The Enlightenment, Modernity and Postmodernity

1

• The Enlightenment, Modernity and Postmodernity
• Using Theory II, Week 3
• Nigel Horner, adapted from Malcolm Golightley

2
Aims

• We will
• Critically examine the claims for knowledge in
  both Modernity and Postmodernity and begin to
  set the scene for the module task
• Seek at acquire knowledge and understanding of
  the emergence and development of rationality as a
  key intellectual strategy of modern society

3
What is social work?

• Social work is inherently political, often
  implementing government policy and regulating
  those who can and those that cannot access scarce
  resources.
• It is also a moral activity- not just about how
  to help clients but about what is the right thing
  to do.
• Social work has a dual mandatefrom individuals
  and from society at large, either through state
  agencies or through non governmental
  organisations. (Lorenz,1994 p 4)

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Where are we now?

• The present day context is that there are
  powerful managerialist tendencies to adopt what
  works (evidence based practice) to the extent of
  limiting concepts such as reflection or critical
  action. This is what we call a technical rational
  approach
• Lorenz argues that Jurgen Habermass theory of
  communicative action has the potential to provide
  a practice approach that is much stronger than
  the technical approach they are closer to the
  European Social Pedagogy approach

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The Age of Enlightenment

• We need to start with ideas
• of Rationality and the
• Enlightenment
• 18th Century
• Political revolutions
• Scientific revolution
• Technical revolution
• Economic revolution
• The power of reason abolishes superstition and
  traditional ways of thinking.

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Immanuel Kant

• Was ist Erklärung? (What is Enlightenment?)
• Enlightenment is man's emergence from his
  self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the
  inability to use one's own understanding without
  the guidance of another.
• Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own
  understanding! (Dare to know!)
• This is an argument for individuals making up
  their own minds, being independent, autonomous.

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Enlightenment and the individual

• Assumption the reasonable individual makes
  rational choices for her/himself in the world
• The individual is politically and economically
  free to make their own choices
• However. Max Weber challenged the
  Enlightenment faith in reason and rationality,
  claiming that the rationality that defines
  modernity is means / ends rationality and
  therefore would not lead to a positive modern
  world (an example could be enforced sterilisation
  / eugenics / population control, or even
  statutory euthanasia)

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Max Weber

• The modern world is stripped of all ethical
  meaning it is devalued and objectified as the
  material and setting for purposive-rational
  pursuit of interests. The gain in control is paid
  for with a loss of meaning (Habermas J 1981
  pxvii)
• Q If the rise of reason and rationality post
  Enlightenment has meant the establishment of
  civil liberties, has it also meant that the very
  individualistic nature of this results in
  self-interest in the economic sphere being
  pursued?

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Rationality

• Rationality and self-determination are key
  elements of social work (Sheppard p 100)
• Max Weber suggested 4 types practical ,
  theoretical, formal and substantive rationality.
• Formal rationality is a form of rationality that
  characterizes organizations, especially
  bureaucratic ones with universally applied rules,
  laws and regulations.
• Substantive rationality applies more to
  individuals who consider a range of possible
  values or actions before acting. Weber termed
  this substantive rationality and considered it
  problematic in modern society in that
  rationalization of social life makes it difficult
  for people to pursue particular values

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Enlightenment, Reason and Progress

• Why was Rationality so attractive?
• Science and technology appeared to deliver The
  Good Life (i.e. Progress) - We may have
  problems - but rational science and technology
  can resolve them.
• Rational political systems are democratic and
  progressive.
• Rational economic systems deliver economic
  progress through capitalism.
• Reason - in the form of rational practice - is
  the way of thinking that supports all of these.

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Benefits of rationality

• Science and Technology
• Diseases conquered
• Food production increased
• Good quality housing
• Energy available for all
• Transport
• Quantification of data
• The Information

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Transport

• Steamships
• Trains
• Flight
• Mechanisation of travel
• Increased speed
• Moving large numbers of people around
• Shrinking world

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Development of democracy

• Extension of franchise
• New political states
• New political parties

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Work

• Dominance of science, technology
• Mass production, mass administration
• linked to calculating economic system
• Development of the professions
• Professional technique involved in solving social
  problems
• Regular, repeatable practice
• Uniform application of expertise
• Equitable services
• An audit trail of quality assurance.

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Technical Rationality

• Social problems and issues can be dealt with
  technically
• housing, planning, population control
• efficiency became the criterion for resolving
  problems.
• Developments in public health are classic
  examples of rationality producing benefits for
  whole populations if they all engage in
  collective rationality

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Problem for human beings

• Is there too much order in our lives?
• or
• Is there too little order in our lives?
• (The Top Gear dilemma)

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Enlightened Society?

• How enlightened are we, when there is
• Inequality, social exclusion and disaffection
• International inequality
• Pollution and global warming
• Some evidence of a reaction to modern society
• Cultural diversity and division?
• Material wealth and intellectual poverty
• Commodification of experience

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Enlightened Science Technology?

• Mechanisation of war?
• Motor car?
• BSE and food supply?
• Energy choices / global warming?
• Genetics?
• Surveillance of the population?

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Contradictions

• The promise of the Enlightenment is now a
  conflict between each of its elements -
• Scientific and technical
• Economic
• Political
• Social problems addressed by the market or
  technical rationality, rather than by social
  democracy and government intervention.

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Key problem

• Rational decision- making may have helped develop
  science and technology, commerce, industry..
• But does it help with the old question from
  Socrates How ought we to live?
• In other words is it helpful with ethical
  questions about our lives as human beings?
• This is a key question for the unit and the essay.

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Key features of modernity

• Economic Production - industrial and capitalist
  society, with social class as the main form of
  social division...
• Urbanisation - the growth of cities..
• A Bureaucratic State - with a powerful central
  government and administration...
• Knowledge - is derived from scientific and
  rational thinking - NOT religious faith, magic or
  superstition...
• A Belief in PROGRESS - based on science and
  technology....

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Post-Fordism?

• Contemporary capitalism has changed in character.
• Fordism was production led and was as a system of
  mass production involving the standardisation of
  products. Ideas of scientific management abounded
  and production lines become the means of mass
  production (mass production mass markets)
• Post Fordism is consumer led and is epitomised
  through the use of online computer systems and
  just-in-time stocking of materials. Design is now
  a major selling point.

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KEY FEATURES of POST MODERNITY

• Growth of the Service Sector - with a decline in
  manufacturing, an increase in part-time flexible
  and home working, and a rise in unemployment..
• The Spread of GLOBALISATION - both Business and
  Culture cross national boundaries -
  'McDonaldisation' 'Disneyisation'...
• Fragmentation - increasing diversity of culture
  in a "Pick Mix" society loss of faith in
  Science - people no longer believe in 'THE MYTH
  of TRUTH'
• The End of METANARRATIVES - no 'big story'
  (Marxism, Functionalism) can explain everything
• An ABANDONMENT of the OPTIMISM of the
  ENLIGHTENMENT - there is no objective progress,
  simply a 'playful celebration of chaos'.
• Post Modernism......is the belief that
  direction, evolution and progression have ended
  in social history, and society is based instead
  upon the decline of absolute truths, and the rise
  of relativity......

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RELATIVISM

• Since World War Two and the 1950's there has been
  the growth of RELATIVISM within Sociology and
  other fields.Relativism argues that there is no
  such thing as Objective Truth. In other words
  'reality' has no meaning apart from what is
  believed to be real. We take science and
  scientific knowledge for granted.For example
  Gallileo (1564-1642) discovered that the Earth is
  spinning around the Sun and now this is accepted
  as a Scientific truth. However before Gallileo
  the 'truth' was that the Earth was fixed at the
  centre of the Universe and the Sun span around
  it. Everybody believed this therefore it was
  true.So, if you believe something, then it is
  REAL.Therefore scientific knowledge is not
  powerful because it is true it is true because
  it is powerful. The question should not be "What
  is true?" it should be "How did this version of
  what is true come to dominate in these social and
  historical circumstances?"Therefore truth and
  knowledge are culturally specific.

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Discourse?

• MICHEL FOUCAULT (a French 'Post Structuralist'
  1926 - 1984). Foucault studies history from a
  position of 'discourse theory' (discourse is a
  way of thinking/talking i.e language). He
  looks at the way certain discourses came into
  being.

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MICHEL FOUCAULT

• A good example of RELATIVISTIC thinking is the
  work of MICHEL FOUCAULT (a French 'Post
  Structuralist' 1926 - 1984). Foucault studies
  history from a position of 'discourse theory'
  (discourse is a way of thinking/talking -
  language). He looks at the way certain discourses
  came into being.He looks at the history of
  medicine and mental illness and the discourse
  surrounding them. Madness' for example has not
  always been a 'medical' condition. Foucault
  argues that the cure for leprosy in Medieval
  Europe left the buildings used to confine lepers
  empty.
• These circumstances provided a place to put 'mad'
  people - out of this grew asylums and therefore
  psychiatrists and over time 'madness' became
  described as 'mental illness'.
• The 'mad' before this were not ill, they were
  possessed by spirits or simply seen as the
  'village idiot'.

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Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)

• A cult figure of postmodern theory with a highly
  idiosyncratic approach. His writing on the nature
  of the modern world and what her termed
  hyperreality make interesting reading! For
  example he believed that in the postmodern world
  people flee from the desert of the real to live
  in a ecstasy of communication in other worlds
  to live in a world influenced by the media and
  technology.
• He was most noted for arguing that the Gulf War
  was not a real war suggesting that it was a media
  spectacle and an example of hyper- reality.

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Jurgen Habermas

• Habermas was a member of the Frankfurt School of
  critical theory. He is perhaps the last major
  thinker to embrace the basic project of the
  enlightenment, a project for which he is often
  attacked.

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Communicative Action

• Habermass work can provide, through his theory
  of communicative action, a potential paradigm for
  social work practice. This is a philosophy which
  seeks to retain the modernist notions of morality
  and justice while allowing individuals to define
  their own realities.
• This is about how to incorporate service users
  into a dialogue while at the same time
  legitimating the traditional commitment to
  universalist ideals of human rights and social
  justice

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conclusion

• Ideas about modernism are bound up with a view
  that industrialism is directed associated with
  progress
• The scientific basis for modernism has produced
  huge gains but not everything has been
  liberalising or provided benefit for all
• Postmodernism with ideas of discourse and
  relativism provide attractive alternatives to
  scientific theory but are the key positions of
  postmodernism incompatible with social work?