adam_milano individualised modernity talk web 151008

7/28/2019 ADAM_Milano Individualised Modernity Talk Web 151008

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Barbara Adam Milano Individualised Modernity Talk Web 151008 1

Oltre lindividualismo?Rileggere il legame sociale, tra nuove culture e nuovi media

University of Milano Bicocca, 16 17 October, 2008

Timescapes of Individualised Modernity: Rethinking the Social

Barbara Adam

Cardiff University

Four Contemporary Scenes

Atomic EnergyOn the morning of July 16 1945 at 5:29:45am the first atomic bomb was exploded atthe Trinity Test Site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, U.S.A. That day marks the

beginning of the nuclear age. Today the worlds nuclear arsenal has the capacity todestroy all life on earth several times over. That capability means that every one of uslives with the potential collective end in the present.

Satellite TV On the 11 th of September 2001, news broke of a plane crashing into New Yorks TwinTowers. Satellite TV enabled people across the world to watch the event unfold inreal time. In unison with millions of fellow human beings across the globe viewerswere experiencing the horror and panic as it unfolded on their TV screen.

Financial Markets2008 will be remembered by people with savings, investments, mortgages and

pensions as a year where their individual financial security has been deeply threatened by global markets in melt-down. If not before, in that year they were confronted withthe inescapable fact that their individual wealth is inextricably tied to global processes

beyond their control.

Climate ChangeAt the beginning of the 21 st Century climate change has risen to the top of the politicalagenda. Across the world people are confronted by deeply worrying effects of

individual actions and choices in daily life, work and leisure, business and sciencethat have accumulated during the industrial period and intensified during the 20 th Century. This means that the future-making actions of predecessors are materialisingto haunt us in the present, and we should adjust our future-making actions and choicesaccordingly.

IntroductionEach of the four exemplars is the product of individualized modernity. Each is thecollective product of actions of a society of individuals 1. The outcomes of each arethe unintended social consequences of decisions and actions that were intended for

1 Elias, N. 1991 The Society of Individuals. Oxford: Blackwell.


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different purposes. Moreover, in each the social outcome is tied not just to people butalso to a particular technology. And, importantly, radiation and climate change haveeffects beyond the human social: they affect all of life, and all of nature, even theearths atmosphere, the stratosphere and beyond.

In each of the four scenes the social constitutes an inescapable, overpowering and awe-inspiring presence. But this is a social outside our control. Each one is marked

by a sociality that no longer fits the familiar established sociality pattern of family and friends, community and nation where our intended actions and choices could be tied to their effects.

In this context we can observe a scissor movement where the globally constituted sociality beyond individual control is coupled with ever-increasing individualism. Itseems that this form of sociality influenced but not controlled by our actions hasheightened the sense of powerlessness and thus increasingly turned action inwardstoward a reliance on the self.

I therefore want to put to you that individualism rises to the height of its dominance atthe very point when it becomes a fiction because a new sociality permeates our contemporary existence. This new sociality is constituted differently from the way ithas been understood since the founding fathers produced their theories of theinterrelation between the individual and society. It requires of sociologists new waysof understanding and new conceptualisations. Time, as I want to show, is a keyingredient to this new understanding.

In this presentation I take individualism and the understanding of individualized modernity as my base line and starting point. Given that it is a subject with which allof you a familiar, I do not propose to rehearse the arguments or recount any of themany excellent social theories on the subject matter, for example, the work of Norb ertElias, Alberto Melucci, Zygmunt Bauman, or Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Gernsheim 2.Instead, I want to focus on the new social and show how it differs from older forms,which means that classical conceptions need to be adapted to encompass this newsociality.

My presentation is structured in two parts: In part one of the talk I want to show how this new sociality permeates some of

our most personal domains, such as death, choice and responsibility.

I use the exemplars of atomic energy, Satellite TV, financial markets and climatechange respectively to explore individual finitude, action, knowledge, and ethicsIn this section I demonstrate that the isolated individual has become a fiction.

In part two of this presentation I explore sociological conceptualisations of thesocial and consider their appropriateness for rising to the challenges posed by thenew sociality which I outlined in part one.

For both parts of the talk a temporal way of understanding will be central to myapproach and analysis.

2

Bauman, Z. 2001 The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity; Beck, U. and Gernsheim, E. 2002, Individualization. London: Sage; Elias, N. 1991 ibid.; Melucci, A. 1996 The Playing Self. Cambridge:Cambridge UP.


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The Fiction of Isolated Individuals: Sociality at the beginning of the 21 st Century

FinitudeIn the nuclear age Death, the most personal and individual aspect of our lives, takes

on a collective dimension. To see the significance of this statement, I would like toturn to philosophy rather than sociology. For philosophers from Hegel to Derrida, for example, individual finitude is the key to understanding subjectivity: it is at the heartof what it is to be a human being. It is the foundation of human existence. As the end of personal existence, death impacts profoundly on who we think we are, and how weorient in the world. For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 3 (1770-1831), our engagement with death

was the ground upon which not just subjectivity but also self-consciousness could develop.

For Martin Heidegger 4 (1889-1976) death takes an even more central role: it is the

ultimate condition that each of us has to face no one can die on our behalf assuch it is our ownmost. The awareness of our life-span, that we will die, marksus off (as far as we know) from other living beings. Born we are already dying, inthe sense of being-in-the-world-unto-death. Our existence is individualized bydeath. As personal future end death features in every moment of my present now.With Heideggers work being is temporalised and the division betweensubjectivity and objectivity sidestepped.

In The Gift of Death (1992) Jacques Derrida (1930 -2004) argues that death,which is the most personal and individual aspect of existence, is simultaneouslytied to sociality. Friendship, for example, is rooted in the knowledge that theother is mortal. Our shared mortality reduces difference, enables sociality and fosters responsibility.

What is shared across these perspectives on death is the association of death and individuation. In and through death we are delineated against others and theenvironment with boundaries of matter (our bodies), space, and time. Even where thelink to sociality is discussed, death is the basis for sociality but not of and in itself social .

I would like to propose that with the first atomic bomb, death, as the ultimateindividuating event, is rendered inescapably social. Whether in theory or practice, thesuns energy unleashed in a nuclear explosion melts us as one , and radiates all ittouches, into an open-ended future.

Individuality and sociality, therefore, are irreversibly altered when, through thedevelopment of the atomic bomb, the potential end the present is no longer just our most individual but simultaneously also our most social destiny.1200

ActionIn the context of individualized modernity action is no longer primarily sanctioned within the social frameworks of religion, tradition, family and extended social group.

3 Hegel, G. F. W. 1952/1807 Phaenomenologie des Geistes. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.4 Heidegger, M. 1980/1927 Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell.


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It is also simultaneously embedded in frameworks provided by the market and stateregulation. In the market context, choice rather than prohibition is a key feature.Choice here is not an option but an imperative. Where in traditional society fate wasthe context within which people made choices, in modernity, choice and self-determination is our fate. Today, as Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Gernsheim (ibid.: 4)

argue, individualization is a social condition which is not arrived at by a free decisionof individuals.

While the role of the social is fully acknowledged for both social and individualized action there is nevertheless an underlying difference which needs to be brought to thesurface as it subtly affects any soc ial analysis. We could designate them the systemsview and action view respectively 5. Put in its starkest terms the difference is asfollows: In the systems view, members and their actions are the creation of the social

system. Here, the system is ontologically and methodologically prior to its participants

In the action view, society is the creation of its members, product of their construction of meaning and the outcome of their actions, interactions and transactions. Here, the system is ontologically and methodologically derivative of

peoples actions and their unintended consequences.

Action conceived in the kind of dualistic ways I have just outlined is a-temporal.When we conceive action from a temporal perspective, however, the classicaldistinctions lose their relevance. Let me explain. From a temporal perspective humanaffairs exist in webs of relationships that extend into an open future. As HannahArendt 6 noted

the smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of the sameboundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes on word, suffices to changeevery constellation. (Arendt 1998/1958: 190)

Action can never be reduced to a single deed because it expands and grows together with its social networked consequences. Once set in motion the process has no end.Thus, the sociality of action endures beyond even individual finitude. Action is thesocial equivalent of the butterfly flapping its wings in Milano and a hurricanesweeping Jamaica at some undefined later time.

Let us now return to the televised terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York onthat fateful 11 th of September 2001 and relate it to perspectives on action. Clearly, the

dualistic methodological debate whether society or the individual are primary does not give us much purchase in understanding this TV based sociality. We had access to the image and commentary by courtesy of satellite TV

technology. This technology enables us to experience in real time together with strangers from

across the world events that are taking place great distances away. As such, itfacilitates instantaneous and simultaneous experience with total strangers.

5 See Alan Dawes seminal paper, Dawe, A. 1970 The Two Sociologies BJS, 21: 207-18, reproduced in Thompson, K. and Tunstall, J. eds. Sociological Perspectives, Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 542-554.6

Arendt, H. 1998/1958 The Human Condition. Chicago: Chicago UP


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Through this distinct time-space-matter constellation such TV spectacles bind viewers in webs of anonymous social connections where, in an instant, strangerscan be transformed into familiars and even significant others.

Here, viewers have the option to turn off, be moved and do nothing, or be spurred to action by their compassion.

In the privacy of their homes viewers actions or non-actions operate in a socialcontext that lacks the face-to-face social judges which sanction actions in moreconventional social settings.

Action and non-action reverberate through the entirety of the system in non-linear interactive ways, radiating and rippling outwards to an open, unbounded future.

KnowledgeMy knowledge is different from your knowledge. It is unique to my biography and historical context. I have accumulated this personal knowledge and internalised it. Asan academic I have externalised some of my knowledge in lectures, journal articlesand books. As individuals readers and listeners have the option to ignore what I sayand write or take some of it on board. When this knowledge is taken up, it isincorporated into the readers and listeners own unique knowledge complex.We act and make choices in the light of such changing knowledge.

All knowledge is socially constituted. This fact remains unquestioned. It is theindividuals relation to knowledge which needs adjustment in the light of our exampleof globalised, electronically constituted financial system in which not just goods,services, and debts but promises of goods, services and debts are traded.This means that not just past and present are exchanged but the not yet existingfuture is speculated on.

Here, as investors, we continue to choose and act in the light of changingknowledge. However, the context of instantaneous and simultaneous information transfer

means that millions of others also act in the light of this same (or similar)mediated knowledge. And they do so in relation not to some collective goal butmostly to their biographically and contextually unique constellation of knowledge,motivation and need.

In such a context, individual choice and collective outcome become radicallydisconnected.

Knowledge of past and present no longer connect to a predictable future. Individuals are confronted by social outcomes (global, national, and local) to

which their actions contributed in a blind rather than knowing fashion. (2100)

Ethics Next I want to use the example of climate change to think about ethics especially withreference to responsibility .

With climate change, as with the previous examples, the relation between theindividual and the social has changed, which means we are facing a new context of responsibility.


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For my explanation I would like to draw on the seminal work of th e philosopher HansJonas (1984/1976). In his book The Imperative of Responsibility 7 Jonas suggeststhat the contemporary model of morality has its roots in Greek antiquity whereresponsibility was thought to apply between living individuals in the present. This means that moral actions and matters of ethics were defined by close proximity , thus limited

in time and space. The long-term future in contrast was associated with fate , providence and destiny.

It was the realm of gods and thus not subject to human planning, debate and moralaction. As such it was outside the sphere of human responsibility.

Today, however, we find ourselves in a new moral context of obligation towards atechnologically produced, long-term future .This contemporary condition is tied to the socio- scientific capacity to create futures that outlast their originators and to the potential to threaten not just individual existences but the continuity of

our species and life as we know it.

This means that today the foundations for responsibility have shifted from an exclusively individual to a collective base, from a predominantly local to a global scale of effects from primarily present impacts to actions that may not materialise as symptom for

a very long time, and from the human domain of action to all of nature.The common-sense ethical assumptions, which we have inherited from the Greeks,therefore, no longer hold for the contemporary condition.

Let me elaborate:

Beyond Certainty and ControlWhile the future has always been uncertain, humans were not called upon to takeresponsibility for what was considered the realm of gods or God. They were merelyrequired to act responsibly in and towards the realm that did not belong to them.

In a secular social world, which is understood to be (to a large extent at least) theoutcome of human action , in contrast, the unknown and unknowable futures of our making do become our responsibility. That is to say, uncertainty of potentialoutcomes cannot absolve producers of long-term, open-ended impacts fromresponsibility to those affected in remote futures and places.

Beyond Immediacy The effects of todays socio-technical, socio-economic and political processes, such asthose associated with my example of Climate change, are no longer spatially or temporally bounded. Effects permeate outwards in space, spread inwards in matter,organisms and bodies and extend temporally into the long-term future. Moral

principles grounded in the immediacy of the here and now, therefore, need to be

7 Jonas, H. (1984/1976) The Imperative of Responsibility. Chicago: Chicago University Press.


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adjusted to the timeprint 8 of potential outcomes. By the term timeprint I mean thetemporal reach of our actions. As such, timeprint is the temporal equivalent to theecological concept of footprint which focuses on space and matter but excludes thetemporal aspects of socio-environmental impacts of innovative future making.

Beyond Individual ResponsibilityThrough the ages responsibility had been associated with individuals and their deeds.But, in recognition of the trans-boundary nature of climate change, the ethical projectof modernity has to be expanded beyond individual responsibility to encompasscollectives at the national and international level: not politicians whose mandate expires after their period of office, not scientists involved in the design and application of technologies that

contribute to climate change, not trans-national companies who bring climate changing products to market not individuals who continue to fly, drive their cars and produce waste but society carries the responsibility and thus will have to debate trans-boundary

policies that have the potential to effect others in space and time somewhere,some time.

Beyond AnthropocentrismThe transformative power of humans has always been extensive. In the industrial age,however, this capacity has reached undreamt of heights and fundamentally changed our relationship to nature. Today, nature is no longer the mere backdrop to humanaction but is subject to scientific intervention and invention. As such, nature in all itsfacets has become ethically significant.

In light of the mismatch between ethical assumptions and the reach of socio-technicaleffects we are charged to rethink our traditional anthropocentric responses and produce principles more appropriate our ecological footprint and timeprint. .

This requires opening up ethical concern to encompass, as our responsibility, thematerial, spatial and temporal sphere of impact, which extends beyond humanity toall of nature and the physical bases of our existence. This principle appliesirrespective of whether or not the affected and afflicted are able to hold us to account.

***

From the argument I presented in part one of this presentation it becomes apparentthat sociologists are challenged to rethink the nature of the social.Through the focus on the individualized domains of finitude, action, knowledge and ethics, I have shown that, from the perspective of social outcomes, the isolated individual has become fiction I have shown, secondly, that the technologically constituted social confronts

individuals as fate. And I have shown that the product of individualized modernity is an inescapable

new technologically constituted social that cannot and must not be negated insocial analyses.

8 The term timeprint has been developed in my most recent work. See Adam and Groves ibid. especially the entryin the Glossary of Key Terms p. 203.


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In the second part of this presentation I will focus on the challenges that are presented by this socio-technological sociality for social theory.I begin with a very brief sketch of classical social theory perspectives on the social(3000)

II. Contemporary Sociality: Challenges for Sociological Conceptualisation

Classical Sociological Perspectives on SocialityFor Karl Marx the social was constituted on the basis of class and conflictual, materialeconomic relations. He had great trust in the power of people to unite their interestsand through their social action to achieve desired ends.

For Emile Durkheim , the social constituted more than its individual parts. It isunderpinned by conscience collective in which people acted according to their socialroles and later according to their interdependencies and structures of obligation.

While for Marx and Durkheim the social underpinned the individual, for Max Weber only individual actions resulted in collective outcomes, irrespective of whether or notthey were intended. His was not a substantive point that asked us to choose betweensocialism and individualism but a methodological one about who and what can act.For Weber, action is the exclusive domain of individual people. Society cannot actonly people can produce concerted action.

For Georg Simmel , in contrast, the social emerges from the interaction and the relation between individuals and groups who act for, with, and against each other. For Simmel, the social resides not in people but in their interdependence and as such thesocial is tied to function and power.

For George Herbert Mead 9 , finally, the social is to be sought in the interaction between parts. In contrast to predecessors, however, Mead insisted that sociality mustnot be understood in purely human, cultural terms but rather as a quality that

permeates all living existence , a quality central to the living world, to conscious being,and to symbolic interaction.

For Mead the root of sociality is to be located in the symmetry-breaking processes

between two interacting entities, be they atoms, molecules, or beings. ConsequentlyMead (1932/80:49), talks of `The social character of the universe'. In hisconceptualisation, therefore, sociality cannot be restricted to human inter-subjectivity.Moreover, the sociality he has in mind is fundamentally temporal: It encompasses the

process of emergence and mutual adjustment at the levels of physical, living and conscious reality. As such, sociality has two essential aspects: passage and emergence. (1932/80:77). Thus, Meads sociality is rooted in the interactive processof adjustment and not in its result, in the active moment of symmetry breaking and notits outcome.

9 See Mead, G. H. 1980/1932 The Philosophy of the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

especially chapter 3 but also chapters 2 and 4. For the conceptual points on Meads sociality see Adam,B. 1995 Timewatch. The Social Analysis of Time. Pp. 80 81 or the Italian translation Adam, B. 2005Timewatch. Per unanalisi sociale del tempo, pp. 149- 152.


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***

While each of the theorists offers significant contributions to our contemporaryunderstanding of the individual-society relation in a context of individualised modernity, Meads theory is the one best placed to extend the social to encompass not

just living and physical nature but also beings not yet born.

However, to capture some of the complexity of the social, identified in part one of this presentation, it is useful to explore complexity theory and see what it has to offer with regard to conceptualising the technologically constituted social I outlined earlier.

Temporalised ComplexityComplexity theory has already been used to great effect in social theory by, for example, David Burns and John Urry.

To get to the bare bones of the issues, however, I prefer to draw on the work of the physicist and contemporary theorist Fritjof Capra 10 . In his book Hidden Connections,Capra adapts and extends the model (which was designed for biological systems) toinclude the human social world. He adds the aspect of meaning to the existingdimensions of matter, form and process. Capra adds the meaning component toaccount for the fact that humans act in the light of knowledge and that socialinvestigators interpret an already pre-interpreted world.

I would like to further extend each of Capras four dimensions by giving them atemporal inflection.

Matter is our physical world: the earth we live on, the soil that feeds us, the air we breathe, the water we depend on, the body we inhabit, the landscapes and cityscapes we dwell in, the other beings we co-evolved and co-exist with and theworld of artefacts we created. It thus includes our socio-culturally produced world, such as buildings, clothes, books, tools, machines, vehicles, power stations,instruments, computers, laboratory products such as plastics, viruses and genetically modified organisms, etc.o From a temporal perspective, however, Matter needs to be understood not just

spatially as frozen in time but also as temporally extended and enduring,decaying and regenerating, leaving a record, projecting into the future and entailing for-ness.

Form encompasses patterned and networked relations of family and friends, work and play, with domesticated and non-domesticated other species. It covers allinfrastructural aspects of social life such as institutions and communicationsystems (including transport), as well as political, economic, religious and knowledge-based associations.o From a temporal perspective, however, Form needs to be conceived not only

synchronically as pattern and structure but also diachronically: form asforming, relations as relating, networks as networking, patterns as patterning.

10 Capra, F. 2003 The Hidden Connections. London: Flamingo.


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Process focuses on the temporal aspects of the world of matter and relations. Itrelates to the way this world is produced and to emergent properties arising frominteractions. As such it includes understanding of the dynamics of change and creativity, continuity and discontinuity, stability and novelty, cycles of repetition,evolution and history.o From a temporal perspective, however, Processes , in turn, need to be grasped

not merely as the dynamic that produces the eme rgent present but moreimportantly as processes that produce timescapes 11 and futurescapes , wheremuch of the on-goings are time-space distantiated and therefore often latent,immanent and invisible until, that is, where processes congeal into matter and emerge as symptom sometime, somewhere.

Meaning involves products and processes of reflective consciousness and sociallyconstituted knowledge such as language, values and beliefs, what Karl Popper (1983) calls the world of intelligibles. With meaning we acknowledge thathumans interpret a pre-interpreted world, that they inescapably operate in acontext of double hermeneutics.o From a temporal perspective, however, Meaning , interpretation, values and

beliefs, which tend to be tied to the present or the a-temporal (Platonic) realmof ideas, need to be temporalised, to resonate with process and becoming, withform as forming, historical and projective.

In order to accommodate the active, processual quality of meaning, Iwould like to further propose that we change the domain of meaningto that of knowledge practices. With this change of label, the subjectmatter of the overarching fourth dimension remains in tact whilst thenew focus allows for a more active nature of knowledge. It sets

knowledge in motion, shows the productive nature of knowledge as practice, that is, its processuality and its temporal extension. With theknowledge sphere infused with practice, the persistent space- and

present-bound imaginary of old, which continues to underpin and pervade contemporary approaches to complexity, is overcome and theconceptual ground prepared for timescapes and futurescapes to beencompassed.

To bring these four elements together in social analyses is clearly a vast improvementon the either-or thinking that governed the perspectives of old: either structure or

process, function or meaning, social system or individual action. As a coherent

framework, which does not privilege one element over any of the others, thecomplexity perspective encourages an understanding that appreciates the embodied,embedded, nested and contextual nature of social relations and processes. It facilitatesunderstanding of the hidden connections and the interdependence of everything witheverything.

11 For detailed elaboration, see Adam, B. 1998 Timescapes of Modernity. The Environment and Invisible Hazards. London: Routledge; and Adam, B. 2004 Time. Cambridge: Polity Press.See also PDF file of conference presentation

www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/resources/Lueneburg%20Talk%20web%20070708.pdf
http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/resources/Lueneburg%20Talk%20web%20070708.pdfhttp://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/resources/Lueneburg%20Talk%20web%20070708.pdfhttp://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/resources/Lueneburg%20Talk%20web%20070708.pdf


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ImplicationHowever, to theorise the complexity I outlined in part one of this presentation and tomake it intelligible is a more difficult endeavour than appears at first sight.

Since we cannot focus on everything simultaneously, that is to say, since we cant

hold all the balls in the air all the time, I have in the past suggested that we need towork with the idea of implication.

I have proposed 12 that aspects of our socio-cultural complexity, which are not primarily focused on or fore-grounded in any given investigation (be this theoreticalor empirical), nevertheless have to be implicated in the understanding and theanalysis.This means what is not focused on, that is, what is dis attended needs to be enfolded inthat which is attended to and, as such, needs to resonate with the resulting analysis.

1. When we understand that our knowledge practices are neither isolated nor isolatable from their networked connections then we can appreciate how the mostindividualistic act connects to the social.

2. The connections have to be thought of not in linear terms but akin to ecological processes and networks of interdependencies.

3. When we understand ecologically interconnected practices in temporal terms thenwe can see how each act radiates outwards into an open future.

4. And, connected to the previous points, we appreciate that the network of socialimpacts cannot be contained in an understanding that restricts the social tohuman activity.

5. Finally, when we take implication seriously, we are also bound to recognise thatwe are implicated participants that cannot escape their responsibility .That is to say, when we appreciate that our actions reverberate through the systemwe accept that the comfortable position of external, uninvolved observer is nolonger to be had.Thus the time-based implication perspective robs us of the view from nowhere:And this, in turn, transforms sociology into a moral enterprise - but this has to bethe topic for another talk. (4560)

Reflections

What then are the key features I have addressed and which need our urgentsociological attention?

1. We associate traditional societies with fate and think of modern societies as thedeliberate outcome of individual and individualized actions. This applies evenwhere the consequences were not intended.

However, Social fate emerges as a key outcome of individualized modernity. This social isnot actively chosen and created. Rather it is something that confronts us and assuch requires new thinking.

12

See Adam, B. 1990 Time and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press; and Adam, B. 1995Timewatch. The Social Analysis of Time, Cambridge: Polity Press chapter 7 or the Italian translationAdam, B. 2005 Timewatch. Per unanalisi sociale del tempo, Milano: Baldini Castoldi Dalai.


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2. We think of individuals and society as units and domains that can be studied asentities in relation to each other.

However, as I sought to show, the situation is far more complex than this and the challengeis to understand their mutual implication and temporal extension.

3. As sociologists we study individual human actions and their social effects. However,A temporal analysis changes the parameters of our studies. That is to say, from atemporal perspective, the social cannot be restricted to human society only.Rather, it needs to include the physical environment, nature and fellow beings thatare yet to be born.

4. This perspective, finally, focuses attention on responsibility as a key element of our subject matter.However,This responsibility applies not just to our object of study. Rather, it implicates usin this new social. Because the temporal perspective of implication robs us of our established comfort zone of objective onlooker and observer, we are responsiblenot only as citizens but also as social scientists.

(4800 words excluding most of the headings)

adam_milano individualised modernity talk web 151008

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