages. This began to become blurred in the second half of the twentieth century when a new age category entered the social stage: the category of youth. It turned out to be so attractive that it not only significantly shifted the boundary of adulthood but also shook the foundation of the two age categories between which it wedged itself. Today, the former “child” more and more often orients its behaviour towards “adolescent” patterns, while adults try to prolong as much as they can the period of youth,37 so that they seem to enter old age almost directly from that new stage. However, even the last stage undergoes a far-reaching revaluation. Associated with senile decrepitude and death, it is being postponed through the introduction of such categories as “third age”, “postmaturity”, or even “late maturity” (cf. Stuart-Hamilton 1991; Urbanik 2008). Therefore, along with the blurring of all former dimensions of differentiation, contemporary society seems to leave individuals with only one area in which they can seek the answer to the question “Who am I?” This area is the body. Once again, it needs to be emphasized that focusing on corporeality as the area in which one can express individual identity is nothing new in human history. Already very early societies treated the body as an object that can be shaped in such a way that it can display, at first glance, tribe or clan membership as well as one’s place in social structure. This was achieved by special tattoos and incisions as well as other means of meaningfully shaping individual body parts, e.g. elongating ears or neck among women, modifying feet by binding them (Chinese custom), and even changing the shape of the skull (a custom encountered in Egypt and among the Mayas). With no hint of exaggeration, one could say that before the invention of writing human body would be treated as an ID card and a billboard. It not only helped communicate group membership but also signal the group’s intentions (war paint) or commemorate significant life events (entry into adulthood). Along with the development and differentiation of societies, these communication functions began to be assumed by clothes and external insignia of one’s

154  The production of the individual position (cf. Turner 1984). The body began to be zealously covered up and its functions were made a secret. This process of “civilizing” individuals (cf. Elias 2000) did not entail complete abandonment of physical interventions, but merely subordinated them to changing cultural patterns38 and largely restricted them to adorning the face and developing an appropriate posture.39 At the same time, the scope of messages conveyed through the body gradually shifted in the course of progressing “psychologization” and “rationalization” of human thinking (cf. Elias 2000). The body began to be regarded not just as a specific “hanger” for a dress that signifies a certain social position, but also as a relatively independent being that lives its own life – an autonomous source of motivations we find difficult to accept and information we would prefer not to pass along. The body can “betray” us, “lead us astray”, or “refuse to obey”. Thus, its spontaneous reactions should be brought under control through special training that instils appropriate cultural patterns. The process of disciplining the body culminated in the nineteenth century when, as Bryan S. Turner writes, “the unrestricted body came to be regarded . . . as symbolic of moral licence; the loose body reflected loose morals” (1984, 167). As Turner demonstrates, the corset, which was obligatory for women from the “high society”, was not only a tool for exposing the fashionable waistline40 or an emblem of belonging to the “leisure class” (wearing a corset made women unable to perform any serious physical tasks), but also a crucial means of controlling intersexual relations by subordinating women to men and simultaneously making them inaccessible as objects of sexual desire. Although today’s “loose” attitude to the body seems to be the opposite of the Victorian approach, it does paradoxically reveal a similar connection between restrictive “somatic discipline” and the moral dimension.41 How else could we interpret the claim made by Giddens that we “become responsible for the design of our own bodies” (2004, 102)? He ties the use of various “somatic regimes” to identity formation in terms of individualism, creativity, and control over one’s life. A “loose” body, one that has not been disciplined and formally subordinated to specific identity concepts, thus conveys negative character traits, even if “moral licence” is no longer one of them. Despite these similarities, however, the post-modern attitude to the body is characterized by two unprecedented peculiarities, both of which are conditioned by a change in the relationship between one’s carnality and identity. Sources of the first could be sought in the aforementioned transformations of interpersonal relations in the period of modernity. Initiated by processes of industrialization and urbanization, these changes replaced long-term personal ties and connections with short-term, elusive interactions between strangers performing institutionally defined roles. As many scholars have emphasized (cf. e.g. Turner 1984; Sennett 2002; Gergen 1991), one direct consequence of these processes was to separate such roles from the self. As a result, a fundamental significance in interactions was acquired by, on the one hand, outer marks of position in the institutional order, and on the other – appropriate self-presentation.42 These two constituted the main source of information for all actors engaged in the interactions, both

The production of the individual  155 determining the scope of appropriate behaviours and offering a basic channel for communicating more personal individual characteristics unrelated to the currently performed role. Through dress, posture and gestures the body was becoming a system of signs referring to the reality beyond it, both institutional and personal.43 This elaborate reference system began to crumble in the second half of the twentieth century primarily because, as already discussed, along with the growth of prosperity in modern societies, which led to the democratization of the social structure, and the increased blurring of social roles, the clarity of the institutional order at the foundation of a modern “body language” began to fade. Another reason is that modern individualism started to undergo far-reaching “privatization” (Elliott and Lemert 2006), with the body gradually ceasing to “fit” collective images related mainly to social position, and beginning to be treated as an area of self-expression, giving voice to our feelings and allowing us to present our “true self”. Increasingly often plastic surgery acts as a basic tool for self-expression. Its arrival greatly broadened the scope of possible body changes meant as ways of adapting the body to our own image of ourselves. What used to be a way of treating severe cases of disfigurement, “correcting” symptoms of ageing, or aiding in (rather marginal) cases of transsexualism, is now treated as an indispensable component of identity formation, one establishing an equation between body and self, thus ultimately obliterating the boundary between the signifier and the signified (Finkelstein 1991). In other words, the body ceases to be a means of communicating our identity through specific dress, posture, or gestures and simply is the basic kind of identity with which we enter into social interactions. These interactions, however, are too brief, too differentiated, and consequently too dependent on first impressions to allow us to count on our interlocutors to discover, during subsequent meetings, the true self that hides beneath our physical appearance. The self must be brought outside for everyone to see because it is the only answer to the question “Who am I?” and the only kind of identity formed under the dominance of the “individualistic imperative”.44 It needs to be immediately added that this is a very specific kind of identity – one that neither refers to a shared system of meanings, allowing others to recognize in us someone with specific social characteristics, nor provides any answer to the question of how one should live. After all, if answering the question about who I am were to amount to answering the question about what is important to me, then it seems difficult to find similar equivalence between claims such as “I am finally a woman with large breasts”, “I finally have the right nose/thighs/bottom”, or even “I am finally a one-legged man”45 and the knowledge necessary to answer the question about importance. Whereas modern culture created specialized patterns of action for identities based on social roles, contemporary culture does not provide such models for people with large breasts, slender noses, or a single leg. Thus, “privatized identity” is stripped of its crucial function, namely that of orientating the individual in social space by determining his or her position in relation to others, hierarchizing the gravity of undertaken actions, and consequently revealing the meaning of life.

156  The production of the individual We are approaching here a problem that lies at the foundation of the second peculiar characteristic determining the post-modern attitude to the body – one signalled by Zygmunt Bauman, who claims that “[o]ne of the most painful prices humanity paid for the comforts of modernity was the discovery of the absurdity of being” (2006, 94). This discovery, brought about by the shattering of obviousness previously ascribed to everyday existence, was initially a problem for a narrow group comprised mainly by intellectuals. However, in the second half of the twentieth century it began to spread, becoming a more or less realized component of everyday life. This is favoured by both the intensifying process of saturating the self with various models of behaviour, which leads to the collapse of nomos (as described in the previous chapter), and the regularly felt invalidation of social roles as the basic scenario determining human actions and individual identities. And “existence without a script written in advance is a contingent existence” (94; emphasis preserved), becoming a life “without an outside rationale” that could lend it some sense or meaning. This in turn inevitably invokes the questions of life’s transience and death as its inevitable end. As Zygmunt Bauman shows, modernity would solve this problem in two ways. On the one hand, it would undertake the huge task of “ordering” individual behaviours by ascribing them to specific social roles. On the other, it would offer to the individuals the concept of “collective immortality.” “Immortality was to be the lot of the group, not of its members; the lot which could be assured only on condition that the fashion in which the members conducted their mortal lives was such as to enable the life of the group to continue” (104). Thus, the highest meaning of life was to sacrifice it while protecting the homeland, but the principle of “collective immortality” imprinted itself on all levels of individual existence, justifying conformism with regard to class-determined norms of behaviour, pride taken in being a part of a specific occupational group, or the sense of obviousness brought about by having children, who lend meaning to the parents’ efforts to support the family and ensure its well-being.46 Thus, by invalidating social roles in their function of forming individual identity and providing the meaning of life, post-modernity invalidated this entire elaborate system of dealing with the transience of life. This does not naturally mean that it did not try to settle this fundamental existential issue on its own. However, instead of lending meaning to life, it simply rejected death. “It is a distinctive feature of our new culture, the attempt to exile death from our lives”, Castells writes (2001a, 481; cf. also Ariès 1981), indicating at the same time that other tendencies also contribute to this, including the abolishing of natural life cycles (childhood, adulthood, old age), “fighting illness till the end” with great help from technologically advanced medicine, transformations of social time, and the process of making death “meaningless by its repeated representation in the media, always as the other’s death” (484). Primarily, however, it is the care for the body that serves this purpose: making it fitter, removing any signs of ageing, and fixing its defects, both those that signal problems with its functioning and those that interfere with the image of our “true self ”.

The production of the individual  157 In this light, the body becomes not only the basic form of identity, but also the fundamental point of reference for individual actions. After all, negating death has its limits because death reaches not only anonymous indigenous people from faraway countries or characters played by actors who are resurrected in subsequent films, but also people we know personally, including our close ones. Thus, as Bauman argues, “[f]ighting death may stay meaningless, but fighting the causes of dying turns into the meaning of life. . . . The existential worry can be now all but forgotten in the daily bustle about health” (2006, 140–141; emphasis added). Or at least it is significantly muffled because there still remains the question of the meaning of other actions that fill our lives in this era of excess, haste, and insufficient time for oneself or for others. Not everyone has the courage to admit directly that the meaning of life is to “hang around here a little and pass away with dignity”. We are still dragging the previous epoch’s values behind us, though our chances of realizing them are becoming ever slimmer, continuing to experience anxiety over whether we are doing things the right way when there are so many other ways available, and being constantly suggested new ways of making our lives meaningful. In order to answer the question of how the post-modern individual deals with all these problems, we must first examine what features he or she has been equipped with in the process of socialization described here.

Social character In the discussion of processes involved in the production of individuals contained in the previous section I focused on transformations in those areas of socialization that could be regarded as particularly significant for the development of what Fromm once called the “social character”. He understood it as “the essential nucleus of the character structure of most members of a group which has developed as the result of the basic experiences and mode of life common to that group” (1969, 305). Certainly, Fromm, who created his theory in the 1940s, predominantly saw social classes as the basic unit of analysis, i.e. the “group”. Currently, however, in a post-modern society characterized by blurring social divisions and a specific “averaging” of living conditions, it seems justified to abstract from differentiations of this kind. This makes it possible to adapt his concept for the purpose of describing those individual features which, due to certain systematically recurring conditions in the processes of socialization, emerge in most members of this society.47 Three such features can be considered as crucial and most widespread. The first one is the growing egotism of individual feelings and actions. It has been shaped by many factors operating in the processes of socialization described earlier. The most important one is certainly the escalating deficit of situations in which individuals could practise and develop social skills necessary for functioning in wider communities. This deficit constitutes a primary feature of the original socialization environment, and is augmented by the increasing significance of indirect interactions that are either oriented towards objects or mediated. However, other properties of contemporary society also contribute to its consolidation, shortening

158  The production of the individual the duration of more permanent relations between individuals, thus inhibiting the process of forming communities that could impose certain duties on individuals – duties extending beyond private goals and aspirations. The second distinct feature of post-modern social character would consist in a clearly intensifying process of turning away from rationalism, which ordered people to be guided by objective knowledge and calculation of profits and losses when matching means to goals, towards emotionality, which makes individual and subjective emotions as well as feelings and experiences the basic factors that guide individual actions. Factors that contribute to the development of this characteristic can be sought, on the one hand, in the increasing emotional temperature of relations formed in primary groups, and on the other – in the dominance of the mass media as the fundamental source of knowledge about reality, constructed in reference to the principle of emotional realism. Finally, the third characteristic is a derivative, on the one hand, of processes of “social saturation”, leading to the numerical growth of socially accepted models of life that remain at individuals’ disposal, and on the other – of the prevalence of processes in which identity is shaped through patterns referring to corporeality, which is accompanied by the growing invalidation of social roles as forming proper life goals. Each of these contemporary phenomena functions independently, inflating the meanings that guide individual actions and that could create a comprehensive meaning of life. Their joint operation leads to the emergence of the kind of feature of social character that may be termed ontological uncertainty. These three characteristics – egotism, emotionality, and ontological uncertainty – seem to be the most widespread features of the “social character” that contemporary society passes on to its members by subjecting them to specific kinds of social experiences. Still, identifying them only slightly enhances our ability to better understand how people function in contemporary society. We can say, of course, that they constitute the complete opposite of features produced by the modern society – which emphasized subordination of individual actions to larger communities (nation, professional circle, class, family), rationality, and nomic obviousness – and simultaneously provide additional justification for the thesis formulated earlier, namely that post-modernity breaks away from the earlier form of social organization. Still, this very fact suggests that – if we do not wish to limit ourselves in further considerations to common sense psychology, which derives general properties of contemporary society from individual characteristics of personal nature – it would be advisable to examine some additional processes accompanying such a radical change in what society expects of an individual. The point is that for each of these properties to gain its “citizenship” in the social world – i.e. to manifest in individual behaviour without arousing punishing reactions from interacting partners – it had to be subjected to the processes of cultural legitimization. In other words, certain ideas must have emerged in public discourse – ones that not only explicitly articulated some patterns of action, but also legitimized them, at least through indicating their widespread character. In this process of legitimizing currently changing forms of action social sciences, primarily psychology and sociology, played a huge role. By permeating into

The production of the individual  159 public discourse, concepts created in these disciplines became the basic point of reference for lending obviousness to the unfolding changes. This is best visible in the case of egotism. According to dictionary definitions, it can be understood as a tendency to become excessively preoccupied with oneself and one’s emotions, directing other people’s attention to oneself.48 This formulation echoes the negative assessment this attitude would still meet with in the early 1970s, when it was described by the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut (1971) and termed “narcissism”.49 Analyzing distortions in his patients’ self-image and in contacts with others, Kohut established that people with a narcissistic personality regard others merely as mirrors in which they can reassure themselves of their self-worth. Narcissistic individuals enjoy being in the company of highly esteemed people because being associated with them boosts their self-confidence and puts them in the limelight, too. However, any signs of being rejected by such people cause narcissists to erupt with fear, hatred, and attempts to dethrone the former idol. When left to themselves, they are doomed to feel a void deep inside and an insatiable hunger for emotional experiences that could fill it. Their behaviour is guided by the principle of immediate gratification. Focused on their bodies and the need to keep them in the best possible condition, they are horrified by old age, sickness, and death, because the world appreciates only the young, the beautiful and the healthy. Kohut saw narcissism as the effect of an abnormality in the process of socialization, specifically related to the absence of the father. Accurately identifying the recurrence of specific reactions among his patients and their relation to the social environment, he classified as a disease entity50 something that, as it turned out, heralded broader changes in social behaviour. When Christopher Lasch published his famous book The Culture of Narcissism (1991) in 1979 he already viewed narcissism not as a disease but a cultural trait. Agreeing with Kohut that the origin of narcissism should be sought in the father’s absence, he draws attention to the fact that in contemporary society this absence is primarily caused by changes in production processes, as a result of which the family ceased to be an economic unit, while fathers have to work outside home, which severely limits their participation in the child’s socialization.51 Consequently, the role of the family changes too as it becomes primarily a site of consumption. According to Lasch, apart from transformations of the family, broader social and cultural conditions also contribute to the production of narcissistic personality, especially those that strengthen the changes in the family. Lasch lists, among others, a sense of threat, lack of perspectives for the future, erosion of work ethics, the overprotectiveness of the bureaucratized state, breakdown of parental authority and the accompanying spreading tendency to assign that authority to experts in the fields of mental and physical health, permissive upbringing, unrealistic hopes of total gratification aroused by the mass media, cult of fame, success and being in the limelight, a vision of health as dependent on constant medical scrutiny by professionals, cult of youth and beauty, depreciation of old age, influence of psychology and psychoanalysis on increased interest in oneself, as well as a “sex war” that manifests in impoverished relations between men and women.

160  The production of the individual As is easily noticed, most of these factors have now become universal properties of post-modern culture, which means that they intensify the production of narcissistic individuals. One should also note that the only real difference between the syndrome described by Kohut or Lasch and today’s popular accounts of “modern identity” is the fact that the term “narcissism”, which refers to a psychological pathology, has been replaced with “individualization”, which has a clearly positive overtone.52 This terminological shift ultimately legitimizes the transformation that has occurred during the past five decades in the assessment of behaviours that boil down to “being excessively absorbed in oneself”, which constitutes the hallmark of both narcissism and egotism.53 Of key importance to this definition is naturally the term “excessively” as it breeds the question of what this excess is gauged against. Certainly, in the early stages of the process described earlier, the degree of focusing on oneself appeared as “excessive” in relation to the norms prevailing in the modern society and determining the justified amount of attention to devote to oneself.54 The problem can be viewed, however, from a more general perspective, one that does not render “the norm” relative to specific cultural parameters, but rather in reference to the relation between I-identity and we-identity (Elias 2001) – two fundamental aspects of the individual self that are shaped in a given culture. From this perspective one can conclude that contemporary egotism, which takes the form of culturally sanctioned individualism, becomes a kind of superior orientation linking individual actions to the shape of systemic institutions.55 Forming this orientation would be no longer dependent only on the characteristics of the family, but would also be conditioned by the properties of a broader social environment. Ulrich Beck and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim (2002) draw attention to this, pointing out that the factor which significantly accelerated the process of individualization – an expression of the shift from we-identity to I-identity – included establishment of old age pensions in the second half of the twentieth century, along with the rise of insurance systems and the popularization of public assistance, which all helped individuals (even ones not doing well on the job market) to support themselves outside the family. Thanks to pension funds, parents ceased to rely on children, while educational stipends allowed young people to become independent from parents. A  complex system of social benefits helps everyone survive without the help of the family. Thus, by reducing economic dependence on others, the contemporary state has greatly expanded individual freedom of action. The same idea was put even more emphatically by Jean-Claude Kaufmann, who argues that “the state has played the role of a ‘midwife’ to the modern individual” (2004, 227). He points out, however, that this role was played by two entirely separate institutions oriented towards two distinct categories of people. The first category comprises those who have socio-cultural resources and competences that allow them to achieve subjective self-regulation. They are the primary beneficiaries of institutions like the mass media, associations or organizations that are linked to the state as such to a very limited degree – with the exception of being subject to state law – and whose task is to disseminate knowledge and

The production of the individual  161 skills that facilitate steering one’s life in accordance with principles explicitly articulated in the “culture of individualism” (cf. Jacyno 2007). The second category includes people deprived of these resources and competences – people who require help and support. They are, in turn, the primary beneficiaries of institutions directly supervised by the state, i.e. institutions whose main goal is, on the one hand, to provide basic social assistance (food, accommodation, healthcare), and on the other – to ceaselessly make attempts to convince these individuals that their fate depends only on them by financing various programmes meant to help people develop within themselves the aforementioned capability of subjective self-regulation. As Kaufmann demonstrates, although these two kinds of institutions differ, they strive to achieve a similar goal by creating conditions that enable individuals to achieve subjective independence. Following this line of reasoning, one can say that these institutions contribute to the systemic rooting of egotism and creating the “we-less I”, as Elias calls it (2001), which is produced in the socialization process. At the same time, by giving individualism the status of an institutionalized legitimization of such attitudes, they transform them into a positively coloured component of the social character. Similar changes leading to the revision of evaluations related to specific behaviours have been observed with regard to the second component of postmodern social character – emotionality. It constitutes the complete opposite of the rationalism that guided the actions of modern individuals after being elevated in the nineteenth century to the rank of a major principle organizing the social order.56 Modernity would treat emotions as a “distortion” of human behaviour and a source of “irrationality”, i.e. of all that could not be subsumed under the “economic” vision of an individual oriented towards the maximization of benefits (“utility”) and minimization of punishments (“costs”). Further, modernity made human emotionality into a “character flaw” – one that can and ought to be treated with all means available at our disposal, by properly disciplining the individual during his or her childhood and school years, through instilling “proper” rules of behaviour instructing one to be composed, through personal models demonstrating the many troubles that certain types of people fall into when they fail to restrain their emotions, and finally, if all other options fail, through therapy. One needs to remember, however, that the direct “enemy” of modernity was not the “irrationalism” of the traditional society, but the Romantic fascination with deep and unfathomable passions that resist rational analysis and control, yet influence our decisions. From the perspective of modernity, Romanticism constituted an eighteenth-century break in the progress of Reason and science that continued since the Enlightenment. As Kenneth J. Gergen notes, the fate of psychoanalysis provides a particularly apt illustration of this struggle. According to Freud, the driving force behind human actions is the id, a “cauldron of seething and repressed motivational forces”, locked deep within the individual, while the ego – a “beleaguered and obfuscated center of rationality” (Gergen 1991, 40) – functions as a helpless intermediary between individual drives fuelled by the pleasure principle and the punishing impulses of the superego.

162  The production of the individual Unlike Freud, however, his disciples ascribed ever greater significance to the functioning of the ego, regarding it both as the centre of formative influences (Sullivan) and the basic tool for coping with internal conflicts (Horney; cf. Hall and Lindzey 1967). This evolution culminated in the mid-1950s in George A. Kelly’s personal construct theory (1963), in which emotions no longer play any role in motivating human behaviour, replaced entirely by a vision of man-thescientist who observes, categorizes and verifies hypotheses about the people he is surrounded by.57 Certainly, one of the crucial blows dealt to this vision of “man-the-scientist” was the youth rebellion of the late 1960s. One of its direct consequences was the emergence of humanistic psychology as a competitor of behaviourism and psychoanalysis. It singled out spontaneity and a holistic approach towards upbringing, acknowledging the importance of emotions.58 However, the processes of dissolving the nomic basis of the modern world (described in the previous chapter) had greater significance for the everyday behaviour of individuals. Given the multiplicity of alternative visions of reality, patterns of behaviour, and goals acknowledged as important, the idea of rationality began to lose the ground it enjoyed in the form of beliefs about reality that would be considered obvious and never disputed. This breakdown of the foundation of rationality was accompanied by transformations in other areas of everyday life, which led to the institutionalization and legitimization of human emotions. Some of the most important transformations that took place around that time were the economic changes first identified by Daniel Bell in his concept of postindustrial society. The dominance of the services sector in the area of production entailed a change in the competences required from individuals. This helps us to grasp why the sociological comeback of emotions occurred in an area most distant from the Romantic interest in them, namely in work management. In 1979, Arlie Russell Hochschild published the article “Emotion work, feeling rules and social structure”, in which she introduces the concept of “emotion work” to describe those aspects of human work which demand that individuals assume specific emotional attitudes proper for the social roles they perform. Emotion work, Hochschild argues, is regulated by broader norms of social exchange, which means that expressing emotions is socially managed by “rules of feeling” describing what people should feel in specific situations. In her article Hochschild introduced a conceptual framework she later developed in the book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (2012), inspiring numerous studies on the subject of emotions. Her theory perfectly dovetailed with another important factor at the root of the transformations taking place in that period, namely an increase in the social visibility and significance of feminist movements. Hochschild demonstrated that the social “rules of feeling” are deeply differentiated in terms of sex, while later works often argue that a fundamental asymmetry exists in the domain of emotions because emotion work is more often performed by women, while men are less skilled in expressing their feelings. The struggle to change women’s position in society became inseparable from raising the status of emotions as a special competence that had

The production of the individual  163 been unfairly given a lower “price” in human interactions, both in the economic and in the cultural sense. The third factor enhancing the status of not only “emotion work” but also “work on emotions” was the body of changes that affected the family, as signalled in the previous chapter. When the family became an institution whose primary goal is the “regulated exchange of emotional comfort” (Beck 1992, 195), it also turned into a setting where human relations are stripped of all additional social and economic props sustaining them. In other words, the permanence of the family began to depend solely on the ability to establish “pure relations”. The concept of pure relations introduced by Anthony Giddens describes the kind of intimate relation that is “initiated for, and kept going for as long as it delivers emotional satisfaction to be derived from close contact with another” (1991, 89; emphasis added). Perhaps we should rather say “configures” instead of “describes” because by stating explicitly that “[r]easonably durable sexual ties, marriages and friendship relations all tend to approximate today to the pure relationship” (87; emphasis preserved), Giddens supports this statement by referring to popular self-therapy books. This reference, however, should not be looked down upon because – despite not really fulfilling proper methodological requirements for formulating descriptive theses – it proves indispensable in answering the question about the cultural legitimization of changes occurring in the sphere of actions. In this configuration, the concept of “pure relations” can be treated as the pinnacle expression of such legitimization. Increasingly frequent references – also in scientific discourse – to various kinds of how-to books recommending specific kinds of behaviour in various situations are a significant phenomenon in their own right, one that is closely connected with the third component of the social character, namely ontological uncertainty. As mentioned earlier, at the basis of this property of post-modern social character lies the dissolution of the function that social roles play in forming individual identity and the growing awareness of the conventional character of culturally constructed worlds inhabited by both us and our partners in interactions. Crystallization of this property was first pointed out in the 1950s by Erik Erikson, a well-known American psychoanalyst who wrote that “the patient of today suffers most under the problem of what he should believe in and who he should – or, indeed, might – be or become; while the patient of early psychoanalysis suffered most under inhibitions which prevented him from being what and who he thought he knew he was” (1987, 253). The concept of ontological uncertainty was coined a decade later by Ronald D. Laing (1960) to describe symptoms accompanying a temporary or permanent identity crisis. Thus, just as it was the case with the first two properties, ontological uncertainty was initially identified as an expression of pathology or “identity crisis” affecting people who are particularly sensitive or fundamentally maladapted to social conditions. However, as Rollo May notes, “neurotic problems are the language of the unconscious emerging into social awareness” (1969, 25). To May, this uncertainty was an expression of the epoch, of the “regular anxiety” accompanying people on a daily basis and stemming from the disintegration of fundamental social myths

164  The production of the individual that serve as vehicles for social values and the source of identity (1991, 26). Taking into account that such myths are the basic component of the social nomos, it should not come as a surprise that the long process of undermining them has led to the present situation in which everyday rituals enclosed in social roles lose their legitimization,59 causing individual life to lose both meaning and direction.60 However, Rollo May is one of the few scholars to trace the source of contemporary problems experienced by individuals in the ontological uncertainty that accompanies our actions. This concept – which has clear negative overtones – hardly makes an appearance in considerations of the post-modern condition. One could even say that it has been almost completely displaced by another, definitely positive concept: freedom of choice. For individualized people liberating themselves from the chains of class membership, family obligations, state control, and scrutiny of institutions and neighbours, the ability to freely choose their goals, views and relations, as well as shape one’s life trajectory, should become the ultimate value. And it does, because – as Ulrich and Elisabeth Beck rightly emphasize – “there is hardly a desire more widespread in the West today than to lead ‘a life of your own’ ” (2002, 22), a life that expresses the most personal desires and needs, forming an original biography that has not been subjected to social censorship. Naturally, our choices are not free from uncertainty, but in this light it radically changes its character, severing its ties to the very foundations of social existence and becoming mainly linked to the question whether we have chosen the right option from among the many available to us – the option that facilitates “leading a life of one’s own”. Since “living your own life . . . entails taking responsibility for personal misfortunes and unanticipated events” (24), it becomes clear that “social problems can be directly turned into psychological dispositions: into guilt feelings, anxieties, conflicts and neuroses. . . . Social crises appear as individual and are no longer – or only very indirectly – perceived in their social dimension” (24). In this way, ontological uncertainty ceases to be the property of the social system and no longer attests to the breakdown of its nomic foundations. Thanks to the extreme separation of the individual from society, ontological uncertainty becomes legitimized as proof of individual maladaptation, failure, or bad luck. For the social system itself creates infinite possibilities, whereas the way in which this spectrum is used remains the property of individuals who are aided in their efforts by hosts of experts. The elaborate “expert systems” are supposed to provide rational, preferably scientific arguments that reduce the individual sense of ontological uncertainty, simultaneously making it easier to reach a decision. It is easy to demonstrate, however, that under the conditions of a disintegrating nomos, which entails the multiplication of “expert systems”, the effectiveness of these systems relies on fundamental, “ontological” decisions that still need to be made by individuals. Even if we were to reach out for help from “experts on choosing experts”, it would only postpone the problem that Rollo May called today’s fundamental problem, which, as he holds, “is no longer a matter of deciding what to do, but of deciding how to decide” (1969, 15; emphasis preserved). To solve this “problem of the will”, which arises from the dissolution of “role

The production of the individual  165 identity”, it became necessary to create more specific systems of motivation guiding human actions.

Normative frameworks of action According to one of the axioms in sociological thinking, no society can afford to leave its members complete freedom of action.61 Although this statement may at first seem banal, it ceases to be obvious when we realize that society is nothing else than a specific grid of regularities abstracted from individual actions. However, for these regularities to emerge at a supra-local level, individuals’ behaviours must be first subjected to a certain standardization that covers not so much their particular course as their general logic and foundation for actions. In other words, the process of “forging” the social character in the course of socialization invariably involves equipping it with a range of goals, rationale, and justifications that direct individual actions.62 As I have attempted to demonstrate in the previous chapter, production of such a set of culturally accepted goals, rationales and justifications is a complex process that engages representatives of all those social groups whose voice can resound in the public sphere. However, in periods of formative transition, which are characterized by a multiplicity of competing patterns of behaviour that are less and less subordinated to institutional logic and more and more freely explore new possibilities, the voice of the intellectual elites becomes particularly important. Assuming their inherent role of interpreters – as Zygmunt Bauman calls them (1989) – of unfolding processes, the elites are trying to articulate more general “meanings” carried by individual actions. This intellectual elaboration of the changing reality primarily entails searching for an answer to the question about individual motivations, and is typically accompanied by far-reaching revisions of the dominant visions of the human nature. Although in the present case this question emerged only towards the end of the twentieth century, answers provided by contemporary theoreticians are rooted in the influential current of humanistic psychology, which developed towards the end of the 1950s/the beginning of the 1960s. Sometimes referred to as the “third force”, it attracted researchers who opposed the dominance of behaviourism and psychoanalysis, and rejected the deterministic vision of human beings that is characteristic for these perspectives. The image of an individual controlled by the outside environment or thrashed about by internal drives was opposed by humanistic psychologists who advanced a vision of humanity equipped with the ability to self-realize and make free choices. The ability to self-realize would consist in discovering and developing one’s potential capabilities. According to humanistic psychologists, each of us is born equipped with a certain range of abilities, an individualized gift that can be developed further – regardless whether it is the skill of cooking delicious dinners or composing symphonies – allowing us to experience life creatively and reach self-fulfilment. The only obstacle on the path to self-fulfilment is society which forces us to repress our natural inclinations

166  The production of the individual and demands that we adapt to a limited number of patterns of life hierarchized in accordance to the respect they enjoy in a given society. Thus, the task of the individual would consist in rejecting the cultural limitations that restrict our spontaneous creativity and in focusing specifically on self-­ fulfilment, which in future perspective would lead to the creation of a Good Society.63 Man’s inherent ability to be authentic helps to realize this task, along with a partnership-based style of therapy proposed by humanistic psychologists. Its fundamental goal was supposed to consist in freeing people’s developmental potential by creating an atmosphere of acceptance, which would allow us to analyze ourselves without fear, in turn contributing to the development of individual reflexivity. Clearly, such an approach carries all the hallmarks of utopian thinking, since its most characteristic feature is faith that it is possible to create a social order that would not be founded on coercion. According to Eva Illouz, “[u]topia is a realm of the imagination within which social conflicts are symbolically resolved or erased through the promise and the vision of ultimate harmony, in both political and interpersonal relationships” (1997, 48). Humanistic psychologists believed that this harmony would be the natural consequence of self-fulfilment, levelling individual achievements on the scale of personal satisfaction and cleansing people of aggression, which was considered to be the outcome of hindering one’s potential to develop. Thus, everything that could not be achieved by political utopias was to be realized by psychological utopia. Although humanistic psychology dissolved quite quickly in a tangle of new psychological trends and fashions, the vision of human nature that it articulated turned out to be more lasting as it pushed into the margin or even replaced earlier visions of a more deterministic character. Self-fulfilment, authenticity, and reflexivity are now the fundamental goals that researchers uncover in contemporary individuals. Moreover, references to these three aspirations can also be found in the most mass-oriented products of popular culture: magazines, advertisements, how-to books. This suggests that we are faced not just with a utopia but with a powerful ideology that perpetuates the social system.64 This ideology is developed at various levels, but one integral element found throughout the whole process is the specific feedback between scientific discourse and broader, social discourse. Analyzing texts from popular women’s magazines, Eva Illouz demonstrates that when they cite scientific studies it is to draw a line between “normal” and “pathological” behaviour. As she argues, this kind of “normalization serves to convert moral statements into truth statements validated by the signs of ‘scientific’ expertise [contained in texts]” (1997, 200). On the other hand, however, popular culture is today probably the most frequently utilized source of data for sociological analyses whose results in turn contribute to the normalization of individual behaviours at a higher level, making them “normal” patterns of human actions, i.e. patterns also shared by others. In this way, self-fulfilment, authenticity, and reflexivity can be transformed from normative recommendations into statements about reality. The fact that such feedback exists between science and popular culture helps to locate the sources of the aforementioned ambiguity that stems from the normative

The production of the individual  167 and descriptive character of concepts used to identify the characteristics of postmodern individuals. Primarily, however, it allows us to better understand the mechanisms that accompany the process of standardizing individual behaviour. The fundamental effect of such “normalizing” efforts is to equip individuals with a set of goals, patterns of experiencing reality, and means of justifying it, by the same token giving the individualization process a specific form. In effect, “being oneself” ceases to constitute an expression of some internal, not fully recognized potentials or impulses, whose realization demands that we oppose social pressures. On the contrary, it becomes an externally constructed and controlled model of behaviour that determines socially accepted modes and scopes of action, thus alleviating to some extent the ontological uncertainty experienced by individuals. This discursively created pattern of behaviour not only makes self-fulfilment the leading social idea, but also clearly locates it in a specific area. As Illouz shows (1997), towards the end of the twentieth century the fundamental area of self-fulfilment was love. It is a specific kind of love because it grows out of the transformations in the domain of intimacy which occurred during the past fifty years. Its fullest account was provided by Giddens, for whom it is based on the aforementioned concept of “pure relations”. Let us dwell on this notion for a moment. According to Giddens, pure relations are a sort of an intimate tie with another person, which “is not anchored in external conditions of social or economic life” (2004, 89). The “purity” of such relationships stems from the fact that individuals enter the relation “for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which [the relation] is continued only in so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to stay within it” (2004, 58). The condition for ensuring the permanence of pure relations is “opening out of the individual to the other”, in whose reactions one seeks to “find his self-identity affirmed” (Giddens 1991, 96–97). It is in this sense that pure relations form the reflexive framework of self-fulfilment, in which the “moral thread of self-actualisation is one of authenticity . . . based on ‘being true to oneself’ ” (78). In this framework of “pure relations” we find  – according to Giddens  – the second factor that makes self-fulfilment possible to achieve through love: the rise of “plastic sexuality”. It is the product of those historical transformations that liberated sexuality from the constraints of reproduction and cultural regulation. “Plastic sexuality”, Giddens writes, “can be moulded as a trait of personality and thus is intrinsically bound up with the self” (2004, 2). He emphasizes that sexual self-fulfilment, which involves both making homosexuality and heterosexuality equal and experimenting with all sorts of ways to achieve carnal pleasure, is now becoming an important aspect of self-realization.65 Giddens argues that “plastic sexuality” realized within “pure relations” gives rise to a completely new kind of intimate relations, which he calls “confluent love”. Although it grew out of romantic love, unlike its predecessor, which would be often secretly based on one-sided emotional dependency, “confluent love presumes equality in emotional give and take” and “for the first time introduces the

168  The production of the individual ars erotica into the core of the conjugal relationship and makes the achievement of reciprocal sexual pleasure a key element in whether the relationship is sustained or dissolved” (2004, 62). There is no longer any talk of chance or destiny, which played such a huge role in romantic love. “The more confluent love becomes consolidated as a real possibility”, Giddens concludes, “the more the finding of a ‘special person’ recedes and the more it is the ‘special relationship’ that counts” (61–62). Although Giddens’s discussion in many ways approximates concepts developed by humanistic psychology, his idea of confluent love gives an entirely new meaning to self-fulfilment. The latter ceases to be related in any way to some “gift” or hidden potential. Genetically equipped with the ability to experience emotional bliss and sexual pleasure, people become democratically equal in their right to happiness. One does not need to seek anything inside oneself, or try to change oneself – it suffices to simply be oneself, which is the best option. If a partner cannot accept us as we are, he or she simply needs to be replaced with someone else. “What holds the pure relationship together”, Giddens notes, “is the acceptance on the part of each partner, ‘until further notice’, that each gains sufficient benefit from the relations to make its continuance worthwhile” (63). Defined in this way, the idea of self-fulfilment turns out to be a perfect match for one property of contemporary individuals’ social character: egotism. At the same time, it affects the understanding of two other concepts regulating people’s aspirations – the imperatives of authenticity and reflexivity. They are in fact interrelated because – as Giddens claims – “the authentic person is one who knows herself and is able to reveal that knowledge to the other, discursively and in the behavioural sphere” (1991, 186–187). However, despite this statement’s apparent obviousness – humanistic psychologists would subscribe to it without reservations – it does hide a significant shift from earlier concepts, namely the absence of a self that would be given once and for all, comprising a possible object of enquiry. Ultimately, the contemporary self is no longer a set of inborn “possibilities” or “gifts” revealed by the individual in a laborious process of self-discovery, but a “reflexive project” (5), “a feeling of biographical continuity” (54). In this light, the only area where individuals can seek this “knowledge of themselves” is their emotional life. This connection between emotions and authenticity is rooted in perceiving emotions as primary and resistant to social control.66 Freud significantly contributed to the advancement of this belief by indicating the role of anxiety in controlling social behaviour and as confirmation of the existence of repressed impulses, i.e. ones that are not socially accepted. The cornerstone of psychoanalysis is to assist patients to tame this anxiety by helping them realize its source and rationally accept the necessity to subject his or her actions to cultural control in exchange for social respect. This is exactly what humanistic psychologists protested against, arguing that an entirely arbitrary lack of cultural acceptance for our authentic desires is what actually hinders our development to the greatest extent, blocking individual self-fulfilment.

The production of the individual  169 However, let us draw attention to the fact that the current changes equating practically all forms of self-expression, regardless of what that self is, have eliminated most of these cultural restrictions. At the same time, they obliterated all cultural indices of social recognition and prestige. Thus, if fulfilment “means fostering a sense that one is ‘good’, a ‘worthy person’ ” (79), the lack of external criteria for such judgements makes this fulfilment dependent mainly on emotional self-contentment arising out of being in a “pure relation”, which is free from socio-economic conditions that could make us yield to cultural conventions and deprive our actions of emotional spontaneity, the only indicator of authenticity. It turns out, however, that the “purity” of our relations with others cannot guarantee that we achieve such self-contentment. Paradoxically, the person who could become the source of the “fundamental trust” facilitating the development of our authenticity also constitutes the only “obstacle” in realizing this very goal. If “[t]o be true to oneself means finding oneself, but since this is an active process of selfconstruction it has to be informed by overall goals – those of becoming free from dependencies and achieving fulfilment” (79; emphasis added), then the necessity to take into account the other person in the “pure relation” can become the source of a specific anxiety about the permanence of this relationship. This is only one step away from becoming co-dependent, which Giddens sees as the fundamental threat to the authenticity of our experience (cf. 2004, chapters 5–6). In other words, by depriving the “pure relation” of all external conditions and grounding it only in the authenticity of partners – whose awareness that the relationship can break apart at any point if one side decides to walk away “forms part of the very horizon of commitment” (187) – Giddens transforms the relationship between two people into a battle of two egotisms. There is in fact no other factor deciding about the legitimacy of the partners’ mutual expectations and demands apart from their internal conviction that they rightly deserve something – a conviction based on emotions. As a result, “rage, anger and depressive feelings swirl through the contexts of pure relationships and, in concrete circumstances, intimacy may be psychically more troubling than it is rewarding” (187). Hence, achieving self-fulfilment must be often supported by therapy, which “can help heal the psychological damage which such relationships can bring about” (186) and also allows us to better understand ourselves. At this point we approach the last normative condition directing today’s individual actions: reflexivity. It is a specific reflexivity – one subordinated to the process of constructing the individual’s identity and involving not just plans for the future but also reinterpretation of one’s past. “We are, not what we are, but what we make of ourselves”, Giddens writes (75). A crucial step in this process of constructing oneself involves processing past events and information about their participants in such a way as to adapt these data to how we see ourselves today. “The involvement of such reflexivity with social and psychological research is striking, and a pervasive feature of the therapeutic outlook advocated” (75), because it is supposed to heal not only the damage caused by being engaged in “pure relations”, but also – by fusing individual actions into a coherent “identity project” – the

170  The production of the individual damage caused by those initial conditions which constitute the effect of the disintegration of the cultural nomos. An important role in reflexivity defined in this way is played by expert knowledge that aids our own thinking. The necessity to use expert opinions arises not just from the very fragmentation of technical knowledge into numerous, specialized “abstract systems”, but primarily from including in these opinions everything that formerly constituted the subject of common knowledge or was acquired in unreflective processes of socialization. When conversation becomes a set of “communication techniques”, gesticulation turns into “body language”, love and friendship constitute “pure relations”, while identity acquires the character of a “reflexive project”, we start to need experts who will teach us these specific techniques and translate from this specific language, who will help us to “purify” our relations from distortions and work with us on our identity project. The deeper we enter into this kind of “living with a calculative attitude”, the more indispensable it becomes to seek help from therapists in making that life coherent and in achieving self-fulfilment. Giddens’s vision of confluent love may have a utopian character and its ­requirements may seem too stringent – which makes love, as Bauman ironically notes, “a trap that needs to be avoided at all costs” (2008, 90) – yet his c­ lear-cut concept allows us to better understand the meaning of ideas constituting the normative framework of actions in contemporary culture. At its basis we find the idea of self-fulfilment as a process not so much stemming from I-identity but rather leading to its creation, and facilitating maximization of the individual’s emotional experiences. One could say that in a world deprived of culturally developed, unambiguous programmes of action, a world where the chief problem is not how to be oneself, but how to be anybody, only emotional experiences allow us to escape from overwhelming apathy (May 1969), because only through them can we feel the authenticity of our existence. Nevertheless, Giddens is aware that the primary character of emotions does not mean they can guarantee individual authenticity, because emotions can be manipulated by others, who may cause us to feel anxiety, guilt, or shame. That is why they need to be constantly monitored through reflection, which involves not only identifying their sources but also recognizing the odds of, and threats to, selffulfilment as well as introducing coherence to our experiences. Giddens’s “pure relation” is thus “based on a communicative rationality that assumes that two persons are equal to each other, can make claims about their needs, and base these claims on agreed upon norms of equality and reciprocity” (Illouz 1997, 206). And if they cannot, therapy is here to help. The significance attributed to it is in this context only a continuation of the need to achieve rationality in communication. Although emotions are the basic mode of experiencing the authenticity of existence, they should not guide our actions. At the basis of Giddens’s theory we find the modernist vision of a rational individual who assesses the pros and cons of continuing the “pure relation”, while therapists perform the role of qualified bookkeepers helping to discern potential developmental profits in “losses” and detect potential losses in “profits”. Thus, when agreeing with the claim that in

The production of the individual  171 contemporary culture “confession and its de-institutionalized form  – confiding one’s secrets in others – seems to be elevated to the rank of the basic ‘form of sociality’ ” (Jacyno 2007, 124), we should remember that the ultimate goal of such sociality is to bring back rationality to individual actions. Giddens’s theory is only one of today’s many discourses on love (cf. Illouz 1997; Gdula 2008; Dembek 2008) that regard it as the basic area of human activity and consequently the legitimized area of scientific and quasi-scientific enquiry. The interest in what would seem to be the most “private” area of individual life should not come as a surprise since, in the era of post-modern fragmentation of both broader social groups and norms they have established, love turns out to be the last bastion of the communal character, while its discursive elaboration constitutes a powerful tool for the social “normalization” of a wide range of individual behaviours. This concerns not only those actions that require specification due to the initial deficit of social skills arising from the character of the socialization processes described earlier, but also ones that are related to how individuals function in the areas of economy and consumerism. As Eva Illouz demonstrates (1997) in her brilliant analysis of symbolic representations of love in contemporary popular culture, the set of practices associated with it is inseparable from increased consumption of all the services and goods provided by the market, beginning from clothes that complement the lovers’ beauty, through romantic dinners in restaurants, and ending with romantic journeys, not to mention such obvious things as flowers, a diamond ring, and a house where the two shall live happily ever after. It is easy to notice, however, that one of the important side effects of the ever more popular “discourse of love” is the selective cultural legitimization of certain behaviours – either existing ones or new – by constructing their symbolic representations in terms of self-fulfilment, authenticity, and reflexivity, thus establishing normative frameworks for actions in post-modernity. This concludes the process of transforming individualization into a specific form of sociality. Thanks to this, striving for individualization can paradoxically become the pinnacle expression of social adaptation. Naturally, although it arises from the material course of individual actions, such discursive normalization of human action occurs primarily in the symbolic sphere. Thus, inferring from this the contents of actual processes that transform post-modern society would, to put it mildly, amount to scholarly naivety. This is not just because norms do not ever translate directly into actions. Even in the heyday of stable structures of the modern society, culturally sanctioned norms of behaviour would not explain the entirety of people’s behaviour;67 and given the increasing pace of changes in post-modern society this becomes even less probable. It would also be naive because – and this may be the most important reason – such an approach would completely disregard the fact that individuals do not act in isolation but constantly enter into interactions with other people, one effect of which is the creation of certain repeatable patterns of action, which need to first congeal and become institutionalized as norms, structures and social beliefs before they can become the foundation for the form of organizing social life that is characteristic for a given society.

172  The production of the individual In other words, having answered the question about the way in which individuals are socialized, we need to examine the way in which their individual actions become socialized in processes that turn them into Durkheimian social facts, or – to put it differently – turn them into regularities that are recognizable by members of the society and become clues about the actions one should undertake.

Notes 1 Let us recall the wave of outrage at Darwin’s claims about humans having descended from apes, or at Freud’s arguments about the dominance of sexual drives in people. These two cases are perhaps the most spectacular examples of a more general tendency to take scientific findings “personally” and to “verify” them by referring to one’s own individual experience. 2 Norbert Elias locates the birth of this vision even earlier: in processes that accompanied the forming of philosophical thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which then led to the development of an image of “I” enclosed in a “bodily case;” cf. Elias (2001, 91–119); for a more systematic analysis of the development of the idea of individualism, see: Środa (2003, 17–137). 3 Cf. a broader discussion of this topic in: Gergen 1991. 4 This is particularly clear in the case of reflexivity: for Giddens it means primarily the intensification of thinking provoked by the necessity to continuously monitor one’s behaviour in order to better adapt it to the nature of the changing world. This relationship between the concept of reflexivity and the process of thinking is made even stronger in the definition contained in the glossary appended to Giddens’s The Constitution of Society (1986). Meanwhile, Ulrich Beck opposes such understanding of reflexivity. As he emphasizes in an article on reflexive modernization, “ ‘[r]eflexive’ does not mean that people today lead a more conscious life” or that they better control reality. “On the contrary”, he writes, “ ‘[r]eflexive’ . . . signifies heightened awareness that mastery is impossible” (Beck, Bonss, and Lau 2003, 3; emphasis preserved). 5 One classic illustration of such “collective” individualism is an advertisement showing young women with the following text: “All of them are unique. All are outstanding individuals. All use (brand name)”. 6 According to Kaufmann, reflection is a rare phenomenon, emerging when tension appears between interiorized (mentally accepted) and embodied (in the form of behavioural habits) operational schemata. Thus, it does not suffice to be merely aware of various patterns of behaviour – they need to be embodied by the individual through reshaping an entire structure of individual habits and customs. 7 This specific affliction of our thinking about human beings  – both in terms of their phylogenesis and ontogenesis – was addressed by Elias. “It seems”, he writes, “as if grown-up people, in thinking about their origins, involuntarily lose sight of the fact that they themselves and all adults came into the world as little children. Over and over again, in the scientific myths of origin no less than in the religious ones, they feel impelled to imagine: In the beginning was a single human being, who was an adult” (2001, 20). This affliction manifests itself in a particularly acute manner in the texts about post-modernity where the main object of consideration is the actions of adults, i.e. already shaped individuals. 8 One needs to remember that one of the systems that Luhmann distinguishes is the individual’s psychological system. 9 This is also the point of departure for probably the most interesting current theory of socialization, namely that developed by Michael Tomasello, who writes: “to socialize” means “to structure culturally, the ways in which children habitually attend to and

The production of the individual  173 conceptualize different aspects of their world” (1999, 166), and who places the whole process in relations between the child and adults. 10 For a broader discussion of the relationship between identity and the process of constructing meaning, see later on in this chapter. See also Calhoun 2003; Castells 2002. 11 As Kaufmann observes, “habits acquire their full force only when they disappear from consciousness and are inscribed in the hidden memory” (2004, 166). 12 According to some studies, the generation born after 1993 has already spent 20,000 hours online and 10,000 hours on video games (cf. Derkaczew 2012). 13 As Zimbardo points out, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the percentage of shy people among American students has exceeded 50 per cent, while twenty years ago it amounted to around 40 per cent. “More and more people are uncomfortable with face-to-face contacts because they have no idea how to behave”. (2001, 12). 14 It is significant that in contemporary psychology the concept of social competences is typically limited to a set of strictly “technical” skills that allow individuals to achieve their own aims through interactions with others, all the while retaining positive relations with their partners in these interactions (cf. Rubin and Rose-Krasnor 1992, 285). Meanwhile, as Georg Simmel demonstrates in his analysis of sociability (1950, 51–73), even this rudimentary form of sociality demands that individuals limit the manifestation of their selves and obey certain rules that sustain social relations. 15 This tendency is certainly reinforced by findings of psychologists and psychotherapists, who unanimously underline that showing love and acceptance to children is of great importance. 16 According to Knorr-Cetina, the rising “objectification” of social relations means that, if we want to understand the latter, it becomes crucial to examine the development of humanity’s relations with objects, which today stabilize the self and define the individual just like family or community did in the past, at the same time ushering in new forms of socialization that displace interpersonal ones. It is worth noting here that contemporary sociology is devoting more and more attention to assemblages composed of humans and non-humans, e.g. objects and technologies. A broad discussion of this can be found in: Tarkowski 2008; cf. also Urry 1999; Latour 2005 as particularly interesting exemplars of this approach. 17 Cf. a broader discussion of this subject in Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018 (especially chapter 3). 18 It has to be noted, however, that the seller would most likely not knock me out for my impolite comments on his honesty, whereas a vending machine, if “taken to task” too harshly, can fall and crush the client, which actually happened to one of the laureates of the Darwin Awards – a prize announced annually for the most idiotic way of dying. Examples of this sort certainly reinforce our tendency to anthropomorphize objects, which finds expression, for example, in the saying about the “malice of inanimate objects”. 19 The fundamental distinctness of youth culture was pointed out in the early 1960s by James S. Coleman in his famous book The Adolescent Society (1961), where it is nevertheless treated as an element of a larger process of age segregation. 20 Margaret Mead speaks in this context of the emergence of a “pre-figurative culture”, in which the rising generation takes the function of determining for adults the patterns of social action and socialization. 21 What I mean here is primarily adult control over access to “adult” books and magazines, and the emergence of specialized children’s literature. As Meyrowitz aptly notes, while reading, “a family can stay together in a single room and yet [be] divided into different informational worlds” (1986, 246). 22 What is more, these devices allow children to break away from their parents’ tutelage, even without leaving home, because they all serve mainly the purpose of maintaining

174  The production of the individual contact with peers, thus boosting the influence of this socialization agenda. For more on such uses of smartphones, see Szymańska 2008. 23 In studies conducted in the 1960s it was assumed that peer groups are an environment that helps practise adult roles due to an atmosphere of acceptance and safety (cf. Gecas 1981). However, this was true at a time when entering adulthood was highly anticipated and when skills acquired in groups were subjected to correction by adults. 24 One should not forget that, as already noted by Georg Simmel (1950, 51–73), “sociality” constitutes the purest form of socializing individual actions; consequently, the habits formed today in peer groups provide the basic framework for coordinating individual behaviours. 25 As Mary Rogers shows (1999), even the Barbie doll can become a “person” who significantly affects our life choices. 26 It differs, for example, by having the character of a monologue and is directed towards an unidentified group of potential recipients; cf. the broader discussion of these differences in: Thompson (1995, 81–118). 27 According to Gergen, these technologies also encompass the development of means of spatial communication (trains, cars, planes) which liberate people, on a mass scale, from being tied for a lifetime to the social environment determined by the boundaries of their original community. The fundamental effect of the development of technologies of social saturation is the multiplication of relations with others. 28 “Some of the world’s most intense affairs of the heart (Héloïse and Abelard, Elizabeth Barret and Robert Browning) were carried on largely by written word”, Gergen notes, pointing at the same time to relations formed by people “with religious figures such as Jesus, Buddha or Muhammad” (1991, 55–56). This argument could be expanded by showing that the development of the symbolic dimension, which is characteristic for humanity, has always involved creating a range of imagined figures important to individuals and affecting their actions. 29 To illustrate this Thompson quotes the example of Joanna, a forty-two-year-old married woman with three children, who told her therapist about her mediated affair with a famous actor. “When I make love with my husband”, she confesses, “I imagine it’s Barry Manilow. All the time. And after, when my husband and I have made love and I realize it’s not him, I cry to myself”. She also adds: “It’s what I describe as a onesided love affair. He’s my lover in my fantasies. He’s my friend when I’m depressed. He’s there and he seems to serve as something I need to get through my life” (1995, 220–221). 30 A crucial role in supporting this statement empirically is played by studies on the socalled “Internet paradox” described by Kraut and his team (Kraut et al. 1998, 2002). They show that although the Internet is a technology that favours making social contacts, this benefits mainly those people who already have established networks and who have displayed higher social skills from the start, as measured by their extroversion. 31 The study was conducted among Dutch viewers of the series. The starting point was letters sent to the scholar after she placed an ad in a women’s magazine, announcing that she watches Dallas and is interested why others do or do not do so (cf. Ang 1996, 10–11). 32 As Iwona Kurz writes, “stars can be described as a certain kind of monopoly – a ‘monopoly on personality’ in which actors or actresses are identified with a specific type of person. As a result, not only do we always recognize the performers at the level of the story, but we also invariably associate certain personality types with them, e.g. a liberated girl and Brigitte Bardot are one and the same. Thus, the star both embodies a certain type and individualizes it through his or her personal traits, inhabiting the tension between uniformization on the one hand and originality or uniqueness on the other” (2005, 129). 33 Małgorzata Jacyno drew my attention to the fact that media revelations concerning private matters increasingly often become a kind of spectacular tearing down of the “symbolic veil”. There are more and more programmes and newspaper articles that not just reveal someone’s private life, but focus on dis-idealizing others. Rafał Drozdowski

The production of the individual  175 even writes (2009, 85) about the emergence of a new form of competitiveness and a new kind of pornography, in which revealing someone’s private matters is designed to simulate a public act of burning bridges when ending relations with others. 34 As Kate Fox demonstrates in her report from research on gossiping (2001), “our conversations about the conflicts between characters in soap operas, the relationship problems of supermodels and the marriages, babies and careers of film stars are often indistinguishable from our gossip about friends, neighbours and family. Overhearing such discussions on a bus or in a pub, someone who was not familiar with the celebrity names in question could easily conclude that Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss and the Dingle family were friends, relatives or next-door neighbours of the gossipers (and note that they were concerned about Victoria’s eating disorder, but approved of Kate’s new hairstyle)”. 35 It would usually take the form of a question about the given culture’s constitutive values. Internalizing patterns of action and their meanings during socialization, individuals adopted norms and values specific to their society. 36 It is worth mentioning here that the authors of Habits of the Heart decidedly reject the widespread position in social sciences that links identity with individual choices – a position they regard as “based on inadequate social science, impoverished philosophy, and vacuous theology” (Bellah et al. 1986, 84). 37 Moreover, as contemporary psychology dictates, they also try to protect “the child within”, along with the cherished spontaneity and curiosity in contacts with the world. 38 As Danielle Régnier-Bohler shows, for example, the female body described in mediaeval literature adheres to “canonical terms: a creamy complexion enlivened by a touch of pink; blond hair; harmonious features; a long face; a high, regular nose; bright, happy eyes; and thin, red lips. . . . a corresponding male stereotype . . . is in fact a double of the woman he loves” (1988, 358–359), differing only in more developed musculature. As this account demonstrates, androgyny is not a modern invention. 39 The cultural conditioning of posture was already pointed out by Marcel Mauss in the essay “Techniques of the body:” “The positions of the arms and hands while walking form a social idiosyncrasy, they are not simply a product of some purely individual, almost completely psychical arrangements and mechanisms” (2004, 52). 40 As studies show, this effect was achieved at the cost of deforming the body and disabling many of its functions (cf. Turner 1984, 197–198). 41 It is interesting to quote in this context an observation made by Andrzej Leder, who writes that “warnings printed on cigarette packages sold in the EU sound like moral admonition formerly encountered in churches” (2006, 10). 42 This transformation manifested itself both in uniformization of dress related to specific institutional roles (examples include both a clerk’s uniform in Tsarist Russia and today’s corporate dress code) and in popular sayings like “image is everything”, “dress for success” or “fine feathers make fine birds”. 43 This perspective found its clearest expression in works by Erving Goffman (e.g. 1959). His division into a stage and a backstage perfectly grasps the typically modern separation of the public from the private spheres, which also provides the basis for separating the role from the person as well as social identity from the more “private” personality. 44 If not the only one, then at least the basic one formed at the end of socialization. This is confirmed in analyses by Joan Jacobs Brumberg (1997; after Elliott 2003), who compared girls’ diaries from the end of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, noting a significant shift from focusing on development of character to concentrating on physical appearance. It is also telling in this context that over one fourth of women undergoing plastic surgery in the UK are under twenty-five (Elliott and Lemert 2006, 2). 45 I am referring here to apotemnophilia, a condition which is characterized by a desire to remove a perfectly healthy limb, as described by Carl Elliott (2003, Chapter 9). 46 It is fascinating that, as recent research shows, even today thinking about death causes people to feel a stronger bond with the group and judge it in more positive terms; cf. Castano and Dechesne (2005).

176  The production of the individual 47 The concept of “social character” – just like the concept of “basic personality” (Kardiner 1945) – has its roots in psychoanalysis. However, borrowing it from Fromm I limit myself to his proposed definition. 48 The online version of the Collins English Dictionary defines egotism as “an inflated sense of self-importance or superiority; self-centredness”. The Oxford Dictionaries website offers a similar definition, according to which egotism means “the fact of being excessively conceited or absorbed in oneself”. Finally, according to Wikipedia, “egotism is the drive to maintain and enhance favourable views of oneself, and generally features an inflated opinion of one’s personal features and importance” (all sites accessed on 11 September 2018). 49 Kohut published his study in 1971 so it can be assumed that he based it on observations of patients in the 1960s. 50 A similar approach to narcissism was developed by Sennett. In his well-known 1977 book, The Fall of the Public Man, he associates this fall with the emergence of narcissistic distortions of character (2002, 20). 51 “On the assumption that pathology represents a heightened version of normality”, Lasch writes, “we can now see why the absence of the American father has become such a crucial feature of the American family: not so much because it deprives the child of a role model as because it allows early fantasies of the father to dominate subsequent development of the superego. The father’s absence, moreover, deforms the relations between mother and child. . . . When a narcissistic mother, already disposed to see her offspring as extensions of herself, attempts to compensate the child for the father’s desertion . . . her constant but perfunctory attentions, her attempts to make the child feel wanted and special, and her wish to make it ‘stand out’ communicate themselves to the child in a charged and highly disturbing form” (Lasch 1991, 175). 52 The positive coloration of the process of individualization is additionally augmented by the popular psychological concept of de-individualization, which has unambiguously negative overtones because it has been linked to destructive and asocial behaviour; cf. Zimbardo and Ruch (1971). 53 This shift is best visible in Giddens’s Modernity and Self-Identity, where the author directly polemicizes with the concept of narcissism, arguing that in Lasch’s text “one can discern an inadequate account of the human agent” (1991, 175), owing to the individual being rendered as a passive object of social and cultural influences, and devaluing the role of psychotherapeutic practice which – in his view – is “an expert system deeply implicated in the reflexive project of the self” and constitutes “a methodology of life-planning” (180). This criticism stems from ascribing different values to basically the same tendencies observed in individuals’ behaviour. 54 This would explain why Kohut and Lasch treated narcissism as a form of pathology affecting a person’s character. 55 As Erich Fromm notes, “the social character internalizes external necessities and thus harnesses human energy for the task of a given economic and social system” (1969, 311). 56 Once again, not without significant participation of sociologists, especially Max Weber and his concept of the modernity as “disenchanting the world”, and the assumption that “[f]or the purposes of a typological scientific analysis it is convenient to treat all irrational, affectually determined elements of behavior as factors of deviation from a conceptually pure type of rational action” (1978, 6). 57 “When we speak about man-the-scientist”, Kelly writes, “we are speaking of all mankind and not merely a particular class of men who have publicly attained the stature of ‘scientists’ ” (1963, 4; emphasis preserved). 58 One slogan popularized by this approach was: “a human being is the unity of thoughts, feelings, and liver”. 59 “A ritual . . . is a myth transformed into action”, May writes (1991, 290), at the same time pointing out the reflexive character of this relation: “Myth gives birth to rituals and rituals give birth to myths” (290).

The production of the individual  177 60 A perfect illustration of this process and all of its stages is provided in Richard Sennett’s book The Corrosion of Character (1999). 61 The non-arbitrary character of individual actions is a constitutive feature of the concept of society, as has been emphatically demonstrated by Durkheim (1982) in his considerations on the social fact. 62 Cf. an analysis of this process in relation to changes in the sphere of work during the transition to modernity in: Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018, 203–244; Marody and Lewicki 2010. 63 Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, wrote that “there is a kind of a feedback between the Good Society and a Good Person. They need each other, they are sine qua non to each other” (1980, 18–19). 64 I understand these two concepts following Mannheim (1985). 65 As Giddens notes, “the decline of perversion can be understood as a partly successful battle over rights of self-expression in the context of liberal democratic state” (2004, 33). The concept of perversion is now being replaced with that of sexual diversity. 66 Richard Sennett (1980) traces the origin of this view of emotions to nineteenth-century theses formulated by Charles Darwin in The Expression of Emotion in Animals and Man (1872). 67 Ralph Merton was perfectly aware of this. In his probably most famous text (“Social Structure and Anomie”, originally published in 1938; see Merton 1968, 185–214), he lists, apart from conformist behaviour, four additional forms of individual adaptation, seeking in them the source of social anomie.

6 Processes of socializing individual actions

In most situations, we use “social” to mean that which has already been assembled and acts as a whole, without being too picky on the precise nature of what has been gathered, bundled, and packaged together. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social

Rigidity of order is the artefact and sediment of the human agents’ freedom. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity

Not that there are no rules, but that rules are created, and changed, in a relentless process of deliberate actions and unique interactions. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society

Once, when discussing Bauman’s Liquid Modernity (2006) in one of my classes, I stumbled upon a passage in which he considers the question of contemporary society’s openness to criticism by comparing it to a camping site. Visitors coming there, Bauman vividly writes, take advantage of all the facilities at their disposal without becoming too preoccupied with the basic principles of the camping site’s operation as long as they remain satisfied with the service they have grown accustomed to. Even “if they feel short-changed or find the managers’ promises not kept”, apart from filing a complaint or demanding reimbursement, “it won’t occur to them to question and renegotiate the managerial philosophy of the site, much less to take over the responsibility for running the place” (24). This passage seemed to be difficult to explain to students of sociology because its central metaphor introduces complete separation of people and society. The latter emerges not only as an entity independent of individuals, but also as one that is “substantially” self-contained, i.e. comprised of something else than the people who (temporarily) live in it. Individuals, in turn, would seem to be leading their lives independently of the “society” understood in this way, equipped with “his or her own itinerary and time schedule” (24). I was greatly surprised when it turned out that none of the students in my seminar – people who, for several years, had been trained in thinking that society is the sum of all individuals, while

Processes of socializing individual actions  179 individuals derive all their behaviours from society – noticed that the camping site metaphor evidently features full separation of both components in this fundamental sociological relation. With time, I understood that my expectations were unfounded. Even when they are not entirely accurate,1 metaphors derive their strength from referring to actual experiences, which convince us today, at every turn, that the basic manifestation of the society – which is, after all, only one of the many “imagined communities” – is usually the body of institutions and regulations established by the state. These institutions are supposed to serve the individuals, aiding them in realizing their goals, taking care of them in situations of danger, and settling conflicts with other individuals or organizations. Primarily, however, they are meant to free people from unwanted ties with those larger social systems that used to claim the right to control our behaviours and impose certain duties on us, thus hindering our individual actions. Such a way of experiencing society and one’s personal relation to it not only authenticates the metaphor of the camping site, but is also firmly supported by those social theories which assume that the basic factor determining the direction of changes that are ongoing in social life are the processes of individualization, which equip individuals with a profound need to “be themselves”, protect their independence, and self-determine their fate. It is individualization that many regard today as the main reason for the dissolution of social bonds, fragmentation of identity and erosion of shared values or norms that used to regulate people’s behaviours. Its consequences also include the intensifying phenomenon of shifting social control from the society to public institutions, which begin to replace the former also in its other functions related to the socialization of individual actions. However, there are also authors who offer contrasting explanations. Ulrich Beck – one of the first scholars to explicitly argue that individualization is a ­specific form of socializing individuals, characteristic for the contemporary ­society2 – warned against equating the process of subjective “individuation”, which involves “personalization, uniqueness, emancipation” (1992, 128), with structural individualization, which was supposed to be the product of objective conditions shaping the individual’s social position. Among these objective conditions he would distinguish the general improvement of well-being, transformations of production and consequent transformations of labour, as well as the change in the situation of women. Marcel Gauchet goes even further in his conclusions, arguing that at the foundation of modernity we find the process of “the appropriation of the social bond by the state” (2000, 29). It would consist in the entry of state institutions and regulations into all those areas that used to be the domain of negotiations within civic society. As a result, he claims, “[t]he implicit production of the social bond by the state means that the explicit social bond is experienced only as a global effect of the aggregation of actions where each person considers only his own advantages and interests, with the outcome that the social bond appears as a result and not a responsibility” (32).

180  Processes of socializing individual actions It is crucial that regardless of how we understand individualization – i.e. as either a cause or an effect of other social processes – these otherwise mutually exclusive explanations do agree on one point: the dissolution of social bonds leads to the atomization of human communities, turning contemporary society into a statistical aggregate of individual actions, which are secondarily integrated and structured by public institutions that manage social life. In consequence, the mode of conceptualizing relations between the individual and the society is also transformed, departing from models developed by social sciences at various points of their history. In a nutshell, one could say that these models were initially dominated by an Enlightenment-based vision of individuals as creators of society by way of a social contract, in the twentieth century they embraced the vision of society as producing individuals through socialization processes, while now a prominent position has been secured by the vision of individuals living outside of or next to the society. Once again we can refer to Gauchet, who argues that “[t]he contemporary individual would thus be the first individual to live unaware that he lives in society, the first individual, due to the very evolution of society, able to ignore that he is in society” (2000, 36). However, the mere universality of such feelings is not enough to accept them as a starting point for theoretical reflection. On the contrary – it should rather serve as a warning signal for all those who study social reality. After all, the concept of society was forged to describe a hidden structure of human connections, which does not have to be consciously acknowledged by individuals. It is nothing new that the stability of those connections is firmed by such symbolic representations created on the level of culture whose resonance depends largely on factors that have little to do with the adequacy of descriptions of actual social structures. It is also not without significance that these structures are characterized by a specific inertia,3 which means that their transformations do not always keep up with the dynamics of spontaneous social processes that ceaselessly unfold at the level of individual actions. Last but not least, the analysis contained in the previous chapter helps us to discern in contemporary individualism primarily a culturally sanctioned form of adapting individuals to a “society-captured-by-the-state”. All of these prompts us to ask the question about the course taken today by actual processes of socializing individual actions. Although posed rarely, this question is not unknown to sociology insofar as it was asked, at an early stage of the discipline’s development, by one of its founding fathers, Georg Simmel, who argued that “neither hunger nor love, neither work nor religiosity, neither technology nor the functions and results of intelligence, are social. They are factors in sociation4 only when they transform the mere aggregation of isolated individuals into specific forms of being with and for one another, forms that are subsumed under the general concept of interaction” (1950, 41; emphasis added). However, in later stages the idea of processes of socializing individual actions practically vanished from sociological discourse, supplanted by analyses of their institutionalized effects: norms, values, roles, and the society’s organizing structures.5 Or, as Bruno Latour puts it (2005), the term

Processes of socializing individual actions  181 “social” began to refer to reified entities and not to the connections between people that constitute these entities. The current, rather timid return to the question of socializing processes6 is undoubtedly the consequence of a continuing disintegration of those entities that were being meticulously identified and described for many years by twentiethcentury sociologists. Paradoxically, it was the disintegration of structures developed by modernity that allowed us to discern behind them the unceasing processes of sharing individual actions. This also allows us to state that the acceleration of changes we are currently observing under the conditions of “liquid reality” is not the cause but rather the effect of the intensification of mutual influences among individuals who are trying out different, formerly unknown ways of realizing their individual aspirations. This specific explosion of social creativity certainly has at its foundation both the emergence of new technological solutions and changes in general living conditions as well as new individual habits shaped by them, as discussed earlier. However, they comprise merely a certain set of opportunities that do not settle the form taken on by social reality produced in the processes of socializing individual actions. And although these actions are symbolically standardized on a regular basis in terms of self-fulfilment, authenticity, and reflexivity, these normative standards order – if at all – only the “aggregation of isolated individuals”, without answering the question about the way in which it is transformed into “specific forms of being with and for one another”. To avoid misunderstanding, it needs to be underlined that this is not about the kind of interpretation of this question – known in sociology as “double contingency” (cf. Parsons 1951, 16; Luhman 1995, 103–105) – in which the very possibility of social actions being directed onto others comprises the basic problem. Although it occupies a highly significant place in all theories that begin with the concept of an abstracted individual, in the theoretical perspective developed here – one assuming an irreducible interdependency of human actions – it becomes basically pointless. The point would be rather to answer the question about what forms this interdependency can take under specific conditions of the post-modern society, or about the more lasting regularities that emerge in social life as a result of unceasing interactions between “individualized” people, i.e. individuals who have been equipped during socialization processes with such traits as egotism, emotionality, and a sense of ontological uncertainty, and who are directed in their actions by such ambitions as self-fulfilment, authenticity, and reflexivity. This question often eludes scholars describing the contemporary society, in which the shattering of old forms of sociality is accompanied, in the symbolic sphere of culture, by a strongly accentuated desire to “be oneself”, i.e. to emphasize one’s individuality and protect one’s autonomy. Surely, this does not favour discerning social processes hidden behind individual choices. It nevertheless does not change the fact that people “individualized” in this way are still subjected, in their real actions, to pressures and influences originating all the time from both other people and institutionalized collective actors who are guided by their own goals, create their own symbolic representations of reality, and propagate their

182  Processes of socializing individual actions own standards of behaviour. Thus, even if the society were to be like a camping site, it would be one where people make friends, communicate with neighbours from other tents or trailers, listen to the radio and watch television on portable TV sets, call or send text messages to family and friends, and buy at the shop ran by a brusque vendor. Kenneth Gergen captured this perfectly, remarking in his analysis of the process of social saturation that “[t]he range of one’s friends and associates expands exponentially, one’s past life continues to be vivid; and the mass media expose one to an enormous array of new criteria for self-evaluation. A friend from California reminds one to relax and enjoy life; in Ohio an associate is getting ahead by working eleven hours a day. A relative from Boston stresses the importance of cultural sophistication, while a Washington colleague belittles one’s lack of political savvy. A relative’s return from Paris reminds one to pay more attention to personal appearance, while a ruddy companion from Colorado suggests that one grows soft. Meanwhile newspapers, magazines, and television provide a barrage of new criteria of self-evaluation. Is one sufficiently adventurous, clean, well travelled, well read, low in cholesterol, slim, skilled in cooking, friendly, odor-free, coiffed, frugal, burglarproof, family-oriented?” (1991, 76). Although for most scholars of post-modernity – just like for most of us, really – the basic problem lies in finding the way in which the diversity and multiplicity of these influences affect the condition of the post-modern individual, contributing to the development of a sense of inadequacy (“there is no way to face them all”) or omnipotence (“what an ocean of possibilities!”), from the sociological perspective it seems much more interesting to ask how these pressures are selected and sifted in processes of sharing actions, which lead to the emergence of certain regularities in social life. Naturally, we have a strongly developed sense of individuality, which constitutes the psychological correlate of the individualization process, and certainly deeply feel that we need to make choices that will reflect our unique selves and distinguish them from others. Still, these introspective feelings should not obscure the reality that provides ceaseless evidence in favour of the social dissemination of our personal, “individualized” behaviours, confirming their dependence on the actions of others, with whom we interact not only directly but also with the help of the media. In other words, regardless of what is experienced by an individual confronted with a range of possible actions, some kind of decision is taken, invariably leading to actions that are incorporated into a network of relations with other people. It is in the course of ceaseless, ongoing, everyday interactions with others that processes of socializing individual actions unfold, making normative standards of actions acquire more specific contents, while individual solutions to recurring problems are selected as specific techniques of living, changing relations with others gain relative stability, and the fragmented knowledge about reality begins to be integrated. Although these processes occur primarily at the level of small groups based on mutual contacts, the current development of means of communication significantly expands the scope of solutions that will thus be developed, and the characteristically contemporary penchant for novelty – the sign of “being

Processes of socializing individual actions  183 cool” – immediately introduces such newly created contents into public circulation, where they become widely accessible. The fundamental problem in analyzing contemporary processes of socializing is certainly their dispersion and open-ended character, which basically makes all attempts to generalize about tendencies visible in individual actions seem equally justified and supported by the observed behaviours. Moreover, such generalizations are typically based on a specific “adding” of particular behaviours, while the criterion of their popularity does not seem to offer the best starting point for drawing conclusions in the processual approach developed in this study.7 Finally, to make matters even worse, sociology does not have at its disposal any solid theory of the socializing processes.8 This stems mainly from the fact that thus far there was no need for such a theory as sociologists focused on studying the products of this process in the form of the modern society. However, new concepts have been emerging for some time now, offering a chance to overcome this theoretical and methodological impasse. Among them we find the currently being developed theory of practices9 in which it is assumed that “the social is a field of embodied, materially interwoven practices centrally organized around shared practical understandings” (Schatzki 2001a, 3). Such a definition allows us to concur that the constitutive feature of socializing processes is the existence or production of a shared practical understanding, which consequently shifts the emphasis from actions themselves to the accompanying processes of sharing their meanings.10 There are several features that make this approach particularly valuable from the perspective of problems considered in this book, and simultaneously different from other ways of explaining social actions. First, by making the concept of practices the discipline’s fundamental datum, it aims to overcome the characteristically sociological dichotomy of structure and agency. Second, the interpretation of the concept of practice proposed in this approach goes a long way beyond indicating the habitual character of individual actions – to which we have become accustomed, at least through Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus – because practices would be rather identified with “the infrastructure of repeated interactional patterns” (Swidler 2001, 85; emphasis preserved), which makes them a property of larger social systems rather than only of individuals. Third, in this perspective a clear division emerges between the sphere of symbolic discourse and the sphere of concrete practices, not only because each is governed by different rules, but also because their mutual relations could constitute a separate object of study. The non-discursive character of social practices entails, fourth, that the content of a “shared practical understanding” should be reconstructed by analyzing the real actions of actors engaged in specific interactions11 rather than by examining individual utterances. Finally, and fifth, the shared character of this practical understanding causes the reproduction of specific practices to be equivalent to the production of a sense of belonging to a group (Swidler 2001, 83), thus establishing a supra-individual entity that individuals wish to maintain. As Ann Swidler writes, it is “the need to engage one another [that] forces people to return to common structures” (2001, 85). At the same time, she emphasizes

184  Processes of socializing individual actions that this minimal level of cooperation has to be secured also as part of interactions that have a clearly antagonistic character. In her analyses of specific cases, she also shows that new social practices are introduced not by creating individual habits but by publicly reproducing new patterns “so that ‘everyone can see’ that everyone else has seen that things have changed” (2001, 87; cf. also Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018, chapter 7). Let us thus adopt this perspective to consider today’s ongoing processes of socializing individual actions in an attempt to locate this “practically shared understanding” hidden in techniques of living created in their course, in relations with others, and in beliefs about the reality that surrounds us.

Techniques of living Generally speaking, most human actions – regardless of their individual motivations – arise from several basic imperatives determined by human biology. This concerns equally the sphere of “production” (i.e. actions aiming to provide means necessary for survival), the sphere of “consumption” (i.e. actions in which these resources are consumed), and the sphere of “reproduction” (i.e. actions undertaken to find a partner and possibly have children). Although the basic scope of these actions is conditioned by biological imperatives, it is easy to notice that – apart from certain extreme situations – in the course of everyday activities people do not struggle to merely survive, but rather to live in a way they regard as “natural”, appropriate and/or desirable (cf. Frankl 2006). What drives them is striving to achieve certain civilizational and cultural standards under conditions defined by available technologies, the type of social system, one’s individual position in it, and the character of the symbolic representations of reality we have come to exist in (cf. Marody 1991). Out of such actions there emerge regularities referred to here as “techniques of living”. Through them there manifests the characteristic form of socializing human actions, typical for a given time and place, which unites the level of everyday individual behaviours with the shapes of the social structures that emerge from them and which provides the basis for social differentiation of individuals. This form constitutes a specific product of possibilities created by technological development and systems of social institutions as well as their more or less creative uses by actors engaged in networks of social practices. While searching for such regularities characteristic for the contemporary society, one ought to draw attention primarily to three aspects of individual actions. First, the factor that determines the direction of these actions is always a certain vision of a good life – a vision limited by the individual’s social position but still containing a clear element of transgression or striving to overcome the material, social, and symbolic determinants of this position. Second, both the content of this vision and the possibility to realize it are – at a social scale – determined by the material shape of reality, i.e. structural and technological factors that define the broadest framework for actions. Third, the effectiveness of individual actions always depends on the position of the individual with regard to other people

Processes of socializing individual actions  185 because the place he or she occupies in the hierarchy of status largely determines the course of social interactions in which the more general techniques of living, an important aspect of social practices, are shaped. The significance of the individual’s status seems self-evident when we consider those possibilities of bringing others to cooperate with us in the realization of ours goals that are opened by power, money, or prestige. However, there is another factor that, as Alain de Botton argues, increases that significance, namely, that “predominant impulse behind our desire to succeed in the social hierarchy may lie not so much with the goods we can acquire or the power we can wield, as with the amount of love we stand to receive as a consequence of high status”.12 (2004, 11) At the same time, he emphasizes that, thanks to such reactions of our surroundings, in every society people of higher status can feel like “somebody” instead of feeling like a “nobody”, when they are disregarded by others. According to de Botton, this regard for status does not stem from some snobbish aspirations on the part of particular individuals, but rather constitutes a universal human trait rooted in the fact that our notions about ourselves, our selfesteem, as well as our successes and failures are conditioned by how others react to us,13 while their reactions prove to be closely connected to the social position we occupy. As a result, our actions are always accompanied by status anxiety, “a worry so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one” (3–4). One could thus say that regardless of more specific aspirations being involved in particular interactions, their inseparable element consists in generating, negotiating, and/or supporting individual statuses.14 In the individual dimension, status is the most general kind of meaning created in the course of realizing various techniques of living, and it is thanks to the connections formed between status and certain patterns of behaviour that these techniques produce both ideals of success characteristic for a given epoch, and specific visions of a good life, which determine individual actions. At first glance, today’s visions of good life seem to be still rooted in ideas developed in the heyday of the middle class society, i.e. at the turn of the 1970s.15 They still involve striving for a reasonably prosperous life in a loving family, with perspectives for advancement or at least for fostering the advancement of children,16 although – as I noted in Chapter 4 – basically all systemic conditions favouring the realization of these goals disappeared long ago. However, it was precisely this growing gap between goals approved by individuals and systemically available means for realizing them – the gap at the heart of Merton’s concept of anomie – that constituted one of the more important factors inclining individuals to search for new modes of action. Although this search has already gone far beyond the scope sketched by Merton in his schema of individual adaptations to a relatively stable system (1968, 193–194), and

186  Processes of socializing individual actions actually contributed to the shattering of that system, a closer consideration of it might help us to better understand the changes that it introduced into the world of individuals. Up until the middle of the twentieth century this world was organized around labour. Ulrich Beck rightly notes that “[e]ven outside of work, industrial society is a wage labor society through and through in the plan of its life, in its joys and sorrows, in its concept of achievement, in its justification of inequality, in its social welfare laws, in its balance of power and in its politics and culture” (1992, 208; emphasis preserved). However, as I show in Chapter 4, the elevation of labour to the rank of the basic area of human activity would not have occurred without tying it to the myth of individual success defined in terms of material well-being available to everyone who works hard enough, naturally within the framework created by “organized capitalism”. Thus, it was not work as such but material success that underpinned the value system in the capitalist society whose development – according to the once popular book by David C. McClelland (1967) – was supposed to be fuelled by a special kind of individual motivation, i.e. striving for achievement, which was set off by the combined impact of education, media, and the market.17 Not work but success would determine the individual’s position, at the same time lending it a clearly marked moral dimension. As Bell writes, “a man displayed his character in the quality of his work” (1978, 70), which would be measured by the wealth he amassed. The longer and harder the road to success, the greater the merit, as is perfectly illustrated by the American myth about the rise “from rags to riches”. Certainly, not everyone could take this road, but many would try. Importantly, completing at least a small stage of it would give the individual a sense of self-fulfilment and serve as a basis for claims to social respect. The first serious blow to this way of perceiving reality was dealt by the late1960s’ counterculture. It attacked the axiological basis of the modern society, revealing the ideological character of tying success to work. Counterculture regarded the capitalist system of work as enslaving, arguing that the pursuit of material success should be rejected as it endangers individual happiness. Solutions were seen in creating conditions under which people could regain their inborn ability to achieve self-fulfilment and experience spontaneous pleasure, rooted in authentic desires. Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter summarize this by saying, not without a certain amount of sarcasm, that “in the countercultural analysis, simply having fun comes to be seen as the ultimate subversive act. Hedonism is transformed into a revolutionary doctrine” (2010, 18). Without going into a polemic against the general assessment contained in this statement, let us just point out that this “hedonism” – understood as the appreciation of individual experience – was swiftly embraced by the middle class society. This is unsurprising if we recall that, since the late nineteenth century, society was subject to systematic and complex efforts that invariably entailed stimulating sales as the foundation of the economy. This purpose was served by the opening

Processes of socializing individual actions  187 of large and lavishly decorated department stores, the extension of the free time that could be devoted to buying goods and enjoying them, and above all the rapid development of advertising,18 which was gradually becoming a “major communications link between mass production and mass consumption” (Fowles 1996, 39). Thanks to the assembly-line production of standardized goods, the rise of workers’ wages, and instalment plans, what used to be a luxury in the past, available to few, gradually became the desired objects of ever greater segments of the population, over time turning into a necessity without which it would be hard to imagine a “normal” life.19 The countercultural revolution perfectly matched this context, fulfilling what Merton assumed to be the adaptive function of rebelling, because – at least initially – it established new goals and means of individual actions without affecting the core of the social system. As later commentators would often emphasize, it actually solidified that system by turning attention away from real social injustices and including individuals more fully in consumerist mechanisms.20 Still, even these critics would admit that young people’s ideals of individualism, self-fulfilment and authenticity were indeed completely different from the old Protestant values that used to constitute the normative basis for the functioning of the modern society (in all its historical forms), essentially remodelling the functioning of individuals. A detailed analysis of processes leading to this goes beyond the scope of this book. We just need to remember that the impact of countercultural values did not consist in a simple replacement of the culture of “success based on hard work” with the culture of “individualism based on maximization of hedonism”. During the past five decades these values were variously incorporated into strategies of individuals and institutionalized actors, disparately positioned in social space and, to a different degree, exposed to the necessity of adapting to rapidly changing living conditions. One could thus say that their impact derived its force mainly from their being available, i.e. indicating alternative aims as well as providing other possible means of achieving them and different systems of meaning, thanks to which the things happening to individuals and because of them have made sense.21 In some cases, this sense supported the system’s functioning, and questioned it in others, depending on what larger structures of social practice these values would give meaning to. In the transformation of these practices a crucial role was played by changes in the structural and economic context of actions – changes initiated by deep shifts in the economic system preceded by a recession in the 1970s. Signs that the post-war boom was stagnating after having elevated the standards of living of all social strata were becoming visible already in the mid-1960s, but the relaxation of monetary policy helped sustain that growth for a little while, albeit at the cost of rising inflation. However, in 1973 the oil crisis and attempts to curb inflation in particular countries led the Western world into a deep recession. Its most symbolic manifestation was the bankruptcy declared in 1975 by New York, a city with one of the largest public budgets in the world (Harvey 1995, 141–149).

188  Processes of socializing individual actions Attempts to fend off recession or shake it off forced the industrial corporations to seek new forms of organization and new means of action, significantly affecting previously formed expectations and social practices. Processes of restructuration and rationalization led to a steep rise in rates of unemployment, which leapt in both Europe and the US from 3–4 per cent towards the end of the 1960s to almost 10 per cent in the early 1980s. Inflation rose accordingly: from 2–4 per cent in the mid-1960s to 9–10 per cent in 1980. As a result, the fate of individuals began to depend on factors they would have no control over. Under such conditions it was difficult to stay convinced that hard work can help to achieve material success in life, as it became problematic to keep one’s job. The sense of success began to be sought ever more often among non-material achievements (cf. Inglehart 1990). Emerging from the crisis under conditions of a restructured economy did not favour a return to the old work ethic, either. A flexible economy enforced a flexible employment regime, which involved, for most employees, the necessity to constantly change the type and place of work, precluding the development of loyalty, engagement, and long-term orientation towards shaping one’s career in a given company (cf. Sennett 1999). Drifting from one job to another, people have been deprived of landmarks that in modernity were formed by long-standing relations with colleagues and superiors. In a constantly changing work environment the only stable point of reference would actually be one’s own self, still under pressure to achieve success yet nagged by doubts regarding the form it was supposed to take and ways of securing it. Both of these paths of transformation culminated in the rise of new technologies, which accelerated economic changes and completed the dethronement of work from the position of the main, “axial” area of human activity. New technologies facilitated transition from Fordist mass production of standardized goods to the system of flexible production focused on creating a diverse range of products in a given category, making them immediately adaptable to changing consumer tastes. Naturally, for these tastes to undergo any changes – or at least changes faster than ones determined by the processes of taking over “colonizing patterns” from higher strata of society (cf. Elias 2000) – they had to be separated from the old principles structuring society and made into a basic means of self-expression. Once again, just like in the earlier process of becoming accustomed to wellbeing, a fundamental role here was assumed by advertising as the key “communication link” between producers of goods and their consumers. Responding to the demands of the rising economy of diversity, advertising began to metamorphose from an information-based tool to one of the main sources of personality patterns and lifestyles (Fowles 1996), supplementing in this role the former, class-based habituses. And by becoming an inseparable part of the developing popular culture, it supplemented the processes identified by Beck as “liberation of individuals from social classes”, because advertising contributed to the separation of promoted patterns from their structural conditions due to the rhetoric of classlessness that dominated in it. One could say that in the early 1990s countercultural values were already fully incorporated into the repertoire of life goals among average citizens in

Processes of socializing individual actions  189 high-income countries, with the workplace as the main, “axial” field of human activity supplanted by the quality of life.22 Its normative basis involves ideas of self-fulfilment, authenticity, and reflexivity, but in practice the quality of life would be identified primarily with a life that is easy, colourful, and free from worries, both financial and spiritual. In other words – it would be a life as it is represented in advertising, which operationalizes these abstract ideas. Today, these two seemingly opposite symbolic systems – one focused on individual development and the other subordinated to consumerism – have a lot in common.23 Both take as their starting point the overriding value of “being oneself”, which orders all actions, the only difference being that whereas the ideology of self-fulfilment articulates this value mainly in psychological categories, advertising derives it from particular behaviours and aspirations of consumers. Both systems seem to programmatically resign from determining the one and only appropriate lifestyle, leaving it to individuals to choose from among the variety of paths and patterns of living24 in order to construct what Ulrich Beck calls the “do-it-yourself biography” (cf. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1996). Further, in both systems the only measure of having made the right choice is the feeling of contentment. Finally, both systems carefully avoid referencing those socially created differences which diversify, on the one hand, individual possibilities to make certain decisions, and on the other – the status-related consequences of these choices. It is thus possible to say that today both systems perform functions similar to those of the Protestant ethics at the dawn of modernity,25 namely giving direction to human desires, the only difference being that “intra-world asceticism” is replaced in the role of the key principle behind all actions by the “terror of pleasure”. At the same time, the way these functions are performed causes these systems to have limited power in stabilizing socially recognizable meanings created in the course of social interactions. Unlike the Protestant ethic generated from overall visions of the meaning of life and the role of labour – visions clearly separating proper actions from morally reprehensible ones – neither the ideology of self-fulfilment nor advertising tell us which lifestyle is appropriate, suggesting only how we should realize our selves and desires. Thus, not only do they fail to bridge the gap created in the processes of transforming “organized capitalism” into “disorganized capitalism”, but they actually widen it. Although disorganized capitalism still derives its legitimacy from the myth about universal accessibility of success, the side effect of changes that accompanied its emergence was the proliferation of problems with defining success, i.e. with establishing a shared practical understanding around which social practices could be organized. The individualization of consumerism, which intensified since the 1970s, caused formerly essential symbolic indicators of social position – expressed in distinct clothes, manners and cultural preferences – to dissolve in the constantly changing lifestyles and fashions, while the intensifying movements for equality and equal chances in life led to the loss of the sense of superiority previously derived from the very fact of being a white mature male who is “naturally” positioned higher than all the Black people, adolescents, or women.26 In other words, destandardization of the criteria for success began to be accompanied

190  Processes of socializing individual actions by a specific egalitarization of all indicators of social position, which inevitably entailed trouble with convincing our social environment (and in many cases, ourselves as well) that we have achieved success. Success is a relational concept – in order for us to enjoy it there must be others who envy us, take us as a model, or compete with us while striving to achieve everything that determines success. This concerns not only its commercialized version offered by advertising but also actions subordinated to the idea of selfrealization, in relation to which success should consist in independently discovering one’s authentic self that determines our identity, or our unique mode of existing in the world. After all, contrary to what eulogists of self-fulfilment claim (cf. especially Giddens 1991), “there is no such thing as inward generation [of identity], monologically understood. . . . My discovering my identity doesn’t mean that I work it out in isolation but that I negotiate it through dialogue, partly overt, partly internalized, with others” (Taylor 2003, 47). In other words, “our identity requires recognition by others” (45), which in turn demands establishing a shared horizon of meanings that give importance to some of the traits and achievements of individuals. Thus, although both currently dominant symbolic systems define success in terms of “being oneself”, the sense of achieving it depends on “being somebody” in the eyes of others. However, “being somebody” becomes increasingly difficult because the accelerating processes of blurring the modern hierarchy of statuses deprive people of their former frames of reference. This leads to the intensification of the feeling that Alain de Botton (2004) calls anxiety status, which causes a specific tension in interactions with others. It is this tension between being “oneself” and being “somebody” that seems to define today the major directions of individual actions, thus affecting the processes of their socializing in the area of techniques of living. To put it differently, although the basic goal of individual actions is supposed to be determined by the desire to discover or form one’s authentic identity, the techniques of living that emerge from these actions are subordinated primarily to the reduction of status anxiety. This anxiety would be related to the social position suggested by a given identity, or more precisely – by those of its external markers that are recognized by the social surroundings and that play the role of crucial signals. As Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter correctly observe, “if what people really wanted to establish was their individuality, they could do so quite easily, simply by acting randomly. But what we are all really after is not individuality, it is distinction, and distinction is achieved not only by being different, but by being different in a way that makes us recognizable as members of an exclusive club” (2010, 359). Membership in such a “club” is still correlated with financial success but, unlike in modernity, this kind of success does not constitute today a sufficient basis for claims to respect and in many cases seems to be the effect rather than the cause of social distinction.27 Under the influence of changes accompanying the shift from organized to disorganized capitalism, success has received a completely new structure. First of all, as the authors quoted argue, it is no longer measured by the

Processes of socializing individual actions  191 amassed wealth but by the income obtained from doing “cool” work in “cool” places inhabited by “cool” people. What may be even more important is that being cool seems to be a relatively easy goal to achieve. As advertising convinces us, along with today’s versions of the rags-to-riches myth – which are created and spread by popular culture28 – it is enough to be young, nonchalant, fashionably dressed, and most of all – simply want to be cool. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the conviction that to be “somebody” it is enough to be motivated and a bit lucky, with no need for hard work or extraordinary skill,29 has been reinforced by the development of biomedical science, which introduced to the market many solutions – some pharmacological and some surgical – that not only promise us freedom from all the factors generally seen as obstacles on our road to success (shyness, depression, ugliness), but also offer many ways of adapting one’s appearance to both the social standards of beauty and the internal convictions about one’s own self. Carl Elliott (2003) calls them collectively “enhancement technologies”. He indicates that the rising popularity30 of enhancement technologies stems paradoxically from the increasing anxiety about “being left behind” (2003, 298), or finding oneself among those who accept their failure right at the start. The side effect of using such “enhancement technologies” is the shift of emphasis from individual assets to all that could invite failure in the race towards a higher social status. One could say that, with all the preoccupation with success, which is so characteristic of the present day, the actions of individuals under conditions of post-modernity are fuelled and directed by variously understood individual deficits rather than by clearly defined social achievements. At the same time, the focus on deficits is increasingly often accompanied by a sense of coercion because, as Carl Elliott put it succinctly, “you can still refuse to use enhancement technologies, of course – you might be the last woman in America who does not dye her hair, the last man who refuses to work out at the gym – but even that publicly announces something to other Americans about who you are and what you value” (2003, 298). Let us only add that this is a kind of message one would prefer not to send out, because allowing clear signs of ageing to appear is considered in the post-modern society as one of the indicators of lower status.31 It is the sense of coercion accompanying the use of broadly understood enhancement technologies that testifies most clearly to the fact that what we are dealing with here are specific processes of socializing individual actions.32 Although the techniques of living that emerge from them are still directed towards achieving success, replacing the formerly overriding principle of striving to “be better” with the principle of trying “not to be worse” entirely changes the character of these techniques. “Worse” is what others do not desire – something that could confirm our individual originality but was not picked up by others. Paradoxically then, in a society where individualism or being cool (as advertising tries to convince us) is regarded as the highest value, the most recognizable mode of behaviour is imitating, “keeping up” with the fluctuating fashion trends, painstakingly following even the smallest hints promising to “make us distinct by not distinguishing”.

192  Processes of socializing individual actions One could thus say that the dominant property of today’s techniques of living is something that was perfectly captured in the slogan “Fuck the rules, watch the traffic” (cf. Wouters 1986, 15). This kind of “other-directedness” – pointed out already in the 1950s by David Riesman (1969) – seems to be today the most widespread strategy of reducing status anxiety. Although it does not guarantee we will become “somebody”, it at least pushes away the threat of becoming “nobody” in consequence of dropping out from the race to be classified in the basic hierarchy of statuses that in the post-modern society is constituted by being cool. The prevalence of such strategies certainly does not mean giving up the active search for the possibilities of being distinguished. All kinds of subcultures come to help in this respect, providing individuals not only with ready forms of “uniqueness” but also with a circle of people who recognize these forms. A similar function offering a “two in one” package is played by various lifestyle groups, which are meticulously crafted and reinforced by marketing. In both cases the sense of individualism is constructed through exposing specific differences33 and one’s choice to invest in them. In both cases the sense of being distinguished is also achieved by depreciating other cultures or lifestyles.34 However, such actions have limited effectiveness in relation to status building because – as Charles Taylor points out – “just the fact that people choose different ways of being doesn’t make them equal” (2003, 51; emphasis preserved). Although the place of hierarchically ordered positions from the epoch of modernity is now taken by a “remix culture”35 that allows us to freely combine various styles, ultimately causing that a different look or behaviour is no longer the source of information about differences in social status, instead expressing differences in cultural preferences or even moods, people still actively seek out the markers of high status, especially because some of them are characterized by surprising longevity.36 In her book Watching the English Kate Fox rightly notes that “though fashion magazines regularly proclaim that ‘Nowadays, anything goes’, this is clearly not the case” (2014, 816). According to her, this is confirmed for instance by the letters that female readers send to women’s magazines, asking what one is “supposed” to wear with what, on what occasions, and in which venues. Primarily, however, this is attested to by the existence of discernible rules that bind certain behavioural habits to social position. This primarily concerns those habits that Pierre Bourdieu (1986) included in the category of the cultural capital transferred through contacts with people from one’s immediate surroundings, and something that Norbert Elias (2000) labels with the category of civilité – forms of behaviour developed by representatives of the upper classes in order to mark their position. These include ways of speaking, dressing, behaving at the table, and other everyday activities subjected to scores of nuanced regulations we become soaked in during primary socialization. By not knowing them, we explicitly reveal our origin, at least in contacts with representatives of the upper classes.37 Although an upper-class mother may go on complaining today that her children “look just like those yobbos from the council estate” (Fox 2014, 834), an acute observer will note that they do not look exactly

Processes of socializing individual actions  193 alike, and that even in the most democratic group comprised of today’s youth we can discern differences arising from social position.38 We need to remember, however, that although all these differences have the power to exclude, and thus constitute efficient tools for refusing to acknowledge the success one could have achieved in other fields, due to changes in social structure – its general “flattening” and the fact that in most societies the older upper class clearly yields before the new elites, which may not have been consolidated yet but thanks to media visibility undermine their predecessors’ claims to dominance – the former concept of higher status is losing its clarity and ceases to be recognizable in broader social circles. In this sense, groups that refer to the principle of difference (subcultural and lifestyle-related) as well as groups that are hierarchized in terms of status share the same fallacy: although the community of signs they create guarantees individual respect from group insiders, it becomes meaningless on the outside. This happens partly because of the changes in establishing and maintaining relations brought about by the rise of new means of communication, especially the Internet. As many analyses suggest (cf. Castells 2001a, 2001b; Wellman 2003, 2002, 2001; Granovetter 1973), these changes contain, in germinal form, the potential for a thorough remodelling of interpersonal relations. I shall return to this later – at this point I merely want to underline that new communication technologies are being widely used by people to reduce the characteristically post-modern deficit of respect. This is confirmed at least by the huge popularity of social media, which are turning from forums where one boasts about one’s achievements into a social space where amassing “likes”39 replaces any formal testimony to “being somebody”, while the sheer number of visitors at a given page can be seen as an explicit indicator of one’s position.40 This relatively new positioning strategy – one that is not limited to life online but has its counterpart offline  – entails two changes that warrant our attention. First, the shift of emphasis from economic to social capital leads to a redefinition of success. In the case of the former it was indexed by wealth, but in the latter it begins to be measured by “social visibility”, i.e. one’s position in a network of friends and acquaintances to whom one may turn both with serious and with trivial matters. Second, utilizing this kind of strategy demands that individuals adopt behaviours and skills entirely different from those that would be helpful in earning traditionally understood social recognition. The world of hierarchized statuses, along with its homogenous sphere of values, was a world of merits: in order to achieve a higher position, the individual had to undertake real actions consistent with the group habitus as a whole. In turn, the networked world, egalitarian in terms of status and differentiated in terms of professed values, is a world of promises and potentialities. Individual attractiveness and, consequently, position are derived in this world from experiences and impressions elicited from others.41 Effective self-promotion requires the skill of “strategically manipulating”42 one’s own image, “managing impressions”, and “developing one’s brand”43 – everything that could be consciously put to use in order to draw attention to oneself,

194  Processes of socializing individual actions thus making oneself an important node in people’s own “personalized network communities”. Let us note here that, on a social scale, these are relatively new skills, not only because they involve using new means of communication (as I already mentioned, networks of acquaintances are also formed offline), but primarily because, due to the conditions of socialization described in the previous chapter, individuals have not had a chance to practise them in the earliest stages of their lives.44 Luckily, they are not left to themselves in acquiring these skills, as a host of experts come to help. For we note also in this sphere of life the emergence of various “enhancement technologies” produced by developments in social sciences. Towards the end of the twentieth century, decades of analytical effort led to a tremendous growth of specialized knowledge about factors found at the base of success in human interactions. After being catalogued and translated into the language of everyday situations this knowledge has become the subject of expert opinions and numerous how-to books demonstrating step by step how to become creative, socially attractive, assertive, happy, how to develop leadership and teamwork skills, how to find a partner, communicate a specific image of ourselves, etc. Everything that seemingly used to depend on one’s “natural”, inborn traits can now be achieved through personal training, beauty treatments, consultations with image specialists, or reading How to Walk in High Heels.45 At first glance, the emergence and dissemination of such knowledge merely supplemented the message carried in advertising, reinforcing the conviction about the ability to control one’s fate and adding another argument to believing in the equality of conditions for success. By breaking down interaction competences into their “primary elements” practised under the watchful eye of a specialist, you might find it easier to inspire sympathy and trust in those people on whom your success depends, while reading Cosmopolitan regularly might make every woman into an irresistible goddess of love. Were we to look out for differences between advertising and these how-to books, they would primarily lie in a different distribution of focus: advertising focuses on creating an image of success, whereas self-help guides demonstrate how to achieve success by following more or less “scientific” methods. It is also easy to notice that the proliferation of such guides radically affects the very foundation of individual functioning because it introduces, in accounts of individual actions, a perspective entirely different from that referenced in advertising. The place of consumers analyzing the continually growing supply of various goods and related meanings is taken by multidimensional psychological entities entangled in interdependencies and striving to make an appropriate impression on each other. Communication between them ceases to be limited to exchanging hallmarks of status and begins to involve, on an ever greater scale, conscious manipulation of emotions and information. At the same time, the knowledge acquired by users demands that they remain watchful and keep analyzing themselves. In other words, the “expertization” of actions is accompanied by their increasing psychologization.46

Processes of socializing individual actions  195 This phenomenon is part of a larger process in which various kinds of therapies are incorporated into mass culture. The process certainly has its roots in the normative idea of self-fulfilment analyzed in the previous chapter. However, the fact that this idea is popularized in such a way seems to be particularly significant. It is not only a question of therapy ceasing to be a specialist treatment, a role it occupied for a long time, and becoming basically an element of lifestyle, making a personal therapist as obvious in certain circles as having a personal hairdresser or masseur. It is also a question – perhaps primarily even – of its tasks being overtaken by other segments of mass culture. These are not just the more or less specialized therapists but every magazine, TV programme, and newspaper – not to mention literature, film, or TV talk shows47 – that advise us how to reach selfrealization and where to seek emotional fulfilment. If we add to this the increasing number of various “personal development” courses organized by specialized firms, which offer knowledge located somewhere between the “technical” character of guides and the more “ideological” dimension of mass culture, there emerges an image of contemporary symbolic sphere that is oversaturated with contents referring to widely understood psychology and that makes the individual the centre of the universe, taking individual feelings as the measure of all things. The ubiquity of such contents causes people to become imbued with them whether they like it or not, thus affecting the way in which we perceive ourselves, our lives, and our actions. The main function of such therapeutic themes permeating mass culture seems to be to alleviate the basic tension between being “somebody” and being “oneself” by indicating possible paths of action, perfecting specific skills (especially interpersonal competences), and boosting one’s self-esteem. However, it seems that their hidden function is ever more important. It consists in shifting significance from material success to maximization of psychological well-being and self-fulfilment. If certain additional criteria are met, this kind of influence could lead in a longer perspective to complete redefinition of success as the superior value guiding human actions, which was the systemic foundation of the modern society and which still performs a supporting function in contemporary capitalism. This influence is nevertheless still dispersed, just like the more specific techniques of living with which people try to develop their do-it-yourself biographies. What unites them at a more general level is, as I already mentioned, the focus on the quality of life. However, neither the ways of understanding this goal nor the kinds of actions taken to achieve it have turned so far into recognizable patterns of techniques of living. At best, we can concur that these techniques are still stretched between the desire to “be somebody”, which can be fully realized only in a systemically determined institutional framework, and the desire to “be oneself”, which breaks this framework, deepening the systemic indeterminacy and anomie diagnosed earlier. Thus, in order to throw more light on the ongoing processes of socializing individual actions we need to examine the way in which people come into closer

196  Processes of socializing individual actions contact, creating social bonds that make them part of broader social groups, since only such groups can unify meanings created in the course of social practices.

Forming social bonds At the basis of human interactions we always find some form of identification with others. Regardless of whether these are anonymous people we share the beach with,48 our closest family, members of the local community, or compatriots, it is thanks to acknowledging one’s membership in a specific collectivity that individuals become prone to subordinating their actions to clues coming from their environment, acquiring as a result some kind of social identity defined in categories of a collective We.49 This act of categorization can be conscious or not, given or assigned, covering collectivities of a different degree of cohesiveness, structuration, permanence, or size; it can also concern prosaic, everyday behaviours or actions that change the fate of larger communities. This does not change the fact that we find it at the root of all those processes which, by generating a shared meaning of a we-identity, transform individual actions into specific “forms of being with and for one another”. The firm character of these statements seems to collide with the widespread view of contemporary society, which emphasizes the image of autonomous individuals who make choices about their actions and independently construct their biographies in a world characterized by a progressing dissolution of social bonds. Such a vision of the homo clausus, or the “we-less I” as Elias (2001) calls it, dominates not only in academic writing and literature, but permeates the feelings of individuals because “the greater impermanence of we-relationships, which at earlier stages often had the lifelong, inescapable character of an external constraint, puts all the more emphasis on the I, one’s own person, as the only permanent factor, the only person with whom one must live one’s whole life” (Elias 2001, 204). Undoubtedly, at the basis of such visions and ideas we find the previously analyzed processes of transforming the modern society, which led to the break-up of groups and communities characteristic for that form of social organization.50 The accompanying changes in interpersonal relations are typically described by reference to the concept of “weak ties” introduced by Mark Granovetter (1973). According to him, the key feature of relations between two people is their strength, which results from the amount of time invested in contacts, emotional intensity, trust, closeness, and mutual help. Strong ties between people act as a source of emotional and social support for them, and as a basis for other forms of help. Weak ties, on the other hand, are crucial primarily for the flow of information, because people linked by them usually have different knowledge, which causes the contacts between them to contribute to individual information resources, and – under certain conditions – to the integration of people into larger communities. Granovetter’s model gained immense popularity with the rise of the Internet because it seemed to perfectly explain the nature of relations established through this medium as well as the specificity of the virtual groups created online. But the move from the dominance of strong ties, determined by the individual’s place in

Processes of socializing individual actions  197 a given community (family, workplace, school etc.) to the dominance of weak ties established between interacting people could also be observed earlier in real life due to the general direction of changes including both the processes of structural individualization (Beck 1992) and the general increase in the amount of frequently transient contacts between people, fostered by the development of new means of communication, both spatial and symbolic (Gergen 1991). However, the very dominance of weak ties in interpersonal relations does not justify constantly evoking the vision in which individuals are autonomous and lonely, especially because empirical data unambiguously documents people’s entanglement in the networks of social contacts and interdependencies. As Barry Wellman has shown in his studies, towards the end of the last century North Americans would average over a thousand interpersonal ties (Wellman and Gulia 1999). Despite most of them being rather casual, about half a dozen were very close ties, while around fifty would be strong. What is more, also in the case of online communities – a classic example of ones based on weak ties – one could indicate evidence of people mutually supporting one another, which is a feature typical for strong ties (cf. Castells 2001a, chapter 5; Mazurek 2003; Olcoń-Kubicka 2009). Thus, were we to trace the source of the lasting character of the homo clausus vision in social sciences and of the overwhelming sense of being separate, as featured in people’s statements, it would not lie in the changing strength of ties but in the nature of the communities created by them. Analyzing changes in this area, Barry Wellman (2002) writes about the current transition from place-to-place connectivity to person-to-person connectivity. The former would be typical for traditional communities of modernity, in which individual life would be focused around home, neighbourhood, work, or social organization. Since the number of groups that an individual could be a member of was slight, their boundaries being clearly demarcated and their structure hierarchic, everyone would be perfectly aware of their place and role, their rights and duties. The direct character of interactions facilitated a high level of social control, while the dependency of the individual on the group guaranteed his or her loyalty and conformism in relation to the group’s rules. Along with the changes entailed by economic growth and the development of means of communication (cf. Wellman 2001; Gergen 1991), this world of “little boxes” began to crumble. Then, with the severing of the relation between physical location and access to latest communication technologies such as smartphones or the Internet, interpersonal relations have been ultimately remodelled. The place of group-centric relations is now being taken by network-centric relations, with the individual becoming their central switch. At the same time, people’s network contacts constitute a tool for realizing individual interests and ambitions rather than a derivative of roles that they play in particular groups. In other words, “new communication technologies are helping each individual to personalize his or her own community” (Wellman et al. 2003, 17; emphasis added) and constantly remain in contact with it, regardless of the physical distance separating individual members who do not even have to know one another.

198  Processes of socializing individual actions The concept of “personalized communities” covers a wide scope of human groups, ranging from ones whose sociological existence depends solely on a given person who plays the function of a central node, as in the case of groups of friends and acquaintances in some social networks,51 to ones that at first glance do not differ from traditional communities, as in the case of contemporary family. What links them and allows us to refer to them with a single term is primarily the emphasis on the individual act of inviting others into the network for reasons important to the individual, be they emotional, cognitive, or instrumental. Unlike in the world of “little boxes”, where people’s identities and contacts were derived from being socially ascribed to specific groups, in the world of “personalized communities” the factors that determine these contacts, and consequently the nature of groups emerging from them, include personal predilections, aspirations, dispositions, and ambitions. Thus, the point is not that people are no longer tied to each other anymore but rather that these ties are changing their character, less and less often leading to the creation of communities in which individuals would belong entirely, their goals and norms subordinated to those of the whole collectivity to the degree that causes them to be basically indistinguishable. In other words, we observe the disappearance of the kind of identification with others that consists in prioritizing the wellbeing of the community over that of the individual – an identification lying at the foundation of a model that is also considered today as a specific ideal: a model of a group in which members are tied not only by social but also by moral bonds. This process of disappearing is best visible when we examine the changes within the family in the past one hundred years. A prototype of such communities since the beginning of modernity, the family played two functions in that type of society, as is demonstrated in Chapter 2. On the one hand, it would embody Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft, offering the basic environment for shaping those moral and social attitudes that served as the foundation of larger systemic structures. On the other hand, by establishing the domain of privacy it became the training ground for experiencing one’s individuality and exercising autonomous behaviour. In time, the importance of the former function began to wane,52 whereas individualization and autonomy gained significance, which has ultimately led to the emergence of the kind of family that we know today – one constituting a “personalized community” formed by individuals seeking their own emotional fulfilment. Two important correlates of this process were pointed out already in the 1970s by Richard Sennett, who argues that it was accompanied by, “first, the transmutation of nineteenth-century eroticism into modern sexuality, and second, a transmutation of nineteenth-century terms of privacy into twentieth-century terms of intimacy” (1980, 92). In his view, these changes led to an overwhelming psychologization of social life due to the worry that “one has no self until one tells another person about it” (103). It also bred the conviction that cooperation with others consists precisely in talking about oneself. By introducing the concept of the “destructive Gemeinschaft” to refer to those relations in which partners demand the right to confide, to reveal the deepest and most intimate recesses of one’s soul, to endorse absolute openness enabling one to share feelings, constructing a world

Processes of socializing individual actions  199 experienced together, Sennett argues that their destructive potential consists in the fact that the “question of unity of impulse becomes [in them] more important than discussion or defence of common interests” (107). Although Sennett’s text was primarily an attack on the narcissistically understood cult of self-fulfilment,53 it simultaneously signalled one more key shift in relations linking individuals to others. Sennett demonstrated that the focus on constructing a community of experiences and feelings paradoxically leads to the accentuation of the transactional character of these relations. Other people become important to us owing not to their special traits or to what they bring into the relationship, but primarily because of their usefulness, assessed from the perspective of the individuals’ development. This development would naturally be determined by the protection of one’s “authenticity”, which excludes the possibility of striking any compromises with the “authenticity” of another person. This combination of the tendency to establish close, intimate relations, and the tendency to obsessively preserve independence intensified later, but its evaluation has changed. In his study of intimacy, Anthony Giddens (2004) devotes two chapters to the dangers arising from excessive dependency on another person, referencing a large body of how-to books, and emphasizes that “intimacy is not being absorbed by the other, but knowing his or her characteristics and making available one’s own” (2004, 94). Unlike Sennett, he positively assesses the tendency to retain independence, even at the cost of maintaining a given relationship, because he identifies dependency with a specific form of addiction, which causes the “inability to colonise the future and as such transgresses one of the prime concerns with which individuals now reflexively have to cope” (2004, 76). Interestingly, reconciling intimacy with independence appears in this work as a kind of moral duty, which is clear from the statement that “what is at issue here is a basic transition in the ethics of a personal life as a whole” (96; emphasis added). Summing up these revaluations, Andrzej Leder notes that the concept of addiction – originally used in reference to purely physiological conditions like alcoholism or drug abuse – made an incredible career towards the end of the twentieth century and is now more and more often used to describe relations between people. Such relations would be adverse because of their hindering effect on individuals who seek self-fulfilment and happiness. The contemporary ideal is independence. It arises by rejecting all limitations, including (perhaps even primarily so) those stemming from the obligations imposed on us by all forms of permanent relations with other people. As Leder writes, “one is supposed to control one’s life at all times. Given this, any lasting relation has to be viewed as something that has been imposed arbitrarily and unjustly insofar as it limits one’s control” (Leder 2006, 10). At the beginning of the twenty-first century the imperative to set oneself free from both social and psychological ties became so widely accepted that it developed into an interiorized coercion. It does cause, however, a specific tension because the defence of individual independence collides with the equally clear cultural imperative to seek individual self-fulfilment in intimate relations, which – due to their closeness and emotional intensity – allow individuals the

200  Processes of socializing individual actions fullest insight into their own selves. Thus, it is the tension between closeness and distance that seems today to be the main factor determining the direction of socializing processes in the area of social bonds. Let us note here that this tension is nothing new because it emerged at the dawn of modernity when individualization processes were first initiated. The modern society dealt with it in a specific way, i.e. by subordinating both tendencies to two different spheres of life. Desires stemming from the need for closeness were supposed to be fulfilled in the private sphere, whereas distance was supposed to regulate relations established in the public sphere. This was accompanied by the emergence of two different types of bonds and corresponding types of communities: in the private sphere – the family as the basic form of Gemeinschaft, subject to natural will at the base of which we find emotions and tastes; and in the public sphere – the arbitrarily created associations, or Gesellschaft, based on shared interests and rationality.54 In contemporary post-modern society, however, this division collapsed, not only as a result of the transformations that led to the breakdown of the traditional family and the dissolution of social bonds found at the basis of local and supra-local association (cf. e.g. Putnam 1995), but also due to the blurring of the boundary between the public and the private spheres. When consideration and functionality are introduced into the most intimate amorous relations and treated as the basis of intentionally designed projects of self (cf. Giddens 1991), while the public sphere is invaded by individual emotionality manifesting both in increasingly less formal nature of relations with others55 and in debates on issues formerly regarded as private,56 it is difficult to avoid frequent clashes between different expectations related to intimacy and independence. Individual attempts at dealing with these expectations are expressed, on the one hand, in the fetishization of the family, and on the other – in the ever more ­frequent decision to remain single. Although the family has now become particularly impermanent, its position in the hierarchy of human aspirations is not lowered. On the contrary, we can observe the intensification of efforts to seek “the other half” through divorcing and remarrying. Thus, we are led to agree with ­Sennett, who writes: “As long as warm intimate relations are given such moral priority, familism will continue, no matter how frequently people divorce and remarry, no matter how unusual their sexual practices, no matter how many affairs they conduct in search of someone who ‘understands’ them” (1980, 120). The search for closeness, which results from the aforementioned complex processes accompanying the legitimization of emotions as a significant component of social life, is not limited to repeated attempts at forming the traditional family that would simultaneously conform to the ideal of “pure relations”, but leads to the emergence of new kinds of more or less permanent relations of a quasifamilial character. These include both the so-called civil partnerships – ­­heteroand ­homosexual  – which differ from traditional families mainly by not being legitimized in law,57 and various models of a partly shared life, which ­constitute attempts to reconcile intimacy with independence, e.g. living-apart-together ­relationships (LAT), “friendly lovers” or “friends with benefits”.

Processes of socializing individual actions  201 At the other end of the scale we find such individual strategies as the increasingly frequent choice to live alone, which in turn constitutes the effect of accentuating the need to retain independence. Certainly, being single is a broader category that includes compulsory loneliness (owing to divorce, death of a spouse, lack of interest from those on the “marriage market”), but it does become increasingly often a matter of conscious choice.58 In many cases it does not stem from necessity but is often an informed decision taken because one needs to focus on one’s career, has high expectations of a potential partner, or takes advantage of the generally accepted sexual freedom, which makes it easier to obtain satisfaction without entering a more lasting relationship. Singles are young, urban, educated, freelancing, and convinced that no relationship is worth giving up their freedom for. This model has been undoubtedly popularized by mass culture59 but it is also possible to indicate the influence of more objectified factors such as the properties of today’s capitalism, which rewards the employees’ availability and the “passion” they display in work, the rise of “consumer culture”, which affects the shape of interpersonal relations (cf. Miles 2002), and finally, the development of means of communication that facilitate creating “personalized communities”. Between the two extremes of family life and being single lies a variety of ­“fractional relationships” – as Kenneth Gergen calls them (1991, 212–217) – which are “specialized”, and thus are “held separate from the remainder of one’s existence” (214). This separation is based on the assumption that relations with others “do not require full expression of self; one is free to express a delimited aspect without responsibility to the remainder, to coherence or consistency” (214). One special characteristic of such relationships is the fact that they allow one to find intimacy without obligations. Their emblematic manifestation is the relation with the therapist, but this category includes also the kinds of behaviour that offer individuals the possibility to immediately overcome intimate distance in contacts with others. The most frequently quoted example of this concerns transformations of sexuality, but there are also entirely novel forms of action that stem from changes in communication. One well recognized example is couch surfing, or emotional tourism (cf. Bialski 2007), which relies on a network of people offering others not only a place on their couch but also friendly exchange of the most intimate thoughts and experiences. What links this variety of actions oriented towards intimacy without obligations is the emphasis on the emotional aspect of interactions, which are usually individualized and geared towards stimulating personal development or satisfying individual needs rather than creating a more or less stable sense of community.60 The place of the individual in such relationships becomes analogous to the status of the Stranger, about whom Simmel wrote that “to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction” (1950, 402), simultaneously emphasizing that being a stranger grants one specific freedom for it makes one “bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given” (405; emphasis added).

202  Processes of socializing individual actions In the relations we observe today it is also possible to discern another property that Simmel ascribes to the Stranger, namely the “proportion of nearness and remoteness” (405), the ability to establish close or even intimate relations that are nevertheless limited temporally or spatially. As Simmel writes, it is “characteristic of relations founded only on generally human commonness” (407). This means that “strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type” (407), which in turn “finds practical expression in the more abstract nature of the relation to him” (405). Simmel’s characterization of the Stranger perfectly renders all the properties of contemporary individuals identified in many studies: their specific social “autism” that stems from egocentrism,61 the ease with which they establish (and terminate) relations without precluding intense emotional engagement,62 the ability to distance oneself from other people, ideas and oneself, as well as the indeterminacy of the individual’s social position caused by the coexistence of competing hierarchic systems in social reality (cf. Marody 2012). At the same time, we need to remember that the situation of the post-modern individual is fundamentally different from the status of the Stranger. In the world of “little boxes”, comprised by integrated communities, Simmel’s Stranger had his own group to which he could return and which was for him a source of we-identity, whereas contemporary individuals, despite being surrounded with “personalized communities”, seem to exist in a state of permanent alienation. In other words, despite the complexity of networks, which arises from the increasingly aspectual character of “being-shared-with-others” and growing interdependency of human actions, the typically post-modern tension between the need for closeness and the need for independence prevents people from entering into relationships that could lead to the creation of more stable communities forming a universally recognizable social identity, standardizing individual actions, and improving orientation in social space (cf. Straub 2002). What is taking their place then? Answering this question certainly cannot rely on indicating the “personalized communities” because, as I argue earlier, they are subordinated to the construction of the individual self and not the we-identity that would form the most general kind of meaning created in contacts with others. Instead, answers should be sought in the area of collective and public actions because it is social visibility that constitutes the basis for recognizing the identities created in their course. One of the better-known and simultaneously most general concepts that meet these criteria is that of neo-tribalism, developed by Michel Maffesoli (1996) in the late 1980s. The concept of neo-tribes accounts for a specific kind of community that emerges on the ground of shared emotions. Neo-tribes differ from other social groups insofar as they “have no need to set goals or develop projects – ­economic, political, or social – they would wish to realize. Instead, they cherish being together, enjoying the moment’s intensity, and making the best of the world as it is” (6–7). Thus, they become in this sense the basic, rudimentary form of “being-shared-with-others” that stems from “the emotive need for human ­society, a giving and receiving in affective relationships to other people”,

Processes of socializing individual actions  203 which – as Norbert Elias rightly notes – “is one of the fundamental conditions of human existence” (2001, 201). According to Maffesoli, the emergence of tribal forms of sociality constitutes an answer to individualization, which leaves many lonely and isolated. People seek communities that would give them a sense of being together and satisfy the hunger for emotional belonging without imposing on them any serious obligations. Anything could serve as the foundation for such “association:” specific sexual practices,63 consumerism-related preferences,64 and even particular emotions underlying public actions.65 However, each of these “foundations” is rather a pretext for revealing a certain kind of energy based on “animal-like” attraction. This is the way in which we observe the manifestation of “sociality . . . an informal centrality that assures the perdurability of life in society” (1996, 4). Regardless of the specific language employed by Maffesoli, his unquestionable merit in this era of bemoaning the dissolution of social bonds consists in drawing attention to the special kind of communities that are particularly characteristic of metropolitan life66 and offers people a new kind of division into Us and Them. Such communities can take many forms, ranging from largely anonymous circles of sports and music fans, patrons of fashionable clubs or members of a given online forum, through loose groups that have their roots in subcultures or socioprofessional contacts, to small circles of friends eagerly portrayed in many products of mass culture.67 All of them are geared towards generating shared emotions, and all of them produce certain myths, symbols, and rituals during their existence, thus performing the fundamental function of base groups, i.e. constructing shared knowledge. What distinguishes the neo-tribes from traditional tribes is primarily the specifically aspectual character of “being-shared-with-others” they offer as well as the fact that membership in a given neo-tribe does not stem from being born in it but is a question of individual choice. Moreover, such affiliation is not permanent and exclusive as one can enter into several neo-tribes on a single day because they “are unstable, since the persons of which these tribes are constituted are free to move from one to the other” (Maffesoli 1996, 6). They also exercise far weaker social control, meaning that all members can “be themselves” and are not forced to subordinate their actions to some superior goal set by the group, or to adapt their actions to specific forms.68 Although the defining feature of neo-tribes is the presence of emotional ties, they nevertheless differ among themselves due to the strength of these ties. The “loosest” type is the one that creates a specific “emotional aura”.69 Such neo-tribes are usually formed around certain places, real or virtual, and are characterized by a relatively high degree of people flowing in and out, their only “obligation” to the community being participation in creating this aura. Greater emotional engagement is demanded by circles that have a socio-professional foundation, which stems chiefly from the fact that they are rather stable in terms of membership. To some extent they resemble an extended family with which we share ties even if we dislike some of its individual members. As Sennett (1999) demonstrates in his analysis of changes in the attitude towards work, in such circles loyalty to the

204  Processes of socializing individual actions entire community is no longer enforced, as a result of which relations between individual members become much more personalized, sometimes leading to the intensification of negative feelings, or even taking the form of mobbing. Victims of mobbing basically have no other option but to change jobs, with the exception of the situation when they can win the emotional support of the group.70 Finally, the most emotionally engaging type of communities is constituted by small circles of friends.71 They impose certain obligations on their members, among which the fundamental role is played by the duty to provide “emotional support”. Readers or cinemagoers who know Bridget Jones’s Diary may recall the repeated states of alarm caused by the emotional turmoil experienced by the protagonist and other persons from her small circle of close friends, which call for an immediate meeting and discussion of the problem at hand. It is these groups of emotional support and not the dyadic intimate relationships that constitute model examples of Giddens’s “pure relation” because they offer a safe haven where people can reveal their true feelings without experiencing shame and hiding behind the screen of social conventions. However, their role is not limited solely to emotional acceptance and confirming that Jude behaved well while Vile Richard is an “emotional fuckwittage”. They also constitute a circle where intellectual interpretations are offered along with potential solutions to the given problem. Neo-tribes seem to be the main way of reducing the fundamental post-modern deficit created by the dominance of “personalized communities” in the area of social bonds. They provide a sense of belonging to a larger whole, offering a more or less stable we-identity, at the same time minimizing the fear of becoming addicted to others. Still, one can also point to at least two other present forms of settling the key dilemma faced by contemporary individuals, who are torn between the need for closeness and the need to remain distanced. The first assumes the form communities build around certain beliefs that, for some reasons, have the power to crystallize total visions of the world. Such beliefs cover a wide scope: from fundamentalist, comprehensive systems based on main world religions, through separate ideas like being “pro-life” or calling for environmental protection, to the most blurred explanations of certain events or phenomena, as in the case of conspiracy theories surrounding the 2010 plane crash in Smoleńsk (cf. Marody 2011) or visits of extra-terrestrial beings. The communities of belief founded around them usually have a more stable character. Although membership in such communities is still characterized by a specific “fractional character”, they are able – thanks to the cohesiveness of knowledge and, ­consequently, of behaviour – to generate a certain system of meanings that form a recognized social identity. A slightly different case is comprised by the second method of settling the dilemma of closeness and distance – one that has led to the emergence of communities of issue. The flourishing of such communities has been closely ­connected with the rise of the Internet, which – as Castells pointed out quite early on (2001c) – favours establishing very close, sometimes even intimate contacts based on a sense of similarity. As many studies show, this similarity can concern not only such dimensions as similar cultural background, personality,

Processes of socializing individual actions  205 appearance, or interests, but also some life situations in which those people have found ­themselves. This is how communities focused around specific issues are born – ones gathering owners of rare and thus troublesome cars (e.g. the Beetle, the Trabant), people suffering from varicose veins, women trying to get pregnant or avoiding it, women who have lost their babies or just given birth, etc. The basis of interactions in these communities is the exchange of information, but their indispensable component is also negotiating meanings that comprise the social identity of individuals. Both community types play a significant role in the process of making social knowledge more cohesive. I  shall return to this later. At this stage, it suffices to say that, regardless of the differences between these new communal forms, they are unified in being firmly rooted in the social character of the post-modern individual. They constitute a specific product of one’s egotism, emotionality, and ontological uncertainty, and simultaneously offer a specific answer to the needs, conflicts, and dilemmas that arise from these features. We can thus expect them to grow stronger in the foreseeable future. At the same time, however, it is easy to notice that the forms of identification they create are characterized by transience and fragmentation of the collective We, which entails the fragmentation of the basic system of meanings that shape individual identity. This means that individuals are deprived of a stable frame of reference that could help them make choices in the multiplicity of culturally constructed worlds and find answers to the questions about what they should believe in, who they are, and who they could be. This is best visible in the case of exemplary neo-tribes – flash mobs, which radically homogenize the actions of individuals for a brief moment.72 However, already in the case of relatively stable forms of neo-tribalism, which include the friendship-based groups of emotional support, the processes of socializing actions are limited to a minimum. Although these groups develop potential strategies of behaviour for individuals to choose from during their ritual meetings, it is usually the case that in emotional support groups we practise conversations we will never have and make decisions we will never follow. After leaving the café, Jude will keep crying about Vile Richard (whom she marries anyway towards the end of the novel) and hesitating whether to call him or not, and, giving in to an impulse, will finally make the call. This does not matter because her actions do not affect the group’s attitude towards her, since the emotional support group does not require consistency in thinking and acting, accepting us “the way we are”. Although at first glance they may seem different, communities of issue work similarly, definitely contributing to a large degree to sharing knowledge among engaged individuals, which could also serve as a basis for processes of identification. However, the point is that this knowledge usually regards only a small piece of reality limited either in temporal terms – e.g. pregnancy (cf. Olcoń-Kubicka 2009) – or in terms of scope, e.g. manga and anime fandom (cf. Królik 2011). It is thus difficult to derive from it any conclusions about the meaning of life. Thus, although we should not underestimate their significance for processes of socializing actions, also in this case they do not provide a solid foundation for developing a firm social identity.

206  Processes of socializing individual actions This specific deficiency of new forms of communal life seems to derive from the fact that all of them are subordinated to defending the basic value of the postmodern society: individual independence. Emerging as attempts to deal with the basic dilemma of closeness vs. distance, which entails the necessity to keep resolving conflicts between the need to belong and the fear of addiction, they gather people brought up in a culture where “everything that binds and limits the individual has been questioned” (Leder 2006, 9). The fragmentary character of ties that these communities offer  – separating jointly experienced emotions from undertaken actions and shared knowledge – constitutes the basic means of retaining relative independence and is simultaneously an obstacle in the process of integrating individual identity. As Andrzej Leder rightly observes, “the more independent people want to be, the more they lack something that would lend meaning to their lives” (12). After all, the price they have to pay for independence consists in losing the sense that the actions they take are obvious, which stems not only from the conviction that others share our perspective on reality, but also from the belief that the order of reality is rooted in the nature of the universe, to which our actions conform.

Sharing individual knowledge Integrating individual knowledge and creating a basically coherent image of the world are some of the main components in processes of socializing individuals’ actions. Some scholars even claim that these two aspects are of the greatest importance, because it is the socially constructed reality that provides the framework for legitimizing particular techniques of living and strengthening the we-identity, thus becoming the basic tool of social control and determining reflexively the scope of allowed actions, individual positions, and boundaries of the communities with which people identify or are associated (cf. Berger and Luckmann 1991; Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018, chapter 4). These controlling functions are always realized at the cost of reducing the complexity of the social world directly experienced by individuals to a number of more or less “neat cultural packages” (Hannerz 1992) subordinated to a more specific idea defining the basis of the social nomos. However, thanks to this kind of reduction, which consists in selecting those elements that are significant and giving them special meaning, the community gains the ability to coordinate the actions of its members and avoid conflicts, while individuals acquire the sense that their actions are meaningful. The last result is particularly crucial, at least due to our genetic, species-specific equipment – there are few actions that would have meaning for humans in and of themselves. Our everyday actions, motivations, aspirations, and attitudes are not rooted in instincts but derive their justification from compliance with a certain image of the world, which provides us with reasons to face everyday hardships. “A world that can be explained even with bad reasons”, Camus writes, “is a familiar world” (1991, 6) – it is a tamed world in which there is no room for the question “why” because the answer to it is contained in the habitual character of actions originating in a given image of the world.

Processes of socializing individual actions  207 Therefore, this image of the world provides us not only with the “knowing that” and “knowing how”, which facilitate undertaking individual actions, but also with the “knowing why”, which facilitates dealing with the fundamental problem of human existence, one rooted in the awareness of one’s death.73 After all, there is no point in repeating, day after day, the behaviours we have learned, living “as if no one ‘knew’ ” (11), as if nobody allowed the thought about the temporal limit to our existence. “We want our lives to have meaning, or weight, or substance, or to grow towards some fullness” (Taylor 2001, 50) because only this allows us to reconcile with our finitude. At the same time, “this means our whole lives” (50; emphasis preserved), and integrating our past actions and plans for the future into a coherent narrative of self in which all elements of contingency are eliminated. While ordering their life experiences, individuals usually refer to an “imaginary”74 created within some meta-narrative – an image of the world formed by science, religion, worldviews and ideologies, which provide us not only with knowledge about “what reality is”, but also justify actions and lay down hints as to what we should do, how we should plan, and how to control that reality. This stems mainly from the fact that “when we make memories intelligible, either to ourselves or others, we must do so in the available language of culture” (Gergen 1991, 163), but it reflexively contributes to the strengthening of the dominant image of reality and its mode of interpreting individual actions. Certainly, this coupling of the individual narrative of self with meta-­narratives created at the systemic level where collective experiences of individuals are ordered and integrated by the political, scientific and intellectual elites into a more or less homogenous image of reality lasts as long as there are no emerging social groups capable of questioning not just specific notions that are part of this image, but rather the principal idea that defines the basis of the social nomos. In the Weberian process of “disenchanting” the world that provided the cognitive framework of the traditional society, this role was played by the middle class, which used ideas of the Enlightenment to undermine the position of religion as the legitimization of the social structure. On the other hand, shattering the “iron cage of reason” in the modern society was started in the early 1960s by emancipatory movements of anti-racist and feminist character, and was soon joined by movements of sexual minorities,75 which rejected the identity and social position they were ascribed in the dominant narrative, attacking the basic ontological assumptions of the dominant vision of reality.76 In listing the three main kinds of differences endangering the stability of democracy – differences in interests, ideologies, and identities – Claus Offe argues that conflicts arising from identity-based differences are the most difficult to settle because the only way to do so, available within democratic procedures, is to grant the discriminated minority special rights. This, however, initiates a process of escalation because the scope of the term “discriminated minority” can be easily blurred when the large majority in the society, basically “everyone but relatively well-off, relatively young, able-bodied, heterosexual white males” (Kymlicka 1995, 145; after Offe 1998, 130) can be convincingly included, or include themselves, in the broad group of those “discriminated against”. At the same time,

208  Processes of socializing individual actions Offe indicates that “the politics of identity-based differences is an increasingly prominent feature of increasing segments of the contemporary world, developed and developing alike” (1998, 122). However, the problem does not boil down to the question of the low effectiveness of such policy, which  – as Offe argues  – entails “new acts of unfairness being implied by the very method of compensating for unfairness” (139). From the perspective adopted here, it becomes more important that the emergence and spreading of identity movements disturbed the very foundation of the characteristically modern logic of “either/or”, which was subordinated to the marginalization of differences and strove towards creating  – at least in politics  – the homogenous ­identity of a “citizen”. Given that these movements not only shattered the ­dominant narrative of Progress but also in many cases successfully enforced new institutional solutions,77 changing both the rules of the “systemic game” and large portions of previously negotiated social knowledge,78 it becomes easier to grasp their role in undermining the meanings that formed the cognitive universe of modernity, i.e. all these ideas that have become taken for granted in the long process of “naturalization”, which involved disciplining the society and linking institutional solutions to everyday actions of individuals. The gradual disintegration of these ideas accelerated in the second half of the twentieth century. Two notable factors contributed to this. The first one involves transformations of the modern society described in Chapter 4, which were initiated by economic, political, and social impulses. Not only did they shatter the basic social identities, no longer supported by changing institutional structures, but they also started (or boosted) the processes that Niklas Luhmann (1990; cf. also Luhmann 1995) calls the “functional differentiation” of modern society’s systems, which consists in the emergence of distinct subsystems of knowledge in the course of the modern society’s evolution. These subsystems cover such areas as economy, politics, science, art, law, religion, love, and family. As Luhmann demonstrates, each of those creates its unique code, which directs the processing of information – a code that basically cannot be translated into codes used by other subsystems.79 Not only does this complicate communication between them, but it also constitutes a fundamental obstacle in integrating social knowledge. This was further augmented by the fact that the progressing functional differentiation of systems was accompanied by changes affecting the state – already discussed in this book – that stripped it of the status of a superior institution capable of imposing a meta-narrative facilitating agreement and integration at the broadest social level. As a result, contemporary society is – as Luhmann writes – “a society without an apex or center” (1990, 31; emphasis preserved) or – to express this in different terms – a “multi-paradigmatic” society in which consensus can be only situational and cannot stem from universally recognized knowledge about the true nature of reality. The second factor was the revolution in information technologies, leading to an unlimited inflow of information about the variety of human behaviours, which not only failed to form a single, coherent narrative, but also increased, through its sheer existence, the level of social entropy, contributing to the undermining of

Processes of socializing individual actions  209 faith in the meaning of what we do. As Susan Wolf convincingly argues, “meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness, and one is able to do something good or positive about it” (2010, 26). In other words, the importance of actions and larger projects we engage in cannot stem merely from our own egotistic preferences or a sense of moral duty, but needs to be confirmed by meanings ascribed to them by others. Even everyday routines need an overarching goal they can contribute to if they are not to become a series of absurd activities. The subjective importance of this goal is objectivized through its acceptance by other people. The sense of information overload that we experience today more and more often is naturally caused by the implosion of meanings created by modernity, but it reflexively exacerbates their disintegration by strengthening the structurally conditioned processes in which the modern social identities are blurred. “The relatively coherent and unified sense of self inherent in a traditional culture gives way to manifold and competing potentials. A multiphrenic condition emerges in which one swims in ever-shifting, concatenating, and contentious currents of being. One bears the burden of an increasing array of oughts, of self-doubts and irrationalities” (Gergen 1991, 80). These doubts stem not only from the fact that we are constantly being confronted with information that undermines our past choices and reveals new possibilities of actions, but also because, in the long run, every kind of activity loses justification in the absence of a meta-narrative that gives it meaning. The meaning of life is the most general kind of meaning generated in the processes of integrating social knowledge, which reduce the available information so as to form a more or less ordered image of the world. Information that is not reduced and ordered within a meta-narrative, separating the important from the trivial80 and indicating the means to achieve goals and reach states considered desirable, turns into noise or banality. One of the important yet rarely discerned consequences of this is increasing boredom. As Orrin E. Klapp shows (1986), boredom is not something that affects us only “in monotonous work and the long traffic-jammed rides to and from it” (1986, 12). It permeates basically all areas of contemporary people’s activity, regardless of their position in the social structure. Boredom can loom over the things that comprise everyday routines, but it can also affect everything that is supposed to relieve us of this routine – parties, social meetings, trips on holidays or weekends, etc. Boredom is experienced by people from both the top and the bottom rungs of the social ladder, the young and the old, the wise and the silly. Boredom can be the foundation of many negative social forms of behaviour, including crime, vandalism, drug addiction, or gambling (11–24). However, a lot of other activities, including many which are socially approved, can be motivated by boredom, e.g. watching popular television quiz shows, or compulsively checking your e-mail every three minutes. Their common denominator is the search for the kind of excitement that could help people forget, at least for a moment, about “ennui, tedium, monotony, lassitude, mental doldrums” (Gleick 1999, 270) – ­feelings typically associated with boredom.

210  Processes of socializing individual actions It is worth noting here that the very phenomenon of boredom is relatively new, having emerged as recently as the eighteenth century81 among French aristocrats. Jean Starobinski links it with the discovery of the idea of freedom, indicating that this newly revealed “need of freedom can take multiple forms: at one time, immoderate indulgence, and at other times – calls for a moral revival” (1964, 13). However, he argues, it was not the striving for freedom that drove the libertarians and the freethinkers, but boredom. “Countless sources confirm that dissolution was justified with flight from boredom, depression, emptiness; to feel, and to feel strongly at that, involves becoming aware of one’s existence. The same result is achieved by free intellectual initiative: the one who thinks, even if unclearly, simultaneously pronounces ‘I am’, which might dissipate if thought were to freeze” (9). Both boredom and freedom emerge in this light as outcomes of the shattering of meanings that used to integrate the life of the elites in the traditional society, heralding the end of their world; though it would still continue, it could not find any justification for itself.82 Although today’s boredom has been democratized,83 ways of dealing with it have not really changed during the past two hundred and fifty years. Casual sex featuring risk as an element that intensifies excitement, and the accompanying return to older, libertarian principles as a specific characteristic of contemporary times – these topics systematically recur in the press and are documented in many studies (cf. e.g. Castells 2002; Szlendak 2004; Nijakowski 2010). The contemporary aestheticization of everyday life (cf. Featherstone 2007, chapter 5) does not differ much from what Starobinski describes as the late-baroque or Rococo subordination of art to an aesthetic that was not supposed to affirm the mightiness of the ruling class, but rather tried to stimulate the imagination and thus intensify the sensation of communing with pure beauty. The eighteenth-century “unrestrained intellectual initiative” (including also rather muddy ideas) returns today in the form of innumerable blogs as well as Facebook and Twitter posts whose only aim seems to be to confirm one’s existence by generating comments and “likes” (cf. Filiciak et al. 2013). The new possibilities offered by today’s media in terms of archiving one’s own life in photographs, YouTube videos, scans of medical records, Twitter and Facebook posts informing everyone where you are, what you do, what you feel, and what you see, “seem from this perspective to constitute attempts at pinpointing and stabilizing sensations that carry the promise of a meaning relatable to our identity yet immediately disappear into thin air without delivering on that promise” (Halawa 2011, 5). This inability stems not only from transience, because sensations extracted from the totality of a given context immediately evaporate, but also from the fact that registering and archiving them merely creates a database which “represents the world as a list of items, and refuses to order this list” (Manovich 2001, 225). Narration is necessary in order to create chains of cause and effect that lend the data some identity-related meanings. However, as Lev Manovich points out, “we have not yet developed a language to describe these new strange objects” (228).

Processes of socializing individual actions  211 Given the collapse of modernity’s meta-narratives and lack of a new language that would facilitate ordering experiences and sensations stored in digital archives, people often return to idioms that seemed discredited long ago: magic, astrology, more or less esoteric cults. They help not just to find the meaning of one’s own life by integrating its “database” into a relatively coherent narrative, but also set its direction, and – as believers would say – control it. From the scant reports that sometimes appear in the media it clearly arises that the age of information is simultaneously the “age of superstitions”, with more than a half of the population believing in them. This concerns not only the incredible popularity of horoscopes, Harry Potter books and films, or the Twilight saga that revisits the old theme of vampires, but most of all the flourishing sector of magical and fortune-telling services. In France there are 16,000 priests but also as many as 32,000 tax-paying fortune-tellers whose services are used by half of the French population. In Poland, fortune-tellers and healers are listed in an official, ministry-managed catalogue of occupations. It is estimated that there are around 100,000 people working in this business, and that “online fortune-tellers generate greater revenue than online eroticism” (Gietka 2013, 30). Alongside well-known clairvoyants, bioenergy-therapists or exorcists there is an ever greater host of persons professionally cultivating magic, who are often inspired by modern physics (cf. Stawiszyński 2011). New cults develop not only as offshoots of traditional religions, syncretically combining Christianity with Eastern religions as well as Voodoo and African rituals, but also as revitalizations of old cults, popular culture or the Internet itself.84 A quasi-religious character is also acquired by completely secular groups like fans of sports clubs (cf. Antonowicz and Wrzesiński 2009) or secular “cults” created by various guides instructing how to be young, beautiful, and rich thanks to some miracle-working physical or spiritual exercises. However, though all such forms of behaviour – which Klapp calls “social placebo”85 – may play a big role in fighting boredom and justifying particular actions, they are unable to generate holistic visions of reality. Deployed individually, they constitute means of “killing time” or dealing with uncertainty in specific situations, but they create neither shared meanings nor long-term goals that people could subordinate their lives to, and that could serve as a basis for a narration of self. The fact that my partner is cheating on me – as confirmed by Zephyr, the clairvoyant – is meaningful only to me, while my activities as a supporter of the local football team, or as a believer in the Flying Spaghetti Monster can become, at best, an exciting interlude in an otherwise boring and monotonous everyday existence, and not a source of meaning that generates the feeling of the obviousness of actions taken and legitimizes the institutional order of society. In the post-modern society this feeling of obviousness has been replaced by political correctness. The dissemination of this term towards the end of the twentieth century signals the appearance of a special dissonance between the principles that guide the functioning of formal social institutions, and those that are viewed as more or less “natural” in various social circles. The former, arising from modernity’s nomos, have been subjected to many modifications, both through technoeconomic processes and due to the activity of those discriminated groups that

212  Processes of socializing individual actions emerged victorious from the battle for recognizing the legitimacy of their claims, at least at the level of political institutionalization.86 The latter constitute the basis for the development of new identity groups defending former ways of “being-inthe-world” by accentuating certain values of the modern nomos as autonomous sources of meaning. Political correctness, which supplements the post-modern institutional order operating on the basis of “both/and” logic, recognizes the irreducible variety of ways to reach self-fulfilment as well as of the images of the world that arise from them, and displays respect for otherness by employing a neutral, non-­ discriminating language in public discourse. Its opponents, who invoke the classically modern logic of “either/or”, defend the position that there is only one true vision of reality – the one they believe in – and that it is supposed to determine both individual meaning of life and the institutional order of society (cf. Kacprzak 2012). It is this tension between diversity and certainty, between the ability to choose from a range of self-realization options and the conviction that the ones we selected are objectively meaningful, that seems to determine today the main directions of processes in the area of sharing social knowledge. Accepting diversity as an indispensable correlate of facticity gives individuals a chance to utilize different systems of social “knowledges” in taking actions meant to achieve self-realization, but at the same time forces them to constantly seek social confirmation of the choices they have made in order to reduce the accompanying sense of uncertainty. The basic framework is provided in this context by expert knowledge. “The profusion of abstract systems is directly bound up with the panoramas of choice which confront the individual in day-to-day ­activity”, Anthony Giddens concludes enthusiastically (1991, 139), although he makes the reservation that in this situation “[d]eciding which to opt for, if any, would be more difficult because she would need to balance off the various claims made by different approaches” (141; emphasis added). Giddens’s qualification, which I  emphasize, is crucial because it shows that under the conditions of blurred images of reality one of the solutions is to postpone decisions that entail high costs (economic, social, psychological), i.e. ones that could greatly contribute to the creation of a meaning of life.87 This could explain, firstly, today’s widespread tendency to postpone getting married, becoming a parent, or moving away from family home, i.e. decisions that formerly constituted the meaning of “adult” life (cf. Sińczuch 2002), and secondly, the emergence of various new lifestyles aiming to minimize consumerism (cf. Jabłońska 2012; Klich and Siewiorek 2013), effort, ambition, energy, or engagement. Scholars speak in this context of the “good enough” generation oriented towards living the moment as well as being comfortable and free from the stress entailed by striving for particularly ambitious goals (Sowa 2012). Most people, however, try to rise up to the challenges of self-fulfilment and become engaged in various actions. At the same time, due to the initial differentiation of expert knowledge88 its individual strands are negotiated discursively within various kinds of communities of issues, allowing people to refer to direct individual experience. The process of integrating knowledge, which was the

Processes of socializing individual actions  213 domain of base groups in previous forms of organizing social life, today occurs mainly in various online communities of issues, where individual experiences are pooled and “specialist” knowledge is constructed from information supplied by individuals.89 Such communities play an immensely significant role, not only in negotiating knowledge gained through personal experience. “When an individual introduces his or her own particular problem into the discourse”, Olcoń-Kubicka writes, “it becomes widely known. Thanks to articulating the problem it becomes something that people are socially aware of as it is named, defined, collectively analyzed and subjected to reflection. People can become discursively aware how many others are in the same situation and to what extent the given problem concerns their broader surroundings. In this way, the problem becomes abstracted from individual experience and acquires social character. Thanks to the discursive sharing of information and experiences it becomes possible for projection/identification to emerge” (2009, 191). The selection of information that occurs within communities of issues is based on the criterion of efficiency in achieving the goals set in those specific life projects around which the discourse is formed.90 Such reductions of complexity are nevertheless limited in every instance to the area determined by the kind of action taken, which means that life is broken up into a series of “projects” that are often subordinated to different kinds of rationality. This makes it difficult to find a theme that could act as the axis of the narrative of self and become a superior goal that gives meaning to individual existence. One consequence of this, as psychologists and therapists unanimously claim, is the increasing sense of dissatisfaction, emptiness, and aridity of one’s own existence.91 To escape these feelings one can take actions that are not only oriented towards maximization of experiences and sensations, but also ones that raise self-esteem in making particular life choices. In the post-modern society individuals gain certainty about the social world, their place in it, and their supposed courses of action, which defines their meaning of life, by joining communities that create comprehensive visions of the world. According to Manuel Castells, the emergence of such new cultural communities that take the form of religious fundamentalism, cultural nationalism, or territorial communities, constitutes a defensive reaction “against three fundamental threats, perceived in all societies, by the majority of humankind, in the end of millennium. Reaction against globalization, which dissolves the autonomy of institutions, organizations, and communication systems where people live. Reaction against networking and flexibility, which blur the boundaries of membership and involvement, individualize social relationships of production, and induce the structural instability of work, space, and time. And reaction against the crisis of the patriarchal family, at the roots of transformation of mechanisms of security-building, socialization, sexuality. And, therefore, of personality systems” (2002, 65–66). The certainty achieved in this way is nevertheless underpinned by fear because one indispensable element of the visions of reality produced by these communities is that they indicate powerful forces that endanger individuals, communities,

214  Processes of socializing individual actions and ultimately the entire world. It is also the kind of certainty that requires giving up the superior post-modern value of “being yourself” – the value to which individuals are socialized and whose importance is constantly emphasized in all agendas of contemporary culture. Achieving this kind of certainty thus requires not only a rebellion against reality, but also an intentional act of faith because this certainty does not originate in directly experienced facticity of the social world but rather refers to higher values on which the image of the world is founded. “God, nation, family, and community will provide unbreakable, eternal codes” (66) – ones meant to separate the important from the trivial, to help in making decisions under the conditions of ambiguity, and to integrate the identity narration. Sharing knowledge about reality occurs mainly by referring to authorities whose position is founded either on tradition or on their current, personal activity in the field defined as endangered. The meaning of life, on the other hand, is constructed primarily on the basis of resistance to all those aspects of reality that are considered to be damaging to the superior values lying at the foundation of that image of the world. These two model strategies of handling the overflow of information and seeking the meaning of life, which emerge from accentuating either diversity or certainty, are the poles between which we can locate all social practices focused on sharing individual knowledge. The social knowledge they generate is, out of its very nature, hybrid, subordinated to occasional utilitarian concerns, and primarily focused on the present, which constitutes the main frame of reference both for the problems around which communities of issues are formed, and for the resistance around which cultural communities gather. The former reduce individual uncertainty by providing socialized knowledge “how”, while the latter constitute a source of more general ideas occasionally attached to, or detached from, the corpus of individual knowledge.92 Being absorbed in the present helps to postpone the question about the meaning of those very projects or forms of resistance. As a result, maximizing one’s own psychological well-being becomes the basic signpost of individual life. This can be achieved either by fulfilling individual emotional needs, or by following the clearly marked paths of “moral righteousness”.

Social formatting of reality I began this chapter by invoking Bauman’s metaphor of the camping site and would like to end it with a metaphor of dance proposed by Elias, with which he attempts to account for the irreducible interdependence of human actions: “Let us imagine as a symbol of society a group of dancers performing court dances, such as the française or quadrille, or a country round dance. The steps and bows, gestures and movements made by the individual dancer are all entirely meshed and synchronized with those of other dancers. If any of the dancing individuals were contemplated in isolation, the functions of his or her movements could not be understood. The way the individual behaves in this situation is determined by the relations of the dancers to each other. It is similar with the behaviour of the individuals in general” (2001, 19).

Processes of socializing individual actions  215 This metaphor allows us not only to grasp the essence of interdependence, but also to consider various forms of social organization in categories of the specific “dances” they produce. The française and quadrille that Elias mentions would refer, in this context, to the late-feudal society that functioned on the basis of the collective identity of the estates that comprised it, accompanied by the assumption about their organic complementarity. Along with the transition to modernity and the initiation of individualization processes, these collective dances were replaced – in all social strata – with dancing in pairs (e.g. waltz or tango), which captures well the idea, characteristic for this form of social organization, that family is the basic cell of society. Finally, were we to stick to this convention, we should say that the dynamic of today’s individualized mass society is reflected in disco dance – performed individually yet in a crowd, accompanied by deafening music and blinding lights, which would correspond to the intensity and variety of stimuli we face on a daily basis. Still, every metaphor, even one as strong as that of dance, has its limitations and raises questions that remain unanswerable. In this case it would be the question of who is playing the music. The traditional sociological answer would be to indicate the role of culture as a matrix that reproduces forms of individual action through processes of socialization. However, as I have demonstrated, this answer is today losing its usefulness because the increasing differentiation of cultural norms and the acceleration of changes that devalue the utility of behavioural patterns acquired during socialization make it difficult to defend the claim about the existence of any such cultural matrix. Its place is now being taken by explanations referring to the concept of “liquid” reality, according to which we should assume that, if the currently dominant form is disco dancing, the main problem is that there is no single orchestra and individuals appear to be dancing to tunes played from their own, individual iPods. Although this conclusion dovetails with the dominant thesis about today’s individualization, it entirely contradicts the fact that, as our everyday experience shows, people’s actions still depend on the behaviour of others. Although we enjoy the freedom of choice, we nevertheless act within specific institutional structures and are entangled in certain obligations stemming from more permanent relations and relationships, still craving for the recognition of others. This, in turn, invariably includes us in those social practices whose basic goal is to share the “melodies” lying at the foundation of individual “dances” by creating shared meanings that allow us to come to exist in the eyes of others as well as communicate and cooperate with them. In other words, the increasing “liquidity” of the surrounding reality by no means causes it to become an ocean of unlimited individual choices. Nor does it lead to the disappearance of the processes of socializing individuals’ actions. Rather, its effects include the kind of transformations that replace the process of moulding individual experiences by a cultural matrix of “natural” social groups – i.e. ones legitimized by tradition – with a multiplicity of competing communities of meaning that emerge around a “shared practical understanding” of individual techniques of living, relations with others, and images of the world. It is in such

216  Processes of socializing individual actions communities, which are integrated in the course of social practices, that reality is “formatted” – for a while, for several months or years – into an area of meanings that are maintained and reproduced in the course of interactions by individuals engaged in them. The concept of formatting – which I borrow from the language of computer science where it means “the process of writing marks . . . that are used to mark tracks and sectors”93 – seems to render well some of the properties specific to contemporary processes of socializing individual actions. Firstly, this concept emphasizes the initial indeterminacy and “liquidity” of the currently experienced social reality,94 and consequently, the potential freedom to impose any signs on it. Secondly, this concept foregrounds the special intransitive character – or untranslatability – of particular “forms of being with and for one another” created in the course of “sector-based” discourses. Thirdly, it facilitates pointing out the role of individuals in establishing the “shared practical understanding” because in this approach they cease to be passive objects of “cultural processing” and become active creators of meanings negotiated in the group. Fourthly and finally, in place of a relatively monolithic culture this concept introduces the idea of a space where meanings compete with each other in attempts to give a specific shape to the social reality. Basically everything can be the source of such meanings because in their production one uses elements coming from both general theoretical systems and particular events, from the past and the present, from collective memory and personal dreams, from official ideologies and group beliefs, from religious revelations and popular trivialities. Although the actual mechanism of unifying them remains basically unknown,95 it is possible to indicate at least three frameworks which – due to their position in the contemporary society, and primarily the role they play in shaping social practices – seem to exert particular pressure on the currently unfolding processes of formatting reality. The first such framework is created by the basic setup of systemic institutions. Although, as I already showed, it has lost the distinctness and disjunctiveness typical for the “first modernity”, while the continuing process of functional differentiation has blurred the relative uniformity of the rules lying at its foundation, it is nevertheless possible to indicate at least several shared properties of the set of meanings imposed by it. They are still concentrated around the concept of individual success, though it is now achieved not through work but by leading an attractive life. The basic rules of social competition are borrowed from economics, which means that individual actions become subordinated to the creation of one’s own “brand” that could attract the greatest number of “clients”. Normative justifications, on the other hand, are provided by the ideology of individualization, which I reconstruct in the previous chapter, with public recognisability acting as the measure of individual success,96 which in turn translates into actual financial profits. The second vital framework is comprised by various well-known systems of beliefs. Although the process of selecting and integrating meanings occurs – as I have already mentioned – not discursively but through actions that establish

Processes of socializing individual actions  217 new social practices, the contents of beliefs circulating in the public can crucially influence the direction of these practices. On the current market of ideas we can find an immense variety of views that offer justification for almost entirely different modes of behaviour in various situations. Ones that merit special attention include those that challenge the general principles lying at the foundation of practices from which current systemic institutions had emerged and through which they were sustained. In this way, these modes of behaviour are initiating actions aimed at the institutionalization of different principles. Such actions share not only partial or complete rejection of systemic solutions, but also “the fight for the common cause” as the basis for developing social identity, regardless whether the “cause” is supposed to be some change in education, legalization of civil partnerships, protection of the environment, or renewal of the society in the spirit of Christian values. The third and the most amorphous frame of reference involves new modes of being-in-the-world, which stem from reactions to certain aspects of today’s reality and utilize new possibilities of human activities facilitated by the development of technology. The meanings they generate are weakly articulated, which means that they strongly rely on the “shared practical understanding” of actions, events, and phenomena. The shared feature of all those meanings is their embeddedness in a specific kind of social communication, which Manuel Castells (2009) calls mass self-communication. It combines the features of private communication, insofar as it is created by an individualized self, with the characteristics of public communication because it is accessible to everyone who wants to know. This combination strengthens the processes of individuation – in the sense given to this term by Beck, as quoted at the beginning of this chapter – and simultaneously contributes to establishing interactions between people, who would never find each other in the mass if it had not been for the rise of social media, thus leading to new challenges and opening new possibilities. These three frames of reference constitute a resource of meanings used in the processes of formatting reality. Naturally, these processes were set in motion on a larger scale by the transformations of social reality I have described earlier, which accompanied the dissolution of the modern nomos and caused individuals to feel lost and facing chaos, as is often experienced when one needs to choose from what the post-modern society offers. The meanings created in the course of social practices are supposed to free people from the uncertainty that such choices entail, at the same time allowing one to alleviate – at least partially – the fundamental tensions existing in the areas of life techniques, relations with others, and images of the world, as identified earlier. At the same time, however, the very fact of these meanings being overproduced and mutually exclusive reflexively exacerbates the implosion of meanings that lie at the foundation of human actions. As is easily noticeable, the three frames of reference distinguished here are characterized not just by dissimilarity but simply by the contradictions between the “axial principles” (cf. Bell 1978) around which the meanings used to format reality are organized. The increasing subordination of systemic institutions to market principles collides with the principle of commonality created and maintained

218  Processes of socializing individual actions by systems of belief which in turn seem to be irreconcilable with the principle of individuation that guides the actions rooted in new communication technologies, with the latter having little to do with the structural individualization imposed by the institutional order. At the same time, it is difficult to regard these rival principles as a manifestation of “the cultural contradictions of capitalism” because each of them carries inside itself the potential to generate meanings that would cover the entirety of human life, not just its individual aspects. In other words, each of them contains the germ of another society created in the course of social practices.

Notes 1 And not entirely consistent with the author’s intention, since I do not suspect Bauman would have adopted the vision of the individual and the society suggested by the comparison he used. 2 Cf. Beck (1992, 127). Beck refers (cf. note on p. 137) to an earlier work by Martin Kohl and Günter Robert, who formulate a similar thesis. 3 Norbert Elias draws attention to this, calling this phenomenon a “drag effect”. Cf. more on this in Elias (2001, 211–214). 4 The term “sociation” – coined by the English translator for Simmel’s concept of Vergesellschaftung – did not catch on in sociology. It is one of the reasons why in this book I use the phrase “socializing processes” to describe the kinds of interactions that generate relatively stable patterns of connections between individuals and, in consequence, stabilize the forms of coordinating their actions. 5 For more information on factors found at the basis of such developments in sociology, see: Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk (2018; chapter 1). 6 This return can be detected, among other things, in the more and more frequent use made in contemporary sociological studies of the term “sociality”, which the Webster Dictionary defines as “the quality of being social; socialness”, while the Wordnet Dictionary describes as “the tendency to associate with others and to form social groups”. These definitions fail, however, to register new uses of this term, which include both the process of making something social and the kind of “sociality” that is produced (cf. e.g. Lianos and Douglas 2000). The adjective “social” is used similarly when it appears in nominal form as “the social” (cf. e.g. Schatzki 2001a; Latour 2005). 7 Émile Durkheim drew attention to this, writing that “it is not the fact that they are general which can serve to characterise sociological phenomena” because “[w]hat constitutes social facts are the beliefs, tendencies and practices of the group taken collectively” (1982, 54). 8 This is certainly a generalization that can be easily undermined by pointing, for example, to the theory of George H. Mead (1972), Goffman’s analyses it inspired (1959), the ethnomethodological experiments of Harold Garfinkel (1967), or works by Elias, so often quoted here. I would just like to emphasize that all such works either remain – as interactionism and ethnomethodology do – at the level of individual interactions, taking as their goal the identification of general psychosocial mechanisms, or – as in the case of Elias (2000) – are too steeped in analyses of a particular, historically given form of sociality, which makes it difficult to extrapolate their results to other cases. 9 Another is, for example, the theory of interaction rituals developed by Randall Collins (2005), or at least some of its basic parts. 10 “Meaning, that elusive and ill-defined pseudoentity we were once more than content to leave philosophers and literary critics to fumble with, has now come back into the heart of our discipline” Clifford Geertz wrote many years ago about anthropology (1973, 29),

Processes of socializing individual actions  219 but the same could be said about contemporary sociology. As a result of rapid changes in our reality – changes variously paced and of different intensity in specific areas of society  – today’s sociologists often find themselves in the shoes of anthropologists facing formerly unknown cultures and attempting to decipher “a manuscript – foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written in conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of shaped behavior” (10). 11 This assumption directly references Geertz’s technique of “thick description” (cf. Geertz 1973, 17–47). 12 According to de Botton, although “there may be differences between romantic and status form of love – the latter has no sexual dimension, it cannot end in marriage, those who offer it usually bear secondary motives – and yet those beloved in the status field will, just like romantic lovers, enjoy protection under the benevolent gaze of others” (2004, 11). 13 De Botton does not refer to Cooley in his work, but his theory is basically identical with Cooley’s concept of looking-glass self (Cooley 1922) and is supported by Festinger’s social comparison theory (1954). 14 It is worth noting here that, according to the findings of Randall Collins (2005, especially chapter 8), basically every activity related to the realization of more general aspirations can become a tool in the status game, and when it becomes widespread – an indicator of status. 15 Jacyno calls this set of ideas “conventional happiness”, which encompasses “family, home, car, stable job, evenings spent on a sofa in front of the TV, as well as routine and conformism” (2007, 30). 16 At least as far as is suggested by studies on contemporary value systems, e.g. the European Values Study (cf. Halman 2001; Yankelovich 1994). Although they show significant shifts in the scales of values, these changes still do not undermine the dominance of such visions of a good life in the population as a whole. 17 As Gergen notes (1991, 46), McClelland’s theory became the backbone of programmes for economically underdeveloped countries such as India, which were meant to stimulate the development of those traits of personality that are crucial for economic activity. 18 As Jib Fowles notes (1996, 37), the November 1871 issue of the Harper’s Magazine contained five pages of advertisements, whereas twenty years later – one hundred. And this was only the beginning of further expansion of this form of communication. 19 In 1970, owning a second TV set was thought of as necessary by 3 per cent Americans, while in 2000 – by 45 per cent. An even bigger leap was noted in the case of owning more than one telephone: from 2 per cent to 78 per cent (after de Botton 2004, 205). 20 This is particularly emphasized by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, who argue that “decades of countercultural rebellion have failed to change anything” and have only “reinvigorated consumer capitalism” (2010, 17–18; emphasis added). Thirty years earlier a similar view was formulated by Daniel Bell, who wrote that “[t]he cultural impulses of the 1960s, like the political radicalism which paralleled it, are, for the while, largely spent. The counter-culture proved to be a conceit” (1978, 81). 21 The assumed model of the effect that values have on actions is based on the foundation developed by Ann Swidler (1986), who regards culture as a toolkit that is differently used by individuals occupying various places in social space. It is worth to point out in this context that there is a basic similarity between the influence of the 1960s’ counterculture, whose values were fully incorporated into culture only towards the end of the twentieth century, and Protestant ethics, whose emergence in the sixteenth century preceded by some several hundred years the development of mature capitalism in nineteenth-century modern society based on this system of values. 22 For more on these changes in the USA, see: Yankelovich (1994), Yankelovich et al. (1985), Biernacka (2009, especially chapter 4). For a summary of changes in European

220  Processes of socializing individual actions countries, see: Zanders 1993. Research from the 1999 European Value Studies shows that – contrary to common expectations – the strongest work ethic (as measured by answers ascribing to it a fundamental meaning in individual and social life) is boasted by countries like Turkey, Romania, and Poland, whereas the lowest scores were found in countries considered to be the hotbed of modernity and capitalism: the UK and the Netherlands (Halman 2009). According to some authors, these changes, called the transition from a work-based-society to a multi-activity society, today also lie at the basis of increased activity of individuals in civic roles. Cf. Stevenson 2006. 23 Eva Illouz calls advertising an “aesthetic of utopia” (1997, 82). 24 As Charles Taylor points out, the ideology of self-fulfilment assumes that its outcome, the individual identity, “by definition . . . cannot be socially derived but must be inwardly generated” (2003, 47). Advertising, on the other hand, when promoting a washing powder that (“unlike all others”) guarantees snow-white clothes, or perfume that allows you to get every man at a party, may refer to more general patterns of life in which certain actions are embedded, but desperately avoids providing clues whether it is more appropriate to have a life devoted to the cultivation of home values, or one devoted to improving one’s attractiveness and having fun. 25 By “Protestant ethics” I mean here not the original set of norms rooted in the concept of predestination, but its popular, common-sense version developed in the first stages of capitalism. As Bell writes (1978, 58, note 16), in his famous work on the relations between Protestant ethics and the rise of capitalism Weber quotes Franklin more often than Luther or Calvin, the actual fathers of Protestantism. 26 The importance of such factors in determining the individual sense of success is clearly confirmed by studies on the status inconsistency, which blossomed at the turn of the 1960s. Cf. Lenski 1954; Kimberly 1967. 27 I mean here primarily the so-called celebrities, for whom the very interest of the media is enough to gain contacts and/or win a position guaranteeing them financial success. For more on the subject of contemporary changes in claims for respect, see: Marody 2012. 28 These myths are related today to two main areas of economic expansion: one opened by the technological revolution, where they can take many shapes, “from an idea (developed in a small garage) to becoming the owner of a global electronics company”, and the other comprised by the ever more powerful entertainment industry, which still keeps proving that everyone can be “talented” and turned into a star, at least for a little while. 29 The belief that everyone can be anyone anywhere is one of the crucial illusions created by contemporary culture, not without significant contribution from social sciences, which emphasize the freeing of identity from structural factors and the necessity for its individual creation, thus sustaining the illusion of complete arbitrariness in this area. 30 As Krzysztof Szymborski writes, “plastic surgery is now an industry of $20 billion in yearly turnover, while the weekly The Economist recently reported that Americans spend more money on cosmetics and beauty treatments than on education” (2003, 5). 31 Christopher Lasch draws attention to this, polemicizing with Ortega y Gasset and emphasizing that today it is not the masses (as the latter holds) that see the world as free from any limitations, but the elites, which reject all necessities, even ones related to the basic human condition. Lasch contends: “While young professionals subject themselves to an arduous schedule of physical exercise and dietary controls designed to keep death at bay – to maintain themselves in a state of permanent youthfulness, eternally attractive and remarriageable – ordinary people, on the other hand, accept the body’s decay as something against which it is more or less useless to struggle” (1996, 28; for more on this, see Castells 2001a, chapter 7). 32 The “coercive power” is, after all, the key feature of Durkheim’s social fact (cf. Durkheim 1982).

Processes of socializing individual actions  221 33 This difference can be extremely slight sometimes, which is confirmed by the success of the iPod. In contrast to other music players, the iPod was sold with white earphones, which not only distinguished it but also allowed people to recognize an iPod owner even when the device itself remained hidden in the pocket. And since many famous people bought iPods, relatively pricey devices, white earphones quickly became an easily recognizable marker of success, indicating a higher status position (for more on this see Młynarczyk 2009). 34 It is one of the ways of raising the status of a given group, and thus also of individual social identity (cf. Augoustinos and Walker 1995). 35 This term was introduced by Lawrence Lessig (2008) in reference to a practice of making new works by freely rearranging and recomposing elements of already existing works. 36 One such timeless signal indicating a high social position seems to be conspicuous consumerism, described by Veblen (2008). 37 This is perfectly illustrated with a child’s remark quoted by Kate Fox: “Mummy says that ‘pardon’ is a much worse word than ‘fuck’ ” (2014, 212). According to Fox, the use of the word “pardon” clearly indicates membership of the lower middle class. 38 According to Fox, the differences in clothes worn by upper middle-class children and those from lower classes are generally a question of moderation. Boys from both classes may be wearing sagging trousers, but those from the lower class will be wearing them looser and lower. 39 Likes seem to be a functional counterpart to “strokes” exchanged in direct contacts, described by Eric Berne (1978), who developed the theory of transactional analysis. 40 Examples of actively using this indicator are contained in the study “Youth and Media” (Filiciak et al. 2013). 41 The difference between these two worlds resembles the difference between traditional and modern hedonism, as theorized by Campbell (1987) and summarized in chapter three. The former was based on fulfilling needs, whereas the latter  – on imagining exciting experiences created by acts of consumption. 42 Term developed by Gergen (1991), who notes that this theme was introduced to sociology by Goffman (1959) in his dramaturgical theory of social behaviour. 43 Mary Portas, an English fashion consultant and celebrity, argues: “I am lucky to be able to run a business in a world I became recognizable in. However, creating that persona and managing it is really difficult” (after Czyńska 2010, 33; emphasis added). 44 This feature strongly differentiates traditional social capital from “network capital”. Amassing the former would be based on good manners and general principles of “sociability” (cf. Simmel 1950) passed down during upbringing in dominant class families. However, contemporary trends in raising children, which emphasize “being oneself” and independence completely fail to prepare people for the task of “making a good/specific impression”. This often leads people to develop the attitude that one of my younger colleagues derogatorily called “full spontan” and which contradicts the more sophisticated “coolness”. 45 Camilla Morton’s guide (2006) is advertised in the following way: “Can you make yourself up in five minutes flat? Make the first move without breaking a sweat? Hang a picture without becoming unhinged? Get out of a car – or an unpleasant situation – gracefully in a short skirt? Load an iPod as effortlessly as a dishwasher? If not, international style and fashion journalist Camilla Morton can help you navigate these and more than two hundred other hazards of modern living with grace and aplomb. Much more than just a style manual or crash course in social skills, How to Walk in High Heels also illuminates the finer points of achieving better homes and gardens, tackling technophobia, climbing the career ladder, and joining the jet set. . . . This comprehensive do-everything-better bible takes the guesswork out of flaunting your fabulousness so that you can stop teetering and start striding confidently through the obstacle course of life”.

222  Processes of socializing individual actions 46 This phenomenon could be regarded as an extension of the civilizational processes of psychologization described by Elias (2000), although one would have to immediately indicate the significant shift of their direction, since active individuals are now becoming primarily interested in themselves and only secondarily in people they interact with. 47 The boundary between such forms of communication and guides is rather fluid. It is enough to recall Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller Eat, Pray, Love (2006), later made into a film that is basically a fictionalized lifestyle guide. 48 Cf. an analysis of behaviour in such situations in Kaufmann 2004, chapter 7. 49 I base my argument here mainly on the results of Henri Tajfel’s studies, conducted in the framework of the so-called “minimal group” paradigm (cf. Tajfel and Turner 1986; Augoustinos and Walker 1995). 50 Cf. also the superb analysis of the historical development of this vision in science in Elias 2001 (especially Part II). 51 It is worth noting here that, according to definitions accepted in sociology (cf. Brown 2000) these are, strictly speaking, neither communities nor groups. Were we to remove the individual who “owns” a given network, it would fall apart, becoming a loose gathering of unrelated people. 52 This was primarily connected with the process of the state and other social groups overtaking a whole range of socialization tasks (e.g. by establishing universal primary education), although it is not without meaning here that these changes also involved the position of women, who would leave the family circle ever more keenly. 53 This text also contains a warning addressed to those scholars and authors who argue that the principal remedy to human relations consists in undisturbed communication of oneself. Invoking the theory of communicative rationality developed by Habermas, Sennett accuses it of psychological naivety, and warns that the emphasis on undisturbed communication of oneself serves mainly to blur the meaning of the social relations of power and dominance. As he argues, “to dream of a world in which psychological processes of open communication . . . are free from social question, is to dream of a collective escape from social relations themselves” (1980, 108). The final expression of such escapism seems to be Giddens’s concept of “pure relations”, described in the previous chapter. 54 Cf. a broader analysis of Tönnies’s typology in Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018, chapter 3. 55 Cas Wouters (2007) draws attention to the change in the way people address others, with names and direct address used much more often these days, and in how they are emboldened in establishing physical closeness in the social sphere through kissing on the cheek or hugging the other person by way of greeting, which he calls, after Goffman, “intimacy without warmth”. Wouters also emphasizes the increasing ease with which people establish “instant intimacy” or “instant enmity” in incidental and shortlasting interpersonal contacts (85). 56 The classic example of this is the flood of illustrated magazines containing mostly details from the private lives of celebrities and public figures. The clearest case, however, is probably the so-called “Zippergate” with US President Bill Clinton. Thanks to the internet, the entire world learned the most intimate details about Clinton’s relation with the trainee Monica Lewinsky. 57 This is changing because, towards the end of the twentieth century, in many Western countries such relationships began to gain various forms of legitimization. 58 Eric Klinenberg demonstrates that the percentage of single-person households in the USA increased from 10 per cent in 1950 to 28 per cent today (2013, 4–5). The percentage is even higher in big cities, reaching 35–45 per cent. 59 In particular, two American TV shows from the late 1990s, Ally McBeal and Sex in the City, revolutionized the image and evaluation of being single, clearly raising the attractiveness of this model.

Processes of socializing individual actions  223 60 This is of course only a question of degree because the relationship with a therapist can develop into an addiction, while couch surfing – as Paula Bialski shows (2007) – has all the hallmarks of a network community. This was confirmed when the website www. couchsurfing.org was closed by its founder, and its users (there were almost 200,000 of them in 2007) made a spontaneous effort to help to restore the site, which operates to this day. 61 During a heated debate on the role of beauty in the contemporary world, one student from my seminar turned to a female colleague, saying “you wouldn’t know about it because this doesn’t concern you”, adding “no offence”. I  was shocked, but not such much about the ad personam argumentation as at the expectation that she should accept this as an objective fact without feeling hurt about the negative opinion about her. It also needs to be added that “objectivity” is one of the features that Simmel ascribes to the Stranger (1950, 507). 62 This characteristic is perfectly illustrated by the anecdote about the “Icelandic affair” quoted by Gergen (1991, 67) and by the film Last Tango in Paris he mentions. Cf. also his concept of “relationships from a microwave oven”, discussed in the previous chapter. 63 The most popular form of “associating” in this area is comprised by clubs for swingers. 64 Especially those that create the more uniform lifestyles. Maffesoli takes the punk subculture as an illustration of tribalism, for example. However, the tribal character also seems to characterize the “peg communities” that Bauman (2001) considers to be the contemporary defence measure against dissolving in the mass, or the conventions described by Mary Rogers (1999) that unite fans of the Barbie doll (as well as fans of Star Trek, Star Wars, Elvis Presley, or popular music bands). 65 It seems that we can include among them the so-called “Indignados” in Spain or the “Occupy” movement in the USA. 66 Cf. the concept of urban tribes introduced by Ethan Watters (2002). 67 One can recall in this context the well-known TV series Friends and Sex and the City, or the once immensely popular novel by Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996). 68 One ought to add here that the seemingly looser social control can be illusory because tribe members are assessed right at the point of entry on the basis of characteristics that decide about the specific character of a given community. This selection process can be literal as in the case of clubs where bouncers perform this function. In other cases, nuanced criteria could be applied, e.g. use of a special language. Cf. Olcoń-Kubicka (2009, 165). 69 Maffesoli uses the term “aesthetic aura”. 70 It seems that it was this kind of community that I discuss in the book’s opening example of a New Year’s Eve party during which one of the guests was beaten up. Maffesoli similarly characterizes the scientific community, arguing that it constitutes a tribe comprising clans, “each of them focused around some eponymous hero. These clans freely employ exclusiveness, exclusion, contempt, or stigmatization. Anyone who smells differently than the rest of the herd is surely rejected” (2008, 11). 71 According to Deborah Chambers (2006), friendly ties based on equality and mutual respect have the greatest chance of becoming the basis of interpersonal relations in the future. 72 The only meaning of these usually meaningless actions seems to be to create an instant sense of We that is immediate, focused, and safely distanced from any forms of deeper engagement. 73 As Tadeusz Bartoś writes on the margin of his discussion of Heidegger’s philosophy, “the need for all-encompassing sense is rooted in the instinct of self-preservation. So as not to lose the motivation to live, the human organism demands a comprehensive explanation of basic issues related to the meaning of life, its beginning and end. Without this it is difficult to achieve psychological balance” (2012, 19).

224  Processes of socializing individual actions 74 This term was introduced by Charles Taylor. “By social imaginary”, he writes, “I mean something much broader and deeper than the intellectual schemes people may entertain when they think about social reality in a disengaged mode. I am thinking, rather, of the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations” (2004, 23). Referring to the concepts introduced earlier, one could say that such social imaginary is a specific operationalization of the nomos, which translates its abstract components into particular images hiding schemata and norms of behaviour. 75 The expression “started” does not mean here the most important impulse that triggered these processes (there were many, including the experience of the Second World War), or point to the emergence of these movements (the struggle with race- and sex-based discrimination goes back at least to the beginning of the nineteenth century), but is to merely indicate the moment when these movements acquired “social visibility” and were recognized institutionally. 76 As Ulrich Beck and Christopher Lau show (2005), the “ontologization” of differences related to race, sex, and sexuality – by which they mean deriving forms of actions ascribed to them from nature and considering them as anthropologically inevitable – was a widespread strategy of rationalizing basic institutions of modernity. 77 One example of such a solution could be “affirmative action”, parity in access to particularly valued positions (in work, education, and politics), or legislative solutions allowing people to legalize same-sex relationships. 78 It is enough to watch any film made fifty years ago to realize how much what we regard, in the simplest social situations, as “natural”, “obvious”, “right” or “important” has changed. 79 For example, the economic system operates on the basis of the binary code of profitable/unprofitable, the legal system – legal/illegal, while the scientific system – true/ false. Luhmann argues that creating meaning is the basic function of all systems (1995, 59–102). 80 According to Gregory Bateson’s popular definition (1979), information is “a difference that makes a difference”. 81 More precisely, this is when a separate term for it emerged in France; the word ennui was then incorporated into English and later replaced with “boredom” (cf. Klapp 1986, 24–25; Gleick 1999, 270). 82 Boredom in its “pure” form, i.e. without any accompanying attempts to intensify sensations, can be found one hundred years later in literature depicting the life of the Russian aristocracy (Gogol, Chekhov, Goncharov). 83 The phenomenon of widespread boredom seems to be related – as James Gleick suggests (1999) – to the modern transformations of how time is understood. For a discussion of this, see: Adam (2004). 84 In Poland there are groups of believers in a pre-Christian ethnic religion, comprising ca. 2,000 people (cf. Czerwiński 2013). In British police there is an official Police Pagan Association. Popular culture produced the Jedi religion based on Star Wars and “Dudeism” inspired by the film Big Lebowski. The Internet, on the other hand, bred the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the recently registered Swedish Missionary Church of Kopimism (cf. Rybarczyk 2012). 85 He defines it as “an institution, practice, or product that consoles us for something wrong or lacking, in ways similar to that of a medical placebo” (1986, 134). 86 Many minority activists argue that the battle has only just begun, while political concessions in the form of various group-specific rights meant to “equalize” the discriminating social conditions are merely a form of containing social tensions, with political correctness serving primarily as a tool for concealing real social conflicts.

Processes of socializing individual actions  225 87 As Susan Wolf writes, “a project’s suitability as a meaning-provider rises as it becomes more challenging, or offers a greater opportunity for a person to develop her powers and realize her potential” (2010, 36). 88 Ulrich Beck emphasizes this particularly strongly, writing that we are faced with “hyper-complexity and variety of findings, which, even if they do not openly contradict each other, do not complement each other either, but generally assert different, even incomparable things, and thus virtually force the practitioner to make his own cognitive decisions” (1992, 167; emphasis preserved). 89 This “ability of virtual communities to leverage the combined expertise of their members” (Jenkins 2006, 27) is called “collective intelligence”. This term was first coined by Pierre Lévy (1997). 90 Charles Taylor (2003) calls this attitude the “primacy of instrumental reason” in guiding people’s actions. 91 This state is well illustrated by what one therapist said: “Many patients do not come here because they feel some drama. On the contrary, they would say that ‘Basically, nothing’s wrong,’ ‘My life’s good, but when I look at other people, I can see they have fuller lives,’ ‘I have the sense of missing out on something important,’ ‘I think I could be happier’ ” (Trzebińska 2012, 38). 92 I am inspired here by Filip Schmidt. “One characteristic of our age”, he writes, “is that one rarely develops today, at the early stages of life, a whole package of immutable truths or a coherent worldview. We are rather forced to attach and detach subsequent elements, considering possible alternatives as well as confronting a variety of ways to perform the same actions, and various perspectives on the same problems” (2011, 12). 93 Cf. www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/formatting.html 94 “Before a disk is formatted, its magnetic surface is a complete mess of magnetic signals” (www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/formatting.html). 95 It is best illustrated by the well-known experiment conducted by Sherif, which takes advantage of the autokinetic effect (cf. Sherif 1936). Its results, which are usually interpreted in terms of social conformism, were regarded by Sherif himself as a starting point for drawing conclusions about how social norms develop. Still, in both cases it would be difficult to consider these interpretations as an explanation of the very mechanism behind the sharing of meanings, apart from indicating in the most general terms that “people are like that” (i.e. are conformist or gravitate towards agreement as far as their views are concerned). 96 Naturally, the scope of the “public” that recognizes a given person does change – from local communities, through broader socio-occupational circles, to the national and even global audience.

7 Producing the society anew

No one can predict where we shall find ourselves in the near future. Immanuel Wallerstein, Na Rozstaju Dziejów (At the Crossroads of History)

Activists of the new era are promising us the coming of a kingdom whose subjects we have already been for some time. Alain Finkelkraut, L’Ingratitude

People increasingly organize their meaning not around what they do but on the basis of what they are, or believe they are. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society

While working on this book I was invited to deliver several lectures at another university. Among the subjects suggested to me by the organizers was the question “Does society exist?” Taking into account that it was posed by sociologists, its emergence can be treated, on the one hand, as a sign of deep changes in society as the long-standing, fundamental object of sociological enquiry, and on the other – as an indication that sociology suffers from an identity crisis since this discipline was founded on the study of society. The hypothesis about the crisis of sociology is strongly supported primarily by sociologists themselves. They often bemoan the increasingly amorphous character of their discipline – attested to simply by a look at the table of contents in any issue of any sociological journal; the lack of so-called “Grand Theories” (Mills 2000b), i.e. large theoretical systems that would hold together and integrate various studies undertaken within this discipline – the last attempt at creating such a theory was made by Giddens (1986) in his structuration theory, which has nevertheless been judged as largely unsuccessful; the fact that some of the classic sociological topics are being intercepted by representatives of other disciplines – one of the most compelling texts about the formation of identity in school was written by George Akerlof (2002), the Nobel Prize winner in economy; and the marginalization of sociological institutes in university structures, which transforms sociology into a post-disciplinary science.1

Producing the society anew  227 It seems justified, however, to assume that, were we to search for the causes of these sentiments expressed in sociological circles, we would have to chiefly look into processes that transform the contemporary society – sociology’s fundamental object of enquiry. Accordingly, the crisis of sociology would be a consequence of the crisis of contemporary society  – one that is atomized, suffers from the dissolution of social bonds, has fluid social categories, and is marked by continual changes of various social forms. Describing the consequences of structural individualization, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim directly pose the question whether, in the light of currently ongoing changes, it is still possible to integrate our highly individualized societies. They show that the three ways of integration that are often mentioned in public debates – i.e. referring to communal values, shared interests, or national consciousness – cannot be effective today due to dramatic changes in all that used to constitute the modern reality. This, in turn, leads them to pose the following question: “[I]s it possible, at all, for a society in the drifting sand of individualization to be registered statistically and analysed sociologically? Is there any remaining basic unit of the social, whether the household, the family, or the commune?” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1996, 42). One could have the impression that the concept of society has been incorporated into the larger category that Beck has called “zombie categories” (2002), which – as he argues – are dead, though they still function in sociological writings.2 However, rumours about the death of society seem not only premature but also based on a false yet firmly grounded assumption made in the discipline. This assumption is clearly visible in the questions posed by Beck, which suggest that we are dealing with a tangible entity whose existence and boundaries are localizable in physical space, and which can be described by analyzing its equally tangible components such as classes, institutions, and social groups. For only by adopting such a view of society would it be possible to formulate judgements about its existence or non-existence. Meanwhile, were the concept of society to constitute a certain entity, it would be an entirely abstract one, belonging to the category of “imagined communities”, to borrow from Benedict Anderson (2006). He used this term to refer to the concept of nation, demonstrating how the interests of some social groups, the efforts made by the state, and the influence of the education system have contributed to shaping the national bonds, materializing the concept of a nation in social consciousness. Analogously, one could trace the materialization of the concept of society in the awareness of sociologists who have analyzed it, and among the receivers of these analyses. Bruno Latour does this, among others, showing how the scholars’ efforts to precisely define their new discipline and give it a scientific character have bred such ways of regarding this discipline’s subject of enquiry in which “the ‘social’ begins to mean a type of material” (2005, 1), as in the case of terms like “wooden” or “steel” – a building material from which reality is made. As a result, from a radically theoretical concept, society has been transformed into a set of particular institutions and statistical distributions. However, the development of sociology’s scientific imaginary, to use a concept coined by Charles Taylor (2004), was also impacted by the historically given

228  Producing the society anew nature of the studied phenomena. The relatively long persistence of the modern society as a specific social form allowed scholars to treat this concept as a synonym of a collectivity demarcated by state boundaries, which invited its reification. Thus, the current crisis of this form does not involve the disappearance of society, but rather the necessity to return to those semantic intuitions that are contained in this concept, and which have been present in sociology since its beginning, having never been really driven away from it. At the basis of these intuitions we find questions about the source and form of the social order, about the dominant type of relations between people, and about the prevailing principle of socializing human actions.3 It is not an easy return because it entails the necessity to radically reformulate all of the notions that have been shaping our thinking in modernity – the epoch that gave birth to both sociology and the society it studied (cf. Halawa 2013). The question posed by Beck – one about the sources of integration in contemporary society – still seems more “natural” and theoretically justified than Latour’s argument that “there is no society to begin with, no reservoir of ties, no big reassuring pot of glue to keep all those groups together” (2005, 37). Scholars still think it more obvious to search for the specificity of contemporary social life in certain regularities of individual behaviours rather than in rules discovered by referring to more general theoretical assumptions. However, this approach leads only to further inflation of sociology’s basic concept when numerous authors try to convince us that we live in a society that is “individualized”, “globalized”, “informationdriven”, “knowledge-driven”, “consumerist”, “risk-based”, “networked”, “liquid”, “sensation-oriented” etc. Meanwhile, as Theodore R. Schatzki rightly notes (2001b), we should not confuse the regularities related to the repeatability of the same or similar behaviours with the social order found at the base of the continued existence and development of a given form of organizing social life.4 The latter emerges from diversified actions that tie people and objects in more or less permanent configurations of interactions, which are organized around some shared meaning and reflexively shape individual behaviours aiming to sustain these configurations. In this perspective, both the production and reproduction of society become inextricably linked with processes involved in the creation and sustaining of meanings lying at the foundation of social practices. But what determines the social practices? Sociology usually searches for possible answers to this in individual features: needs, values, specific beliefs. This, however, inevitably takes us back to the question of socializing such individual features. Thus, in order to break away from the vicious circle of interdependencies, we need to regard social practices as a way of ordering individual actions, whose form depends not on individual traits, but on the conditions under which they are formed.5

The post-modern society as a space of social practices At first glance it might appear that the task defined in this way inevitably forces us to return to the level of analysis I have earlier rejected – one assuming that

Producing the society anew  229 describing society depends on tracing its regularities. The aforementioned terms used to describe the contemporary society are, after all, shorthand for such conditions of individual actions that various authors consider to be vital for the creation of the form of social organization we have today. Moreover, many of the findings contained in their theories have been referenced in this book, which unambiguously shows that I treat them as largely adequate accounts of the ongoing processes. However, I have also often indicated that these descriptions do not offer satisfying explanations of the contemporary processes, either due to the fragmentary character of the accounts (i.e. they focus on only some areas of human activity), or because their explanatory variables are based on phenomena that themselves demand an explanation, not to mention the fact that they mix the diagnostic, normative, and prognostic dimensions of analysis. A good example of such limitations is provided by the theory of network society. Although it constitutes today probably the most significant and certainly the most popular theory offering a comprehensive account of contemporary changes, Castells’s idea to trace the distinctive features of new forms of sociality in the networked character of the social configurations seems somewhat unsatisfactory for at least three reasons. First, the networked character of connections has always featured in the organization of human actions, constituting – alongside hierarchy, markets, and communities – one of the four major forms of social morphology (cf. Stalder 2008, 175–176). One could even argue that the network is the most rudimentary form of sociality, one that precedes the emergence of other, more complex forms (Elias 2001). The currently observed increase in the significance of network configurations would be, in this light, the outcome of, on the one hand, the dissolution or inefficiency of these more complex forms, and on the other – the result of the rise of new means of communication, which facilitated curbing the fundamental weakness of networks constituted by problems with coordinating actions undertaken within their frameworks. The second important limitation of the “network society” concept, especially in terms of explaining current changes in forms of sociality, is the fact that it fails to grasp a whole range of various ways of formatting reality created in the course of social practices. Castells himself was well aware of this limitation. He tried to overcome it by introducing the concept of social identity and devoting the second volume of his trilogy to its various manifestations. In effect, he views the dynamic of current transformations as determined by two contradictory processes: on the one hand, the emergence of global networks of flows whose existence, however, “is voiding of meaning and function the institutions of the industrial era” (2002, 354), and on the other – the fact that individuals seek this meaning in developing identities and communities that express resistance to the various aspects of these anonymous network effects. Nevertheless, this solution introduces, through the backdoor, the typically sociological opposition between individual and society – one that is also often regarded as the dichotomy of structure and agency, which I am trying to avoid here. Additional problems arise from the descriptive function of the concept of network society. The “translocality” of network connections, diagnosed by Castells, means

230  Producing the society anew that individuals become part of the network society insofar as they are engaged – even indirectly – in creating various systems of that society. In other words, the concept of network society automatically assumes that there is a large number of “loose people” who live outside its structures and are guided in their actions by a logic that is completely different from network logic.6 Castells addresses this directly when he introduces the metaphor of “black holes of informational capitalism” and writes that people living in them are “socially/culturally out of communication with the universe of mainstream society” (2001b, 167; emphasis preserved). In his view, we are witnessing today the emergence of a Fourth World that is “made up of multiple black holes of social exclusion throughout the planet. The Fourth World comprises large areas of the globe, such as much of Sub-Saharan Africa, and impoverished rural areas of Latin America and Asia. But it is also present in literally ever country, and every city, in this new geography of social exclusion” (168; emphasis added). To leave this category aside would thus also mean excluding it from theoretical analyses, which does not seem justified. All of these reservations certainly do not undermine Castells’s particular findings, to which I refer both earlier in this book as well as later in this chapter. They nevertheless suggest that the very concept of network society is prognostic in character rather than strictly descriptive, and therefore it should not be regarded as a point of reference in analyses of the conditions that shape contemporary social practices. After all, these practices are deployed here and now, in a specific institutional context, with the participation of people who are guided in their actions by specific images of reality. The networked character of connections established between these people is undoubtedly an important mechanism that moderates the course of specific interactions, but it does not determine their direction. Thus, it also does not determine the character of the forms of sociality created by these interactions. What is more, even if post-modern society were to morph into some version of Castells’s network society, it is still too firmly rooted in modernity to ignore the conditionality that would arise as a result. First of all, however, it is a society at the stage of formative transition – this is the fact that determines the processes occurring in it to the greatest degree. As analyses of earlier formative transitions suggest (cf. Marody and GizaPoleszczuk 2018, chapter 8), such periods are characterized by intensified changes in primarily three areas. First, these are changes rooted in the numerical growth of the population, which leads to migrations as well as alienation from former social structures and dissolution of existing bonds, reflexively restarting the processes of differentiation. Second, there are transformations that stem from the depletion of the habitat’s resources, both natural and socio-organizational. This intensifies the search for new modes of action and new sources of social power. Third, there are changes that relate to the intensification of communication, both spatial and interpersonal, which in turn contributes to the disintegration of established social representations and motivates people to search for new ways of explaining the world. Processes that accompany all of these changes are deeply interconnected and drive each other, contributing to the shattering of old forms of sociality and establishing conditions for the creation of new social practices.

Producing the society anew  231 Thus, let us adopt this perspective to consider the post-modern society of early twenty-first century. It might seem that population growth is the least important factor in this context, and so Western societies should not be influenced by any of the processes associated with it. Although the world’s population more than quadrupled over the course of the twentieth century, most of that growth was recorded outside the modernized West, where an entirely reverse tendency has been observed since the 1960s as the number of births has dwindled in many high-income countries.7 However, this tendency is accompanied by two crucial processes. The first one consists in the intensification of migrations on a global scale,8 leading to a stable rise in the number of immigrants in the populations of high-income countries.9 The second process, fuelled not only by external migrations but also by internal ones related to urbanization, consists in the aforementioned growth of cities.10 They have provided the basic form of “social existence” – one that shapes both individual psyche and collective behaviours (cf. Simmel 1950, 513–531; Castells 2001a, 434–440). One direct consequence of both these processes has been the intensification of multiculturalism, observed since the 1970s, which manifests both in the copresence of culturally diverse groups in the social space (strong multiculturalism) and in the saturation of that space with objects and symbols indicative of cultural difference (the so-called “boutique” multiculturalism). Consequently, “contacts between, and interpenetration of various traditions, models, intellectual systems as well as attitudes towards the world, God, and people have become something inevitable and irreversible in the contemporary world” (Śliz and Szczepański 2011, 7), thus evidently contributing to the undermining of the obviousness of the dominant image of reality and the social identities inscribed in it. Processes induced by multiculturalism have been additionally strengthened by factors characteristic for metropolitan life such as “the rapid crowding of changing images, the sharp discontinuity in the grasp of a single glance, and the unexpectedness of onrushing impressions” (Simmel 1950, 410) as well as by the weakening, or even dissolution of social bonds, which has contributed to the processes of structural individualization. Their combined effect consists in the increasing diversity of lifestyles, views, aspirations, and behaviours. At the same time, however, we need to remember, as Castells rightly notes, that “in such a world of uncontrolled, confusing change, people tend to regroup around primary identities: religious, ethnic, territorial, national” (2001a, 3). Those kinds of identities often become a framework for divisions into Us and Them, creating a basis for social practices and thus affecting not only culture but also the shape of political, economic or religious structures,11 to which I shall soon return. As for the second area of transformations, the turning point in processes of changing the modern habitat was the economic recession in the early 1970s and the political decisions it initiated, which were supposed to revive Western economies but effectively led to economic globalization. According to Castells, “[t]hree interrelated politics created the foundations for globalization: deregulation of domestic economic activity (starting with financial markets); liberalization

232  Producing the society anew of international trade and investment; and privatization of publicly controlled companies (often sold to foreign investors). These politics began in the United States in the mid-1970s, and in Britain in the early 1980s, spread throughout the European Union in the 1980s, and became the dominant policy in most countries in the world, and the common standard in the international economic system, in the 1990s” (137).12 In order to fully grasp the meaning of these decisions, it would be necessary to recall that the modern society gained its final shape in the long-running process of “socializing” the free-market economy. As Karl Polanyi shows, “the conflict between market and the elementary requirements of an organized social life provided the [nineteenth] century with its dynamics” (2001, 257); this conflict stemmed from the fact that the self-adjusting market “could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society” (3). It was in defence against the consequences of free-market processes that Western societies created the institutions we now associate with modernity in its socio-political dimension, and which culminated in the welfare state. When Polanyi prophesied, towards the end of the Second World War, that the nineteenth-century civilization would fall as a result of society’s victory over the free market, he obviously could not have foreseen the triumphant return of the principles of free-market economy towards the end of the twentieth century. At the same time, today’s dismantlement of the basic forms of organizing social life developed by the modern society seems to confirm his assumption about the irremovable conflict between the free-market order and the social order. One could thus say that, along with the deregulation policy, we have once again entered a period of “de-socializing” the economy since “instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system”, while the society becomes “an adjunct to the market” (60). Naturally, with the change of historical context we observe changes in basic properties of capitalism and state, the two components of the modern habitat which define the institutional space for both individual actions and social practices. Freemarket capitalism developing under the conditions of post-modern society differs from its historical predecessors chiefly in that “it is global, and it is structured to a large extent around a network of financial flows” (Castells 2001a, 502). This is an essential difference because it entails a fundamental shift in the basic sources of social power. They cease to depend on the ownership of material means of production located in a particular country and difficult to transport elsewhere, and are becoming a derivative of “movements of capital largely determined by subjective perception and speculative turbulence” (467), which increases the significance of access to information as the main determinant of this perception and speculative decisions. The post-modern state is in turn retreating from the position of a superior authority responsible for the fate and well-being of the nation-society, thereby liberating free-market mechanisms and ceding many of its former tasks to various external institutions. Such institutions, whose operation is subordinated to economic principles, are now becoming the basic tool of turning the post-modern society into a “market society”.

Producing the society anew  233 Given the assumptions made earlier, however, the concept of “market society” is contradictory insofar as the principles of free-market capitalism remain inevitably conflicted with the principles of social life. One might thus expect that the return of free-market economy would stimulate the society to seek measures that could protect it from being “annihilated by the action of the self-regulating market” (Polanyi 2001, 257). This leads us to the third area of changes, which involves the intensification of social communication. It is in the course of intensified communication that we observe the consolidation of such social forces whose location in the system facilitates introducing fundamental institutional changes that would transform the basic logic of the dominant form of social organization.13 Undoubtedly, the main factor responsible for changes in this area was the development of information technologies, which enabled everyone to communicate – potentially at least – with everyone else.14 However, a vital role in shaping this phenomenon was also played by already discussed processes of disintegration of the dominant, class-based images of reality, accompanied by a growing awareness of alternative images, wearing down of authorities, and increasing aspirations (cf. also Naím 2013, chapter 4). It seems that Serge Moscovici was right in claiming that from the middle of the twentieth century Western society has ceased to be rooted in labour and systems of beliefs, instead becoming structured by communication (1985, 149). Thus, it is in the existing communication networks that we should seek the source of social forces capable of developing a new form of social organization, a new society. However, the analysis of today’s dominant communal forms created through communication, contained in the previous chapter, shows that they are characterized by transience and fragmentation, which in turn means that the ways of formatting reality they create are equally transient and fragmented. What is more, these communities focus on cultural rather than economic aspects of reality, making it difficult to expect from them any major attempts at rebuilding the institutional order. Therefore, even if a new configuration of forces, a new “hegemon” is already crystallizing, it eludes attentive scholars. Certainly, they do note the increased activity of various, more stable groups that openly deny the legitimacy of particular components or even the very basis of the current social order. They also discern the role played in these processes by new means of communication (cf. especially Castells 2002, 2009, 2012). Still, the only conclusion that can be drawn from the available analyses of such groups is that they share a strong, negative emotional reaction to various aspects of contemporary reality and the absence of any, even quite general project aimed at rebuilding society. One could also add that it is just emotional rejection and not rational reflection on views expressed by particular groups that seems to be the fundamental mechanism structuring social communication, which only reinforces existing social antagonisms and does not favour integration of meanings created through social practices. In this configuration of conditions, the basic question is what stabilizes the post-modern society, facilitating the evolution of the social order it creates in a way that does not (yet?) lead to radical formative change? In search of an answer

234  Producing the society anew we should primarily examine up close the institutional frameworks of action that organize social life in its various dimensions. The process of “modernizing modernity” (discussed in Chapter 2), diagnosed by Ulrich Beck as an outcome of “reflexive modernization”, had to lead to such transformations of modernity’s initial institutions that currently allow the society to absorb the cumulated effects of accelerating changes – social, cultural, technological, and economic. From the perspective of sociality, however, the most crucial consequence of these changes appears to be the fundamental revision of forms of social control. This change is observable on all levels of socializing processes. As far as the level of individual behaviours is concerned, it can be easily noted that mixing people of different roots, increased pace of changes, intensification of urbanization, and the resulting disintegration of the dominant homogenous image of the world lying at the foundation of the “either/or” logic – all of these processes made classical forms of direct control ineffective (socialization and the necessity to take into account the community’s opinion) and increased the cost of earlier means of formal control (police, guards, controllers). As has been discussed in Chapter 4, solutions to both problems were provided by the development of information technologies, which are now becoming the basic tool for ordering, organizing, and monitoring human activities. As a side-effect, the place of values and norms regulating individual behaviour is now taken by automatized control over access to certain areas of activity, whose framework is determined by an assumed “conception of ‘normality’ or ‘regularity’ that all subjects are expect to reproduce” (Lianos and Douglas 2000, 264). However, as Michalis Lianos observes, this change is not only one of form. “Automated regulatory procedures”, he writes, “are not simply procedures of control. They are general management instruments for adopting the social world to the aims of institutions that use them. Their purpose is to eliminate all those aspects of social interaction which prevent the institution from achieving its set targets” (267), i.e. all that is related to the protection of superior values, loyalty to reference groups, negotiation of meanings, and more generally – the polysemic character of human actions. “The social bond becomes redundant since the whole environment is configured to replace it completely by the atomized interaction with the institution” (272). In this sense, institutions are now replacing nineteenth-century factories as the “ ‘satanic mills’ grounding men into masses”, as Karl Polanyi put it (2001, 35), or – to employ an updated idiom – as the main tool of individualizing contemporary society. The consequence of the dominance of institutional actions over social interactions is not only individualization but a range of other phenomena that we have grown accustomed to treating as irremovable and intrinsic features of post-­ modernity, but which turn out to be the outcome of transformed forms of control rather than the stimulus that initiated these transformations.15 For example, Lianos and Douglas point out that the transition from direct control to one mediated by institutions is accompanied by shifts in logic they collectively call “dangerization”. It consists in the increasing “tendency to perceive and analyse the world through categories of menace” (267). In this perspective, Beck’s popular concept

Producing the society anew  235 of risk society becomes a side effect of the cognitive approach imposed by those rules of institutional action that are oriented towards risk assessment. At the individual level this is supplemented with the rise of “prevention society”, to add another term to those mentioned earlier. Individual life begins to be subordinated to taking actions whose purpose is not to create certain effects but rather to prevent other effects from ever materializing. We abstain from tasty food because it involves the risk of raising our cholesterol levels; we postpone the decision to become parents because it might jeopardize our professional career; we invest money in higher education since, although it does not guarantee success, its lack could prove to be a major obstacle to achieving it; we force ourselves to take up jogging because it reduces the risk of something else, etc.16 The institutionally imposed perception of contemporary life in categories of potential risks forces individuals to constantly make predictions, plan, and monitor their actions. Another equally vital consequence of the dominance of institutional controloriented rules over social interactions consists in the progressing atrophy of the normative sphere. As the authors quoted here indicate, introduction of automated systems of control – focused on particular, often second-order components of our behaviours – contributes to the fragmentation of identity and leads to “value erosion” (265) because values can emerge only in direct interactions we enter with our entire selves, negotiating the direction of our actions and the meanings ascribed to them. From this perspective, the dissolving of the prevalent moral order, diagnosed by most contemporary social scientists, and replacing it with positive law, i.e. regulations written primarily by appointed authorities, seem to be not only the effect of the progressing functional differentiation of modern society’s institutions,17 but also a consequence of the relative disappearance of situations in which the actions of individuals are subjected to the sight and interpretation of others, with whom they directly interact. We are dealing with an identical process at the level of institutions. It reinforces all the consequences produced by changes in forms of control over individual actions. The disappearance of the axiological and normative foundation for social control is accompanied by the development of “audit culture”, which constitutes a specific institutional reaction to the growing need to reduce the sense of uncertainty, anxiety, and risk. As Michael Power shows (1999; cf. also Jary 2002), the popularization of auditing since the 1980s was certainly not caused by some pressing need to exert control but rather expressed a shift in the approach to society that accompanied the expansion of neoliberalism. At the same time, much like Lianos, Power draws attention to the fact that auditing is not just a new form of control over the rationality and effectiveness of institutions, but it reflexively affects their functioning insofar as “the idea of audit shapes public conceptions of the problems for which it is the solution” (7). In other words, auditing creates its own world, which it in turn controls, introducing values and practices essential for the course of its own process, but not necessarily by taking into account the effectiveness of the institution it controls. Although automated control over access to certain areas of activity seems to be an innocent technological improvement (after all, entry gates to the underground

236  Producing the society anew or to institutions operate in the same way as a human controller checking tickets or passes), while the “audit culture” has at its base an obvious need to supervise and verify tasks realized by specific social institutions, in both cases achieving set targets takes place at the cost of reducing the influence of spontaneous processes of socializing individuals’ actions. The concept of “normality”, which determines access to specific areas of activity, ceases in this light to be the consequence of complex processes of “normalizing” the social world, instead becoming the outcome of more or less arbitrary institutional decisions.18 In turn, the concept of “effectiveness” characterizing various social institutions replaces traditional selfregulation mechanisms, which were based on values and trust (cf. Jary 2002), with agreements reached by experts19 on the basis of patterns derived from the market. All of these changes – both direct and mediated – are related to the broadly understood area of social control. They marginalize the influence of competing meanings created in the course of social practices on the functioning of the entire system. The conflict-generating potential of such meanings is disarmed in individualized contacts between people and institutions, weakened by moving the values that inform it to the purely symbolic sphere without any possibility to institutionally enforce them, and dissolved in individual interactions, which increasingly often feature what Thomas Luckmann (2002) has called “indirect moralizing”, i.e. sneaking in moral judgement by adopting a specific style of communication.20 This specific “pacification of society” is supplemented by processes occurring in the area of the political. I mean here the domain of all those actions that are taken in the public sphere and that decide about the form in which a given society exists, regulate the relations between society, state, and the outside world, determine ways of being politically active, the functioning of the public sphere, as well as ways of taking and legitimizing decisions which concern the collective whole.21 In modernity, the most important institution in this field was the state, founded in the concept of citizenship and supposed to express the “general will”22 negotiated in political discourse, where different values and interests would clash. Even its mid-twentieth-century evolution into “welfare state” did not affect that basic idea which made state an institution meant to serve society.23 It was only the shift towards the end of the twentieth century that led to a significant transformation of the state into an institution subordinated primarily to the market. Of course, the point here is not to lend credibility to popular conspiracy theories arguing that “a plot of bankers and international organizations aims to enslave our nation”,24 but to indicate structural dependencies resulting from economic globalization. As Manuel Castells demonstrates (2001a, chapter 2), although at the basis of economic globalization we find political decisions motivated by “classical” ambitions of the main “globalizers” to create more favourable conditions for the operation of their own companies, and thus to increase the well-being of their own society, it is clear that, once unleashed, globalization processes have taken all countries as hostages of the globalized market. This is a market where the biggest players do not include members of domestic economic elites but transnational corporations,25 international regulatory institutions, transnational rating agencies,

Producing the society anew  237 and anonymous financial markets. Their successes and decisions currently determine the economic well-being of every society. This fact has a fundamental meaning for decisions taken by politicians.26 It is worthwhile to draw attention to three consequences this fact carries for changes in the area of the political. Firstly, the scope of matters affected by political negotiations and choices has been greatly reduced. “Voters can change governments, but it is nearly impossible for them to alter the economic policy”, Ivan Krastev writes (2013, “Introduction”), summarizing the change that also affected politicians themselves, to which I shall return later. As a result, the domain of the political in post-modern societies becomes dominated by general, cultural issues, or even moral ones – matters that do not translate directly into economic processes27 and primarily regard the inclusion of certain behaviours within the scope of that “normality” which underlies the institutionalized social control. Naturally, this does not mean that the so-called “society” completely abandoned actions that belong, at least nominally, to the domain of the political, leaving them to politicians. It only means that such actions are increasingly often taken not inside the institutions of the democratic state, or with their mediation, but outside them. Thus, we observe the disappearance of a common ground where competing values that guide specific actions could be negotiated. As a result, the protests that sweep through the streets of large cities, arguing in favour of or against something, mainly serve to cement a temporary sense of community of protesters, whereas groups of people who occupy metropolitan squares or streets can become, at best, a tourist attraction.28 This inability to channel the political into institutional forms of negotiating ways in which society functions contributes to the deepening divide between competing systems of meanings. On the other hand, however, it can paradoxically stabilize the existing reality by limiting contacts between the supporters of the most extreme views.29 Secondly, we note a clear shift in ways of governance. As John Braithwaite writes, “since 1980, states have become rather more preoccupied with the regulation part of governance and less with providing” (2005, 1–2), and he summarizes this change by saying that they “have become rather more preoccupied with steering and less with rowing” (iv). This allows states to transfer a portion of political responsibility and costs to so-called “regulators”, i.e. specific institutions formed in order to supervise these regulations, and to conceal the redistribution of social resources taking place on this occasion. As Levi-Faur notes, “while other types of policy are about relatively visible transfers and direct allocation of resources, regulation only indirectly shapes the distribution of costs in society”, which makes “their impact, effects, and net benefits less visible and therefore less transparent to the attentive public” (2010, 4–5). This reinforces one of the important consequences of the earlier-discussed change in forms of social control, namely the “structural tendency towards the replacement of the law-abiding citizen with an efficient user [of systemic institutions]” (Lianos and Douglas 2000, 265), thus contributing to the ultimate dismantling of the idea of “civic society”.30 Thirdly and finally, changes in how the state functions are accompanied by the increasing “impossibilism” of authorities, which manifests particularly clearly in

238  Producing the society anew the state’s internal affairs, where traditional expectations regarding the state as the main policy-maker, or at least as the instance implementing the politically negotiated rules of social life, clash with the new realities of political organization and participation. “It is as if a political centrifuge had taken the elements that constituted politics as we knew it and scattered them across a new and broader frame”, Mosés Naím writes (2013, 103). Political parties still exist but they have ceased to be the main channels for articulating political will after being forced to negotiate with various new players on the political stage, such as lobbyists, NGOs, or new social movements. Ideologies still provide the basis for party identification, but they are no longer capable of mobilizing social support, which is won more easily by focusing on specific issues, like civic partnerships or banning GMO crops. Barriers limiting access to the field of political discourse are more and more often overcome by outsiders who can greatly affect political life.31 Manuel Castells adopts a similar tone when he characterizes the basic properties of network economy: “In this electronically operated global casino specific capitals boom or bust, settling the fate of corporations, household savings, national currencies, and regional economies. The net result sums to zero: the losers pay for the winners. But who are the winners and the losers changes by the year, the month, the day, the second, and permeates down to the world of firms, jobs, salaries, taxes, and public services – to the world of what is sometimes called ‘the real economy’ ” (2001a, 503). This diagnosis is supported by statistical data quoted by Naím, showing the rising fluctuation among CEOs in large corporations. According to various sources, in comparison with the 1990s the chances of holding such positions have significantly dropped, just like the chances for survival of the greatest corporations have become slimmer.32 Although both metaphors – i.e. of centrifugal tendencies in politics and of the economic casino – can be considered as an expression of intellectual helplessness among authors who analyze these phenomena, it seems to be heuristically fruitful to consider them as hints about an important property of the processes described here, namely the structurally conditioned inability to attain a permanent position, one guaranteeing influence over the shape of the social order, by any collective actor engaged in politics, economy as well as social and cultural activities. As I already showed, although the social practices that emerge from these actions do format reality in completely different ways, the systems of meanings they create are tethered by the centrifugal forces of ever more rapidly globalizing economy. Its exigencies curb all possibilities of rebuilding a particular society, at least because such a reconstruction would demand rejecting them, while “any individual decoupling from the global economy implies staggering costs; the devastation of the economy in the short term, and the closing of access to sources of growth” (Castells 2001a, 147). This is the kind of situation that Alain Touraine calls the end of the social, writing that it means “the separation between the economic system, over which nobody can any longer claim to exercise any real control, and political and cultural life, which deals with the principles of freedom and of justice rather than the balance of power” (2014, 112).

Producing the society anew  239

The future has already begun Whatever Touraine’s “end of the social” might be, it is obvious that this idea means neither “the end of history” (cf. Fukuyama 1992), nor complete de-­socialization of human actions. It rather constitutes shorthand for the progressing dissolution of the form of social organization which was produced by modernity.33 This diagnosis finds expression in the conviction, voiced by Touraine, that “the period of change we are living through is at least analogous to the change from an agricultural to a mercantile society and then to an industrial one” (2014, 112). Linking this change with the economic crisis experienced since 2008, he argues that the latter was the outcome of a long-term tendency, and it “does indeed represent a breakdown, and one which is not confined to the increased separation between the financial world and that of production, insofar as it shatters the industrial logic, or in other words, the interdependence – or even fusion – of economic and social categories” (154). In the diagnostic dimension, Touraine’s theory is not particularly innovative. It perfectly fits with all the analyses of the contemporary era developed – perhaps slightly more cautiously – by scholars invoked in this book. What distinguishes it is perhaps the strong conviction that the end of reality as we know it is looming ahead of us, and that “our only choice is: either to resign ourselves to repeated crises until some final catastrophe occurs, or else to reconstruct a new type of economic and social fabric” (157; emphasis preserved). However, it remains unclear what the “final catastrophe” would consist in, who the “we” are, and what forces – social? political? – would undertake the task of “the reconstruction of relations between the economic actors” (158). Naturally, it is easy to imagine – as some economists do – some catastrophe sparked by a spectacular crash of financial markets, especially as we have come to the verge of this several times in recent years. Such a scenario brings to mind the Great Depression, which began in the 1920s, although given the complexity of today’s globalized world and the corresponding depth of repercussions entailed by a possible breakdown of its networks this vision might rather find inspiration in post-apocalyptic dystopias, such as Mad Max, which show a complete collapse of the social order. However, specifically due to the obviousness of such a threat we may feel inclined to agree with Lester C. Thurow (1997), who argues that this is not very probable, not least due to the multitude of various securing mechanisms, and – in the first place – to the will of the wealthiest countries, which will try to avoid this at all costs. According to Thurow, it is far more probable that we are going to witness a gradual regression of the Western civilization, spanning several generations and reminiscent in its structure of processes that accompanied the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the early Middle Ages.34 In his book titled The Future of Capitalism, he formulates the thesis that we have just embarked on a period of “economic punctuated equilibrium” (1996, 19), at the source of which we may locate the accumulation of changes in the spheres of ideology (fall of communism), technology (rise of knowledge-based industries), demography (growth

240  Producing the society anew of population as well as its ageing and mobility), economy (globalization), and politics (increasing multi-polarity of the world). The basic property of the periods of “punctuated equilibrium” is, in his view, the widening gap between new technologies and old ideologies or – to put it more precisely – visions of reality. This inevitably affects the effectiveness of market economy. “Before good economic combustion can be reestablished”, he concludes, “the two must again become compatible or consistent. This is a complicated process, since what is possible depends heavily on what we believe” (1996, 11). Although the choice between an immediate catastrophe and one stretched in time seems rather unattractive, especially in the situation when the market of scientific ideas abounds in theories sketching much more positive visions of the future and boldly exploring the shape of future social structures (cf. e.g. Bard and Söderqvist 2002), while the official ideology of high-income countries proclaims the construction of an “information society” or “knowledge society”, it is difficult not to notice that after a period of relishing the possibilities opened up by technological progress, we are entering a period marked by increasing intellectual anxiety about the ways in which contemporary societies will develop in the future.35 It is more and more often the case in public discourse that people are raising the question “How to make the world anew?” It expresses not so much dissatisfaction with its current form but rather fear that it might radically change. However, questions of this kind, just like theories formulated by individual analysts or Touraine’s calls, seem to be too strongly rooted in the modernist faith in the possibility of planning social development. It would be thus unwise to treat them as a serious starting point for a sociological analysis of this development. It would be also fruitless to adopt any approach that would start with certain ongoing phenomena or processes in order to foresee their future trajectories. This is the basis of Touraine’s discussion. He regards “the post-social situation” as inevitably connected with the emergence of a subjectivity that would be fully aware of the “universal rights for every human being” (2014, 157). A similar position is taken by Norbert Elias (2001), for whom the rise in the significance of human rights indicates that “the function of the effective survival unit is now visibly shifting more and more from the level of the nation state to the post-national unions of state and, beyond them, to humanity” (2001, 218). Castells, on the other hand, is far more careful in his prognosis. Writing about the currently unfolding processes of globalization, he makes the reservation that they will continue and even accelerate in time, “barring a catastrophic meltdown of the financial market, or opting out by people following completely different values” (2001a, 147; emphasis added). And rightly so, because a belief in some inevitable trajectory of development would be too close to Hegelian “historical necessity” – a position that does not find much support these days. In this situation, the safest starting point for sociological analyses seems to lie in the methodological imperative formulated by Latour: “to follow the actors themselves” (2005, 12). The fundamental difficulty with its implementation, however, arises from the trouble in defining actors. As I already mentioned, the processes transforming contemporary society have deprived the social forces that

Producing the society anew  241 determined the modern society’s dynamics of their importance, but have not yet led to the emergence of new structures we might associate with this role. These are the conditions that Touraine emphatically defines as “the end of the social”. In his view, it amounts to saying that due to changes affecting contemporary society, the place of social actors  – structurally defined forces motivated by socioeconomic interests arising from their position within the organizational structure of the industrial society – is taken by “unsocial” ones, among whom the ­leading role is played, on the one hand, by transnational financial capital, and on the other – by forces invoking specific values (Touraine 2014, 150). At first glance it would seem that the most convenient starting point for describing these new, “unsocial” actors would be their relation to the dominant systemic institutions. Thus, we would speak of actors engaged in practices that support these institutions, fight them, or ignore them. However, such a division becomes of little use when we stoop to the level of analyzing specific contemporary actions. First, the shape of systemic institutions is also undergoing changes and this fact cannot be passed over, regardless whether we ascribe it to the influence of the principle of “reflexive modernization” (cf. Beck, Bonss, and Lau 2003; Beck and Lau 2005), or to the necessity to “pacify” or tap into these social forces on which the stability of the entire system depends. Second, the scope of “anti-systemic” practices is immensely differentiated36 and stems from beliefs that violate the coherence of currently prevailing systemic institutions to a varying degree, especially because the characteristically post-modern logic of “both/and” allows them to be diverse. Third, ignoring systemic institutions can only happen to some extent because, whether we like it or not, even entirely new forms of actions emerge in a predetermined institutional context and are subject to its influences. All of these reservations are additionally strengthened by the fact that the postsocial situation, as Touraine puts it, “is characterized by the separation between the system and the actors” (2014, 5; emphasis added). This description corresponds well to a previously identified property of contemporary society, namely replacing social control with institutional control. It also allows us to discern the specific process of the autonomization of systemic institutions. Their functioning principles are a complex outcome of former goals, later adaptations, and contemporary conditions, as a result of which they are becoming further removed from people’s real concerns at the level of actual social practices. Integrating the system and the actors would thus require primarily subordinating these institutions once again to more or less uniform rules emerging from a “shared practical understanding” of reality. We thus return to the processes of formatting reality discussed in the previous chapter, which unfold in the course of social practices. It is in the processes of sharing meanings that we ought to seek the germs of new, unsocial actors whose actions could play a significant role in the current processes of social change. For some time now, it has been increasingly clear that these processes are not just limited to creating meanings that legitimize group distinctness and/or offer a means of escaping from the intensifying sense that life in a fragmented, “liquid” reality is deprived of meaning, but they also constitute an attempt at furnishing this

242  Producing the society anew life with an axiological order that would differentiate “proper” behaviours from “improper” ones, “desirable” relations from “undesirable” ones, and “rational” aspirations from “irrational” ones. In other words, they attempt to create our world anew by re-integrating the shattered reality in an act of “foundational holism”37 that would harmonize the systems of meaning around which social practices are organized. These competing axiological orders seem to revolve today around three imperative values. The first one, which constitutes a residual version of the modern nomos, is still focused on economic success achieved through competition between individuals, companies, political parties, states, etc. The basic principles of such competition in all areas of life are provided by an idealized model of the free market, which means that the actions of social actors become to an ever greater degree subordinated to economic principles.38 Normative justifications of actions, once furnished by the Protestant ethos, are here replaced by the principle of efficiency. The second kind of axiological order is constructed around the imperative value of community, whose boundaries are determined by the most basic social identities: religious, ethnic, territorial, national. Special attention is granted to the protection of traditional family treated as a sort of incubator of communal values and bonds. Normative justification of actions is provided by the necessity to defend the community from Strangers, while the criteria for including people in the last category are determined in the course of actual social practices.39 Finally, the third kind of axiological order is organized around the imperative value of being oneself, i.e. the option to lead one’s life in accordance with one’s inclinations and the opportunities arising from the changing reality. Normative justification for actions subordinated to such individuation is provided by the idea of self-realization and self-development, while the basic principle organizing interpersonal relations consists in acknowledging other people’s right to choose a variety of different lifestyles, at least as long as they do not clash. As is easily noticed, at the basis of these competing axiological orders we find not just attitudes towards systemic institutions, but a different reaction to the fundamental principle of the post-modern society, i.e. progressing structural individualization. In this sense, one might say that considering success as the chief principle entails acknowledging this process as unquestionable and without alternative, while defending traditional communal forms is a specific expression of resisting it and struggling with it, and only the emphasis on the significance of self-realization opens the possibility to search for new forms of being-sharedwith-others. By determining the broadest framework for the processes of formatting reality into areas of meanings supported and reproduced in the course of interactions by individuals who engage in them, the three axiological orders direct the forms of social practices that arise from them in a different manner. It is also crucial that, analyzing contemporary exemplifications of these forms, one can ascertain that they differ not only in the content of the “shared practical understanding” around which individual actions are organized, but also in the way they create collective

Producing the society anew  243 identities, in the specific morphology of the ways of socializing individual actions they utilize, and in the kind of collective goals they set. Thus, as far as differences in ways of creating basic social identities are concerned, they seem to be aptly reflected in different forms of We-categorizations (Jarymowicz 1994). The “communal” We is supported by the categorial divisions that exist and are preserved in a given society, such as workers, women, sexual minorities, trade unionists, ethnic background, or denomination. In the case of practices organized around various forms of “being oneself”, constructing collective identities usually occurs in reference to an attributive We, which abstracts from the individuals’ membership in specific groups or social categories, and emphasizes the similarity of their characteristics or problems they face (e.g. people with initiative, those with a sense of humour, “minimalists”, but also women (un)willing to become pregnant, people of unusual height, etc.). The most interesting instance is that of creating collective identities in the case of practices focused on the value of success. Due to the dominance of structural individualization which is characteristic for such practices, the production of collective identity occurs mainly through the construction of a group We, i.e. relatively small collectivities whose members maintain more or less long-lasting, direct relations subordinated to achieving a particular target (e.g. project teams formed to realize a particular task, but also “cliques”, “coteries”, “support networks” etc.).40 As for the specific morphology of the ways of socializing individual actions represented by the three kinds of we-identity, one might argue – by freely employing the botanical metaphor developed for other purposes by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1987) – that the practical understanding around which the practices of people who identify with various communities are organized has the structure of roots, whereas that used by people who experiment with new forms of being themselves have the structure of rhizome. The former refer to eternal values, universal laws of nature and timeless symbols in their endeavour to find in the depths of the past the roots of the “axis of evil” they construe as the enemy of the “tree of good”, which they represent and which defines their identity. The latter freely combine meanings created by various participants in public life, offering temporary alliances in defence of the right to publicly disclose different ways of being oneself. The juxtaposition between filiation based on strictly defined criteria of inclusion or exclusion, and temporary alliances of people holding different views but brought together in order to solve particular problems or reach certain goals, should be supplemented with an account of the ways of socializing individual actions created by the group We. Following Deleuze and Guattari, one might argue that the “practical understanding” offered by the group We has an onion-like structure. Its deepest level would be comprised by meanings whose main source is the repository of individualistic and free-market convictions that evolved from the basic premises of modernity, the middle level – by meanings created within specific social categories (classes, demographic categories as well as ethnic, sex, or lifestyle ones), while the outer layer would consist of meanings that guide actions within more or less loosely tied social groups. At the same time, let us

244  Producing the society anew draw attention to the fact that in this context cooperation between individuals is, at the deepest level, primarily subordinated to institutional norms,41 at the middle level – to differentiated cultural norms, and it is only at the group level that we can speak of relatively free creation of more or less permanent intra- or interinstitutional ties whose basis is the realization of group members’ interests. As for the most general goals that guide these diverse axiological orders, the basic difference is created by the attitude towards the ongoing overriding process of “making society market-oriented”. Accepting success as the principal value entails embracing this process as a natural frame of reference and leads to formulating goals in economic terms, i.e. in terms of maximizing profits and minimizing losses, regardless of the area in which actions are being undertaken. This principle dominates equally in institutions, in group practices, and in individual actions.42 This does not mean that individuals who accept it display a particularly high level of rationality or effectiveness. It is rather the case of a general tendency to subordinate aims formerly formulated in the language of autotelic values to economic categories. In case of practices that emerge from seeing communality as the superior value, the main end seems to consist in the radical reconstruction of the social order in accordance with certain universal and timeless principles referring to the Bible, Christian natural law, or the conviction about the eternal character of primordial ethnic bonds and the necessity to defend the community from Strangers (cf. Żelazny 2004). Many scholars (cf. Tibi 2002; Castells 2002, especially chapter 1) indicate, however, that such communities are basically an indispensable product of post-modernity because they accept – fully or to a large degree – its economic and technological order, rejecting only its inherent cultural values, which are systemically supported. One could thus say that regardless of differences in the “ideological superstructure”, these communities primarily aim to capture systemic institutions that regulate access to the resources of social power. Accordingly, the main end of practices that emerge from such convictions is primarily the redistribution of the system’s resources. Naturally, realization of this end can be accompanied by a more or less thorough institutional restructuring. In this sense, communities of this type are considered to support a social order different from the one that is currently produced on a systemic basis. Finally, it seems characteristic for practices organized around individuation to focus on defending general laws that facilitate unrestrained self-realization or “being oneself”, rather than on building particular social institutions channelling the actions of individuals into strictly defined patterns.43 We should also note that in the case of such practices we are dealing with goals which – by rejecting the meaning system subordinated to market logic, which is superior to systemic institutions – hide in themselves the greatest potential to build an alternative social order. This is supported by the fact that aspirations guided by the principle of individuation oppose, by definition, all the aspirations that shape the activities of a “marked-oriented society” (cf. Fromm 2008). However, what also contributes to the search for alternative forms of sociality is the increasing difficulty of living in the post-modern society and the ever greater opportunities to take new actions

Producing the society anew  245 which have been facilitated by the development of technology. Thus, on the one hand, we observe the accumulation of problems that Ulrich Beck called the “sideeffects” of modernization, and which arise from the expansion of processes in which the society becomes market oriented. These include increasing wealth inequality, rising unemployment, wasteful exploitation of natural resources and people, leading to the decrease in the quality of life, and, primarily, accelerated disintegration of the meanings that used to give sense to social actions. On the other hand, embedding practices that constitute a reaction to these problems within “mass self-communication” positions them on the frontline of the ongoing transformations of human life, transformations rooted in explorations of new solutions offered by the technological revolution we all participate in. This general description of competing axiological orders lurking behind the ongoing processes of formatting reality might be concluded by saying that there currently coexist three modes of sociality, which are organized around different values and generate different kinds of identity. Although such a conclusion can be theoretically elegant and rooted in the well-grounded theory developed by Castells,44 it appears to be excessively idealizing today’s reality, in which actions of most people are subjected to the simultaneous influence of meanings that are generated by the aforementioned orders45 and are also (rather effectively) controlled by existing systemic institutions. And although each of these orders could be ascribed – as Castells has done – the most characteristic or distinctive actors, we should remember that these actors “defined in ‘moral’ terms cannot yet be defined by the institutional . . . implications” (Touraine 2014, 104). It remains an open question whether Touraine’s “yet” can ever transform into a “then” shaped by these “moral actors”. The key factor is certainly the activity of traditionally understood elites. This is not only because they are capable of directly affecting the shape of the institutional order, but also – and perhaps primarily so – because integrating meanings created by particular actors into a more or less homogenous vision of the world, which orders the functioning of the entire society or at the very least its majority, ultimately always occurs in the field of power (cf. Gupta and Ferguson 1992). This is why every attempt at answering the question about the future development of the post-modern society – torn apart by entirely contradictory, conflicting desires created during the processes of socializing individual actions – must take into account at least a brief reflection on the properties of this social category. At first glance, it would seem that not much has changed in this field since the 1950s, when C. Wright Mills (2000a) analyzed the concentration of power in the USA in the hands of top-level representatives of business, politics, and the military, emphasizing the strengthening of relations between particular hierarchies. Perhaps the significance of business has recently increased because that of the military has been decreasing since the end of the Cold War, but Mills’s claim that “the people of these higher circles are involved in a set of overlapping ‘crowds’ and intricately connected ‘cliques’ ” (2000a, 11) could be repeated unchanged by all the scholars who emphasize the oligarchic character of today’s power elites, seeing in them a major threat to democracy.46

246  Producing the society anew However, contrary to these “morphological” similarities, today’s power elites, which have emerged in the course of processes transforming the sources of social power, are quite unlike the elites of the first half of the twentieth century. Already in the 1980s Christopher Lasch drew attention to a qualitative change of this social category, emphasizing that the most specific characteristic of new elites is “their continuing fascination with the capitalist market and their frenzied search for profit” (1996, 34). It is also worth stressing that this approach would make the elites the main representative of the axiological order focused on economic success. According to Lasch, the new elites can be defined not through their place in the system of production (as in the Marxist approach) or their “aesthetic dispositions” (as in Bourdieu’s theory), but through their lifestyle, which makes them more and more separated from the rest of society. Today’s privileged classes in fact live outside society. Since their effectiveness depends on teamwork, they settle in specialized geographical niches populated by people similar to them. They send their children to private schools, take out medical insurance policies funded by their employers, live in gated communities, and hire private security companies to shield themselves from increasing violence. Instead of supporting public services, they invest in improvements of their voluntarily isolated enclaves. As Lasch puts it, “they are less interested in leadership than in escaping from the common lot” (41). Let us point out that rejection of leadership, or Lasch’s eponymous “revolt of the elites”, primarily involves their non-interfering with systems of meaning that organize the practices of other social groups. As Michael J. Sandel demonstrates, this position is usually justified by invoking the widespread opinion that “respecting our fellow citizens’ moral and religious convictions means ignoring them (for political purposes, at least), leaving them undisturbed, and conducting our public life – insofar as possible – without reference to them” (2009, 268). However, the revolt of the elites diagnosed by Lasch, or – to employ more neutral language – their alienation from their own society of origin, can also be explained by the fact that the frame of reference for the “new class” are multi-national technocratic elites rather than groups making up the rest of society. It thus results from processes of economic globalization, which – by contributing to the rise of transnational corporations – did not so much tear the bonds between the elites and their societies,47 as eliminated, or at least weakened, the reliance of economic activity on all that happens in this society or to it. Apart from alienation, another equally important feature of today’s elites consists in such transformations of the patterns of their actions that could be ascribed to a fundamental change in the mechanisms of shaping them. Whereas entering Mills’s “Great Three” would be regulated by class (a shared background meant that members of the elite would graduate from the same schools, frequent the same clubs, and maintain informal relations throughout their lives), recruitment into today’s elites may also be based on direct contacts but happens primarily on the basis of one’s knowledge and information. It would be quite mistaken, however, to regard these elites as a germ of Richard Florida’s “creative class” (2004)

Producing the society anew  247 or similar names48 that foreground the intellectual competences of the new elites. As Janine Wedel (2009) argues, what matters here is a specific kind of information derived from performing certain functions in the state or having a specific position within a corporation, as well as a specific kind of knowledge – how to navigate the state’s maze of decision-making, or how to skilfully influence public opinion. In her book titled Shadow Elites, Wedel formulates the thesis that changes in mechanisms of shaping the elites are a derivative of radical transformations affecting the contemporary society, whose basic vector is the blurring of the boundary between the public and the private. State structures, which create the most widely recognizable public sphere, are now entering into closer relations with private structures, or are even replaced by them.49 Hence, the basic attribute of the new type of “players for power and influence” is that they are not limited to only one sphere of activity. “Rather”, Wedel writes, “through their activities, they connect state with private, bureaucracy with market, political with economic, macro with micro, and global with national” (2009, x–xi). This is possible due to the fact that these “flexians” – as Wedel calls them – simultaneously play numerous roles on various stages, utilizing positions gained in some areas to achieve their aims in others. This does not involve only strictly material aims, even though amplifying their income is an essential trait of the new elites. As Wedel emphasizes, at the basis of creating “flex nets”, i.e. the collective form of the new elites, we find shared convictions and actions. “Members of a flex net act as a continuous, self-propelling unit to achieve objectives that are grounded in their common worldview” (17), while “a flex net’s strength lies in its coordinated ability to reorganize governing processes and bureaucracies to suit the group’s purposes. Members of these groups both use and supplant government, as well as establish might-be-official, might-be-unofficial practices to bypass it altogether” (19). Or, to put it in slightly different terms, “they use the formal organizations with which they are affiliated – governmental, corporate, national, or international – but their chief allegiance is to themselves and their networks” (15; emphasis preserved). Unlike Lasch, who emphasizes the technocratic modus operandi of the elites, denying any engagement on their part in broader public matters, Wedel attributes great importance to the “common view of the world and their role in it”50 (154), which unites “flexian” networks, but the unity of views she analyzes is rather unidimensional and primarily concerns convictions about general mechanisms responsible for the global dynamics of political and economic processes as well as ways of affecting them (the fight against terrorism, defence of the free market etc.). Certainly, these beliefs, especially when translated into policies, are to some extent assimilated by systemic institutions, but they are unable to subordinate meanings generated by other systemic structures or created in the course of direct social practices, because what sets the horizon of these convictions and decisions is the globalized world system and not one’s own society. Or, to employ Castells’s terms, in today’s societies power is organized in an abstract space of information flows, disconnected from particular locations, whereas human practices remain rooted in a space of particular places, leading to the situation in which

248  Producing the society anew “experience, by being related to places, becomes abstracted from power” (2001a, 458), and simultaneously abstracted from meanings created by that power. Undoubtedly, in practice this separation is not as strict as Castells seems to assume. We should rather assume that both social categories are “sponging off” the meanings they create: representatives of the power elites intercept certain themes from “the language of experience” and the so-called ordinary people often appropriate concepts produced by the elites for their own purposes. However, this does not change the fact that in post-modern society of the 2010s it would be difficult to defend Foucault’s claim that “power produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth” (1995, 194), especially if we read it literally. This is not because this claim is no longer adequate or binding, but because the authorities today are losing power. As Mosés Naím put it, “power is easier to get, harder to use – and easier to lose” (2013, 2). In the book titled The End of Power, Naím summarizes reflections on power relations in the contemporary world. “We know”, he writes, “that power is shifting from brawn to brains, from north to south and west to east, from old corporate behemoths to agile start-ups, from entrenched dictators to people in town squares and cyberspace” (2013, 1). In his view, however, this is an illusory knowledge as it fails to grasp the fundamental property of changes occurring in this field, namely that “who is up and who is down will matter ever less in the world in which those who get to the top do not stay there for long and are able to do less and less with the power they have while there” (236). In his analyses of contemporary changes, Naím identifies three “M-revolutions” – the More, Mobility, and Mentality revolutions – and demonstrates that one of their consequences consists in incapacitating all basic channels through which power would influence people: deploying violence is more and more costly, habitual subjection to the authority of power is waning, the awareness of alternatives makes authorities less persuasive, while awards that can be won for loyalty cease to have unambiguous value in the world of intensified competitiveness. In effect, the power of major players – states, armies, corporations – is increasingly curbed by actions of all kinds of micro-authorities, ultimately causing political paralysis and social unrest. Contrary to what might be expected, Naím does not conclude from this that power ought to be strengthened. Focusing on symptoms of its disintegration, he tries to demonstrate instead that they further endanger social development. As he underlines at the very onset of his discussion, “power has a social function. Its role is not just to enforce domination or to create winners and losers; it also organizes communities, societies, marketplaces, and the world” (17). This is the function it cannot play today anymore, not only due to specific traits of individuals who comprise contemporary elites, but also because – perhaps primarily even – the configuration of power in the post-modern society is in fact changing. Naím concludes his book with a somewhat optimistic observation that “we are on the verge of a revolutionary wave of positive political and institutional innovations” (243); however, he makes the reservation that the process of creating such innovations “will not be top-down, orderly, or quick, the product of summits

Producing the society anew  249 or meetings, but messy, sprawling, and in fits and starts” (244). His conviction that “it is inevitable” (244) seems to stem chiefly from historical analogies, as suggested by his references to Greek democracy and the institutional changes unleashed by the French Revolution. One should not forget, however, that the French Revolution had its roots in the Enlightenment, which equipped it with a new system of meanings, “a new reality”, i.e. a set of new issues that are taken for granted, including individual characteristics, interpersonal relations, and people’s rights. At the basis of institutional changes released by it we find reflections on the desired shape of the state and its relations with the civic society – reflections characteristic especially for British social thought. In other words, those changes were preceded by the development and dissemination of the kind of an intellectual project for the future that would search for solutions to current problems not by turning towards the past but rather by creating a New Man and adapting the form of social organization to him. Meanwhile, it would be difficult to seek analogous projects in contemporary intellectual debates. According to Frank Furedi, the withdrawal of the intellectual elites from their fundamental task, consisting in creating standards and forming visions of a better society, is primarily rooted in a misconceived “politics of inclusion” – the belief that “different cultures and experiences have a lot to contribute to the development of human civilization” (2006, 17) and that consequently they should not be curbed by introducing any models of perfection. Michael J. Sandel, on the other hand, defines this position more bluntly as a “politics of avoidance”, which frequently “means suppressing moral disagreement rather than actually avoiding it” (2009, 268), inevitably leading to the exacerbation of social conflicts. Regardless of the reasons for the rise of this attitude51 or the names we can give it, its dominance transforms thinkers into experts, displaces projects with diagnoses, and further blurs social meanings by way of breaking away meanings created in the course of social practices from the “codes” that guide the functioning of institutions. This, in turn, leads to the situation in which the systemically supported institutional order is more and more emptied of values, which formerly justified its functioning, while competing axiological orders are still too dispersed and fragmented to create their own institutions and impose them on a significant part of society. Thus, even if solutions to contemporary problems are sought in some counterpart to the French Revolution, we should conclude that we are only at the very beginning of a journey possibly leading to an event of this kind. Summarizing these considerations, it is worthwhile to indicate three problem areas that might determine, in the coming years, the turns of this path and the events lying ahead of us. The first is the increasing inefficiency of contemporary capitalism. Let us point out that regardless of the looming violent financial crash caused by unforeseeable movements of speculative capital – the basic component of the globalized economy (cf. Castells 2001a) – the lingering economic crisis that has affected the Western world since 2008 questions the adequacy of the fundamental principles determining, since the 1980s, the framework of economic policies.52 This crisis is accompanied by high unemployment rates and the rapid growth of income

250  Producing the society anew inequality, which leads to economic stagnation and lower life standards. This is a blow to the legitimizing basis of the current system because it will be more and more difficult to invoke individual economic success as a value justifying various limitations imposed on people’s actions. The second key problem area is the ongoing technological evolution. It is usually identified with changes in communication, which in themselves constitute an immensely important factor of change, whose scope has not been fully probed yet.53 It needs to be emphasized though that it also involves a dramatic though unspectacular development in biotechnology, which opens an entirely new, formerly non-existent field of human activity  – one that will demand changes in older institutions and establishing new ones. It is enough to mention here the already known controversies related to in vitro fertilization, which only heralds the kinds of problems that might be entailed by the development of genetic engineering and other “technologies of life”, as Castells calls them (2001a, 54–59). One should also remember that these technologies cover not only supplementing various deficiencies of the human body, but also researching the human genome, which paves the way for altering the genetic make-up of our species, developing artificial intelligence, and exploring a broadly understood fusion of technology and biology. This might ultimately blur the boundary between the “natural” and the “artificial” or “human-made”.54 The third problem area, finally, is the least diagnosed one – it consists in transformations of individuals themselves, or strictly speaking of those aspects of their functioning that Norbert Elias (2000, 2001) calls social patterns of self-control55 and which determine the most general dimension of relations between the individual and the society, constituting a complex outcome of both its specific relations with others, and civilizational transformations that shape these relations.56 In a nutshell, the essence of this change would consist in that, “in conjunction with the reduced permanence, [as well as] a greater interchangeability of relationships”, life in the post-modern society increasingly often “demands of the individual a greater circumspection, more conscious forms of self-control, reduced spontaneity in action and speech in the forming and management of relationships” (2001, 204), which reflexively leads to the increase of self-awareness and the development of new intellectual modalities. In other words, just like the transformation of warriors into courtiers boosted psychologization and rationalization of human thinking, today’s transformation of masses into individuals fosters fundamental transformations of how people regard themselves and others. The key aspect of these transformations consists primarily in the increasing awareness that we can be both subject and object of our own actions, i.e. that, by being a “product” of social interactions, we can simultaneously actively shape these interactions, at least through “controlled decontrolling of emotional control”.57 This is also accompanied by a rising awareness of our irremovable dependency on the actions of other people with whom – to employ Kant’s now idiomatic phrase from Perpetual Peace – we not only have to “reconcile ourselves to existence side by side” (Kant 2005, 18), but can also work together, for instance by entering relations subordinated to the “culture of gifts”.

Producing the society anew  251 Achieving higher self-consciousness58 certainly does not occur automatically and does not have to always lead to desirable effects.59 However, it is the only relatively permanent change that – emerging from processes characteristic for the post-modern society – involves the potential to reach a higher level of social integration.60 Its realization largely depends on finding answers – ones adequate for the new kind of self-consciousness – to the three questions that constitute the basis of three key contemporary dilemmas, as identified in the previous chapter: who we are in the eyes of others, who the others are for us, and what gives meaning to the life we live. Creating society and searching for new forms of societal organization thus demands that, in our reflections on the future, we have to find “[in] the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think” (Foucault 1984, 46; emphasis added).

Notes 1 “By post-disciplinary”, Castellani and Hafferty write, “we mean the following. The word ‘post’ refers to any type of sociology that goes beyond the discipline’s current institutional arrangements and intellectual divisions. These ‘post’ disciplinary arrangements can be inter-disciplinary (between or amongst disciplines), trans-disciplinary (above and beyond disciplines) or even anti-disciplinary (without disciplinary boundaries” (2009, 162). 2 Other zombie categories, according to Beck, include concepts such as family, class, and neighbourhood. 3 Cf. a broader discussion of this in Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018, chapter 1. 4 Schatzki follows in the footsteps of Durkheim, quoted in the previous chapter (cf. note 9). 5 Such ways of ordering are called “dissipative structures” that emerge under conditions of imbalance in larger systems; cf. more on this subject in: Prigogine and Stengers (1984), Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk (2018). 6 The concept of “loose people” was used in accounts of some segments of the social structure in the period when the modern society was forming (cf. Assorodobraj 1966 and Frieske 2004). Today’s numerical growth of this category could be thus regarded as an additional argument in favour of the thesis about the current transformation of social systems and structures. 7 This phenomenon is known in demography as the second demographic transition, the first one having occurred at the beginning of modernity and leading in its initial stages to a rapid growth of population in Western countries (cf. Okólski 2002). 8 Castles and Miller (1998), who wrote a classic study on the subject, use the phrase “the age of migration” to refer to the twenty-first century. 9 In 2006, people born abroad constituted already ca. 12 per cent of the entire population of OECD countries. In 2011 this percentage rose to 13.3 per cent (www.oecd.org/els/ migration/imo) [accessed in March 2014]. 10 The number of so-called megacities whose population exceeds ten million is rapidly rising. There were three in 1975, thirteen in 1990, twenty in 2005, and twenty-four in 2011. The number of metropolitan areas whose population exceeds twenty million is also rising. There were already five of them in 2011 (Giddens and Sutton 2017, chapter  6; Castells 2001a, 434; www.prb.org/pdf13/2013-population-data-sheet_eng.pdf) [accessed in March 2014]. 11 For a more detailed analysis of this influence, see: Naím (2013, 58–64). 12 Castells strongly emphasizes the significance of these strategies, writing elsewhere that “the global economy was politically constituted. Restructuring of business firms, and

252  Producing the society anew new information technologies, while being at the source of globalizing trends, could not have evolved, by themselves, toward a networked, global economy without politics of de-regulation, privatization, and liberalization of trade and investment” (2001a, 147; emphasis added). 13 Cf. the meaning that Habermas ascribed to intensified communication with regard to the rise of bourgeois society (1989; cf. also Chapter 2 of this book). 14 Scott Lash (2002b) even writes that for this very reason the concept of information society should be replaced with that of “communication society”. 15 This is a crucial change because it entails the shift in the theoretical status of a number of concepts, which turn from being considered as explaining variables to explained ones. 16 This preventive and planning-focused attitude manifests also in those areas that formerly seemed subordinated only to spontaneous reactions  – it suffices to browse through the guides to sex life (cf. also Giddens 1991). 17 Cf. Chapter 4 as well as Luckmann 2002. The latter refers to the theory developed by outstanding German sociologist of law Theodore Geiger, in whose view the existence of a homogenous moral order, one offering a definition of good life, would only make it more difficult for modern society’s institutions to function rationally. 18 This is perfectly illustrated by the case of a 60-year-old woman whose credit card was blocked by her bank when she tried to use it to pay in a tattoo studio. 19 For a discussion of the broader context and consequences of a transition from the professionalism of public trust to expert-based professionalism, see: Brint 1994. 20 Based on his studies, Luckmann (2002, 20) mentions the use of litotes (i.e. the reverse of hyperbole, a belittling, e.g. as in the response “Don’t mention it” in the sense of “You’re welcome”), specific kinds of questions (e.g. “Why is that?”), or phrases (e.g. “I don’t understand”), structures of the if/then type, certain kinds of ridicule etc. 21 For a broader discussion of different ways of understanding the political, see: Król 2008. 22 Naturally, we ought to remember that this “generality” of will was initially limited to a very small segment of society, while the scope of “active citizenship” was undergoing gradual expansion up until the mid-twentieth century. In France women won the right to vote only in 1944 and in Switzerland they had to wait until 1990 for active participation in elections. African – Americans in the USA gained full voting rights only in 1965. 23 One should add that this evolution was accompanied by a clear transition from “the voice of society” to “the voice of experts”. Its effect was the state institutions overtaking various social functions, thus starting a specific process of “appropriation of society by the state”. 24 Cf. the analysis of slogans articulated by American militia and Patriot movements in Castells 2002, 84–97. Similar themes can be detected in anti-globalist movements in other countries. 25 Whereas in 1969 there were 7,000 transnational corporations in the world, in 1996 their number already reached 44,500, and in 2000 it exceeded 62,000. 26 It is enough to recall how the governments had acted at the brink of the last economic crisis initiated by the announcement of bankruptcy by Lehmann Brothers. 27 This does not mean they are any less important. However, whereas the government’s decision to raise the minimum wage could lead to an immediate outflow of foreign capital and losses on the stock market, the decision to legalize civil partnerships ­carries only the risk of protests organized by people supporting the traditional model of family. 28 Of course, such manifestations of the political have a completely different meaning in countries that are struggling to introduce and stabilize democratic governance. 29 As Castells notes, “negation of civil societies and political institutions where cultural communes emerge leads to the closing of the boundaries of the commune” (2002, 67). This closing can take a spatial form because apart from ethnic ghettoes there emerge “identity ghettoes” – districts or even towns inhabited by people of a specific sexual orientation, of certain age, of a specific denomination, of a specific worldview, etc. 30 For more on factors that undermine this idea, see Marody 2004.

Producing the society anew  253 31 Two most famous recent examples are Julian Assange (founder of WikiLeaks) and Edward Snowden (CIA whistle-blower). 32 As Naím states (2013, 163–165), directors of the Fortune 500 companies had a 36 per cent chance of keeping their position for the next five years in 1992, which dropped to 25 per cent in 1998. According to other sources, the average period of employment for directors of the biggest companies has dropped from 10 to 5.5 years since the 1990s. Other data show that 80 per cent of directors of the 500 most important corporations accounted for in the S&P index were dismissed before reaching retirement age. A similar trend can be observed in data on the “survivability” of the biggest companies. From among a hundred top-ranked Fortune 500 companies in 2000, only 66 retained their spots in 2010. Both trends are global. 33 Touraine addresses this directly in his introduction, arguing that he chose the term “post-social situation” in order to “avoid the more obscure term ‘post-social society’ ” (2014, 3). 34 In an interview published in Gazeta Wyborcza (1997), Thurow summarizes these processes: “There were no technical reasons for mediaeval Europe to lose ninety per cent of the ancient Rome’s level of life in six hundred years. When we compare the standard of living – quality of food, clothing, housing, education, security, communication, participation in culture, public amenities – obtained at the height of the Roman Empire around 350 ce and in the deepest Middle Ages, ca. 950 ce, we can calculate with some precision that the inhabitants of the wealthiest European cities retained only ten per cent of the prosperity enjoyed by average Romans. . . . The first European city to achieve the standard of living comparable to ancient Rome was London in the middle of the eighteenth century. Roman technology, however, did not evaporate. The knowledge did not melt into thin air”. Answering the question about what in fact happened, Thurow replied: “In short, when further conquests became meaningless, the Empire lost the spirit that had kept it alive. It ceased to invest in roads, waterworks, education, army. The socially recognized hierarchy of values was gradually changing. Money was spent elsewhere. All that was shared had to yield before private interests. The state was shrinking. Conservation of public amenities, defence, and education were areas where savings would be made. The rest was merely a matter of time. Civilizational regression, disintegration, internal turmoil, breaking of bonds, destruction of infrastructure. Long before Rome was captured by barbarians, the Empire functioned much worse than under the rule of Augustus or Caesar. Then came the avalanche that devastated all that Romans themselves had not exploited yet”. It needs to be emphasized that this vision has little in common with the theory of neomedievalism developed in political science and meant to explain the evolution of the European Union (cf. Zielonka 2007). 35 It manifests both in the ever more frequent questioning of indisputability of the very principles of free-market economy (cf. e.g. Sedláček 2011; Piketty 2014), and in the rising interest in questions of equality and social justice (cf. e.g. Wilkinson and Pickett 2009; Sandel 2009). 36 One needs to remember that in Castells’s typology “resistance communes” include both sexual minorities and Islamic or Christian fundamentalists. 37 This term was coined by J.C. Kaufmann to denote the moment of the emergence of a total, symbolic image of the world, which legitimizes both individual actions and the totality of social reality; cf. a broader discussion of this in: Kaufmann 2004; Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2018. Berger’s nomos may be considered as the effect of foundational holism. 38 From this perspective one might also consider whether the post-modern society is still characterized by Luhman’s functional differentiation of systems (1995), seeing as one of them is beginning to dominate over all others. 39 Cf. the case of American “patriots” analysed by Castells (2002, 84–97). 40 Cf. the analysis of contemporary ways of creating such groups in politics in: Wedel 2009.

254  Producing the society anew 41 This stems mainly from the fact that in every social system these norms are produced in the processes of institutionalizing social practices that had come before (cf. Berger and Luckmann 1991). 42 The popularity of “casual sex”, for example, is often justified by the “excessive costs” of engaging in emotional relations. 43 A perfect illustration of this is provided by actions sparked by an attempt to introduce the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). 44 Castells (2002) distinguishes three kinds of identities in contemporary society: legitimizing, resisting, and project-based. 45 Individual strategies of most members of contemporary society could be described by referring to the saying about “having a cake and eating it too”: they want to be economically successful, all the while retaining the ability to “be themselves” and/or submerging themselves in a community that matches their own views. 46 Cf. a broader discussion of these debates in Naím 2013. 47 One could argue about the extent to which these bonds ever existed. Lasch’s conviction about the sense of civic duty among nineteenth-century elites seems to contradict the earlier diagnosis formulated by Ortega y Gasset (1960), who heavily criticized these elites, accusing them of “commonness” and lack of principles, not to mention all the analyses that foreground the significance of class interest. However, this does not change the fact that the basic factor determining these elites’ horizon of actions was national identity. 48 One could include here such names of the “new class” as the aforementioned “symbolic analysts” (Reich 1992) or “knowledge workers” (Drucker 1994). 49 One example of this process could be the creation of private prisons or the widely known fact that certain bases and convoys in Iraq were defended by Blackwater, one of the world’s leading private security companies. 50 This difference may stem from the fact that Lasch considers the elites as a general social category, while Wedel focuses on analyzing elites engaged in political actions. 51 Furedi (2006) analyses in his book the complex tangle of mechanisms leading to the depreciation of intellectuals in the post-modern society. One could also argue that this social category undergoes all the processes I have analysed in the previous chapter, and is marred by the same dilemmas as the rest of society. 52 These principles, called the Washington Consensus, determine the actions of two basic regulators of the world’s economy: the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. However, they are currently being questioned not only by academics, but also by the representatives of these institutions; cf. the conversation with Kaushik Basu, Senior Vice President of the World Bank (Basu 2014). 53 From fragmentary reports it would arise that, among other things, new means of communication fundamentally remodel the functioning of the human brain, although – as critics note – these changes are not necessarily desirable. Cf. e.g. Keen 2008; Bauerlein 2008. 54 Francis Fukuyama warned against its several consequences over a dozen years ago (2002). “Genetic discrimination” is a subject more and more often discussed these days. 55 One should remember that Elias’s self-control is by no means auto-control, but the dominant form of socializing the drive-based structure of a human being. This is especially visible in the claim that “it is the self-regulation of the individual in relations to others which sets limits to their self-regulation. To put it in a nutshell, the individual is both coin and die at the same time” (Elias 2001, 55). 56 “However certain it may be that each person is a complete entity in himself”, Elias writes, “an individual who controls himself and can be controlled and regulated by no one else if he does not do so himself, it is no less certain that the whole structure of his self-control, both conscious and unconscious, is a network product formed in a continuous interplay of relationships to other people, and that the individual form of the adult is a society-specific form” (2001, 34–35).

Producing the society anew  255 57 This is a phrase from Elias (after Wouters 1986, 3) which emphasizes that life in today’s society requires a much higher level of mastery over our own emotional reactions, which would involve their cogent and selective use in specific situations rather than repressing them, as was the case in the modern society. 58 Elias employs in this context the metaphor of a spiral staircase, writing about the “elementary feature of human experience”, which would consist in that “people are in a position to know that they know, they are able to think about their own thinking and to observe themselves observing. Under certain circumstances they can climb further and become aware of themselves as knowing that they are aware of themselves knowing. In other words, they are able to climb the spiral staircase of consciousness from one floor with its specific view to a higher floor with its view and, looking down, to see themselves standing at the same time on other levels of the staircase. . . . How far up or down one climbs this staircase depends not only on the talent, personality structure or intelligence of individual people, but on the state of development and the total situation of the society to which they belong. They provide the framework, with its limits and possibilities, while the people either take advantage of the possibilities or let them lie fallow” (2001, 103). 59 One blind alley of the development of self-consciousness seems to be the egotism analyzed in the previous chapter. 60 Elias himself was fully aware that preserving this direction of development is not guaranteed in any way. “Human beings”, he writes, “are at present involved in an immense process of integration which not only goes hand in hand with many subordinate disintegrations but can in any time give way to a dominant disintegration process” (2001, 165).

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Index

actors 83, 99, 117, 133, 139, 154, 157, 183 – 184, 240 – 242; collective 31, 39, 281, 238 – 239; institutional/ized 101, 187; moral 245; unsocial 241 Adam, B. 224, 256 Adorno, Th. 34, 58, 118, 256 Akerlof, G.A. 226, 256 Altman, I. 65, 272 Anderson, B. 89, 94 – 95, 227, 256 Ang, I. 148, 174, 256 anomie 16, 84 – 86, 185, 195 Anthony, P.D. 26 – 27, 256 Antonowicz, D. 211, 256 Appadurai, A. 69, 95 – 96, 256 Arendt, H. 28, 32, 58, 256 Aries, P. 156, 256 Aron, R. 34, 81 – 82, 84, 256 Aronson, E. 20, 256 Aristotle 128 Assange, J. 253 Assorodobraj, N. 251, 256 audit 235 – 236 Augoustinos, M. 70, 221 – 222, 256 Austen, J. 59 Austin, W.G. 270 authenticity 37, 166 – 171, 181, 187, 189, 199 authorities 39, 48, 50, 92, 235, 237, 248 authority 48 – 49, 120, 214, 233; of adults 141 – 142, 151; of parents 34, 107, 141 – 142, 159; of science 116, 122 autonomy 9, 11, 15, 17, 65, 92, 130 – 131, 135, 181, 196, 198, 213 Balzac, H. de 24, 59 Bard, A. 128, 240, 256 Barraclough, G. 22, 86, 124, 256 Bartoś, T. 223, 256 base group see deme

Basu, K. 254, 256 Bateson, G. 224, 256 Batorski, D. 267 Bauerlein, M. 254, 256 Bauman, Z. 23, 28, 53, 88, 91 – 92, 103 – 104, 116 – 117, 125, 127, 132, 134, 156 – 157, 165, 170, 178, 214, 218, 223, 257 Beck, U. 23, 42, 53 – 55, 60, 97 – 98, 100 – 101, 103, 106, 108, 110, 113 – 114, 116 – 117, 119, 121, 129, 132, 139, 160, 163 – 164, 172, 179, 188 – 189, 197, 217 – 218, 224, 227 – 228, 234, 241, 245, 251, 257, 265 Beck-Gernsheim, E. 23, 164, 189, 227, 257, 265 Behne, T. 271 “being cool” 76 – 77, 183, 191 – 192 “being-shared-with-others” 8, 12, 202 – 203, 242 Bell, D. 24, 31 – 32, 36 – 37, 67, 69, 75, 102, 114, 119, 128, 162, 186, 217, 219 – 220, 257 Bellah, R.N. 151, 175, 257 Benderly, B.L. 261 Bendix, R. 60, 257 Bendyk, E. 123 – 124, 257 Benjamin, W. 88, 257 Bentham, J. 41 Berger, P.L. 14, 20, 51, 57, 80, 89, 117, 121, 127, 145, 151, 206, 253 – 254, 257 Berne, E. 221, 257 Besselaar, P. van den 272 Bialski, P. 201, 223, 257 Bielik-Robson, A. 45 – 46, 257 Biernacka, M. 219, 258 biography 101 – 103, 164; do-it-yourselfbiography” 189 Boase, J. 272

Index  275 Bocock, R. 269 body 43, 153 – 157, 175, 220, 250 Boneva, B. 264 Bonss, W. 53, 60, 132, 172, 241, 257 boredom 209 – 210, 224 Botton, A. de 60, 185, 190, 219, 258 Bourdieu, P. 52, 60, 74, 88 – 89, 101, 111 – 112, 114, 117, 126 – 127, 135, 183, 192, 246, 258 Braithwaite, J. 237, 258 Braudel, F. 124, 258 Breuilly, J. 94, 258 Brewer, J. 72, 88, 267 Bricmont, J. 57, 269 Brint, S. 252, 258 Brumberg, J.J. 175, 258 Bush, G.W. 58 Byron, G.G. 44 Calhoun, C.C. 151, 173, 258 Calhoun, J.B. 65, 258 Calhoun, L. 21, 258 Calvin, J. 220 Campbell, C. 54 – 55, 60, 72 – 73, 88, 221, 258 Camus, A. 206, 258 Canetti, E. 30, 258 capital: cultural 52, 101, 111, 135, 192; economic 36, 97, 103, 232, 241, 249; social vi, 100, 193 capitalism 24, 29, 42, 50 – 51, 59, 102, 113, 125 – 126, 218 – 220, 232 – 233; disorganized 189 – 190, 195, 201, 249; informational 230; organized 100 – 102, 186 Capra, F. 129, 258 Carpenter, M. 271 Castano, E. 175, 258 Castells, M. 66, 68, 77, 85 – 87, 96, 103 – 104, 106, 109 – 110, 112, 114, 119, 125 – 126, 128, 151 – 152, 173, 178, 193, 197, 204, 210, 213, 217 – 220, 226, 229 – 233, 236, 238, 240, 244 – 245, 247 – 254, 258 Castles, S. 251, 259 Chambers, D. 223, 259 Chekhov, A. 224 Chen, W. 272 choice vi, 4, 12, 16, 52, 56, 62, 71, 77, 79 – 80, 83 – 84, 95, 107, 109, 113 – 116, 121, 123, 132 – 134, 164 – 165, 181 – 182, 189, 192, 196, 201, 203, 205, 209, 212 – 213, 215, 217, 237, 239

class 47, 74 – 75, 113 – 114, 157 – 158, 164, 188, 227, 243, 246; creative 246; dominant 6, 111 – 112, 119 – 120; leisure 73; 154; lower 26, 28, 42, 52; middle 30, 32 – 36, 41, 50 – 52, 75, 101, 114 – 115, 119, 152, 207; ruling 28, 74, 218; upper 26, 43, 46, 49, 68, 75, 111, 137, 192 – 193, 246; working 25, 32, 100, 111; see also social divisions Codol, J.P. 267 coercion 26, 31, 99, 116 – 117, 166, 191, 199 Coleman, J.S. 180, 326 Collins, R. 218 – 219, 259 communication 135, 140, 143 – 144, 146, 153, 170, 187 – 188, 194, 201, 208, 213, 230, 233, 250; in family 138; intensification of 68 – 69, 95, 230, 233; mass, c. 30, 68 – 69, 79, 82, 119, 122, 144; mass-self, c. 217, 245; patterns of 136 – 137, 142, 236; technologies of 30, 79, 95, 119 – 120, 141, 182, 193 – 194, 197, 201, 218, 229 communism 31, 81, 118, 239 community 9 – 12, 29, 39, 43, 96, 100, 109, 137, 139, 152, 197 – 199, 201, 203 – 205, 214, 234, 237, 242; economic 42; ethnic 95; imagined 13; religious 116; local 196; personalized 197 – 198; political 5, 39; primary 9; transnational 69, 96 – 97, 152 conflict 35 – 36, 44, 96, 122, 138, 140, 142, 174, 179, 206 – 207, 232 – 233, 236, 249; class 36, 49 – 50, 111 – 112 consumerism 54 – 55, 70 – 77, 99, 132 – 133, 171, 189, 203, 212; consumer goods 26, 55, 62, 71; consumption 52, 71 – 73, 75 – 76, 83, 113, 159, 171, 184, 187 control 40 – 43, 51, 65 – 66, 72, 77 – 78, 81 – 82, 101, 103, 105, 109 – 110, 119 – 120, 123 – 124, 154, 165, 199, 207, 211; automated systems of 234 – 237; self-control 25, 37, 43, 72, 130, 250; social control 16, 25, 84, 98, 118, 147, 152, 165, 179, 197, 203, 206, 234, 237, 241; state control 96 – 97, 117, 119; 164; surveillance 123 – 124 Cooley, Ch. H. 219, 259 cooperation vi, 10, 137, 140, 184, 198, 244 coordination of human actions i, vii, 11 – 12, 17 – 18, 36, 56, 74, 93, 123, 137, 206, 229 Corbain, A. 43, 46, 59, 259 Crane, D. 269

276 Index crisis 26, 30 – 32, 37, 45, 51, 53, 86, 92, 98, 114, 164, 187 – 188, 226, 239, 249 crowd 29, 65 – 66, 70 – 71, 215; sense of crowding 62 – 70 Crawford, A.M. 264 culture 9, 10, 28, 32, 37, 42, 111 – 112, 114, 155 – 156, 160, 170 – 171, 186, 206 – 207, 214 – 215, 231; counterculture 34 – 35, 76, 140, 186 – 188; cultural pluralism 62, 192, 216, 249; mass culture 45; 75, 195, 201, 203; popular culture 134, 166, 171, 188, 191, 211; transformations of 46, 48, 187; youth culture 140; see also capital, cultural Cummings, J.N. 264 Czyńska, M. 221, 259 Dahrendorf, R. 34 – 35, 52, 111, 259 Damasio, A.R. 82, 259 Däniken, E. von 129 Darwin, K. 129, 172 – 173, 177 death 45, 85, 96, 152 – 153, 156 – 157, 159, 207 Dechesne, M. 175, 258 Deleuze, G. 243, 259 Dembek, A. 171, 259 deme 20n14; base groups 12 – 13, 105, 203, 213; demic community 12 – 14, 20, 105 demic communities see deme democracy vii, 28 – 29, 34 – 35, 97, 207, 245, 249; representative 39, 43 Dent, M. 263 de-normalization of social roles 67 – 70, 83 Derkaczew, J. 178, 259 desires 25, 28, 38, 44 – 48, 56, 75 – 76, 116, 137, 140, 154, 164, 168, 181, 185 – 187, 189 – 191, 195, 200, 245 Diaz, I. 272 Dickens, K. 59 Domański, H. 33, 51 – 52, 101, 126, 259 Douglas, M. 73, 76, 124, 218, 234, 237, 259 doxa 117, 127n39 Drozdowski, R. 174, 259 Drucker, P.F. 50, 59, 254, 259 Duby, G. 40, 259 Durkheim, É. 7, 16, 21, 74, 84 – 85, 89 – 90, 172, 177, 218, 220, 251, 259 Durkin, K. 20, 135, 259 Dutschke, R. 59 Eco, U. 150, 259 economy 36, 86, 97 – 98, 171, 186, 188, 208, 232; free-market, e. 232 – 233, 240;

global, e. 238, 243; of scale 100; of scope 100; of waste 71 education 31, 35 – 36, 45, 99, 109, 112, 115, 117 ego 4, 8, 161 – 162 egotism see social character Ehrenreich, B. 104, 260 Eisenstadt, S.N. 115, 260, 271 Elias, N. 1, 3 – 8, 12, 17, 19 – 22, 39, 42 – 43, 49, 59, 87, 106, 125, 127, 130 – 131, 134, 154, 160 – 161, 172, 188, 192, 196, 203, 214 – 215, 218, 222, 229, 240, 250, 254 – 255, 260 elites 27 – 31, 67, 94, 115 – 117, 119, 193, 210, 236, 245; financial 114; intellectual 6, 30, 34, 165, 207, 249; political 31; power elite 245 – 248; revolt of 112, 246 Elliott, C. 155, 175, 191, 260 emotions 2, 34, 42, 69, 72 – 73, 82, 104, 120 – 121, 142 – 143, 146 – 147;159, 161 – 163, 168 – 170, 198 – 202, 206, 214, 233; emotional “bonding” 12, 40, 203; emotional dependency 167; emotional fulfilment 109 – 110, 138, 195, 198; emotional gratification 138; emotional intelligence 103; emotionality (see social character); emotional realism 148, 150, 158; emotional support 196, 204 – 205; emotion work 162; shared, e. 202 – 203 equality 25, 36 – 37, 45, 109, 112, 167, 170, 189, 194; see also inequality Eriksen, T.H. 78 – 79, 260 Erikson, E.H. 163, 260 excess 62, 72, 157, 160; of goods 70 – 71, 83; of information 78, 84, 209; sense of 83 – 85 experience: basic 157; community of 199, 206 – 207; emotional 159, 168, 170, 204; generic vii, 56, 70, 77, 83 – 85; mediated 145 – 147 expert 13, 75, 124, 159, 164, 170, 194, 212, 236, 249; expertise 166 family 12, 17, 40 – 41, 43 – 45, 53, 93, 101 – 102, 104, 113 – 116, 121, 123, 133, 135 – 138, 142, 152, 156, 158 – 160, 163 – 164, 182, 185, 196 – 198, 200 – 201, 203, 208, 214 – 215, 227, 242; patriarchal 42, 107, 109, 213; transformations of 41, 106 – 110 fascism 29, 31, 34, 51, 81 Featherstone, M. 210, 260

Index  277 Ferguson, J. 245, 261 Festinger, L. 219, 260 Fielding, H. 223, 260 Filiciak, M. 210, 221, 260 Finkelkraut, A. 226, 260 Finkelstein, J. 155, 260 flexibility 99, 103, 105 – 106, 108 – 109, 122 – 123, 188, 213; flexion 247 Flis, M. 266 Flores, M. 34 – 35, 260 Foucault, M. 116, 124, 127, 248, 251, 260 Fowles, J. 187 – 188, 219, 260 Fox, K. 175, 192, 221, 260 Frankl, V.E. 184, 260 Franklin, B. 220 Freud, Z. 48, 161 – 162, 168, 172 Frieske, K.W. 251, 260 Fromm, E. 29, 34, 51, 58 – 59, 71, 147, 157, 176, 244, 260 Frykman, J. 127 – 128, 260 Frysztacki, K. 266 Fukuyama, F. 239, 254, 260 Furedi, F. 249, 254, 261 Galbraith, K. 88, 261 Galsworthy, J. 24 Garbo, G. 149 Garfinkel, H. 218, 261 Gates, B. 84, 104 Gauchet, M. 143, 179 – 180, 261 Gdula, M. 171, 261 Gecas, V. 134, 140, 142 – 143, 174, 261 Geertz, C. 218, 219, 261 Geiger, T. 252 Gellner, E. 28, 94, 261 Gemeinschaft 41, 200; destructive 198 Gergen, K.J. 44, 69, 87, 119 – 120, 128 – 131, 133, 138, 141, 144, 146, 152, 154, 161, 172, 174, 182, 197, 201, 207, 209, 219, 221, 223, 261 Giddens, A. 15, 19, 23, 60, 114 – 115, 132 – 134, 154, 163, 167 – 172, 176 – 177, 190, 199 – 200, 204, 212, 222, 226, 251 – 252, 261 Gietka, E. 211, 261 Gilbert, E. 222, 261 Giza-Poleszczuk, A. vii, 16, 19 – 21, 59, 70, 87, 89, 94, 100, 107, 126 – 127, 137, 173, 177, 184, 218, 222, 230, 251, 253, 261, 262, 266 Gleick, J. 209, 224, 261 globalization 92, 96, 99, 103 – 104, 213, 231, 238 – 240, 246 – 247; global

economy 66, 77, 97, 238, 248 – 249; of risk 97 Goethe, J.W. 45 Goffman, E. 175, 218, 221 – 222, 261 Gogol, N. 224 Goldfarb, J.C. 58, 261 Goldhammer, A. 259, 262 – 263, 268 Goleman, D. 103, 261 Goncharov, I. 224 Goody, J. 89, 261 Granovetter, M. 193, 196, 261 Graumann, C.F. 264 Greenspan, S.I. 20, 261 Gromkowska, A. 153, 261 Guattari, F. 243, 259 Gulia, M. 197, 272 Gupta, A. 245, 261 Gurevich, A. 73 – 74, 88, 262 Habermas, J. 34, 39, 123, 128 – 129, 151, 222, 252, 262 Hacking, I. 127, 262 habits 9, 18, 42, 49, 54, 56, 66, 79, 86, 105, 133, 136 – 143, 144, 147, 150, 181, 184, 192, 206, 248 habitus 96, 111 – 112, 117 – 118, 135, 145, 183, 188, 193 habitat 10, 12, 13, 230 – 232 Halawa, M. 127, 147 – 148, 210, 228, 260, 262 Hall, C. 41, 262 Hall, C.S. 162, 262 Hall, E.T. 65, 69, 262 Halman, L. 219 – 220, 262, 272 Hamilton, P. 269 Hampton, K. 272 Handy, Ch. 70 – 71, 88, 262 Hannerz, U. 145, 206, 262 Harvey, D. 32, 53, 57, 119, 124 – 126, 187, 262 Hasselt, V.B. van 268 Hausner, J. 98, 125, 262 Hayek, F.A. von 58 Heath, J. 35, 76, 186, 190, 219, 262 Heelas, P. 116, 257, 262 Hegel, G.W.F. 150, 240, 262 Heidegger, M. 223 Heisenberg, W. 128, 262 Helgeson, V. 264 Hersen, M. 268 Hewstone, M. 259, 272 Hirszowicz, M. 100, 113, 262 Hobbes, Th. 30

278 Index Hobsbawm, E. 94, 262 Hochschild, A.R. 162, 263 Hoffman, D. 149 Hoggart, R. 50, 75, 89, 263 Horkheimer, M. 58 Horney, K. 162 Huizinga, J. 57, 263 Hull, D.L. 20, 263 Hunt, L. 40, 263 id 48, 161 identity vii, 8, 12, 13, 17, 37 – 38, 46, 66 – 67, 70, 76 – 77, 83, 85, 87n13, 93, 96, 99 – 100, 103, 114, 150, 167, 190, 205, 207, 210, 212, 214, 226; crisis of 163, 226; formation of 83, 136, 150 – 165; fragmented 91, 179, 226, 235; model identity 149, 153; national identity 152, 231, 242; politics of 208; project of 169 – 170; role-identity 151; social identity 215, 217, 229; we-identity 106, 160, 196, 202, 204, 206 ideology 53, 80 – 82, 84, 166, 239 – 240; bourgeois 6, 27; “egophallocentric ideology” 4, 8, 16; of individualization 121, 216; of self-fulfilment 189, 220n24; see also religion, secular religions Illouz, E. 166 – 167, 170 – 171, 220, 263 image of reality/world vi, 9, 11, 14, 80 – 85, 131, 144, 206 – 207, 209, 214, 231, 234; nomic 80, 82, 121 – 122 individual 4 – 8, 14, 18, 36, 53, 130 – 131, 134 – 135, 182, 199; and society 3, 4, 6 – 9, 15, 18, 160, 164, 171, 179 – 182, 191, 227, 229, 234, 250 individualism 5, 6, 47 – 48, 76, 121, 130 – 133, 142, 154 – 155, 160 – 161, 180, 187, 191 – 192 individualization vi, 2, 4, 8, 10, 53, 56, 83, 139, 143, 150, 160, 167, 170, 180, 189, 198, 200, 203, 215; structural 113, 119, 132, 179, 197, 218, 227, 231, 243; of sociology 21 inequality 52, 113 – 115, 186, 245, 250; see also equality information 61 – 62, 77 – 80, 82, 97, 135 – 136, 141, 144, 192, 194, 196, 205, 208 – 209, 213 – 214, 224n80, 247; distribution of 39, 233, 246 – 247; society 32, 240; technologies 77 – 79, 86, 96, 99, 124, 208, 233 – 234 Inglehart, R. 188, 263 Insel, P.M. 64, 263

institutionalization 4, 101, 112, 162, 212, 217 institutions 3, 16 – 17, 22, 30, 34, 39, 53 – 54, 93, 117, 120, 122, 132, 151, 154 – 155, 160 – 161, 164 – 165, 179, 195, 208, 212 – 213, 215 – 218, 227, 229 – 230, 232 – 236; 241 – 242, 244 – 245, 247, 249 – 250; formal 13; political 29 – 30, 39, 90; public 39, 51, 179 – 180; regulatory 236 – 237; social 80, 86, 93, 184, 211, 236, 244 interdependence of actions 10, 11, 26, 31, 214 – 215 interest 27, 31, 42, 200, 207, 227, 236; class 50, 241; collective 37, 113, 117, 199, 227, 244; individual 39 – 41, 179, 197 internet 69, 141, 193, 196 – 197, 204, 211 irrational 161, 209, 242 Isherwood, B. 73, 76, 259 Ishida, T. 272 Jabłońska, U. 212, 263 Jacyno, M. vii, 114, 127, 131, 161, 171, 174, 219, 263 Jary, D. 236, 263 Jarymowicz, M. 243, 263 Jaźwińska, E. 106, 263 Jenkins, H. 225, 263 Johnson, P. 25, 27, 44, 57, 64, 263 Johnson-Laird, P.N. 268 Kacprzak, M. 212, 263 Kant, I. 41, 250, 263 Kardiner, A. 176, 263 Kaufmann, J.C. 4, 6 – 8, 133, 137, 160 – 161, 172 – 173, 222, 253, 263 Keen, A. 254, 264 Kellner, D. 144, 264 Kelly, G.A. 162, 176, 264 Keynes, J.M. 58 Kiesler, S. 264 Klapp, O.E. 209, 211, 224, 264 Klich, A. 212, 264 Klinenberg, E. 222, 264 Kłoskowska, A. 58, 264 Knorr-Cetina, K. 71, 139, 173, 264, 269, 270 knowledge 9, 10, 20n11, 79 – 81, 85, 97, 108, 120, 122, 135, 141, 158, 160, 170, 194 – 195, 247; common 13, 80, 84, 134, 170; dispersed 13, 147, 182, 196; economy based on 62, 239 – 240; scientific 116; shared (see

Index  279 representations, collective) vii, 11 – 13, 21n18, 203, 205 – 214; transmission of 138, 140, 145, 194 Kochanowicz, J. 266 Kohl, M. 218 Köhler, W. 59, 264 Kohn, M.L. 126, 264 Kohut, H. 158 – 160, 176, 264 Kołodziejczyk, M. 1, 264 König, R. 74, 264 Kooiman, J. 98, 264 Kornhauser, W. 29 – 31, 58 – 59, 264 Kranton, R.E. 256 Krastev, I. 237, 264 Kraut, R. 174, 264 Król, M. 252, 264 Królik, K. 265, 264 Kruse, L. 63, 65, 264 Krzemiński, A. 34 – 35, 264 Krzywicka, I. 49–50, 264 Kumar, K. 57, 125, 264 Kurz, I. 174, 265 Kymlicka, W. 207, 265 labour 76, 80, 86, 93, 99 – 100, 108, 186, 189, 233; changes of 102 – 106, 119, 123, 179; organization of 104; see also work Laing, R.D. 163, 265 language 9 – 10, 44, 94, 120, 133, 140, 163, 194, 207, 210 – 212, 244, 248; body language 155, 170 Lamont, M. 52, 112, 265 Larson, Ch. U. 27, 265 Lasch, Ch. 112, 114, 159 – 160, 176, 220, 246 – 247, 254, 265 Lash, S. 67, 69, 90, 100, 252, 257, 262, 265 Latour, B. 128, 173, 178, 180, 218, 227 – 228, 240, 265 Lau, Ch. 53, 60, 98, 116 – 117, 121, 132, 172, 224, 241, 257 Le Bon, G. 29, 265 Leder, A. 175, 199, 206, 265 Lee, N. 257 Lemert, Ch. 201, 327 Lerner, D. 145, 265 Lessig, L. 221, 265 Levi-Faur, D. 237, 265 Levi-Montalcini, R. 150 Lévy, P. 225, 265 Lewicki, M. 177, 266 Leyens, J.P. 267

Lianos, M. 124, 218, 234 – 235, 237, 265 lifestyles 32 – 34, 38, 48 – 52, 56, 76, 83, 105 – 106, 111, 113 – 115, 121, 135, 138, 144, 188 – 189, 192 – 193, 195, 212, 231, 242 – 243, 246 Lindgren, H.C. 64, 263 Lindzey, G. 162, 262 liquid reality vii, 23, 91 – 93, 103, 122 – 124, 151, 215 – 216, 241, 228 Littré, E. 40 Livingstone, S.M. 132, 265 Löfgren, O. 127 – 128, 260 Loren, S. 150 love 34, 43 – 45, 120, 144, 146, 151, 170 – 171, 180, 185, 194, 200, 208; romantic love 107, 167 – 168 Luckmann, T. 14, 20, 89, 145, 151, 206, 236, 252, 254, 257, 265 Luhmann, N. 135 – 136, 172, 208, 224, 265 Lunt, P.K. 132, 265 Luther, M. 220 Lynd, H. 75, 89, 265 Lynd, R. 75, 89, 265 Lyon, D. 123 – 124, 266 Lyotard, J.F. 57, 266 Madsen, R. 257 Maffesoli, M. 202 – 203, 223, 266 Malthus, T. 64 Mandes, S. 125, 266 Mannheim, K. 177, 266 Manovich, L. 274, 334 Manstead, A.S.R. 327, 342 market 39, 100, 102, 104, 106, 108, 113, 160, 171, 191, 217, 229, 231, 236 – 237, 239 – 240, 244 – 246, 248; free 25 – 28, 64, 98, 232 – 233, 242 – 243, 247; marketing 149, 192 Marody, M. 16, 19 – 21, 59, 89, 94, 100, 107, 125 – 127, 137, 173, 177, 184, 202, 204, 206, 218, 220, 222, 230, 251 – 253, 260 – 262, 266 – 267 Marx, K. 49 – 50, 74, 79, 87, 110, 112, 149, 246 Maslow, A.H. 216, 335 mass: audience 149; imagination 150; media 62, 69, 76, 115, 119, 133, 144, 148 – 151, 158 – 160, 182; production 187 – 188 masses 28, 30 – 31, 47, 66, 83, 112, 119 – 120, 132, 234, 250; revolt of 46 – 47 Matusik, A. 90, 266

280 Index Mauss, M. 7, 175, 266 May, R. 163 – 164, 170, 176, 266 Mazurek, P. 197, 260, 266 McClelland, D.C. 142, 186, 266 McKendrick, N. 72, 88, 267 Mead, G.H. 7, 11, 218, 267 Mead, M. 141, 173, 267 meaning 27, 54 – 56, 73, 76 – 79, 82, 119, 133, 136 – 137, 145, 185, 187, 202, 204 – 206, 208, 216 – 218, 226, 229, 233 – 234, 236 – 238, 242 – 243, 247 – 248; of actions/behaviour 137, 143, 150, 159, 235, 243, 150, 158, 159, 235, 243 – 246; of life 20, 38, 43, 45, 79 – 85, 93, 110 – 111, 113, 120, 122, 151, 155 – 158, 164, 189, 194, 205 – 207, 209 – 214, 251; shared system of, m. 155, 183, 189 – 190, 196, 211, 215, 228, 241 mega-cities 66, 119, 251n10 Melosik, Z. 153, 267 Merton, R.K. 86, 177, 185 – 187, 267 Meyrowitz, J. 141, 173, 267 migrations 95, 107, 230 – 231 Mikołajewski, J. 259, 260 Miles, S. 132, 201, 267 Milgram, S. 89, 267 Miller, M.J. 251, 259 Mills, C.W. 28 – 29, 32 – 33, 58, 66, 226, 245 – 246, 267 minorities 47, 64, 120, 207; national 94 – 95; sexual 207, 243 Miyata, K. 272 Młynarczyk, M. 221, 267 mobility 46, 68, 95, 145 modernism 32, 131 modernity 23, 28, 36 – 37, 39 – 40, 45 – 46, 48 – 49, 51, 53 – 56, 63 – 66, 73, 75, 82, 91 – 94, 98, 100, 106, 108, 111 – 112, 114 – 123, 143, 152, 156, 161, 179, 181, 188 – 190, 192, 197 – 198, 200, 208 – 209, 211, 215 – 216, 228, 230, 232, 234, 236, 239, 243; see also society, modern Modzelewski, K. 90, 267 Moll, H. 271 Monroe, K.R. 82, 267 Monroe, M. 149 Moor, R. de 272 moral 27, 41, 46, 71, 79, 82, 113, 133, 148, 154, 166 – 167, 186, 189, 198, 200, 210, 214, 236 – 237, 245 – 246, 249; bonds 198; (double) morality 43, 44; duty 121,

189, 209; indirect moralizing 236; see also order, moral Morris, P. 257, 262 Morton, C. 221, 267 Moscovici, S. 21, 58, 80 – 81, 130, 233, 264, 267 Mrożek, S. 87, 267 Mukopadhyay, T. 264 Munro, R. 257 mutual dependence of actions 10, 11 myth 117, 163 – 164, 203; “mythographies” 96; of success 26 – 27, 186, 189, 191 Naim, M. 87, 233, 238, 248, 251, 253 – 254, 267 Nancy, J.L. 12, 267 Napoleon (Bonaparte) 59 nation 34 – 35, 40 – 41, 45, 68, 82, 93 – 95, 98 – 99, 158, 214, 227, 236; patriotism 44 – 45, 94, 96; deterritorialization of 69, 96 – 97, 152; see also identity, national identity; state, nation-state) neo-tribes 202 – 205 network 102 – 104, 184, 193 – 194, 197 – 198, 201 – 202, 213, 228 – 230, 232 – 233, 239, 243, 247 Newton, I. 26, 129 Nijakowski, L.M 210, 267 Nisbet, R. 85, 267 nomos 6, 80, 89n33, 116 – 118, 120 – 121, 156, 164, 170, 206 – 207, 211 – 212, 217, 242; nomic structure/framework 80, 82, 85, 93, 115 – 122, 158, 162, 164 Nowak, A. 267 Nowotny, A. 260 Offe, C. 108, 207 – 208, 267 Okólski, M. 86, 106, 251, 263, 267 Olcoń-Kubicka, M. 197, 205, 223, 267 order 6, 28, 80, 104; axiological 47, 186, 235, 242 – 246, 249; modern 100, 107, 115 – 116, 118; moral 47, 235, 252n17; natural 45 – 46, 79; social 29, 33 – 34, 41, 50, 85 – 86, 92 – 93, 97, 108, 117, 134 – 135 Ortega y Gasset, J. 1, 30, 46 – 48, 63 – 64, 66, 220, 254, 267 Ossowski, S. 16, 267 Pacewicz, P. 273 Parker, S. 59, 268 Passeron, J.C. 52, 126, 258 Patterson, M. 264

Index  281 Pauli, W. 129, 268 Pawlik, W. 128, 268 Peel, R. 27 Perrot, M. 40 – 41, 259, 262 – 263, 268 Piaget, J. 20, 268 Pickett, K. 253, 272 Piketty, T. 253, 268 Pinker, S. 20, 268 Plumb, J.H. 72, 88, 267 Polanyi, K. 26, 29, 124, 232 – 234, 268 politics 26 – 27, 31, 35 – 36, 86, 92, 133, 186, 208, 231 – 232, 238, 240, 245, 249; politicians 41, 96, 116, 237 political: changes 32, 49; correctness 211 – 212; decisions 25, 231, 236; leaders 98, 147; parties 37, 98, 238, 242; the political 236 – 237; system 18, 30 Pomian, K. 266 population 10, 12, 13, 30 – 31, 101, 120, 187, 211, 231; growth of 62, 64, 230 – 231, 240 Postman, N. 78 – 79, 81 – 82, 141, 268 Potter, A. 35, 76, 186, 190, 219, 262 power 30, 50, 74, 78, 80, 92, 94, 96, 118, 141 – 142, 147, 185 – 186, 230, 232, 239, 244 – 245, 247 – 248; decline of 248 Power, M. 235, 268 prestige 29, 52, 73, 112 – 113, 118, 169, 185 Prigogine, I. 288, 337 privacy 38 – 41, 44, 46, 56, 141, 198 processual: character of social life vi, 18; perspective 37, 122, 183 progress 38, 81, 208, 240 Prost, A. 49, 268 Protestantism 24, 26, 187, 189, 220n25, 242 Prusak, J. 128, 268 public sphere 36, 38, 165, 183 – 184, 200, 236, 238, 243, 247; discourse 39, 158 – 159, 212, 217, 227, 240; publicprivate division 39 – 40, 42 – 43, 56, 141, 143, 147, 200, 247 Putnam, R.D. 125, 200, 268 Quan-Haase, A. 272 rationalism 158, 161; see also irrational rationality 6, 39, 98, 117, 119, 122, 133, 158, 161 – 162, 170 – 171, 200, 213, 235, 244; functional 36 – 37, 102; instrumental 140; rational 53 – 54, 82, 120, 123, 131, 161, 164, 170, 233, 242;

rationale 165; rationalization 116 – 117, 154, 188, 250 Reagan, R. 58 reason 6, 7, 9, 116, 118 reflexivity 15, 60n35, 83, 131 – 133 Régnier-Bohler, D. 175, 268 Reich, R. 67 – 68, 105, 254, 268 relations: in family 138 – 139; of friendship 142, 144, 163; interpersonal 34, 73, 134, 158 – 159, 193, 196 – 197, 199, 242, 249 – 250; intimate 146 – 147, 149, 199, 200, 201 – 202, 204; mediated 144 – 147, 152; and obligations 146, 201; “pure” relations 163, 167 – 170, 200, 204; relational character of social life 17, 18; relational ties 56 relationships: changes in 152, 163, 167 – 169, 193, 200 – 201, 232, 250; fractional 201; patterns of 134, 138 religion 6 – 7, 80 – 81, 84, 116, 120, 133, 207 – 208; secularization 46, 80, 120; secular religion 81 – 82 representations 2, 18; collective 10, 12, 13; cultural 52; social 57, 94, 230; symbolic 54, 171, 180 – 181, 184 reproduction: biological 12, 80, 107, 109, 167, 184; of society 18, 52, 93, 111, 118, 134, 183, 228 Ricardo, D. 57 Richardson, J.G. 258 Riesman, D. 34, 127, 192, 268 rituals 12, 77, 94, 99, 117, 164, 203, 211, 248 Ritzer, G. 71 – 72, 88, 268 Robert, G. 218 Roberts, K. 126, 268 Rogers, M.F. 174, 223, 268 Romanticism 43 – 47, 54 – 55, 73, 131, 161 Roosevelt, F.D. 58, 60 Rose-Krasnor, L. 173, 268 Rosenberg, M. 261 Rubin, K.H. 173, 268 Ruch, F.L. 176, 273 Rutherford, J. 257 Rybarczyk, M. 224, 269 Sandel, M.J. 246, 249, 253, 269 Savigny, E. von 269, 270 Schatzki, T.R. 183, 218, 228, 251, 289, 270 Scherlis, W. 264 Schmidt, F. 225, 269 school 34, 82, 134, 136, 138, 142, 226, 246 Schooler, C. 126, 264

282 Index Schudson, M. 75, 269 Schutz, A. 83 – 84, 269 science 46, 79 – 82, 92, 116, 120 – 123, 161, 166, 191, 207; social sciences 158, 180, 194, 197 Sedláček, T. 253, 269 self 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 37, 45, 131, 134, 151, 154 – 156, 160, 167 – 169, 188, 190 – 191, 198, 202, 209, 217; project of 169, 200; real/true self 131, 146, 155 – 156; selfesteem 140, 142, 159, 185, 195, 213; self-expression 132, 137, 155, 169, 188, 201; self-knowledge 151 – 152, 168, 182; self-presentation 154, 159, 193, 207, 211, 213; self-realization 37, 131, 165 – 171, 181, 186 – 187, 189 – 190, 195, 199, 212, 242, 244 self-fulfilment see self, self-realization Sennett, R. 40, 65, 67, 87, 102 – 105, 137, 152, 154, 176 – 177, 188, 198 – 200, 203, 222, 269 Shenk, D. 61, 78 – 79, 89, 269 Sherif, M. 225, 269 Shils, E. 30 – 31, 51, 58, 120, 266, 269 Shott, S. 120, 269 Siewiorek, R. 277, 332 significant others 14, 136, 143 – 150 Sikorska, M. 109, 135, 269 Simmel, G. 7, 87, 173 – 174, 180, 201 – 202, 218, 221, 223, 231, 269 single: being single 200 – 201; single parents 108 – 110 Sińczuch, M. 141, 212, 269 Skąpska, G. 266 Skockpol, T. 122, 269 Slany, K. 121, 269 Śliz, A. 269, 231 Smiles, S. 27 Smith, A. 25, 59 Snow, C.P. 128, 269 Snowden, E. 253 social bonds 16 – 18, 32, 40, 83, 94, 96, 113, 138, 196, 234, 242, 246; dissolution of vi, 179 – 180, 196, 200, 203, 227, 230 – 231; emotional 13, 138, 144; forming 196 – 206; national 227, 244 social change 16, 32 – 34, 46, 67 – 68, 86, 135, 151, 239, 241 social character 157 – 158, 161, 165, 168, 205; egotism 157 – 161, 168 – 169, 181, 205; emotionality 150, 158, 161 – 163, 167, 181, 200, 205; ontological

uncertainty 158, 163 – 164, 167, 181, 205 social divisions 24, 26, 33, 35, 38, 48 – 49, 67 – 70, 73, 75 – 77, 86, 93, 101, 115, 157; class structure 22, 28, 38, 49 – 50, 100, 110 – 111, 113, 152, 164, 188, 243; distinction systems 25, 52, 67, 73 – 75, 111 – 113, 190 – 193; transformations of 68, 110 – 115, 194, 241 social (dis)integration 30, 93, 98, 152, 181, 196, 208, 227 – 228, 234, 251 sociality vi, 8, 10 – 14, 16, 25, 28, 31, 33, 54, 85, 171, 182; forms of 23, 37 – 38, 44, 53, 56, 143, 203, 229 – 230, 234, 244 – 245 socialization 8 – 10, 14, 21, 93, 107, 111, 134 – 136, 144 – 145, 151, 157, 159, 161, 165, 170, 180, 181, 213, 215; by mass media 144 – 150; to objects 139 – 140; by peer groups 139 – 140, 142 – 143; primary 136 – 143, 150, 192; secondary 143, 145; standardization of behaviour 3, 14, 116 – 117, 140, 150, 165 – 167, 181, 202 socializing processes vi, vii, 10, 11, 18, 31, 37 – 38, 42 – 43, 53 – 56, 63, 69, 77, 86, 92 – 93, 99, 111, 116, 121, 124, 134, 143, 178 – 225, 228, 232, 234, 236, 243 social memory 9 – 10, 137, 139, 216 social practices vii, 84, 183 – 185, 187 – 189, 196, 214 – 218, 228 – 233, 236, 238, 241 – 247, 249 social status 25, 39, 49; 52, 69, 70, 76, 112; social position 33, 56, 66, 74 – 76, 101 – 102, 111, 113 social structure see social divisions society 3, 14 – 16, 18, 29, 32, 40 – 41, 53 – 54, 56, 74, 86, 92, 158, 162, 165, 178 – 180, 182, 202 – 203, 208, 211 – 212, 214, 218, 226 – 228, 232 – 233, 236 – 237, 245, 249 – 250; bourgeois 24 – 29, 31 – 32, 35, 38 – 40, 43 – 44, 46, 48, 51, 56, 63 – 64, 74, 106, 118; civic 6, 39, 94, 179, 237, 249; mass 28 – 34, 38, 44, 49, 51, 56, 63 – 64, 118, 215; middle-class 33 – 35, 38, 44, 48, 52, 56, 63 – 64, 112, 114, 118, 185 – 186; modern 23, 24, 31, 36, 38 – 39, 51 – 54, 56, 62, 67, 70, 74, 81, 85, 93, 100, 102, 105 – 108, 111 – 115, 117, 120, 123, 137, 141 – 142, 152 – 153, 158, 160, 171, 186 – 187, 195 – 196, 200, 207 – 208, 232, 235, 241; network 229 – 230;

Index  283 post-industrial 31 – 32, 162; postmodern 18, 19, 23, 32, 35, 38, 57; of risk 113, 235; traditional 53, 65, 73, 116 – 117, 145, 161, 207 – 208; Söderqvist, J. 128, 240, 256 Sokal, A. 57, 269 Sombart, W. 24, 72, 88 Sowa, A. 212, 269 Sroczyński, G. 271 Środa, M. 5, 19, 172, 270 Stacey, J. 110, 126, 270 Stalder, F. 229, 270 Stanaszek, A. 104, 270 Starobinski, J. 210, 270 Stasiak, P. 141, 270 state vii, 6, 28, 40 – 41, 43, 51, 92, 101, 117, 119 – 120, 159 – 161, 164, 179, 208, 228, 232, 237, 247 – 249; democratic 5, 27, 99, 237; interventionism 26 – 27, 31, 95; modern 25, 93 – 95, 116, 123; nation-state 53, 94 – 96, 98 – 99, 116, 123, 240; policy of 95, 227, 238; welfare 95, 97 – 98, 103 – 104, 108, 113, 116, 232, 236 Stawiszyński, T. 211, 270 Stec, R. 89, 270 Stengers, I. 251, 268 Stevenson, N. 220, 270 Straub, J. 151, 202, 270 Streep, M. 149 Strelau, J. 272 Strzyczkowski, K. 144, 270 Stuart-Hamilton, I. 153, 270 success 26, 52, 105, 115, 118, 140, 159, 185 – 191, 193 – 194, 216, 235, 242 – 244, 246, 250 Sullivan, H.S. 162 Sullivan, W.M. 257 super-ego 43, 48, 161 Swidler, A. 183, 219, 257, 270 Szczepański, J. 16, 270 Szczepański, M. 231, 269 Szlendak, T. 153, 210, 270 Sztandar-Sztanderska, K. 127, 270 Szymańska, I. 174, 270 Szymborski, K. 220, 270 Tajfel, H. 222, 270 Tanabe, M. 272 Tarkowski, A. 173, 270 Taylor, Ch. 5, 6, 46, 59, 140, 190, 192, 207, 220, 224 – 225, 227, 257, 270 Taylor, F.W. 50, 79

techniques of living 12, 38, 93, 99, 111, 119, 121, 136, 182, 184 – 185, 190 – 192, 195, 206, 215 Thompson, J.B. 69, 128, 144 – 146, 148, 174, 271 Thompson, K. 269 Thurow, L.C. 239, 253, 271 Tibi, B. 244, 271 Tilly, Ch. 125, 271 Tipton, S.M. 257 Tocqueville, A. de 40, 271 Toffler, A. 32, 122, 127, 271 Tomasello, M. 11, 20, 172, 271 Tönnies, F. 16, 198, 222, 271 Touraine, A. 58, 238 – 241, 245, 253, 271 trade unions 27, 31, 49 – 50, 103, 243 tradition 34, 69, 96, 115 – 116, 151, 214 – 215, 231 Trentmann, F. 73, 133, 271 Trotsky 34 Trzebińska, E. 225, 271 Turner, B.S. 154, 175, 271 Turner, J.C. 222, 270 Turner, R.H. 261 unit of survival 123 Urbanik, A. 153, 271 Urry, J. 100, 173, 263, 271 Valentino, R. 149 values 11, 16, 30 – 31, 35, 38, 46, 52, 73, 82, 96, 112, 117, 123 – 124, 132, 140, 142 – 144, 149, 157, 164, 179 – 180, 186 – 189, 191, 193, 206, 212, 214, 217, 227 – 228, 234 – 237, 240 – 245, 248 – 250; middle-class 32, 34, 65, 118 Veblen, T. 73, 88, 221, 271 Vincent, G. 268 vision of reality/world see images of reality/world Walker, I. 70, 221 – 222, 256 Wallerstein, I. 226, 271 war 25, 31, 34, 40, 93 – 94, 96, 108 Wason, P.C. 268 Waton, A. 269 Watters, E. 223, 271 Weber, M. 21, 24, 48 – 49, 54, 57, 97 – 98, 100, 110, 117, 207, 220, 271 – 272 Wedel, J.R. 247, 253 – 254, 272 Wellman, B. 193, 197, 272 Werner, C.M. 65, 272

284 Index Wheen, F. 129, 272 Whitehead, S. 263 Wilkinson, R.G. 253, 272 Wojciszke, B. 2, 272 Wolf, S. 209, 225, 272 Woolgar, S. 128, 265 Worchel, S. 270 work 12, 26 – 27, 32, 50, 53, 65, 68, 74, 80, 95 – 96, 98, 101, 109, 112, 116, 124, 138, 152, 159, 162, 180, 186 – 189, 191, 194, 197, 201, 203, 213, 246; ethics of 32, 115, 159, 188; household 106; time of 102; see also labour Wouters, C. 192, 222, 255, 272

Wrong, D.H. 134, 272 Wrzesiński, Ł. 211, 256 Wyszyński, M. 123 – 124, 272 Yankelovich, D. 219, 272 Zagórski, S. 273 Zajonc, R.B. 21, 272 Żakowski, J. 256, 271 Zanders, H. 220, 272 Żelazny, W. 95, 125, 244, 272 Zielonka, J. 253, 272 Zimbardo, Ph. 173, 176, 273 Znaniecki, F. 140, 273