Abstract
Various commentators express the view that society is accelerating in some manner. In this chapter I assess what this might mean and seek to identify factors that could explain the widespread acceptance of this view. In the course of so doing I elaborate an account of social reality that allows me to identify the nature of social stability and thereby of the kinds of factors that might work to undermine it. In particular I examine the nature of recent developments in technology and of their take up in capitalist development. Conclusions are drawn as to whether society is indeed accelerating in some way, and speculations offered as to the sort of society for which ongoing developments could lay a basis.
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- 1.
Or as Rosa (2003) puts it: “However, empirically measuring (rates of) social change remains an unresolved challenge” (p. 7). He adds: “There is little agreement in sociology as to what the relevant indicators of change are and when alterations or variations actually constitute a genuine or ‘basic’ social change”.
- 2.
Quoted in Rosa (2003, p. 22).
- 3.
Thus although I agree with Margaret Archer (2014) that the object that we now call the Rosetta Stone retained its dispositional capacity to be intelligible, including to serve as a translation manual, throughout the period since it was first made, its identity was not that of a translation manual during the period that it was used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien (near the town of Rashid [Rosetta] in the Nile Delta), and nor even was it interpreted/constituted as such when the stele of which it was originally a part was erected in 196 BC following the coronation of King Ptolemy V (and inscribed with the decree that established the divine cult of the new ruler).
- 4.
Of course, assembly is more than a matter of simply connecting the parts in an additive fashion. Welding produces high temperatures, which produce expansion and distortion; so that management of the cooling process is vital (poor quality control of welding may allow changes detrimental to the properties of the metal). And the weight distribution of a structure can change during assembly, requiring precautions such as adjustable jacking. Forcing two parts into alignment produces unforeseen stresses that can lead to cracking.
- 5.
And of course even the bridge qua bridge (rather than some unidentified material object) is continually reproduced through human interaction.
- 6.
I am aware that where I use the category social position that of social role is employed by some and notably by Margaret Archer (see especially Archer 1995, 2000). Although there is seemingly little disagreement over the nature of the features of social reality that the competing terms are used to designate, I stick with the term social position, not just (and not least) because this is the terminology I have adopted throughout my contributions, but also because, on balance, I continue to think it the more appropriate.
In the text I shall argue that associated with (the status that I am calling) social position are sets of rights and obligations.
Archer’s reason for preferring the category role is that she associates the term position with various groupings such as the downtrodden or poor or homeless or nouveaux riches where the individuals included are not the bearers of any associated rights and obligations. These, Archer argues, are heterogeneous categories that do not correspond to social identities, as outlined above.
I agree that the downtrodden, the poor, the homeless as well as nouveaux riches are not the sorts of categories that indicate social status of a sort that carries associated rights and responsibilities (though heterogeneity itself is not a problem per se; there are many types of UK citizen but still UK citizenship brings [positional] rights and obligations). But I would not refer to these sorts of categories (poor, downtrodden, homeless, etc) as social positions either. For sure, in describing an individual as, say, poor one might interpret this statement as meaning that the income of the individual is associated with a ‘position’ (or more likely a range of positions), on some considered-to-be relevant income distribution, and so on. But here the word position has a different meaning, and referring to being poor as a position is really an imprecise short hand.
Role too can be given different, including loose, meanings as in ‘accepting to take on the role of X (or even a poor person) in some play’; or ‘acknowledging that everyone at the football club played some role in the team’s defeat and relegation’; or X likes to act the role of a fool.
The reason I prefer the term position on balance is that it has the connotation of existing beyond simply individual choice, being ultimately a community property. In all cases, even in the loose usages just discussed, we speak easily of individuals taking on roles, whereas individuals are more often said to be allocated to, placed in, or finding themselves in, positions. Although, individuals may indeed chose to apply for, or work to achieve, certain positions, most cannot be taken on just like that, whereas roles, it seems to me, do very often carry this individualistic connotation, and for that reason does seem to me to express far more subjective and temporary designations. Ultimately of course the meaning will be clear from, and perhaps determined only in, context. Anyway readers should be aware that the category social position as utilised here is much the same as social role as employed by Archer and others.
- 7.
Parenthetically, inanimate objects also, in effect, acquire their social identities (a feature discussed in the introductory section on ‘The social domain’ above) through being positioned within a social system. Various objects when suitably positioned take on the identity of cash, passports, identity cards, deeds of ownership, wedding rings, and so forth. And once more this all depends on community acceptance. Of course, when inanimate objects are so socially positioned, the capacities or powers most closely associated with their positioning take the form not of rights and obligations but of system functions.
- 8.
A stage that Clive Lawson (2012) describes as one of ‘isolation’.
- 9.
At first sight this claim may seem to be contradicted by the idea that museums often seek to ‘identify’ an object correctly. But this is not so. The museum is itself a part of some community. In the context of this community, the object is positioned and so identified as a museum piece. Those described as seeking to identify it are really seeking to determine how it was (possibly differently) positioned in one (or perhaps in several different) formerly existing community(ies).
- 10.
Of course, some may so allocate themselves, through, say, invasion and replacing a current incumbent, or creating a novel post and in effect allocating it to themselves (though often via a ceremony where some other appointed person does the anointing etc).
- 11.
Some capacities may be realised only on the job, i.e., after being appropriately positioned. But when these capacities were undeveloped they were so for all contexts, and once developed they thereafter exist (to the extent they do endure) whatever the context.
- 12.
Indeed, a thorough investigation by China Labor Watch in 2012 (China Labour Watch is an independent not-for-profit organization, founded in 2000, and based in New York, concerned with investigating the conditions of factories in China that produce for some of the largest companies of the U.S. and elsewhere) significant doubt was cast on the sincerity of these promises, concluding that the “FLA’s report presents no new findings; all the problems that the FLA raised have been raised in previous reports”. In other words, they warn that because “Apple failed to ensure that many needed reforms would be made before, its new commitment should be treated with scepticism”. The 2012 China Labour Watch report also found that problems reported were not exclusive to Foxconn but “exist in virtually all other Apple supplier factories, and in many cases are actually significantly more dire than at Foxconn”. Needless to say, the sorts of work conditions uncovered in Apple’s supply chain by China Labor Watch and other observers are not restricted to suppliers of Apple. For example, in 2011 China Labour Watch carried out three investigations of the South Korean company Samsung Electronics. The investigation into eight factories revealed a long and detailed “array of serious legal violations and labour abuses throughout” See http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/pro/proshow-177.html.
- 13.
The issues I focus upon in this section at least, do not deal with phenomena that are at all novel under capitalism. If there is any difference in recent developments it is seemingly that the technological innovations under consideration have been of a nature as to impart a leap in possibilities for individual mobility (simultaneously destabilising frameworks for organising individuals), along with a qualitative decline in the possibilities for attachment to objects within the life world. Certainly the trends in question have been observed before. Consider for example the observations of John Dewey, writing the best part of a century ago:
How can a public be organised, we may ask, when literally it does not stay in place? Only deep issues or those which can be made to appear such can find a common denominator among all the shifting and unstable relationships. Attachment is a very different function of life from affection. Affections will continue as long as the heart beats. But attachment requires something more than organic causes. The very things which stimulate and intensify affections may undermine attachments. For these are bred in tranquil stability; they are nourished in constant relationships. Acceleration of mobility disturbs them at their root. And without abiding attachments associations are too shifting and shaken to permit a public readily to locate and identify itself (1927, pp. 140–1).
- 14.
According to Archer reflexivity works through an ‘internal conversation’, of which she identifies three distinct forms. She thus argues for an ultimately more disaggregated or contextualised approach to assessing the responses of human beings to instability, suggesting that it is a group that she identifies as ‘communicative reflexives’ who find instability the most difficult to handle.
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Acknowledgments
For helpful comments on an earlier draft I am grateful to Margaret Archer and Clive Lawson. For generous financial support for this research I am indebted to the Independent Social Research Foundation.
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Lawson, T. (2014). A Speeding Up of the Rate of Social Change? Power, Technology, Resistance, Globalisation and the Good Society. In: Archer, M. (eds) Late Modernity. Social Morphogenesis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03266-5_2
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