14.11.2007 (2) A Sociology of Modernity

Origins of Modernity II and III: The Industrial Revolution and the Birth of

the Nation State

Prof. Dr. Joost van LoonInstitut für Soziologie, LMU

Nottingham Trent University, U.K.

Three Revolutions

• Industrial Revolution (1760s)

• American & French Revolutions (1776 and 1789)

• Protestant Revolution (1517-)

Impact of the Industrial Revolution

• (a) the economy and

• (b) social relations

– both on a world-wide scale.

Defining the Industrial Revolution

Peter Stearns (1993: 5):

“Stripped to its bare bones, the industrial revolution consisted of the application of new sources of power to the production process, achieved with transmission equipment necessary to apply this power to manufacturing. And it consisted of increased scale in human organization that facilitated specialization and coordination at levels pre-industrial groupings had rarely contemplated”

Marxist roots

Stearns identifies two main factors:

(a) changes in technology (FORCES OF PRODUCTION) and

(b) changes in the organization of production (RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION)

Consequences 1: the material organization of production has changed

• a concentration of capital, labour power, raw material, machines• use of non-human power sources expanded (from HP to steam

to electricity)• increased scale of productivity (reducing costs)

Consequences 2: the social organization of production has changed:

• a new dominant class emerged: the bourgeoisie: wealth derived not from land but from capital invested into production (rather than trade)

• a new subordinate class emerged: the working class; who had nothing to sell but their own labour power. Initially, the majority of these were women and children

• Social relationships became increasingly based on commodities and exchange (money)

Consequences 3: The spatial and temporal organization of production has changed

• Spatial concentration of people in factories let to rapid urbanization

• The clock became the new source of time-orientation and source of disciplining individual behaviour

Social implications 1:• Division of Labour (Durkheim)• Abstraction of social relations: money (Simmel) and

commodification (Marx); – from mechanical to organic solidarity (Durkheim)

• The rise of bureaucracy (Weber)• Alienation (Marx) and Anomie (Durkheim)

Social implications 2:• Rapid urbanization (Simmel)

– from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft (Tönnies)

• Growth of urban poverty – lumpenproletariat (Marx)• Rise of infectious diseases (Wills, Ryan)• Increased mobility and reliance on transportation (Urry)

Social implications 3:

• Centrality of the nuclear family (Parsons)

• Education as an economic institution (Bourdieu)

• Dominance of clock time (Adam)

Social implications 4:

• Hegemony of (applied) science and technology (Haraway, Beck)

• Birth of the human sciences (Foucault)• Changes in the nature of warfare and military

strategies (dominance of logistics) (Virilio)

Social implications 5:

• Rise of mediated communications (McLuhan, Innis, Mumford)

• Colonialism and global inequalities (Wolf, Wallerstein)

• Globalization and global connectedness (Harvey, Giddens, Beck)

The Nation State

Argument

The nation-state operates alongside the market as a central force of social reproduction and is still central to then organisation of capitalism in an age of globalization

Overview• Introduction

• Market versus State

• The Will to Nation

• Identification as a ‘Need to Belong’

• The origins of Nationalism (Imagined Communities)

• The role of violence

• The role of otherness

Market versus State• commodification = turning social relationships and social

processes into ‘objects’ bought and sold on markets • Gramsci: states required to look after long term interests

of capitalism• Poulantzas: capitalism is based on non-market

principles: property, contracts, money

The Will to Nation

• French Revolution: liberté, égalité et fraternité

• Fraternité: kinship-like ‘bonds’ (solidarity, sacrifice)

• Renan: will to nation as a ‘driving force’• ‘enduring’, cuts across social divisions,

binding of common fate

Identification as a ‘Need to Belong’

• Indentification is derived from: – (a) meaningful social interactions with others and – (b) the acting back of the accumulated (un)intended consequences of

this and other interactions ('the social‘). • Modern thought:

– Man as centre of the universe; man over Nature, God, History– Man as Measure of all things (Science and Technology)

• Need to belong relates to man as a social animal• Will to nation is a manipulated need

The origins of Nationalism (Imagined Communities)

• Benedict Anderson pointed towards three interrelated factors:– (1) the segregation of Cosmology and History.– (2) the centralization of administration in the absolutist

state.– (3) the emergence of print capitalism.

The Origins of Nation States

• Eric Hobsbawm and Ernest Gellner point towards the fundamental role played by economics. – Collapse of feudal economy– Social disorder and unrest– Rise of Cities & mercantile capital– Colonialism– Secularization (Protestant Revolution)

• Weber: monopolization of means of violence and means of taxation.

The role of violence• William Connolly (1994: territory is based on two meanings

– 1- terra (earth) and – 2 - terrere (terror, violence); – territoriality entails the violence of spatial appropriation and control;

• Michael Billig: Banal Nationalism = Symbolic Violence

The role of otherness

• Edward Said: Orientalism – Identity is defined against ‘others’

• Homi Bhabha: Ambivalence at the heart of the idea of nation-hood (civic versus ethnic definitions).