Relational approaches to hybrid social theory

1. Relational approaches to hybrid social theory Prof Alex Law Abertay University BERA, 9 July, Glasgow

2. The Promise of Social Theory • Social theory is only possible by empirical study of lengthy historical processes • Move beyond abstract, frozen and ahistorical categories, eg time, space, existence, free will, etc. • Theory potentially become more adequate to actual human processes • Exercise collective self-control over relations within and between human groups

3. Norbert Elias (1897-1990)

4. Elias and triad of basic controls • Controls basic to all human societies: • Extra-human processes – ‘control chances over non-human complexes of events’ (nature regulated by technology) • Inter-human processes – ‘control chances over interpersonal relationships’ (social differentiation and integration) • Intra-human processes – control over self (individual civilising process)

5. Socio-genesis and psycho-genesis • People pass through both a ‘social civilising process’ and an ‘individual civilising process’ at the same time • Terms like socio-genesisand psycho-genesis attempt to restore to theory forgotten historical experiences that shaped us all • Become conscious of unplanned processes • Increase chances of mutual restraint between people and groups by controlling fear images

6. Sociogenesis and psychogenesis • Behaviour is constrained by external social pressures then internalised as self-restraint • An unintended social dynamic (sociogenesis) becomes a cumulative psychological disposition (psychogenesis) • Social interdependenciesspread new democratic standards - avoid social disgrace in the presence of social superiors • A rising threshold of shame and disgust

7. Threats to human survival • Fantasy ideals that threaten human survival • Long-term reduction of insecurities and fears of nature but • Increased insecurities and fears between social groups • Individualsperceive increased social dangers • Double-bind spiral of fear-response escalation • Necessity for greater detachment and more control over emotional fears and ideological illusions

8. Relational social theory as a means of orientation • relation of theory to the world, formed by concepts and models, organises heterogeneous elements • relations as focus of social theory – not discrete ‘things in themselves’ • relations between concepts – not arbitrary constructs, but provisional models based on use value • But how do we know which tools to combine from the box of concepts and models?

9. The so-called ‘learning paradox’ • Plato, Meno’s paradox (cf. Rumsfeld’s paradox) • how to inquire into something if you don’t know in advance what it is? • out of all the things not yet known what to select? • how will you know that you subsequently discovered what you didn’t know but needed to know? 

10. Philosophical solutions 1: Hannah Arendt (1954) • ‘Whenever in political questions sound human reason fails or gives up the attempt to supply answers we are faced by a crisis; for this kind of reason is really that common sense by virtue of which we and our five individual senses are fitted into a single world common to us all and by the aid of which we move about in it. The disappearance of common sense in the present day is the surest sign of the present-day crisis’

11. Philosophical solutions 2: Karl Popper, 1945 • Popper’s anti-democratic elitism • The ‘uneducated’ unable to recognise their deficiencies yet most in need of education (Brexit, etc?) • ‘How can those whose task it is to educate be judged by the uneducated?’ • Leads to authoritarianism of ‘indoctrination’ by progressive education instead of self-criticism about the limits of knowledge (Socratic ideal)

12. Elias’s solution: Relational processes • Abandon image of a solitary, self-contained mind to be worked upon • Stream of social learning transmitted across complex differentiated and integrated social structures • Increasing functional specialisation and social interdependencies • Demands greater foresight, self-restraint • Need for ever more specialists in intermediation to coordinate and translate functions across distances and time

13. Social discrepancies • Longer, more difficult and indirectpreparation of young people for social adulthood • Unlived lives – deciding between growing range of possibilities for specialisation • Increased risk of being caught out by shifting balances of ‘social discrepancies’ • Specialisation demands personal distinction • Integration demands social conformism • Constant adjustment to tension balances

14. Damaging models of orientation • Young people caught between: • A social orientation that constantly demands individual striving, aspirations, plans • Limited social possibilities for realisation of goals • Tension produces ‘socially instilled anxieties’ – shame, embarrassment, scale of mental illness, etc. • Need for a more adequate conceptual model as a means of orientation

15. Informalization processes,Cas Wouters • Changing psychogenetic-sociogenetic balances in 20th century • From formal to informal controls • ‘violent emotions once allowed are now repressed’ – index of restraint • ‘violent emotions once repressed are now allowed’ – index of relaxation

16. Hybrid social theory as means of orientation • Against fixed essences and wishful fantasy images • Relational models of the stream of collective learning • Beyond disciplinary straitjackets • More adequate hybrid bio-psycho-social models of social discrepancies as a means to control socially-induced suffering