Coping with zombie-concepts

Daniel ApollonDigital cultureUniversity of Bergen3rd Education and Technology Summer SchoolBergen 2010

Social representation - Lexica - Concepts (Fachbegriffe)

social representations (SR): being partly explicit lexica (fake indexical relationship), being partly tacit collective constructions. Such SRs legitimise practices and self-conceptions

linguistic constructs (LC) are deeply embedded into peoples construction

discplinary concepts (DC) : restrictive or expansive specializations or transformation of SR to be used in a particular discipline.

Reality constructsReality constructs: SR supported by LCs.

the assumption is that different SRs/LCs contribute to a shared collective sense of reality (SCSR) in given societies and in given periods.

The hypothesis is that there exist a functional relationship between this a SCSR and the emergence of discplinary concepts

diciplinary diciplinary conceptsconcepts

DCDC

diciplinary diciplinary conceptsconcepts

DCDC

SocialSocialrepresentatrepresentat

ionsionsSRSR

SocialSocialrepresentatrepresentat

ionsionsSRSR

linguistic linguistic constructsconstructs

LCLC

linguistic linguistic constructsconstructs

LCLC

tacit tacit collective collective constructsconstructs

TCCTCC

tacit tacit collective collective constructsconstructs

TCCTCC

available available lexicalexica

LL

available available lexicalexica

LL

A short list of contextualised notions

• familyfamily

• identityidentity

• media media

• technologytechnology

• societysociety

• social classsocial class

• nationnation

• the peoplethe people

• technologytechnology

• knowledgeknowledge

• educationeducation

Reality categoriesSuch concepts function as reality categories which frame the conceptions of individuals, institutions and groups about their environment.

Such reality categories contribute to motivate, explain and defend individual practices and concrete actions.

they also function as disciplinary markers

Decontextualisation of reality categories

As long as there is a functional relationship between, say, a “social system”, e.g. industrial modernism,reality categories and disciplinary concept, one has a high contextualision.

Disciplinary concepts, social representations and linguistic constructs display a high degree of embedding into each other

If, however, the social basis of such notion changes, but the reality constructs survive as lexical constructs and fossilized social representations, we may say we are in a phase of decontextualisation and disembedding

Example of disembedding: “social structure”

“ .. .there is no more social structure,

only information structure....”(loose quotation of Ulrich Beck’s

Spitzformulierung)

Decontextualisation, deisembedding... what next ?

The situation referred to is the post war period and the transition from industrial modernity to post-industrial late modernity

The situation described by Beck, Giddens,Lasch, Baumann and other is the evacuation of the reality constructs of industrial modernity and the gradual replacement of old “solid categories” (family, nation, education, class) by new re-contextualised categories.

Zombie-concepts Such formerly solid reality constructs are now living-dead concepts. They do not refer any more to an existing social reality. Butt hey are not really dead nor surviving. They are living-dead. Zombie concepts.

They have lost their explanatory power, but are still powerful, in that they legitimize practices,actions and explanations.

They are still very active as disciplinary tools and norms.

Methodological nationalism

Beck: such zombi-concepts, in Europe and elsewhere build upon a “methodological nationalism”. Beck thesis, simplified is that central public and disciplinary constructs are the product of the modern nation-state construct and belong to the past.

Part of the struggle of individuals today and human disciplines e.g. educational science, sociology, cultural studies is to evacuate the zombie-concepts of modernism and recontextualize

Recontextualing educational technologies

individualisation of the individual

risk and simulation dimension of self-construction

death of “modern technics” .. growing imbrication of information technologies - or better “representations about information” into reality constructs

recontextualisation of knowledge (liquidification of solid knowledge)

evacuation of the mass-media grand vision and emergence of individual media

erosion of the notion of media

Sources on late modernity

Bauman, Zygmunt (2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2000) The Individualized Society. Cambridge.

Beck, Ulrich, Giddens, Anthony & Lash, Scott (1994) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge .

Beck, Ulrich (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. New Delhi. (Originaltittel: Risikogesellschaft utg.1986)

Bolter, Jay & Richard Grusin (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA.

Flora, Peter, Kuhnle, Stein, & Urwin, Derek (Editors) (1999) State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan (Comparative European Politics). Oxford.

Giddens, Anthony (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge.

Habermas, Jürgen (1962 transl 1982) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere . Cambridge.

Habermas, Jürgen. 1984. Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Volume 1 of: The Theory of Communicative Action, English translation by Thomas McCarthy. Boston. (original tysk utg. 1981).

Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, Volume 2 of: The Theory of Communicative Action, English translation by Thomas McCarthy. Boston. (original tysk utg. 1981).