Media and social change: Durkheim and Weber peper 2 chap 5.3
Table of Contents
Durkheim and Weber on the Social
Implications of New Information and Communication Technologies
Neo-mechanical solidarity and ICTs
Social cohesion via ritual interaction
Contrasts
and Complementarities
Durkheim
and Weber on the Social Implications of New Information and Communication Technologies
By Ralph Schroeder and
Rich Ling
Abstract
This paper considers the
work of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim in the context of new information and
communication technologies (ICTs). While these two theorists did not consider
mediated communication in their work, they provided concepts at the macro, meso
and micro social levels that can give us tools with which to understand the
contemporary interaction with ICTs. We consider, among other things, Weber’s
notion of the Iron cage, and Durkheim’s ideas of mechanical solidarity and
ritual.
Introduction
The sociology of science and technology has often drawn on Marx (MacKenzie 1984, Bimber 1994), but rejected him insofar as he not longer fits the social constructivism that is currently in vogue. Durkheim and Weber, in contrast, have been neglected. Here we do not want to ‘resurrect’ these two classics for their own sake, but rather make the argument that these two thinkers, with modification and updating, provide a powerful way to understanding the role of technology in society. The same point applies to media or communication studies: although Marx was for some time a key thinker in media and communications – we can think here of topics like the news as ideology or of capitalist cultural imperialism (see, for example, Tomlinson 1999) – Weber and Durkheim have not figured in the social implications of new media or information and communication technologies (ICTs).
In a short paper, we can only sketch this argument and give examples. However, we have given fully-fledged accounts of the two thinkers elsewhere (Ling 2008, Schroeder 2007), and here only summarize their positions. The main point of this essay is counterpoise them against one another, highlighting where they differ and the respective strengths and shortcomings of their positions. In the conclusion, we shall argue that although the two thinkers differ, they nevertheless also complement each other and together, provide a theoretically powerful analysis of the social implications of science and technology (and ICT’s in particular). They also, we argue, fill an important gap in theories of the social implications of new ICTs because other theories fail to connect with larger questions of social change[1].
To make this argument, we shall need to extend Durkheim’s
and Weber’s ideas, in some cases extrapolating from their thought in order to
apply them to ICTs. This is because the ICTs we are concerned with were only on
the horizon at the time they were writing. Both thinkers were commenting on a
dramatically changing landscape occasioned by industrialization and the
transitions from traditional to modern capitalist society. Weber focused on
macro- questions and he offers an overall account of the rationalization of
modern societies. Though, as we shall see, he was unduly pessimistic about
rationalization, a strength of the concept of rationalization is that it
recognizes the positive and negative implications of this process. Where Weber
is weak is in extending this concept to the micro-level of everyday life,
though again, we will see that ideas about rationalization can be extrapolated
and applied to ICTs in everyday settings. Durkheimian ideas (along with the
The strength of both Durkheim and Weber is that they tackled the social implications of science and technology at the macro-level. Very few theorists since have followed them in this endeavor – one that might be thought supremely important for sociology. The few that have addressed this bigger picture have done so in a speculative way and often without bringing evidence to bear (we shall give examples in the conclusion), which also makes them difficult to operationalize in sociological analysis. One exception is Luhmann, whose ideas about science can be seen as Durkheimian in their functionalism. Luhmann, however, never addressed technology (with the exception of mass media (2000) which are an exception to what has been said so far. Again, we shall come back to him).
This leads to a second strength, which is that, in contrast with the current social constructivist theory of science and technology, which argues that science and technology are inescapably socially (or culturally) shaped, and hence every different social context entails different implications of science and technology, Durkheim and Weber present a more general and generalizable view. This also means that, unlike contructivist theory, we can derive from Durkheim and Weber some claims that can be tested by reference to the evidence, unlike in constructivism where claims are made about context-bound case studies, which produces many different shapings of science and technology or implications or new ICTs that are difficult to evaluate across different cases or at a more general or macro- level.
Weber
Rationalization
and a Rubber Cage
Weber’s ideas about science and technology center on the notion of rationalization. He argued that science ‘disenchants’ the world, replacing value-oriented action with instrumental rationality. The advance of instrumental rationality also applies to technology, which creates impersonal structures, foremost among them bureaucracies but also including large technological infrastructures or systems (Hughes 1987). For Weber, these constituted an ‘iron cage’ since he thought that increasing rationalization was inescapable. As we shall see, these ideas can be used to describe how ICTs have become rationalized into systems, not just for industrial production or in infrastructural support for ICTs, but also in embedding these systems into everyday routines which rely on these systems for maintaining our relationships and access to information.
Before describing these processes in more detail, it is necessary to amend Weber’s ideas briefly. There is much to be said for the notion that technologies translate into social ‘caging’, with two caveats: one is that, in addition to a ‘cage’, new technologies are also an ‘exoskeleton’ (Schroeder 2007) which provides us with greater mastery over the environment (as Weber also argued). The second caveat concerns Weber’s rather gloomy prognosis about the effects of technology, since the ‘iron cage’ leads to ever greater ‘meaninglessness’ and impersonal structures of domination. Yet technology, as an exoskeleton, can also be used to provide richer and more variegated experiences, for example in relation to consumption and leisure. Gellner (1987: 152-65) therefore talks of a ‘rubber’ rather an ‘iron cage’ because apart from its role in instrumentally-rational production, technology also provides, on the consumption side, an environment of user-friendly devices which make our life-world more comfortable and allow plenty of scope for individuality.
Before we come to everyday life, however, how do these ‘cages’ arise in the first place? Weber saw bureaucratization in organizational terms, but on the side of technology, the expansion of the scale and scope of bureaucracies can also be interpreted as relying on large technological systems. The infrastructures created by these technological systems are means of enhancing organizational capacity, but once they have grown to encompass the environment they are aimed at (often at the national level for infrastructures like transport, but for ICTs like the internet and mobile phone also often the global level), they congeal and become ossified. In other words, while they may still be further refined, to a large extent, these ‘cages’ become unchangeable. These ideas can readily be applied to the technological of ICTs and how they mediate modern culture.[2]
The main reason for Weber’s pessimism is that, instead of focusing on consumer culture, Weber’s main concern was with impersonal political and economic domination. Thus he sees bureaucratization, including by means of ICTs, as leading to rule by specialists and experts. Weber’s ideas have been extended along these lines by Dandeker (1990), who argues that bureaucratization, the increasing scale and scope as well as the central role played by knowledge in institutions, enables institutions to exercise more surveillance over populations. ICTs are essential in this development, and although it may be possible to separate these (mainly economic and political) uses of ICTs from their uses in consumption, the line is somewhat blurred if we consider the enhanced capacity of ICTs to target and operate to expand the needs for consumption. In any event, Weber says the increasing rule of expertise as contributing to a more disenchanted world: he called them ‘specialists without spirit’(1930: 182).
It may, however, be misleading to see these large technological systems only as infrastructures: they are systems which support the bureaucracies of (to use a Weberian term) political machines and of production, but also machines (or systems) underpinning consumer economies with their logistical and advertising needs. Thus, the consumer economy has a supporting system which has been interpreted along functionalist lines (Beniger 1986) as being a precondition for the logistics, marketing and advertising that are required for scaling up consumption to encompass whole societies. Apart from these infrastructures, however, there is another (more familiar) part of Weber’s thought which explains this expansion of a consumer economy, which is the dynamism that he saw as underlying capitalist economies. What he described as the rational restlessness of capitalism, arising from market competition (and its Schumpeterian dynamic of innovation and competition for niches) and open-ended profit-seeking in the first instance, finds its echo in the restless seeking of novel consumption experiences, as Campbell has argued (1987).
To Weber’s ideas it can be added then that economic growth has led in the 20th century to a mass consumer culture. Indeed, much of this consumer culture is driven by the proliferation of new technologies for leisure, including information and communication technologies (ICTs), transport technologies for travel, and technologies for enhancing the comfort of the home. Hence it is possible to speak of a ‘culture-technology’ spiral (Schroeder 2007), whereby novel artifacts enable more experiences of cultural consumption, which in turn generate more needs for novel artifacts, and so on in a never-ending spiral.
These ideas are in keeping with Weber’s notion of rationalization, even if they also extend them: with the proliferation of devices and forms of mediated cultural consumption, there is an increasingly uniform (rationalized) proliferation and diversification of experiences with new technologies. Weber is thus firmly on the side of those who argue that globalization leads to greater homogeneity or convergence, yet this convergence need not rule out that this homogeneity consists of a consumer culture and of more heterogeneity in the devices that people use or in the manner in which they use them – for example – to gain access to knowledge or information or to maintain their interpersonal ties. In this respect we can already see some echoes of Durkheim’s organic solidarity and the idea of havens of neo-mechanical solidarity within organic society.
ICT’s, the
Spirit of Consumerism, and Globalization
Weber did not write about information and communication technologies (the exception are his scattered comments on journalism and mass media). Nevertheless, applying or extending his ideas to ICTs is relatively straightforward: if we focus on personal and leisure uses of ICTs (as opposed to uses as the mass media for and political communication), Weber’s notion of increasing rationalization can be applied to mediated interpersonal communication: With the growth of the impersonal (or producer) side of these technological cages, there arise large infrastructures which support various tools for communication. These in turn lead, on the consumer side, to the proliferation of devices – mobile phones, internet, social networking tools. As their uses expand, these tools have the effect of a simultaneous tethering – to devices, to others, and to the amount of time spent in their uses – and un-tethering – from face-to-face interaction and from places (Schroeder 2010).
Weber’s cage/exoskeleton nature of technology is thus illustrated by the proliferation of devices for interpersonal communication and information access: they at once provide a means of more dense, more extensive (in time and space), and more multiple means for interacting with others. At the same time, they inexorably lead to more technologically mediated experiences of sociability and accessing entertainment and information. Whether this is perceived as more ‘iron’ than ‘rubber’ depends on the extent to which we focus on how technology shapes culture, or if the cultural habits are regarded as ways of life in highly affluent societies increasingly dominated by leisurely mediated sociability and information access. In either case, however, this proliferation of ICTs becomes routine: our everyday lives are shaped by this environment of ICTs in a pervasive way, even if this pervasiveness also moves into the background such that it is hardly noticed (foreshadowing the Durkheimian social facts that we shall come to shortly).
One debate that Weber’s concept of rationalization sheds light on (at least by implication – Weber himself does not spell this out concretely), and where his position is distinctive, is in relation to the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the effects of technology (in relation to ICTs, see Rantanen 2005). This issue closely relates to a number of others, including convergence of technologies, or to what extent the uses of technologies are shaped by social forces. At the most macro- level, the related issue is globalization, which can be reframed in relation to science and technology to ask whether these have effects that are similar across the globe, or alternatively quite different effects. In relation to this congerie of questions, Weber’s ideas point to homogeneity and globalizing effects. This is because rationalization is the master narrative in Weber’s sociology, and the inexorable advance of this process is in the direction of greater instrumental rationality or means-ends efficiency. What Weber does not say, but can be added, is that convergence and greater homogeneity do not necessarily entail uniformity (though Weber’s ideas point in this direction), but also – as mentioned - more diversity: if we think, for example, of production and consumption of ICTs, then rationalization leads both to more powerful ICTs and more of uses of the tools, but at the same time to a proliferation of devices and to diversity in this sense.
Although Weber did not directly discuss ICTs, it can be seen that the continuing way in which consumption experiences and access to information are mediated, via new technology and a proliferation of devices, shapes culture along Weberian lines, even if, again, this cage of mediation is more ‘rubber’ than ‘iron’. The restless seeking of new experiences and proliferation of information and mediations of relationships, however, while it is dynamic, could equally be regarded as becoming an ever more routine part of everyday life, and this again points to how homogeneity and diversification are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Durkheim
Neo-mechanical
solidarity and ICTs
If we move
now to the meso-level, a key tension can be identified by drawing on Durkheim
who depicts both a mass-society as well as smaller “clumps” of groups who
maintain tighter and more traditional bonds. In a society that is moving in the
direction of ever greater rationalization, it is thus interesting to ask how a
local sense of uniqueness and local identity is maintained. By way of
background, where Weber spoke of increasing rationality, Durkheim examined what
he called -- somewhat counter-intuitively -- the transition from mechanical to
organic solidarity. While generations of students in introduction to sociology
think he got the names backwards, Durkheim was clear in his thinking on this
point. Mechanical solidarity is that form of social cohesion that arises due to
similarity of perspective and situation. By contrast, in industrial society we
experience organic solidarity where individuals fulfil different functions in
the complex interactions of the larger society.[3]
The notion of ICTs being used on the project of maintaining social cohesion brings us to another area where Durkheim give us insight into the interaction between ICTs and society; namely, a recalibration of his notion of mechanical solidarity. In general, Durkheim was interested in the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity, that is, the transition from less to more industrialized society. In characterizing modern industrial society as ‘organic’, Durkheim argued that people took on more complex and differentiated roles and were becoming more interdependent on one another, replacing the mechanical solidarity of traditional societies in which people’s homogeneity and ties in small-scale groups provided them with solidarity. It is interesting, however, to consider the potentials that ICTs provide a way of bridging the divide between the two, allowing solidaristic experiences even in societies with complex ties organic organization. What we are suggesting is that ICTs allow us to cultivate a type of neo-mechanical solidarity: While there is a general drift in the direction of organic society, the potential of ICTs is potential to cultivate sociation of the intimate sphere and to provide a space for this neo-mechanical solidarity.
The notion of mechanical solidarity asserts that cohesion within a group comes from a shared sense of similarity. In Durkheimian mechanical solidarity, individuals gain cohesion through similar status, training, religious perspective, and the like. In many ways, each individual is similar in capacity and orientation to all others. There is little specialization and certain interchangeability. In the case of mechanical solidarity, there is a broadly felt common notion of similar beliefs and sentiments by all members in a group. To be sure, this is an over simplification. There is a complexity to traditional societies that is not reflected in this understanding. However, the sense of association based on similarity of thought is the central point that we want to examine.
It is easy to see that Durkheim and many of those that followed him were more interested in the transition to organic than in mechanical solidarity. It was the tool with which he wished to clarify industrialization. In the case of organic solidarity, the society is characterized by the notion of interdependence. There is an interdependence of the component parts: If one person does not do their job, then it has consequences for the wellbeing of others. As noted by Collins, there are definitely power issues to be considered here. How and why do individuals fit into a particularly central or peripheral situation? It is clear that Durkheim's approach can be faulted on this count.
The difference between the two can be seen in the type of legal system that they spawned. In mechanical solidarity, the legal system is based on the indignation of people who feel that they have been wronged. The monitoring and disciplining of individuals in mechanical solidarity is based on a web of interlocking observations and the development of a type of social narration regarding the individual. There is the sense of not being able to hide from the all observing eyes of fellow members of the village or the tribe. There is also a high sense of collective consciousness in mechanical solidarity. In contrast, organic system is characterized by contractual interactions and with it a more dissipated sense of collective consciousness. Mechanical solidarity privileges the group while organic solidarity puts the gives the same position to the individual into a larger web of relations.
There is directionality in the assertions of Durkheim. He was commenting on a world that was becoming increasingly industrialized and where specialization flourished. Society was moving in the direction of organic solidarity. Yet it is possible to think of overcoming this mechanical/organic dichotomy by suggesting a form of neo-mechanical solidarity. While there is undeniably a movement in the direction of increased division of labor (or as Weber would have it, more rationality), there are also islands or clumps of mechanical solidarity (recall the ‘rubber cage’ in the midst of the ‘iron cage’). Indeed, we claim with the support of a growing body of research (Ling 2008) that the mobile phone and its privileging of person-to-person interaction support this neo-mechanical solidarity even across more distant relationships. We are able to share interactions and views with our closest friends and family. In this way we can maintain our sense of common identity in the face of an ever more differentiated society. We use point-to-point mediated interaction to keep in touch with one another even as we are sitting in meetings or participating in the highly specialized drift of everyday life. Thus, the mobile phone and other ICTs become the way that we are able to develop a neo-mechanical refuge in the increasingly rationalized (to use Weber’s term) world.[4]
Overcoming the dichotomy between mechanical and organic via the notion of neo-mechanical does not cover all aspects of mediated encounters. Indeed, the match is not complete. For example, a part of the control in Durkheim’s mechanical solidarity comes via being constantly exposed to local approbation. We fear the harsh words or judgmental comments of others in the group. By contrast, mobile telephony and net based interaction provides us with a space free from the eyes of local onlookers and wags. Thus, the cohesion is based on our wish to be together with our closest sphere, not on the fear of shrill sanctions when we stray from the approved path of the group. Also the neo-mechanical groups of the mobile phone in particular, but also of many web based groups, are smaller in scale than Durkheim’s society- wide version.
There are also differences in the way that neo-mechanical solidarity is worked out - given the form of mediation. Social networking sites, for example, cast a broader net when including people when compared to the typical core group of contacts using the mobile phone. Where the mobile phone is largely the instrument of the closest sphere, internet interaction and social networking sites also encompass the closest sphere, but also go up to the meso- level of social interaction.
Social cohesion
via ritual interaction
A second issue where Durkheim makes a contribution is in helping us to understand how social cohesion actually develops within small groups. Durkheim developed the notion that ritual interaction is a key element in the development of social cohesion (Durkheim, 1995). Durkheim’s work on ritual was expanded upon by Goffman (1967) and also Collins (2004), and the combination of these three thinkers allows us to see how we build social cohesion through the use of ritual.
To parse this discussion a bit, it is important to understand the social nature of ritual interaction. According to Durkheim, a ritual is a mutually focused activity that engenders a common mood in a bounded group. In this situation there is a mutual reflexivity associated with the action. We see others engaging in the mutual action and we also know that they see us. The mutual focused activity may be cheering for the team, telling jokes over beers, participating in a religious ceremony, or any other social situation where the individuals maintain a common focus and work to maintain a common mood. Durkheim writes:
By themselves, individual consciousnesses
are actually closed to one another, and they can communicate only by means of
signs in which their inner states come to express themselves. For the
communication that is opening up between them to end in a communion—that is, in
the fusion of all the individual feelings into a common one—the signs that
express those feelings must come together in one single resultant. The
appearance of this resultant notifies individuals that they are in unison and
brings home to them their moral unity. It is by shouting the same cry, saying
the same words, and performing the same action in regard to the same object
that they arrive at and experience agreement. (Durkheim 1995, pp. 231–232)
The reason that this leads to social cohesion is that it engenders a common sense that we are all in this together. If someone does not cheer at the appropriate moment, if they do not laugh at the jokes or do not stand when the hymn is sung, they are not participating in the circle of interaction. They are not making their contribution. Indeed they may serve to question the general mood and to limit the degree that social cohesion can arise from the situation.
When we engage in these situations and when we use the
correct manners, assert the correct mood and engage in the correct focus, we
While Durkheim saw rituals as meso-level interactions (he focused in particular on the rituals of Aboriginal tribes in Australia), Goffman was saw them at the micro level in the production of everyday life. Every time we greet one another, eat a meal, tell a joke, gossip or for that matter enter into an elevator, we are using the elements of ritual interaction. It is possible to suggest that Durkheim was attentive to the generation of social cohesion while Goffman was concerned with its maintenance. Rather than only looking at large scale situations, Goffman refocused our attention on everyday life.
Durkheim, Goffman and Collins conceived of ritual as face-to-face interaction. Indeed in some cases, there is the pointed exclusion of mediated interaction. The rise of a variety of instruments for mediated social interaction, however, brings into question the idea that co-presence is a prerequisite for engaging ritual. This, in turn, leads to the possibility that mediated interaction can also be a space - however virtual - where socially cohesive ritual can take place.
We argue that mediation technologies allow us to maintain and indeed elaborate social cohesion within the group. Teen girls cultivate their circle of friends through the use of texting. Our gossiping, flirting and joking with our closest friends via the Facebook, email or the mobile phone allows us a focused situation where there is a common sense of effervescense, to use Durkheim’s terminology. During the battles of World of War Craft, clans fulfill the idea of a mutually focused activity that engenders of common mood in a bounded group. Clearly this is only one dimension of their lives, but for that group, it is a situation in which cohesion is developed and maintained. In many ways, we always have our closest social contacts available, albeit in a mediated form. Indeed, we would argue that nowadays, there is an ever increasing connectedness via multiple modalities (Schroeder 2010). They are always just a text message, a face book entry, an IM chat, Second Life log-in or tweet away. Once in a particular sphere of mediation, we can go about the work of developing a common focus and engendering a common mood.
Taken to a perhaps not so distant conclusion, it is possible to see mediated interaction and the devices which we use in this context as taken for granted. This statement is not simply that this form of interaction is something the individual would expect of him/her self. Rather it is something that we might expect of one another. The ownership, mastery and use of mediated forms of interaction has until now been seen as a convenience for the individual. A mobile phone is a way to arrange their affairs and email is a convenient substitute for letters. However, there is the increasing sense that we owe it to one another. There is the sense in some groups that we are not being responsible when we leave home without the mobile phone, do not update our Facebook account or do not respond to email. The seriousness of these gaffes varies from group to group, but we are indeed starting to see the development of this sense of things. To the degree that this attitude obtains in a group, we are seeing the vague establishment of what Durkheim called ‘a social fact’. With time, there will be the expectation that we are available to one another via mediated forms of communication. To shirk this would result in pressure from others to amend our ways.
They come to each one of us from outside and can sweep us along in spite of ourselves. If perhaps I abandon myself to them I may not be conscious of the pressure that they are exerting upon me, but that pressure makes its presence felt immediately (when) I attempt to struggle against them (Durkheim 1938: 53).
While Durkheim might see the collective urge to be available as a type of social fact, this idea fits well with Weber’s notion of the iron cage noted above. Indeed we may be living in the period when the bars of this particular cage are in the process of becoming less flexible, even when they only consist of the web of interpersonal relationships with all this implies for the hardness or otherwise of these bars.
Contrasts and Complementarities
Unlike Durkheim, Weber is often regarded as a conflict theorist, but his ideas about conflict apply mainly to political struggle and competition for market chances. In the realm of culture – as in the how the realm of politics and economics are affected by rationalization – the process of rationalization leads to greater organizational capacity. Yet in the realm of culture, it is difficult to translate this ongoing development in into either conflict or cohesion: the main effect is to displace the role of religion and enhance the role of expertise and of those with powerful knowledge. Whereas Durkheim, on the macro- level, thinks that organic solidarity requires denser ties and he sees in these in positive terms, Weber sees the growth of impersonal structures in negative terms.
This provides us with our first contrast – but also complementarity: If, as we have argued in a Durkheimian vein, ICTs give us back a simpler more direct relationship to our closest social sphere in providing a neo-mechanical world, then these relationships can be seen as cohesive havens in an increasingly impersonal world. One way to harmonize the two thinkers in this respect is to notice that while ritual provides much needed solidarity in everyday life, this is hardly noticed by participants as it has become part of taken-for-granted routine, with the impersonality how these systems are supported and the organic complexity of the (rationalized technical support) system far removed in the background. In this way Durkheim’s necessary ritual solidarity on the micro- or everyday life level and Weber’s ideas about the growing dominance of a consumer culture on the macro-level are reconciled insofar as the two sit at different levels.[5]
Weber and Durkheim therefore – jointly – lead us to thinking about the increased power of ICTs, but without the normative implications of Habermas (1986/9) and Castells (2009). Habermas’ public sphere has offered one framework, but this is premised on the idea that communication freed from the constraints of capitalist economies will lead to a more ‘rational’ society. Similarly with Castells, who builds the idea of resistance and its potential for progressive social change into the very fabric of his analysis of communication networks. While he sees that there is a centralization of network power, he also outlines the potential for what he calls mass self communication (Castells 2009). Castells’ notion of mediated interaction takes into account the reach of broadcast mediation, be it the programs of BBC, or the more limited pronouncements of a blogger or Facebook user, and in this way he takes the analysis into the realm of everyday life even if he does not directly address person-to-person interaction (Castells et al. 2007).
Both Castells and Habermas thus seek to identify (or, in Habermas’ case, recover) the role of ICTs in everyday life and link this to larger social changes, instead of (like Marx) subsuming the role of ICTs within the logic of capitalist society. Durkheim and Weber offer an interesting alternative here insofar as everyday solidarity and routines are reproduced at the macro-level (and vice versa) in the rituals and routine systems operating throughout society, foremost in its consumer culture. Weber and Durkheim therefore go beyond other thinkers in providing greater anthropological distance: If we see a more mediated culture not in terms of domination and emancipation, but rather as simply the requirements of a mass society and a more complex one, then the thrust of their ideas points us to an impasse, or a link, which had not hitherto been resolved: This is the link between interpersonal relations and everyday life (which have mainly been discussed in the literature on ICTs only as they affect different contexts, but not on an aggregate level) on the one hand. On the other hand, there is the macro- level of access to information and knowledge (treated at the aggregated level in misleading terms as ‘information’, ‘knowledge’ or ‘surveillance society’ – misleading because they hypostatize the effect of ICTs along a single positive or negative dimension), and political communication (which focuses exclusively on the democratizing effect of ICTs, or the opposite).
Weber and Durkheim address this intersection (the micro-macro link), but before we spell this out further, it can be mentioned that they were to some extent anticipated by Meyrowitz (1985), though with the limitation that Meyrowitz only relates the media to the self, not to larger social changes apart those concerning ICTs and the self. Meyrowitz pointed to the effects that we have discussed here, how roles, such as those presented by television to large audience, blur the distinction between the private and public realms. He argued in a Durkheimian vein that the separation between the private and local domain and the larger public domain is bridged by ICTs which often create a national (or sometimes transnational) shared moral awareness. This idea about shared or common self-understandings has been taken further in work about media rituals, in the politics and entertainment, with notion of ‘civic rituals’ (Rothenbuler 1996, Couldry 2003) that focus on politicians or entertainment figures and major events. This ritual dimension of broadcasting or other large-scale media and ICTs is quite different from what Weber would have seen as their disenchanting effects, but come close to what Durkheim would have regarded as an emerging national (perhaps today, again, transnational) common culture – a ‘collective conscience’.
One thing is missing, however, from the analysis of ICTs in terms of ritual (apart from, in Meyrowitz, the focus on self-understanding), and that is that ritual theory only provides accounts of singular events which focus the attention of the populace on a sacred centre. What a Weberian account could add here in a Durkheimian and Luhmannian vein is that the sacred has become a system (Couldry also says there is no centre, but he also denies the systemic nature of ritual): with the proliferation of devices and content, there is a vast panoply of cults of personality (including politicians) and sacred beliefs (again, including political ones). In advanced societies, this is a pluralized and at the same coherent mediated sphere – coherent in the sense that it is part of everyday routine and pulls together interpersonal ties and societal beliefs within a large technological system of mediation (even if this system consists of many devices). Apart from its role in maintaining the web of interpersonal (micro-) relations, this system (unlike the events in ritual theory) consists of an ongoing and pervasive systematic input into politics and a constant and expanding demand for mediated consumption.
Durkheim and Weber thus provide a more ‘distanced’ view insofar as they point to the ritual and more mediated nature of ICTs in society, though with different valences (Durkheim’s positive, Weber’s negative – though we have distanced ourselves from these valences too). The two can be combined, however, via Luhmann (2000), who argued that the role of ICTs was simply to provide inputs into politics - and by extension into a consumer culture and economy. Similarly, what Durkheim and Weber point to (at least in our elaborated version of their ideas) is how ICTs seemingly play such an extraordinarily powerful role in society, not only in mediating our interpersonal lives but also providing the media rituals required by mass entertainment and politics. At the same time, this effect is weak inasmuch as it is merely a routine one. Thinkers like Castells and Habermas argue – or hope - that the role of ICTs is to transform society. Durkheim and Weber, in contrast, show how a personal sphere, enveloped by access to information and by multiple mediated relations, sits comfortably within a larger sphere saturated by ICTs and complex and dense networks of relationships. If the role of ICTs is less emancipatory or critical to emancipatory social change than Habermas and Castells hope, then this because Durkheim and Weber (and Luhmann) would agree that ICTs can adapt within a complex and homogenous system to being ritualized and routinized, a cocoon and a cage, at one and the same time.
[1] The invocation of Hegel by Katz and Aakhus (2002) is an exception that proves the rule, though as the authors point out, their essay provides a ‘perspective’ or ‘viewpoint’ rather than a ‘theory’
[2] We will revisit this point later on in the context of Durkheimian social facts.
[3] It is clear that there is a lot of ideological baggage in this classification, i.e. the sense that the bootblack is fulfilling a proper place in a complex social structure and thus deserves his or her position.
[4] It is also possible to see how net-based interaction
facilitates the cultivation of neo-mechanical groupings. Indeed we have a collection of names for these
types of “shared feather” groups, i.e. communities of practice, or communities
of interest. It is clear that there is some specialization within these groups,
but the characteristics of ICTs allow for these neo-mechanical groups to
maintain themselves, to one or another degree, in the virtual sphere.
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