Whatever one thinks of Pierre Bourdieu, watching the documentary “sociology is a martial art” is time well spent. Youtube is your friend, even though the end of the documentary is missing…

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 7:

A while back some colleagues from my institute returned from a workshop in Copenhagen. A number of STS-”hotshots” attended the event, including Sheila Jasanoff. Upon return, a couple of them (not the hotshots, but my collegues) noted how Anthony Giddens had been rather aggressively attacked (not literally of course, he was not there..) during the proceedings.

I haven’t read Giddens for some time, but when I realized his most recent work deals with climate change and energy policy, I felt sort of obligated.  Thus, I have started reading ”The politics of climate change” (2009). I have only finished a couple of chapters, though,  so I can’t really comment much on the book in general. The first pages, however,  have reminded me of how Giddens has dealt with “nature” in his past work, and how this stands in stark contrast to how nature is perceived and described in the STS-literature (most notably by Bruno Latour, I guess). Perhaps this is part of the reason why he (apparently) is so loathed by (at least some) STS-scholars?

In “Modernity and Self-Identity” (1991) for example, it is clear that Giddens believes an original, pure, virgin-like nature to have existed at some point in history. This “natural world” was of an entirely different character than the social (modern) world we inhabit today. As such there is a visible and explicit dichotomy between nature, the “natural world” and the “social world” in Giddens account. He writes:

Technological intervention into nature is the condition of the development of abstract systems (…) but of course affects many other aspects of Modern social life as well. The ’socialization of nature’ has helped stabilize a variety of previously irregular or unpredictable influences on human behaviour (p.135)

On another instance he goes further, and argues with Bill McKibben that nature, as it at some point existed in it’s pure form has been abolished:

Socialized nature provides a telling (…). MicKibben argues, with great plausibility that human intervention in the natural world has been so profound, and so encompassing, that today we can speak of the ‘end of nature’. Socialized nature is quite different from the old natural environment, which existed separately from human endeavours and formed a relatively unchanging backdrop to them (pp. 136-137)

This view of “real nature” as a thing of the past is also repeated in “The politics of climate change”, allthough it has not been a major focal point in what little I have read of it so far. On page 29 Giddens briefly touches the subject:

(…) the distiguished scientist Martin Rees speaks seriously of the possibility that we – the human race – might not survive the twenty-first century, because of the quantity of dangers built up through the diverse interventions into (what used to be[1]) nature

In other words Giddens’ view basically seems to be that at some point the “human” or the “social” co-existed with the “natural”, but that the two were separate worlds,  not interfering much with each other. The natural was an “unchanging backdrop”, merely a context over which the social could unfold. I guess this is quite typical of sociologists (shame on us!), giving privilege to the social over the material.

From an STS-point of view the Giddens-account of nature would be problematic, to say the least. At what point did we begin to “socialize” nature? Was it when we started making tools that we utilized to hunt or harvest? Perhaps it was when we tamed fire? Possibly when we started cooperating to bring down large animals? Did it happen with feudalism, or was it a result of western industrialization? This very idea of a starting point, of a “before” and an “after” distinguishing “true nature” from a socialized counterpart is indeed problematic.

Of course, one can argue that this is of theoretical importance only to a relatively small group of people, and that the practical implications in terms of “real life” policy-suggestions wouldn’t necessarily be too large. If avoiding (or limiting)climate changes is the goal, I guess finding the best practical solutions would be the overarching task, not pondering the theoretical and philosophical relationship between humans and non-humans(the obvious counterargument is that this understanding is essential to reach the policies which best serves all, both humans and non-humans – and I guess that is a valid argument in the climate debate).  As I said, I haven’t read much of Giddens book yet, so I don’t really know which suggestions he raises. None the less I think the following is a valid question: if he reaches more or less the same types of conclusions that “we” (STS) do and give more or less the same types of advice – does it really matter if he “over-sociologizes” to a certain degree, and over-simplifies on some points? Scientific quarrells are just part of the game, I guess, but I hope they aren’t counter-productive…

[1] My bold..

[2] He discusses some ideas on nature in this lecture (interesting and quite entertaining at times).

For a while I have been a member of the board of (the pretty dormant) trønder-division of Norsk sosiologiforening. Next tuesday (10th of March) we will be hosting the first of a series* of events this semester; a sociology quiz. The plan is to make it good fun for sociologists of all levels – from bachellor students to professors, and perhaps even for STS-oriented sociologists (two out of three readers of this site fite this category** ). There will even be a pretty good prize involved for the winning team; a gift certificate at SIT-Tapir for 1500 kr. The venue of the event is not yet determined (facebook will keep you updated)

Unfortunately I won’t be able to be there myself as I will be attending the conference climate change – global risks, challenges and decisions in Copenhagen next week, a conference that should be really interesting. I will be presenting a poster with results from a study comparing the coverage of climate changes in Norwegian and Swedish newspapers, something which is really a bit on the side of my general research-project. There are many sessions, however, on energy and technology, also specifically relating to bioenergy and biofuels. More on this later.

*) Series of events means “probably three events”

**) Actual numbers

Listening to different people talk about the same phenomena can be interesting. Most of the time their descriptions of exactly the same thing tend to be very different. This, of course, is obvious in relation to mundane phenomena like a particular pop-tune playing on the radio or an abstract piece of art. While one person could describe the pop track as an enjoyable piece of music, the other could describe it as superficial nonsense without any substance. The same is true for the piece of art; one can see it as a subtle commentary on our time and society, the other as pure drivel that could just as easily have been produced by a 4-year old. As sociologists we tend to explain these differences by looking at forces beyond these individuals control, like say, their upbringing, culture, class-background, gender and so forth.

Differences in they way people talk about a seemingly unified field is, however, not only observable at the mundane individual level. Recently I have been talking to actors who in different ways deal with bio energy here in Norway. These people are policy makers, they are working in local government, they are researchers, and so on. All talk about bio energy, but if you were to eavesdrop without knowing the general topic this would be hard to detect. Here, however, I think it is difficult to use the standard sociologic models to explain what the hell is going on. Rather, we need to look at the motives of the different people.

There are particularly two ways of talking about the technology that strikes me. One focuses on the potential it sparks for small-scale business opportunities in the rural areas, the other focuses on the potential of launching a massive industrial adventure that will somehow free us from the tyranny of oil. So again – like the pop-track and the piece of abstract art – we see the world, and in this case the future of the world, in very different shadingThe difference, of course, is that we can quarrel over art and we can quarrel over music, but in the long run these debates really doesn’t hurt anyone – at least not physically or economically (except for those getting ripped off buying the latest Beyonce or Britney-single on iTunes…).

In this case, however, the quarrels and the different understanding of the world could eventually lead to serious conflicts over very tangible resources. So in the time ahead it really seems like the different people have a job to do in explaining to the rest of the region that their view of the future is the best view of the future, and that their understanding of bio energy is the best one. I’ll follow this development(and look into a lot of related topics) over the next years and keep you posted. Perhaps even a bit more concrete, eventually…

The Norwegian radiostation NRK P1(2 million daily listeners according to their own website) featured an extensive story on the project “the sociology of cafés” today. Norways most popular radio-show “Norgesglasset” sent a reporter to interact with the café-sociology team in a fieldwork-setting at Dromedar kaffebar last week. The result was an excellent story broadcasted in todays program. read about it here, or listen to the story by following this link.