MODERNITY AND SELF-INDENTITY: self and society in the late modern age. Anthony Giddens. 1991. California, Stanford University Press. Pp. 256, CCLVI.
Reviewed by Korstanje Maximiliano
University of Palermo Argentina
One of aspects that concerns scholars in our times seems to be the influence of modernity in the psychological self-identity. From Hobbes or Rousseau's days onwards, many thinkers problemized about the convergence between society and subject. The predominance of society over individuals was for "French philosophes" (Comte, Wundt, Durkheim, and Saint Simon) the most important issue to explain the advent of industrialism in social daily life. Following their development, social order was changing as a result of secularization process. Other scholars emphasized on the supremacy of psychological ego over societal rules. After all, the society was a construal formed by subjects who intertwine cyclically with other subjects and so forth. In these studies, the otherness was the key factor to explain the reason and how the society works. Of course, both waves dispute the hegemony of truth each other. Nowadays, sociologists and psychologists still question to what an extent the self precedes to the influence of society and vice-versa. Restructuring the contributions of French sociology with British Pragmatism, the book Modernity and Self Identity originally (authored by A. Giddens in 1991) intends to resolve this issue alternating psychological with sociological insights. Perhaps, Social Science tends to disregard the review of a classical work like this but we guess an effort of this nature is worth because of its quality and academic profundity.
Starting from the premise that modernity is a post-traditional order based on the rationality and doubt, Anthony Giddens examines how the concept of risk emerged replacing the pre-existing logic by a rational knowledge which operates from the subject and the structure at the same time. Reflexivity institutionalizes the principle of "Radical Doubt" while trust draws the boundaries between care-taker protection and ontological security. Notably influenced by the "Attachment Theory", Giddens realizes that trust should function as a "protective cocoon" in which case care-takes can provides in early socialization process to subject the necessary inoculation to face the potential threats and dangers in day-to-day life. In fact, modernity is the culture of risk and doubt. Under these underlying conditions, the differences between past, present and future are often blurred. In words of our author, "Modernity reduces the overall riskiness of certain areas modes of life, yet at the same time introduces new risk parameters include high-consequence risk: risks deriving from the globalized character of the social system of modernity. The late modern world -the world of what I term high modernity- is apocalyptic, not because it is inevitably heading towards calamity, but because it introduces risks which previous generations have not had to face" (Giddens, 1991: 4). One might question whether modern people seem to be more vulnerable than other generations. The moot point here is ¿why?.
The chapter one refers to the divorce as a consequence of modernity appearance. The fact is that modernity ambiguously affects the reality of many institutions including family households. Our sociologist reviews the concept of modernity and its application to psychological fields. Giddens contends that modernity can be equaled in certain degree to the notion of industrialization. Both are part of a broader process of labor organization and material production power (commoditization). Nevertheless unlike industrialism, modernity created a new political and economical form of institution: Nation-State. Tradition order here contrasts with the logic of Nation-states because of two reasons: a) a new way to perceive the space and time in social imaginary and b) the needs of monopolizing the usage of violence within certain territory. Geopolitical monitoring tradition in convergence with a new form of conceptualizing the site gives the rise of a new form re-organization. Time-spaces distances are controlled by the beaurocracy of a system which is centered in three respects. Surely, the first one is what Giddens calls the separation between space and time. This principle reminds us even if all cultures have their own time-reckoning as well as spaces parameters, only under the late modernity the time and space merge in a much broader configuration: the place.
Under this point of view, mechanical clock and time zones are product of this process because both allow the emptiness of space. As mediator between the site and time, the place very well corresponds with modern social organization coordinating the actions of many human beings connecting "the where" of these behaviors with "the when". The second concept Giddens discusses in his book is the disembeeding mechanisms which consist in all the symbolic tokens and expert systems self-oriented to separate the pre-existing interaction from particularities of locales while, third, the institutional reflexibility works as a regularized use of social knowledge in terms of a constitutive element of organization. Disembedding mechanisms are two: symbolic system and expert systems.
For further understanding, we can find the following explanation "symbolic tokens are media of exchange which have standard value, and these are interchangeable across a plurality of contexts. The prime example, and the most pervasively important, is money. Although the larger of pre-modern social system have all developed monetary exchange of one form of another, money economy becomes vastly more sophisticated and abstract with the emergence of maturation of modernity" (ibid, 18). On contrary, the expert system circumscribes their action to the private life of subject not only bringing to lay persons their wisdom in technical issues but also connecting the intimacies of self with others. As a consequence of this, both types of system (illustrated here) depend upon the trust to operate in the complex and inextricable social net. With the advent of modernity, we might speculate, the privacy has come to the end.
Nowadays, the consumers acquire more knowledge about their purchasing power as well as the lines of production. Reflexivity, to put this in brutally, obliges persons to find themselves beyond the influences of social institutions. Whether pre-modern societies saw in witchcraft a valid instrument to forecast the future, today statistics not only validates the position of Nation-State regarding certain problems but also represents the reality of citizenship. Modern reflexivity permits people questioning course of actions of their own institutions and leaders. In other terms, "modernity's reflexivity refers to the susceptibility of most aspects of social activity, and material relation with nature, to chronic revision in the light of a new information or knowledge. Such a information or knowledge is not incidental to modern institutions, but constitutive of them … because many possibilities of reflection about reflexivity exist in modern social conditions" (ibid: 20). Anyway, this entails an unexpected aftermath, the rise of risk perception. It is also assumed that risk perception trends to grow up at the time more knowledge Science acquires. Implicitly, industrialized societies look to be more vulnerable than rural ones. Due to the intrusion of distant events in day-to-day perception, mass media reproduces a new substantiated consciousness beyond the response of audience. The experience can be determined by the proximity wherein the event really happens. One of characteristics of high-modernity is that unfamiliar events are internalized individually as a part of daily social life of consumers. In sharp contrast with other philosophers who argued that Mass Media performs and create the sense of reality, for Giddens, these mediated corporations are social and political institutions of a much more deep-seated issue.
After further examination in the book of reference, Giddens assesses the existential anxiety in conjunction with ontological security. Doubtless, this is one of more interesting chapters of the entire project. The upshot of Giddens here is that double-edged Science can create problems as well as solutions. Inasmuch as people make a decision in one of other way to resolve certain point further propensity of generating unexpected risks. The degree of expertise in our modern world is determined by the ways it can resolve the contingency in lay persons. Furthermore, risk can be understood as parameters to measure the probabilities of events occur beyond the boundaries of our own assessed reality (calculations). In opposition to Luhmann, Giddens considers the risk as real not exclusively determined by contingency.
The identity, thus, seems to be a product of opposing the social change with self reflexively. Self-identity turns problematic in this new millennium because of the contrast with self-society. That way, Giddens tries to resolve an old debate about the origin of social character, we pointed out in the introduction of this review. Unquestionable Braudillard´s contributions are present in how Giddens detaches the matter of self and society (hyper-reality based on the notion as if). Ontological security and trust are expanded as topics throughout this second chapter from many perspectives. Here is the instance whenever Giddens introduces the thesis of Secure Base in order for him to reflect the extent anxiety in daily life surfaces. Likewise, "as developed through the loving attentions of early caretakers, basic trust links self-identity in a fateful way to the appraisals of others. The mutuality with early caretakers which basic trust presumes is a substantially unconscious sociality which precedes an I and me, and is a prior basis of a differentiation between the two" (ibid, 38).
In part, security feelings are interconnected somehow with early socialization process where the subject learns to construct the anticipation of future. This process involves the early mentioned separation between space and time. As Giddens put it, there is certain analogy between mother liaison and the perception of contingency. Whereas children expect the protection of their care-takers, once in their adult-hood they place expectations about the consequences of future facts. People who have been socialized in an atmosphere of conflict and violence show fewer probabilities to face the threats of environment than others who received support during their childhood. In other words, basic trust not only is needed to explore the uncertainness (time) in an unknown circumstance (place) but also triggers the capacity of experiencing curiosity.
In a bodily sense, Giddens considers the essence of life is strongly influenced by the perception of risks, which is no other thing than a way of calculating the contingency. With the calculative ability each human being has the possibility to overwhelm its own anxieties and goes on. For that reason, he argues psychologically that risk play a pivotal role in social behavior. Risk allows persons to feel certain invulnerability before to disaster. To set a clear example, a driver who sees a traffic accident (happened alongside the route) may be dissuaded to drive slowly (at least) for few miles but once invulnerability sentiment returns, he or she opts for accelerating again. Taking his cue from Winnicott´s studies, Giddens dwells on the self-identity progress as a form of basic trust pre-condition. Potential space between the children and caretakers will be surely the relationship with otherness in their adult-hood. Sociologically speaking, whereas daily routine brings to psychological ego to certain coherence and integrity, unpreparedness situations (expressed in dangers or risks) threaten such an organization with fragmentation.
Everything human beings condemn in chaos is not emerging disorder in such, but the possibility to suffer an unexpected and faster loss. Emotional acceptance of outsider world depends on the attachment of children with care-takers; with this background in mind, Giddens writes "fear of loss- the negative side of trust developed across the time-space absences of the parenting figures- is a permeating feature of the early security system. It is in turn associated with hostility, generated by feelings of abandonment: the antithesis of the sentiment of love which, combined with trust, generate hope and courage. The hostilities provoked by anxiety in the infant can most easily be understood as reactions to the pain of helplessness. Unless constrained and channeled, such hostilities can give rise to spiraling anxieties, especially where the expression of anger in the infant produces a reactive hostility on the part of parenting figures" (ibid: 46).
Of course, the needs of security are associated to the possession will. Following this argument, we might think that freedom can be deemed as the counter of external reality with self-identity (which combined with other variables) gives the anxiety as a result. Four are the existential questions of being which are assessed by Giddens. Existence and Being is a category denoting the identity of objects and events. Secondly, the finitude of humans refers to the complexity of sentiment involving human beings in connection with self and nature. The experience of others denotes the ways how one can interpret the behavior of others. Ultimately, the continuity of self-identity encompasses the persistence of feelings of personhood in a continuous line where converges body and self.
Third chapter is fully dedicated to the study of the trajectory of self in contextualization of modernity. Underpinned in the proposition that shame and guilt represent different meaning, our British sociologist argues the shame is a negative feeling associated with the failure of goal achievement and narcissism while guilt means to the own concern of violation of certain codes or rules. Whereas shame rises as a sentiment wherein one might experience inadequacy regarding to the loved other, guilt emphasizes on the feeling of wrong-doing towards a "respected loved other". The point here seems to be ¿why does modernity characterize by a recent proliferation of shame episodes?. ¿does this reflect a lack of coherence in social ideals or a difficulty of finding worth-while ideals to pursue?.
To address questions of this caliber, Giddens recurs to a detailed examination of Rainwater's book about self-therapy in modern contexts. From this point of view, the following phrase merits to be discussed "taking charge of one's life involves risk, because it means confronting a diversity of open possibilities. The individual must be prepared to make a more or less complete break with the past, if necessary, and to contemplate novel courses of action that cannot simply be guided by established habits. Security attained through sticking with established patterns is brittle, and at some point will crack" (ibid, 73). As previously mentioned, one of the respects that Giddens highlight afterwards a deep examination of Rainwater's text is the presence of reflexivity for which the subject turns responsible for their present and future (a phenomenon unknown for the citizen of Middle-Age or Renaissance). Also, the modern-self comprises a trajectory from the past towards an anticipated future (lifespan). Conjecturally, the decision-making process invades the life of people from all possible angles ranging from food-related diets to body awareness. In a major or lesser degree, the citizen of Late Modern Age acknowledges not only the signals coming from environment but also concerns about the signals about the own psychological self. However, modernity, we must accept, erodes the grounds of tradition and authority because follows a cyclical hierarchy. Day-to-day life changes the traditional sense of tradition insofar lay persons gain further authority and knowledge about their own future and present.
Whether in past, religion or other institution guided the actions of subjects with the promise of a better life or salvation, modernity nowadays deployed a new form of daily life-style organization. And of course, "the reorganization of daily life through abstract systems creates many routines forms of activity having a higher level of predictability than most contexts in pre-modern cultures. Through the protective cocoon, most people are buffered most of the time from the experience of radical doubt as a serious challenge either to the routines of daily activity or to more far-reaching ambitions. The dilemma of authority vs doubt is ordinarily resolved through a mixture of routine and commitment to a certain form of lifestyle, plus the vesting of trust in a given series of abstract systems" (ibid, 196). The burden of human leeway generates a higher degree of anxiety in some people that results in an embracement to totalitarianism.
Submission corresponds in this case with a much broader process of trust declining. Thus, the psychology of leadership plays a pivotal role in the configuration of authority in modern circumstances. At the other pole, we find some persons who are immobilized by doubt in all angles of their life. This pathological behavior become in a paranoia which jeopardizes seriously the psychological autonomy of involved subject. A proliferation of cases of phobias and physical withdrawals to secure home are undoubtedly a result of this trajectory. It is important to mention the rivalry between examples of appropriation and powerlessness that Giddens examines in the following lines. "Modernity expropriates -that is undeniable. Time-space distanciation and the deskilling effects of abstract systems are the two most important influences. Even if distance and powerlessness do not inevitably go together, the emergence of globalised connections, together with high consequence risks, represent parameters of social life over which the situated individual has relatively little control. Similarly, expropriation processes are part and parcel of the maturation of modern institutions and reach not only spheres of day-to-day life but the heart of self" (ibid, 192).
With this background in mind, "powerlessness and reappropriation" relate each other in contexts where time and space dissociate in dynamism without precedent in other past times. As a result of this, it emerges a process of general engulfment where the individuals feel dominated by encroaching forces which operates from the outside. These implacable and invisible forces not only generate chaos and an apocalyptic point of view about the horizons of our civilization but also close dramatically the autonomy of individuals giving serious aftermaths for self-identity as well as the relationship with otherness. Late modernity appears to be accompanied with a declination of social bondage and cohesion. The progressive lack of authority wakes up a stronger sentiment of anxiety which is driven towards mass-consumption and emulative leisure. But far-away from resolving the problem, these devices trigger more exciting panic.
In accordance with other scholars such as R. Beck (2006), R. Castel (2006) and N. Luhmann (2006), Giddens observes in modernity a stronger irreversible dynamic whose influences encroaches all sides of daily life. In other terms, modernity brings a new restructuration of political and social order in which case space, time and authority seem to be gradually blurred. After a critical review, we consider Modernity and self-identity is an important book that bridges the contribution of psychology with sociology in the understanding of the new times we are now facing. Most likely, the criticism on this masterful text can be channeled in the following direction. Inflation of risk, as professor Giddens explains, is a part of a passage from hierarchal authority to reflexivity in terms of the Heidegger's phenomenology of being. His main thesis is aimed at outlining that inasmuch as the experience of knowledge grows, the inflation of risk perception becomes utterly incommensurable. It is not surprising to see this is why modern human beings refuse the biological death in terms of possibilities.
After all, says assertively Giddens "death tends to be the more completely hidden away of the two, perhaps because it is the more dangerous in terms of the return of external criteria. For childbirth is a process of entry into life and can be technically managed as such. The process of dying, on the other hand, cannot be seen as anything other than the incipient loss of control: death is unintelligible exactly because it is the point zero at which control lapses. It is in these terms that we should understand the resurgence of literature concerned with making the phenomenon of death a subject for wider public debate" (ibid, 203). Assuming that the fate is open to the particular decision of humans, fatalism plays a counterfactual role to the advent of modernity. Whether risk is enrooted in the belief that the destiny is not determined by protestant predestination, fatalism concerns to come back to a closed future. The fatalism is comprehended as a refusal of modernity, a kind of linkage of fatefulness which allows social imaginary explains the happenings events. On contrary, risks are often a product of freedom and prevalence of life-threatening dangers.
Critically as Giddens accepts, his recursive and cyclical style of writing give as a result hypotheses that repeat once and once again throughout the book. This prevents from an all-encompassed appraisal of his main contributions in the research of risk and uncertainty. Whatever the case may be, Giddens confuses the definition of risk because of two main reasons. As Luhmann put it a couple of years back, risks are only possible whenever it is entailed certain profitability by means of a previous decision making process wherever the subject has certain partial or fully knowledge of possible consequences. The choice of individual, in other terms, determines the future events. No need to say that a traffic accident or other natural or made-man disasters (examples cited by Giddens in his development) do not correspond with the previous definition since involved community has not direct responsibilities on the events.
Under such a circumstance, it is necessary for Giddens to distinguish operationally risk from threat or danger. Secondly, Lash and Urry considers that Giddens has taken the incorrect pathways in the analysis of modernity. In fact, it is impossible to think modern reflexivity would bring a total emptiness of social institutions. By the way, Giddens inadvertently trivializes the role played by aesthetic in this afore-mentioned process synthesizing exclusively the findings of his work in the role of cognitive logic. A similar mistake we can observe in Marx who argued that civilizations follow a linear logic of evolution respecting to material forms of productions and development. For Lash and Urry, even if Giddens explained in detail how operated the reflexivity in modern daily life he did not got the essence of modernity. Centered in an apocalyptic idea of "total emptiness", his approach emphasizes erroneously on the geographical space as signal in lieu of the internalization of allegory (Lash and Urry, 1998: 82). This means that romantic notion of community is definitely broken into pieces and gives rise a new form of political order where resurgences the power of image. Cartesian space is replaced for this new form of tridimensional aesthetic. Modernity paved the pathway towards the hope of a broader comprehensive and all-encompassed experience for the subject, more authenticable but more danger as well. Quite aside from Giddens´s limitations, the present book should be considered as a valuable project which originally introduces (by first time) the contributions of Attachment theory in the research of sociology. For that and other many reasons else, this represents a high-quality and recommendable work for specialist concerned in these type of issues.
References
Beck, U. (2006). Risk Society, towards a new modernity. Buenos Aires, Paidos
Castel, R. (2006). La Inseguridad social: ¿Qué es estar protegido?. Buenos Aires, El Manantial.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and society in The late modern age. California, Stanford University Press.
Lash, S. y Urry, J. (1998). Economies of sign and spaces. Buenos Aires, Amorrortu.
Luhmann, N. (2006). Sociology of Risk. México, Universidad Iberoamericana.
