How does an analysis of the wider social context help us understand individual actions more fully?
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I plan to use the concept of security and how the wider social context mediates the individual’s behaviour by linking it to their perception of risk and their desire to maintain ontological security. Further, I will relate ontological security in individuals to their attachments, both to other individuals and to the social context, and how these feelings mediate conduct..
Social scientists argue that individuals are created by the social context in which they exist, and by the practices that surround them. “the passport {illustrates] how a[n]...individual is surrounded by social factors [and] a range of material practices” (DD308/Book1/p9). DD308/Book1/( p7 et seq) goes on to describe how the combination of the procedures used at airports translates individuals into their documentary representation, the passport, and into safe or unsafe persons. The social context creates the individual as one who may, or not, cross the state’s security frontier. Simultaneously it creates ontological insecurity in the individual because of their unfamiliarity with and lack of control over these practices, which may mean that they are unable to proceed with their plans – or even may be perhaps arrested or subject to further investigation.
Perhaps the most primitive social world is the one created between mother (or primary carer) and baby in the earliest years of life. Winnicot (cited in DD308/Book 1/ p96) identifies this social world as where primary ontological security is created: ‘Holding...is a capacity to identify to know wha the baby is feeling like.....The result is a continuity of existence.. a sense of self” (Winnicot, cited in DD308/Book 1/ p97) or ontological security. This doesn’t always happen effectively. Where it happens well, the experience has translated the infant from one “on the brink of unthinkable anxiety” (Winnicot, cited in DD308/Book 1/ p95) to someone whose “trust in their own ontological security enables them to develop a sense of presence in the world”. (Laing, cited in DD308/Book 1/ p 94); however, when the holding and attachment process is sub-optimal, the individual will not feel ontologically secure as a general life position.
This need for “holding” applies not only to mother/baby interactions, but to intimate partners and parent/child interactions. This need to maintain attachment is a crucial constraint in the available conduct for individuals in the social/domestic context; conduct that would break their attachments could feel dangerously insecure. This has two effects. One is that individuals change roles and move between social worlds, if all goes well, managing and maintaining their mutual attachment needs. The other is the need to develop a routine and meta-routines, negotiation processes that underpin the routines as the social context changes. These processes help to maintain the individuals in these domestic settings in a state of ontological security.
Ontological security is simply the confidence that an individual has a self that truly exists. Giddens (cited in DD308/Book 1/ p94) defines it as “a sense of continuity and order in events...” DD308/Book 1/ p95 argues similarly that “a framework of routine cultivates a sense of ‘being’” i.e. ontological security. For an individual it is created and maintained through their conduct in the social context they are in. Mediation is the translation of the understanding of situations from one state of being (or ontology) to another, and therefore the individual’s perception of a particular situation is not objective, but is created in the space between the individual and the social context. Winnicot (in DD308/Book1/p95) characterised the development of basic trust as developing in a potential space between infant and mother, and there is a clear analogy here between the infant/ mother relationship, and the individual/social interaction. Winnicott (2010) also implies that the transition to a healthy relationship with one’s social context may be mediated in early life by a “transitional object”, such as a soft toy, which acts as a replacement for the absent primary carer. Thus adult ontological security is related to “developments in early life” (DD308, Book1, p95) in a structural way, as well has having been internalised.
Jordan (in DD308/Book1/ p18 et seq) describes how the soil (matter) in his allotment was initially a source of ontological security; was then mediated via testing into a source of insecurity, changing his conduct; and then was mediated back into an allegedly safe state. However, although nothing had physically changed, the translation of the allotment soil from uncontested safety and even a source of goodness, to poisonous, and back to safe, but on a very particular definition of safety, mediated his understanding of the risk that he faced by eating vegetables grown there, such that he could only maintain his ontological security by changing his conduct to no longer grow and eat such vegetables.
Callon & Latour (in DD308/Book 1/ p24 et seq) define macro-actors as equivalent in terms of agency to individuals, but considerably more powerful. Here we observe several macro actors mediating the understanding of the safety of the matter (soil) in the allotment. It changed status when the London Borough of Hackney (LBH) – a macro actor – decided to test the soil. This was not entirely an LBH decision – perhaps the timing was, but there was little choice about carrying the tests out at all, as they were constrained by a more powerful macro actor, the UK government, which had passed laws that they had to do the testing. The testing translated the soil in the allotment from unexamined to poisonous through the mediation of the testing, and the results were passed to the allotment association (another macro-actor) via LBH. The wider social context included, among others, the UK government, LBH, those designing the test and the allotment society. By publishing these test results, LBH mediated the allotment holders themselves, translating them into individuals who could no longer securely eat their allotment vegetables: conduct that would have been easy before the test result.
Later, the soil was retested in a different way, which led to a translation of vegetables grown in the soil to arguably safe to eat again. But no test could mediate it back to untested and unconsidered.
The story ends with the official status of the soil being safe, but the allotment holder deciding that they would no longer grow food there, because their ontological security would be compromised by eating food grown on soil that could be mediated into poisonous. It seems likely that the allotment holder’s ontological security was more deeply shaken than this; it would perhaps be no longer possible for his conduct to include an unquestioning acceptance of any area of soil. There may even be analogies here between the blissful, unthinking attachment between mother and baby, and the boundary setting that takes place as the two psychologically separate – the allotment holder is no longer at one with Mother Earth. The soil – matter – in this social world had moved from an unalloyed good to potentially threatening, and therefore creating a need for assessment, rather than secure attachment.
In the complex interplay between individuals and social contexts discussed in the intimate social setting of home life routines discussed in DD308/Book 1(pp85-93) , we see how the individual self perception, the meaning to themselves and to others of who they actually are, changes as the situations change through the day. Activities are largely modulated by clock time; as time progresses the individuals change roles as different social contexts become more or less important. There are several instances of people being constrained by the social context set by the child’s school. Rose (DD308/Book1/p87) picks the children up from school or the childminder at various times or from school on her working days. For this to work smoothly, it’s implicit that she negotiates with the childminder to ensure that all are aware of how the routine is expected to unfold. Ronald, Rose’s partner, takes the children to school in the morning, and takes over homework duty while Rose cooks dinner. The adults, the childminder, the children, school and work contexts are all interwoven, and the individuals are simultaneously constrained by the particular social contexts, and managing them. In particular the adults are translated between domestic and work roles, partly mediated by their journeys to and from their work locations. There are similar interactions between domestic roles and school demands on the children and parents described for the Wells family. (DD308/Book1/p89 et seq)
We see a set of routines, taking the children to and from school, childminder, adults going to work, interacting with outsiders, workmates and customers, sleeping, watching television, which are constrained by the wider social context outside the family; and these routines are in continual flux and negotiation within the family too, so part of the ontological security being created and maintained here is the confidence in the reliability of others not only to deliver on their commitments, whether explicit or implicit, but to negotiate and advise as appropriate when things need to change. “a framework of routine cultivates a sense of being that is separate from non-being (DD308/Book1/p95). This secure routine, together with the meta routines of negotiation, and the stability of the surrounding social contexts create a sense of basic trust ...”a defensive carapace [which}offers a conviction of security regardless of its reality”. (DD308/Book1/p95)
The individuals studied in detail in DaSilva’s study cited in DD308/Book1(pp85-93) had become particular kinds of individuals “parents” because once they were in the context where they had childcare and work responsibilities, their conduct becomes constrained by a whole range of social contexts, some with short term effects : a television programme that they may want to watch perhaps, or very long term : examples might be commitment to a life partner in the context of marriage, or a mortgage contract on a house; and these long term associations work like Callon & Latour’s (in DD308/Book1/p24) black boxes: “...which contain[s] that which no longer needs to be reconsidered.” These associations become part of the social context for the individuals creating them.
The examples outlined above of the state boundary processes, the allotment and the safety of the soil, and the domestic family routines illustrate Barnes argument(in DD308/Book1/p44). “...that the individual and the social should not be separated but need to be analysed together”.
Individuals are not free agents who can act as they choose, even within constraints, but the kind of individuals they can possibly be is defined by the social context. Within any particular social context, individuals have a range of behaviours – for example the allotment holder could in principle always decide whether to harvest and eat vegetables grown on his allotment, although the discomfort associated with that decision would vary with the social context. We also see in the home routines how the same individual moves smoothly between multiple roles as different social contexts change importance. They spend time not only operating the routine, but negotiating what the routine should be and how and when it should change, thus also setting the social context. So individuals both create the social world they are in, and are constrained by it: the individual and the social context are interwoven.
(Actual words) 1901
References/Bibliography
The Open University (2008) DD308 Making Social Worlds, Book 1, ‘Security: Sociology and Social Worlds’, Manchester, Manchester University Press
Winnicott, D. (2010) ‘The Transition Object’, Changing Minds.org, http://changingminds.org/disciplines/psychoanalysis/concepts/transition_object.htm (Accessed 5 Dec 2010).
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