The local, the global and the transformation of day-to-day life

The globalising tendencies of modernity are inherent in the dynamic influences just sketched out. The reorganising of time and space, disembedding mechanisms and the reflexivity of modernity all presume universalising properties that explain the expansionist, coruscating nature of modern social life in its encounters with traditionally established practices. The globalisation of social activity which modernity has served to bring about is in some ways a process of the development of genuinely world-wide ties -- such as those involved in the global nation-state system or the international division of labour. However, in a general way, the concept of globalisation is best understood as expressing fundamental aspects of time-space distanciation. Globalisation concerns the intersection of presence and absence, the interlacing of social events and social relations `at distance' with local contextualities. We should grasp the global spread of modernity in terms of an ongoing relation between distanciation and the chronic mutability of local circumstances and local engagements.

-- 22 --

Like each of the other processes mentioned above, globalisation has to be understood as a dialectical phenomenon, in which events at one pole of a distanciated relation often produce divergent or even contrary occurrences at another. The dialectic of the local and global is a basic emphasis of the arguments employed in this book.

Globalisation means that, in respect of the consequences of at least some disembedding mechanisms, no one can `opt out' of the transformations brought about by modernity: this is so, for example, in respect of the global risks of nuclear war or of ecological catastrophe. Many other aspects of modern institutions, including those operating on the small scale, affect people living in more traditional settings, outside the most strongly `developed' portions of the world. In those developed sectors, however, the connecting of the local and global has been tied to a profound set of transmutations in the nature of day-to-day life.

We can understand these transmutations directly in terms of the impact of disembedding mechanisms, which act to deskill many aspects of daily activities. Such deskilling is not simply a process where everyday knowledge is appropriated by experts or technical specialists (since very often there are imponderable or hotly disputed features of their fields of expertise); and it is not only a one-way process, because specialist information, as part of the reflexivity of modernity, is in one form or another constantly reappropriated by lay actors. These observations apply to the writings of sociologists as much as to any other specialists: it has been seen that the findings of books such as Second Chances are likely to filter back into the milieux in which people take decisions about relationships, marriage and divorce. Trust in disembedding mechanisms is not confined to laypeople, because no one can be an expert about more than a tiny part of the diverse aspects of modern social life conditioned by abstract systems. Everyone living in conditions of modernity is affected by a multitude of abstract systems, and can at best process only superficial knowledge of their technicalities.

Awareness of the frailties and limits of abstract systems is not confined to technical specialists. Few individuals sustain an unswerving trust in the systems of technical knowledge that impinge on them, and everyone, whether consciously or not, selects among the competing possibilities of action that such

-- 23 --

systems (or disengagement from them) provide. Trust often merges with pragmatic acceptance: it is a sort of `effort-bargain' that the individual makes with the institutions of modernity. Various attitudes of scepticism or antagonism towards abstract systems may coexist with a taken-for-granted confidence in others. For example, a person may go to great lengths to avoid eating foods that contain additives, but if that individual does not grow everything he or she eats, trust must necessarily be invested in the purveyors of `natural foods' to provide superior products. Someone might turn towards holistic medicine after becoming disenchanted with the orthodox medical profession, but of course this is a transfer of faith. A sufferer from an illness might be so sceptical of the claims of all forms of expertise in healing that she avoids contact with medical practitioners altogether, no matter how the illness progresses. But even a person who effected a radical disengagement of this type would find it virtually impossible to escape altogether from the impact of systems of medicine and medical research, since these influence many aspects of the `knowledge environment' as well as concrete elements of day-to-day life. For instance, they affect the regulations governing the production of foodstuffs -- whether these be `artificial' or `natural' in character.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 945