High modernity and its existential parameters

High modernity is characterised by widespread scepticism about providential reason, coupled with the recognition that science

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and technology are double-edged, creating new parameters of risk and danger as well as offering beneficent possibilities for humankind. Such scepticism is not confined to the writings and ponderings of philosophers and intellectuals: we have seen that awareness of the existential parameters of refiexivity becomes part of refiexivity itself on a very broad level. To live in the `world' produced by high modernity has the feeling of riding a juggernaut. ¹⁹ It is not just that more or less continuous and profound processes of change occur; rather, change does not consistently conform either to human expectation or to human control. The anticipation that the social and natural environments would increasingly be subject to rational ordering has not proved to be valid. The refiexivity of modernity is bound up in an immediate way with this phenomenon. The chronic entry of knowledge into the circumstances of action it analyses or describes creates a set of uncertainties to add to the circular and fallible character of post-traditional claims to knowledge.

Providential reason -- the idea that increased secular understanding of the nature of things intrinsically leads to a safer and more rewarding existence for human beings -- carries residues of conceptions of fate deriving from pre-modern eras. Notions of fate may of course have a sombre cast, but they always imply that a course of events is in some way preordained. In circumstances of modernity, traditional notions of fate may still exist, but for the most part these are inconsistent with an outlook in which risk becomes a fundamental element. To accept risk as risk, an orientation which is more or less forced on us by the abstract systems of modernity, is to acknowledge that no aspects of our activities follow a predestined course, and all are open to contingent happenings. In this sense it is quite accurate to characterise modernity, as Ulrich Beck does, as a `risk society', <sup>20</sup> a phrase which refers to more than just the fact that modern social life introduces new forms of danger which humanity has to face. Living in the `risk society' means living with a calculative attitude to the open possibilities of action, positive and negative, with which, as individuals and globally, we are confronted in a continuous way in our contemporary social existence.

Because of its reflexively mobilised -- yet intrinsically erratic -- dynamism, modern social activity has an essentially counterfactual character. In a post-traditional social universe, an indefinite

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range of potential courses of action (with their attendant risks) is at any given moment open to individuals and collectivities. Choosing among such alternatives is always an `as if' matter, a question of selecting between `possible worlds'. Living in circumstances of modernity is best understood as a matter of the routine contemplation of counterfactuals, rather than simply implying a switch from an `orientation to the past', characteristic of traditional cultures, towards an `orientation to the future'.

Given the extreme reflexivity of late modernity, the future does not just consist of the expectation of events yet to come. `Futures' are organised reflexively in the present in terms of the chronic flow of knowledge into the environments about which such knowledge was developed -- the very same process that, in an apparently paradoxical way, frequently confounds the expectations which that knowledge informs. The popularity of futurology in the system of high modernity is not an eccentric preoccupation, the contemporary equivalent of the fortune tellers of old. It signals a recognition that the consideration of counterfactual possibilities is intrinsic to reflexivity in the context of risk assessment and evaluation. In some respects, of course, such an outlook has long been built into modern institutions. Insurance, for example, has from fairly early on been linked not only to the risks involved in capitalist markets, but to the potential futures of a wide range of individual and collective attributes. Futures calculation on the part of insurance companies is itself a risky endeavour, but it is possible to limit some key aspects of risk in ways unavailable in most practical contexts of action. Risk calculation for insurance companies is actuarial and such companies typically attempt to exclude aspects or forms of risk which do not conform to the calculation of large-sample probabilities: that is, `acts of God'.

Life has always been a risky business, fraught with dangers. Why should assessments of risk, and a proclivity for counterfactual thinking, be particularly significant in modern social life, as compared to pre-modern systems? We might add to this a question about expertise: is there anything distinctive about trust and abstract systems in modernity, since in pre-modern cultures also people consulted experts, such as magicians or healers, about their problems? In each of these respects, there are in fact major differences between the generality of pre-modern systems and the

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institutions of modernity. So far as the second question is concerned, the differences lie in the all-pervasive scope of abstract systems, together with the nature of the relation between technical and lay knowledge. There were experts in pre-modern societies but few technical systems, particularly in the smaller societies; hence it was often possible for the individual members of such societies to carry on their lives, if they so wished, almost solely in terms of their own local knowledge, or that of the immediate kinship group. No such disengagement is possible in modern times. This is true in some respects, as I have pointed out, for everyone on the face of the earth, but especially for those living in the core geographical areas of modernity.

The difference in the connections between technical and lay knowledge, when we compare pre-modern and modern systems, concerns the accessibility of expert skills and information to lay actors. Expert knowledge in pre-modern cultures tends to depend on procedures and symbolic forms that resist explicit codification; or, when such knowledge is codified, it is unavailable to lay individuals because literacy is the jealously guarded monopoly of the few. Preservation of the esoteric element of expert knowledge, particularly where this element is separated from `skills and arts', is probably the main basis of whatever distinctive status experts achieve. The esoteric aspects of expertise in modern systems have little or nothing to do with its ineffability, but depend on a combination of lengthy training and specialisation -- although, no doubt, experts (like sociologists) quite often put up a front of jargon and ritual to protect claims of technical distinctiveness. Specialisation is actually the key to the character of modern abstract systems. The knowledge incorporated in modern forms of expertise is in principle available to everyone, had they but the available resources, time and energy to acquire it. The fact that to be an expert in one or two small corners of modern knowledge systems is all that anyone can achieve means that abstract systems are opaque to the majority. Their opaque quality -- the underlying element in the extension of trust in the context of disembedding mechanisms -- comes from the very intensity of specialisation that abstract systems both demand and foster.

The specialised nature of modern expertise contributes directly to the erratic, runaway character of modernity. Modern expertise, in contrast to most pre-modern forms, is reflexively highly

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mobilised, and is generally oriented towards continual internal improvement or effectiveness. Expert problem-solving endeavours tend very often to be measured by their capacity to define issues with increasing clarity or precision (qualities that in turn have the effect of producing further specialisation). However, the more a given problem is placed precisely in focus, the more surrounding areas of knowledge become blurred for the individuals concerned, and the less likely they are to be able to foresee the consequences of their contributions beyond the particular sphere of their application. Although expertise is organised within wider abstract systems, expertise itself is increasingly more narrowly focused, and is liable to produce unintended and unforeseen outcomes which cannot be contained -- save for the development of further expertise, thereby repeating the same phenomenon. ²¹

This combination of specialised expertise and eccentric consequences forms one main reason why counterfactual thought, coupled to the centrality of the concept of risk, is so important in conditions of modernity. In pre-modern cultures, `thinking ahead' usually means either the inductive use of stored experience, or consulting with soothsayers. Crops have to be sown, for example, in anticipation of future needs and with the changing of the seasons in mind. Traditionally established farming methods, perhaps accompanied by expert magical advice, would be employed to conjoin present need and future outcomes. In modern social life, individuals may be able to get along for periods of time by mixing established habits with consultation of specific experts for `general repairs' and for unexpected contingencies. Experts themselves -- who, to stress again, are not a clearly distinguishable stratum in the population -- may proceed within their technical work by means of a resolute concentration on a narrow specialist area, paying little attention to broader consequences or implications. In such circumstances, risk assessment is fairly well `buried' within more or less firmly established ways of doing things. But at any point these practices might become suddenly obsolete or subject to quite thoroughgoing transformation.

Expert knowledge does not create stable inductive arenas; new, intrinsically erratic situations and events are the inevitable outcome of the extension of abstract systems. There are still

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dangers constituted outside the reflexively infused spheres of action (for instance, from earthquakes or natural disasters), but most are filtered, and to some degree actively produced, by those spheres of action. We often think of risks in terms of parameters of probability that can be precisely assessed -- rather in the manner in which insurance companies make their calculations. But in circumstances of late modernity, many forms of risk do not admit of clear assessment, because of the mutable knowledge environment which frames them; and even risk assessments within relatively closed settings are often only valid `until further notice'.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 954