Abstract
Here we have the final instalment of Margaret Archer’s trilogy of books on reflexivity as the distinctly human power mediating between structure and agency. To fill in the story so far for those who may not be familiar with it, in her two previous monographs (Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation, 2003, and Making Our Way through the World, 2007), the arch-proponent of morphogenesis has already argued that social structures impact upon we human beings by shaping the contexts in which we find ourselves and, crucially, upon which we reflexively deliberate with the goal of formulating appropriate projects to realize our ultimate concerns. Not only that, but in the course of empirical research on selected denizens of the UK city of Coventry it emerged that such reflexivity came in not one but several distinct flavours. Although multiple modes may jostle within any one individual, there are, she claimed, the primarily ‘communicative reflexives’ (those whose deliberations take the form of conversation with ‘similars and familiars’), the primarily ‘autonomous reflexives’ (those whose deliberations are self-contained in mental self-talk), the primarily ‘meta-reflexives’ (those who not only deliberate internally but deliberate on and critique the nature of their internal conversations), and the primarily ‘fractured reflexives’ (those who have difficulty sustaining any reflexivity without it becoming distressing). To top it all off, Archer posited that communicative reflexivity, forged in and reproducing contextual continuity, was on the wane in an age of high modernity characterized by technological advance, globalization and educational expansion, while autonomous reflexivity, rooted in contextual discontinuity and producing upwards mobility, and meta-reflexivity, the product of contextual incongruity and promoting erratic trajectories in search of an ideal, were on the rise.
So what does this latest addition, largely centred on survey and interview data harvested from undergraduate sociology students at Warwick University, bring to the mix? A little bit of inevitable repetition of old arguments, to be sure, but balanced against that are three conceptual novelties which, while framing the later empirical analysis, are conveniently developed in successive chapters. First, there is a rather more elaborate periodization of (Western) history in terms of prevalent modes of reflexivity, involving a thorough embedding of reflexivity within the morphogenetic cycle (i.e. the process of social change) (Chapter 1). Second, there is a sustained engagement with and critique of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, especially as defended by critical realists such as Andrew Sayer and Dave Eldar-Vass (Chapter 2). Third, there is an attempt to sketch a new ‘relational’ theory of socialization to explain the genesis of modes of reflexivity and concerns (Chapter 3).
The historical narrative begins with pre-modernity, a long epoch characterized by morphostasis, or straightforward reproduction of existing patterns, in both social structure (material conditions) and culture (ideas), thanks in large part to entrenched elites steadfastly upholding their own interests. This was thus a world of contextual continuity, homogeneity and, therefore, communicative reflexivity. With the urbanization and industrialization signalling the arrival of modernity, however, and the challenge to the elites of new class-based or religious interest groups, a degree of morphogenesis, or elaboration of structure and culture, was begun, though the extent to which it injected contextual discontinuity, a new logic of competition and thus autonomous reflexivity – now likened (or reduced) to instrumental rationality – was somewhat uneven. Finally, since the 1980s, argues Archer, the cocktail of high technology, accessible higher education and flexibilization of jobs in Western societies has ushered in a new phase of history – unoriginally dubbed late modernity – characterized by rapid (though not total) morphogenesis, a decline of vested interests and authoritative guidelines, ever more deviations from the status quo, the juxtaposition, or incongruity, of diverse ideas and, critically, augmented opportunities for all. The product, apparently, is the explosion of meta-reflexivity among the population, particularly among younger generations for who all of this has simply always been so, and the decline of the smooth reproduction of class advantages such as cultural capital or working-class communal social capital. Admittedly, it also seems to produce a greater number of fractured reflexives in the process, but on the whole, like Anthony Giddens, Archer generally slaps a positive gloss on all this, noticeably downplaying, despite her leftist sympathies, the anxieties and blows brought about by neoliberalism in the very same time period and seeing a rosy logic of opportunity where others would detect underlying and pervasive competition, struggle and denigration.
Ultimately, one cannot help but feel that carving up historical periods on the basis of the prevalent manner in which people thought would, to be fully credible, require evidence of a kind that might be hard to come by – one cannot, after all, administer ICONI (Archer’s special survey for distinguishing modes of reflexivity) to tombstones, to paraphrase E. P. Thompson. Moreover, there is a slightly tricky tension running through the book of whether the key thing really is the types of reflexivity – which Archer sees as important for distinguishing her own point of view from that of Ulrich Beck – or the amount of reflexivity – which of course would align her very neatly, albeit at a vastly superior level of theoretical and empirical depth, with Beck. Archer routinely affirms, after all, that everyone must be more reflexive than before – even communicative reflexives must think and discuss more than in the past – in order to sustain the central thesis that reflexivity is imperative for all these days. Related to this, she rather confusingly claims that personal concerns have come to the forefront of projection today when surely, following her own logic, everyone’s actions have always been driven by personal concerns, just of a very different character and method of discernment. If not, then personal concerns are no longer the flywheel of human action per se, as previously argued, but simply another way of rendering the novel desire for ‘self-realization’ theorized by Beck.
If the ‘Other’ of the first substantive chapter was a certain German theorist, then the antagonist of the next chapter (a modified reprint of an earlier article) is undoubtedly, though indirectly, a certain French one: Pierre Bourdieu. Basically, after having dismissed Bourdieu’s work as of little relevance today in her previous endeavours, Archer takes it upon herself to try to persuade her fellow critical realists – namely Andrew Sayer, Steve Fleetwood, and Dave Eldar-Vass – who seem resistant to her full conclusions, and who even think internal conversations and the habitus are compatible, to follow suit. Haunting the discussion here is an uneasy awareness on Archer’s behalf that anchoring the different forms of reflexivity and the formation of concerns in different social contexts as she does could be tantamount to describing the formation of habitus under a different name. To try to wriggle out of that dilemma she employs two general argumentative strategies, neither of which really do the job. First of all, she equates the habitus with unthinking habit and routine in order to contrast it with reflexivity, internal deliberation and personal powers of concern-generation. Unfortunately she then appears to contradict herself, however, by claiming that the habitus was right for its time (the 1960s and 1970s) and indicates communicative reflexivity – now implying it is not antithetical to reflexivity and concern-formation in her mind at all (unless communicative reflexivity is not really reflexivity, and here the shadow of the above contradiction on concern-formation looms), only particular modes. Moreover, while Archer is undoubtedly right (though hardly the first to notice) that Bourdieu himself tended, at times, to underplay deliberation and projection, she is clearly at her weakest when she quickly dismisses the specifically phenomenological reading of the habitus in terms of protention on the rather flimsy grounds that it leads to fatalism (p. 72). To reject the role of protention, that is, the basic sense, acquired through experience, of the forthcoming and the possible providing the filter through which all perception (including of internal conversations) passes and the foundation for projection, suggests a faith in immaculate perception and threatens voluntarism – an impression strengthened at a more substantive level by the audacious assertion that elocution lessons represent not a project born of classed experiences but a perfectly ‘voluntary transformation’ (p. 79). Archer’s second tactic fares little better. Even if one could describe modes of reflexivity and concerns pursued, or expectations of the forthcoming, in terms of habitus, she asks, what would be gained from so doing? Nothing, she answers: it adds no explanatory or conceptual purchase (p. 71). One can respond, however, that it clearly does, viz. underscoring the fact that development of the mode of reflexivity practised (and thence the pathway through social structure) is itself a pre-reflexive process, and that while projects may be prompted by conscious and even deliberated reasons (what Schutz called ‘in-order-to motives’) and ultimate concerns, those reasons and concerns, contrary to her own steadfastly held position, have causes (‘because motives’, i.e. sedimented history) of which agents are not themselves fully aware – thus countering voluntarism not with determinism but a form of compatibilism. This is no mere theoretical quibble either; as will be seen, it bears significant consequences for the interpretation of her empirical material.
Meanwhile Archer moves on to her theorization of socialization, understood as the formative influence of family relations and social networks on the mode of reflexivity adopted and the ultimate concerns pursued. Somewhat disappointingly the discussion is premised solely on a theoretical critique of Mead and Habermas (whose ideas were apt for their time but not in late modernity, she says), rather than, as might have been expected, extant empirical research or leading sociological ideas on the family, schooling, and so on. In any case, Archer draws on Pierpaolo Donati’s brand (for there are a few around) of ‘relational sociology’ to conceive of the family as a set of relations mediating social and cultural conditions through its differential possession of ‘goods’ (strong bonds, affection, unity) and ‘evils’ (excessive dependence, domination, coercion, and so on). Where there are plenty of goods, children develop a desire to reproduce their familial relations and characteristics and to do so through communicative reflexivity; where there are too many evils, offspring reject their family’s modus vivendi, seek to escape and become fractured reflexives; and in between there are familial tensions and mixed messages producing autonomous reflexivity (and selectivity from the family ethos) or meta-reflexivity (and critical engagement with the family spirit). Notwithstanding the uncomfortably moralistic vocabulary – with divorce counted as an ‘evil’ – the emphasis on familial conflicts, rifts, alliances and mixed messages in the production of orientations is fruitful, though the idea that they could not be conceived by other supposedly outdated frameworks, whether those of Mead or Bourdieu, is a bit of a stretch and rests more on the unwillingness to plumb the treasure trove of existing research than anything else.
And so we come finally to the empirical analysis, with each chapter from 4 to 7 devoted to a different form of reflexivity. Running through the same clear order of exploring interviewees’ pasts (their family and communal relations), their university experiences (friends, activities, and so on), and their futures (their career and family plans), Archer’s analysis is consistently rich, skilful and enjoyable to read. Communicative reflexives, we learn, have strong family bonds and closely identify with their parents, struggle with the tension between home and university friends and choose careers imitating what they have been exposed to in the natal context. Autonomous reflexives, on the other hand, have experienced the discordant breakdown of their parents’ marriages and geographical mobility, i.e. mixed messages and contextual discontinuity, which enforce independence, instrumentality (leading them to favour a future in business or state administration) and a pick-and-mix attitude to the parental message, later remoulded by the tensions and concessions arising from their own romantic partnerships. Meta-reflexives have also been subject to dissatisfying mixed messages at home, but, crucially, their parents, more likely to have stayed together, encourage from the start a critical mindset, a questioning of what they are told and the formation of one’s own point of view, with the importance of particular domains (politics, religion, etc.) being conveyed even if the stance adopted on them is diametrically opposed. Career choices thus become commitments to particular vocations – not least academia – irrespective of financial payoff. Finally, the fractured reflexives suffer traumatic family relations, reject them without forming a coherent alternative, develop a dependence on friends or partners and tend to drift through life with a rather presentist attitude.
The trouble is – and here we return to the previous point – the well-executed empirical analysis works to undermine, or at least heavily qualify, some of the bolder conceptual pronouncements in the earlier chapters. For what Archer consistently offers is a deep and nuanced analysis of the formation of what she calls ‘bounded variety’ in decision-making, the development of concerns out of classed natal contexts and even the powers of ‘diffuse cultural capital’ (p. 172) in producing valued skills and expectations among a relatively privileged (taking in some petit-bourgeois and upper-working-class participants) tranche of the British class structure. In other words, she does a pretty good job of unearthing those earlier-disavowed ‘because motives’, or the pre-reflexive (in her words, ‘unintentional’, p. 207) formation of perceptions of the possible and desirable, in the specific structural context of the family as a mediation of structures of class, gender, and so on. Rather than substantiate the heralded decline of class and other structures of power, then, in the end, Archer seemingly unwittingly demonstrates how classed experiences continue to produce classed outcomes and trajectories (none of which may correspond to the official governmental measures of ‘class’ on which Archer relies), and, far from supporting the critical rejection of Bourdieu, her analysis nicely captures the detail and mess of habitus formation ‘on the ground’ in twenty-first-century Britain. That Archer thinks otherwise is only because she depicts what she calls ‘Bourdieu’s people’ (i.e. people in the 1960s and 1970s acting via habitus) as unthinking drones or ardent class traditionalists.
The conclusion, for its part, forecasts Archer’s future undertaking: an exploration of the possibility of a society of ‘morphogenesis unbound’ populated by millions of meta-reflexives, though she adds in a rather quaint aside that the flourishing of the latter could be threatened by the current obsession with mindspace-occupying gadgets (smart phones, mp3 players, etc.). The long discussion of systems theory here will not be to everyone’s taste and adds little to the core arguments of the book, but it appears to be a discussion she wanted to have.