Abstract
This book is collective monograph by research group, based on Institute of Social Studies of Tartu University in Estonia. Complete alphabetic list of its 12 authors includes Veronika Kalmus (also famous as Estonia’s best competitive draughts player), Maie Kiisel, Ragne Kõuts-Klemm, Marju Lauristin, Marianne Leppik, Anu Masso, Signe Opermann, Sander Salvet, Külliki Seppel, Peeter Vihalemm, and Triin Vihalemm. They are members of even broader network of Estonian researchers, centered on Tartu university. Founded and still led by Marju Lauristin, former Member of the Estonian (in 1990–2014) and European Parliament (2014–2017), one of the most influential Estonia’s politicians and public intellectuals, it now includes researchers of three generations. It is another Tartu scientific school in the making, on a par with the worldwidely known Tartu Semiotic School that was formed by Yuri Lotman.
Main field of the Tartu Sociological School is the sociological monitoring of the ongoing transformation of Estonian society after the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991. The authors describe their book as ‘a retrospective and reflexive logbook’ (p. XV) of work in this field since 2002. In this year, they did start the representative survey ‘Me. The World. The Media’, followed up in four waves (in 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2014). The questionnaires contained about 900 variables divided into some 20 blocks, including respondents’ positions in various social fields, their attitudes, values, and interests. Special consideration was given to media usage (including computers and Internet), communication and time usage habits and other life-style indicators. First encompassing conceptualization and theoretical reflexion of this very rich empirical data was published in 2017 as ‘Estonian society in an accelerating time: the results of the survey “Me. The World. The Media” in 2002-2014’ in Estonian (Vihalemm et al., 2017).
The monograph under review is abridged (almost by half) and reworked English version of the former publication. The difference in titles reflects main change in the theoretical framework. In the Estonian version, the authors used the theory of social acceleration by German sociologist Hartmut Rosa as their main source of theoretical inspiration. Distinguishing three forms of acceleration (technological acceleration, acceleration of social change, and acceleration of pace of life), Rosa singled out four manifestations of the increasing pace of modern life: ‘the speeding-up of individual actions, the elimination of breaks, the temporal overlapping of activities (multi-tasking), and the replacement of temporally costly with time-saving activities’ (Rosa, 2013: 128–129).
In the English version, Rosa’s ideas remain major source of theoretical inspiration in the chapters on lifestyles of as shapers of the Estonian society (Kiisel), on spatial mobilities in Estonia described as ‘high-speed society’ (Masso and Salvet) and in the chapter analyzing personal time-use capabilities of its members (Triin Vihalemm, Opermann, Kalmus). These authors also use the theory of individual time capital by Romanian sociologist Mario Preda. Rosa is important source also in the outstanding chapter on the structuring role of generations in a transforming society (Kalmus). This remarkable chapter provides theoretically sophisticated update of the Karl Mannheim’s classical theory of generations, melding Mannheim’s ideas with Rosa’s and with Margaret Archer’s theory of social and cultural morphogenesis.
Archer’s theory serves as general framework in the English version, embedding Rosa’s master narrative of social acceleration. Archer conceives social processes as morphogenetic sequences, where interactions of human agents lead to reproduction (morphostasis) or to transformation (morphogenesis) of the structural contexts of these interactions. This framework is introduced in first two chapters of the monograph. First chapter (Masso, Lauristin, Opermann, Kalmus) contains adaptation of Archer’s for needs of the country case study, presenting morphogenetic model of Estonian transformation. In the second chapter (Lauristin and P. Vihalemm), this model is applied for tracing the trajectory of social transformation in Estonia from 1988 to 2018. With appropriate modifications and elaborations, this Estonian morphogenetic model of social transformation is transferrable to the analysis of social change in other formerly Communist countries. After many of them did join European Union (EU) and NATO, formerly dominant ‘transitology’ paradigm conceptualizing social change in these countries as dual transition to capitalism and democracy did become exhausted.
Estonian sociologists provide meaningful alternative, distinguishing three morphogenetic cycles during recent three decades (1988–2018) of the social transformation in their country. First cycle encompassed the 1988–1991 period, which is called in the Estonian folk sociology, ‘Singing Revolution’. It started with the rise of social mass movements (the People Front and the Estonian Citizens’ Committees) struggling for the restoration of independence and closed with the achievement of this aim. Second cycle (1992–2003) enclosed radical market reforms and the establishing of the institutional order in the restored nation state, economic stabilization, ‘digital revolution’ or emergence of ‘electronic Estonia’ (e-Estonia), integration into international organizations of Western states – EU and NATO. Third cycle (2004–2017) started with accession of Estonia to these two international organizations in 2004 and closed with rise of the populist countermovement, fuelled by the discontents with the side-effects of the deepening the EU integration (including the joining the Eurozone in 2011) and the strains of the structural and cultural adaptation to the transnational system.
In the creative way, Estonian researchers relate these cycles to the Karl Polanyi’s ‘double movement’, idea, deepening their analysis of the Archerian generative mechanisms at work in all three cycles of Estonian transformation. These mechanisms moved social change from one cycle to another, with outcomes of a preceding cycle setting initial conditions for next cycle. They include positive and negative feedbacks, mediated by human reflexivity in four forms (communicative, autonomous, expressive reflexivity, and meta-reflexivity). Failures at synchronization of social and cultural changes, evoking negative feedbacks, may lead to stagnation in social change, turning a morphogenetic cycle into morphostatic one or even leading to morphonecrosis.
However, in the situation of Estonia as small open society a morphostasis cannot prevail for longer time due to ever new challenges of external structural and cultural environments. For such society, important mechanism of morphogenesis is interplay between external feedback, provided by powerful agents in the external environment, and internal feedback, provided by domestic agents. On some occasions, this led to paradoxical situations, not foreseen in the original morphogenetic theory: ‘positive feedbacks in the end facilitated stagnation, i.e. morphostasis, and negative feedback created space for diversity and the emergence of new voices, e.g. further morphogenesis’ (p. 67). This observation is only one example how Estonian researchers not only successfully use morphogenetic theory to illuminate social transformation in their country, but in doing this provide extremely interesting elaborations of this theory itself.
Therefore, first two chapter can be recommended for broader audience of theoretically interested sociologists, including not only the researchers looking for new theoretical lenses how to conceptualize social change in those Central and Eastern European countries where its description as ‘postcommunist transition’ or ‘postcommunist transformation’ does not provide much illumination anymore. Experts in the Estonian or Baltic area studies may learn a lot from the applications of the morphogenetic model in the chapters on the patterns of political participation in Estonia (Lauristin and P. Vihalemm), changes in the situation of its Russian-speaking minority (T. Vihalemm, Seppel, Leppik) and on the subjective stratification of the Estonian population in 2002–2004 (Lauristin).
In learning from this study, researchers from neighbor countries would be helped by comparisons of Estonian transformations with those in other Baltic and Central European countries. However, such comparisons are provided very sparingly. This may be related to the use of cluster analysis as main tool of data analysis. Nearly all typologies in the empirical chapters are inductive or ‘bottom up’. Being ‘wired’ into data, they do not allow for direct comparisons with findings attained using survey data, collected using different questionnaires for different populations of cases. Publishing (e.g. as online supplement, together with data) of the questionnaire of the ‘Me. The World. The Media’ survey would be useful for researchers interested at such comparisons. However, this questionnaire (only in Estonian, although survey was conducted also in Russian) is available only in the Estonian version of the publication (Vihalemm et al., 2017: 724–754).