David Jary

Citizenship and human rights—particular and universal worlds and the prospects for European citizenship

This chapter* makes the argument that the concept of universal citizenship rights based on human need is compatible with a recognition that particularistic identity (eg specific nationalities) exist. Following Habermas, Jary makes the case that diversity is essential to the discourse of human culture. In the first part of the paper, Jary discusses the work of Feyerabend, Habermas, Turner, Doyal and Gough in order to establish the position that universal rights preserve the conditions for cultural diversification and autonomous action while also enabling a search for social solidarity and integration between different groups. In the second part of the chapter, on the historically substantive prospects for European Union citizenship, Jary draws on Habermas, Held, Linklater and others to show that an inclusionary, cosmopolitan emancipatory citizenship may develop within a post-national civil state.

The fourth way: the inspiring future for educational change

Written at the height of the credit crunch, but also at a high point of optimism, this book is a yes-we-can manifesto for educational change. Recapitulating and building on the research and learning of the authors and many others, it seeks to seize the moment when all seemed possible just after Obama’s election, taking to heart his (then) chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel’s adopted dictum: ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’. Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, educational change gurus with fully-paid-up liberal democratic credentials, are aiming for impact, relevance, and engagement with a broad audience. Reading this book now may, as they intend, renew our inspiration but also tests it, by prompting three questions. As the Tea Party continues and the bankers’ bonuses return, has the ship of state already washed up on the reefs of greed in the squalls of hate, or can we still allow the audacity of hope? Can we really identify a Fourth Way, and was there ever even a Third Way? And maybe a fourth question: who are the intended audience? As a student and practitioner of higher educational management and policy I may be at the margins of that audience, but the book’s argument can nevertheless be applied with advantage to the current travails of English higher education policy. After the global financial crisis ‘the status quo is no longer an option’. Hargreaves and Shirley start from here, setting out their credo assertively. It is ‘askew’ to argue for: British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 32, No. 4, July 2011, 643–663

Fashion as a Form

When we expect that a style or pattern of social activity adopted by a group or class of persons is time-limited and may ‘vanish as quickly as it came’, we call it fashion. Anything, not only apparel, can become the ‘content’ of the ‘form’ of fashion, although some objects are less amenable than others. These features of fashion are part of Simmel’s account of fashion. Simmel also notes that fashion operates like ‘honour’ in its ‘revolving within a given circle’ and at the same time emphasising this circle as ‘separate from others’. The rapid circulation in the objects of fashion also differentiate time. Simmel’s dialectical general model — his usual vehicle for presenting and developing his sociological themes — is strongly evident in his treatment of fashion. Fashion is but one expression of a never-ending trend to social recurrence and renewal. It ‘is a complex structure in which the leading antithetical tendencies of the psyche can be represented’. Although in Simmel’s view it can enslave the individual socially, since it occurs at the ‘periphery of being’, it can also be used as a ‘mask’, leaving the ‘soul’ free. Thus fashion is also part of the endless dialectic of individual and society, the dialectic of ‘life’ and social forms. Absent in classless societies, in class societies fashion tends to flow from elites to the imitating middle class, but before class differences in fashions are eliminated, the elite move to a new, more fashionable mode.

Simmel’s Life and the Context of His Work

This chapter sets out to locate Simmel’s sociological thinking more fully in its wider historical, social, cultural and philosophical context. This coverage is not aimed at being exhaustive but is focused on providing a background to our consideration of his method.

The Philosophy of the ‘As If’ — The Role of ‘Fictions’ in Science and Social Life

The ‘As if’ in Simmel’s sociology and methodology is a term for assumptions known to be untrue or impossible and yet acted upon in daily life or used in theorising as useful, heuristic ‘fictions’, as if they were true or possible. We saw in Chapter 6 how Simmel’s use of the duality of absolute and relative makes recourse to the ‘as if’ device (not always labelled as such) and this plays a part in his ‘relationism’, in which fictionalism is nonetheless not at odds with strong conceptions of the ‘truth’. We also saw how Simmel utilised the ‘as if’ device when writing about ‘feminine culture’. The presence of fictions elsewhere in his sociology is seen in his use in the sociology of the stage actor of the dictum that ‘society can be viewed as if it were a work of art’. The wider presence of the ‘as if’ in social life itself is also a focus of the chapter. In Chapter 4 we saw that only by assuming a ‘juridico-social fiction does the practice of care for the poor seem to be placed beyond arbitrariness’.

The Secret and Secret Societies

The secret as a form is seen by Simmel as central in social interaction. Knowing about each other is essential for social living. Yet all human interaction is also accompanied by a withholding of information. Sharing fully with others one’s inner-flow of consciousness is impossible, and selection also provides scope for purposefulness. Sincere self-disclosure and its opposite only come about in the context of a wider, ever-present, ‘not knowing’ about one another.

Echoes of Darwin: Simmel’s Evolutionism

The evolutionary conceptual model outlined in this chapter will be advanced as an extension of our Simmel abstract general model in Chapter 1. In the main model, the time dimension, space, numbers, the polarity of order and change are all present, but the overall direction of the model is to merge into an infinity of potential forms of sociation. In the second model, the first will be assumed and the purpose then is to convey the dynamics of forms in the context of evolutionary change based on the principles of ‘selection’, involving a movement from lower to higher levels of social organisation, but allowing for regression as well as progression. The underlying philosophy in both models — and for Darwin and Simmel — is relational monism and materialism.

Interaction, Form and the Dialectical Approach — Simmel’s Analytical Conceptual Framework

Simmel repeatedly states that the language of sociology has links and commonalities with everyday language. But in contrast with common sense, sociology is oriented towards ‘cancelling’ the synthesis represented in particular a social phenomenon, such as ‘fashion’ or ‘the secret’, taking it apart, and seeking answers as to how and why it takes its general form. In sociological analysis the aim is to identify the recurring general forms that shape the varying content of social life. Once achieved, sociological insights may feed back into common sense.

Absolute and Relative — The Operation of a Single Polarity

In contrast, but still with the aim of exhibiting Simmel’s general method, though by a different means, this chapter collects together his use of a single general polarity absolute-relative spread across several of his texts and in relation to a number of different topics. The topics include truth and knowledge, money and gender. The terms absolute and relative occur together or singly, but if singly, still with the second half of the pair implied. Also, when both are present, often one part of the pair will be dominant. We will also notice how a second general polarity, the subject and object duality, is often present in conjunction with the absolute-relative one.

The Overall Terrain and Contemporary Relevance of Simmel’s Oeuvre

Although the ‘autonomy’ of the text and the possibility of multiple interpretations is much discussed, our final discussion of interpretations and applications of Simmel’s methodology sidesteps the more general literature and builds directly from Simmel’s own views on interpretation.