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Sociology Study ISSN 2159‐5526 November 2013, Volume 3, Number 11, 825‐834
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The Dynamics of the Sociological Imagination Sergey A. Kravchenkoa Abstract This article focuses on the factors that influence the dynamics of the sociological imagination. The author argues for the codependence of sociological theorizing, thinking, and imagination that are analyzed through the prism of the increasing complexity of social and cultural dynamics of the society, the accelerated complex development of human communities within the “arrow of time”. He critically discusses the types of sociological imagination worked out by C. Wright Mills, P. Sztompka, S. Fuller, and U. Beck, and proposes his own model of sociological imagination in the form of a non‐linear humanistic one that is based on the synthesis of social, hard and humane science. It deals with the acceleration of socio‐cultural dynamics and glocal complexity, the integrity of the interdependent humanity, and synergetically takes into consideration paradoxical synthesis, breaks, risks, and dispersions of socium, its objective, subjectively constructed, and virtual realities, searching for new forms of humanism, based on men’s existential needs. It presupposes humane praxis—nowadays the world needs the passing over from technological to humane modernization that can be achieved due to a humanistic turn in sociology, its orientation on a non‐linear humanistic sociological imagination. Keywords History of sociology, sociological imagination, innovative thinking, generations of the sociological metatheorizing, non‐linear and humanistic sociological imagination, humanistic turn The founder of the theory of the sociological
imagination was C. Wright Mills (1916-1962). In the
work The Sociological Imagination, he challenged the
dominant theorist of his day, T. Parsons, and his
followers. The grand theorists, he wrote, are:
So rigidly confined to such high levels of abstraction that
the “typologies” they make up—and the work they do to
make them up—seem more often an arid game of concepts
than an effort to define systematically—which is to say, in a
clear and orderly way—the problems at hand, and to guide
our efforts to sole them. (Mills 1959: 34)
Mills was also critical about P. Lazarsfeld’s
abstracted empiricism:
The methodological inhibition stands parallel to the
fetishism of the Concept… because of epistemological
dogma, abstracted empiricists are systematically ahistorical
and non-comparative; they deal with small-scale areas and
they incline to psychologism. Neither in defining their
problems nor in explaining their own microscopic findings
do they make any real use of the basic idea of historical
social structure. (Mills 1959: 50, 68)
So, according to Mills both grand theorists and
As a result, the grand theory, he continued, is:
Only about 50 percent verbiage; 40 percent is
well-known text-book sociology. The other 10 percent, as
Parsons might say, I am willing to leave open for your own
empirical investigations. My own investigations suggest that
the remaining 10 percent is of possible—although rather
vague—ideological use. (Mills 1959: 50)
aMGIMO‐University, Russia Correspondent Author: Sergey A. Kravchenko, Department of Sociology, MGIMO‐University, 76, Vernadsky Prospect, 119454, Moscow, Russia E‐mail: [email protected] 826
abstracted empiricists underestimated the role of
innovative thinking.
The sociological imagination is especially noted
for the effort to keep the original methodology of the
founders of science alive in the sociological theory as
in the hands of Comte, Marx, Spencer and Weber
sociology is “an encyclopedic endeavor, concerned
with the whole of man’s social life”. On the basis of
his innovative thinking and original methodology
Mills put forward the ideas of methodological
integrity of social nominalism and social realism: the
sociological imagination “in considerable part consists
of the capacity to shift from one perspective to another,
and in the process to build up an adequate view of a
total society and its components” (1959: 211). His
type of the sociological imagination deals with the
links of global and region problems as well as the
relationship between individual troubles and public
issues, the ambivalent functions of science, the
cultural relativism, the dynamics of institutions and
social meanings, etc. He especially argued that
“freedom cannot exist without an enlarger role of
human reason in human affairs” (1959: 174). The
sociological imagination enables individuals to
understand the “traps” of social and cultural
development with the micro-macro linkages of society.
Since then according to Merton, these issues have
been extraordinarily influential in sociology (Merton
1976).
However, Mills did not show concretely the
sociological imagination of the founders of sociology
and the representatives of the next generation of
scholars, neither did he analyze the factors of “ageing”
sociological theorizing and thinking in their dynamics.
Besides, Mills’ work is more than a half century old.
THE CODEPENDENCE OF SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIZING, THINKING, AND IMAGINATION The character of theoretical and methodological
Sociology Study 3(11) instruments of sociology is influenced by the social
and cultural dynamics of a society, intellectual
traditions of the country in which it developed, and,
certainly, by the achievements of the science. New
theoretical approaches are also based on the shoulders
of the previous giants of the sociological thought. The
consequences of these factors are both liner and
non-liner in character. So there is a very contradictory
process. As Merton wrote: “I adopted the non-liner,
advancing-by-doubling-back Shandean Method of
composition at the same time I was reflecting that this
open form resembles the course taken by history in
general, by the history of ideas in particular, and, in a
way by the course taken in scientific inquiry as well”
(1993: XIX). Thus, sociology attends to continuities
as well as discontinuities.
Commonly sociological theories are classified by
two criteria. The first one is a historical-cultural
context. Accordingly, it is accepted to allocate the
classical sociological theory (Ritzer 2000a), modern
sociological theory (Ritzer 2000b; Giddens 1987), and
postmodern social theory (Ritzer 1997; Ritzer and
Ryan 2007) which loses many actually sociological
characteristics of the predecessors, including thus in
itself even “antisociology”. The second is based on the
ideas of national sociological schools—Chicago
School (Smith 1988), Durkheimian School (Besnard
1983), etc.
There may be another criterion of the
classification of the sociological theories that is the
capability of the theory to analyze the increasing
complexity of social and cultural dynamics of the
society, the accelerated complex development of
human communities within the “arrow of time”
(Prigogine 1997), according to which all the matter
(this concerns as material as social worlds) is being
developed increasingly quicker and quicker. Besides,
the dynamic becomes more and more complex,
including points of bifurcation (Prigogine 1997). As a
society passes a certain threshold of evolution, it
assumes new qualities on a large scale expressed in
Kravchenko the “ageing” of socium. As a result there appear new
challenges to the sociological knowledge, thinking
and imagination that force the pass from one
generation to the other. So, according to the above
mentioned criterion—the capability of the theory to
analyze the increasing complexity of the
socium—there may be proposed the following five
generations of the sociological metatheorizing,
thinking, and imagination.
At the same time, peculiar sociological thinking
and imagination are located within sociology, to be
more exact—in its metaparadigm. That is the reason
why sociological metatheorizing, thinking, and
imagination are codependent. Each metaparadigm has
its limits in historical and intellectual terms, and the
same can be said about the corresponding types of
sociological thinking and imagination.
The First Generation The theories consider social development as
evolutionary and linear, recognizing that the
development of a nature and a society can be
interpreted
by
the
same
theoretical
and
methodological instruments. The first sociologies—O.
Komte, H. Spencer, E. Durkhgeim, and K.
Marx—tried to prove the objective laws which, in
essence, were applied to the interpretation of societies
as well as the lifeless matter. So, there appeared the
positivist metaparadigm which is based on a postulate
of eurocentrism of scientific knowledge, convertibility
of social development and linear development in
general. The supporters of this metaparadigm
considered that studying the various social facts
enabled scientists to learn the society, its structures
and functions and thus to create the social order,
progressing on the basis of the intellectual
development and moral perfection. At the same time,
they developed the sociological imagination with a
specific scientific ethos and innovative thinking
(though the very term was not yet used) in the form of
“organized skepticism”. According to Merton (1996),
827
it required the scientist to doubt about the existing
“truths” and then to check whether the doubt was well
founded.
The Second Generation The theories are based on actually social theoretical
and methodological instruments which interpreted the
causality as probability of the fulfillment of events.
This led to the assumption that the human society is
not something “historically inevitable”, but the result
of many alternatives. The theories of this generation
form the interpretive metaparadigm, asserting
pluralism of possibilities of development and
subjectively designed worlds. The methodology of
this metaparadigm is based on the postulate that each
socium has unique values and the circumstances are
always subjective. That is the reason why there cannot
be uniform, universal explanations of social realities.
The research instruments used by them (M. Weber, G.
H. Mead, C. Cooley, A. Schutz, S. Freud, etc.) are
aimed at declaring the inevitability of pluralism of
valuable systems and of alternativeness of social
realities. All together they worked out the
antipositivist sociological imagination with a new
model of thinking—the socium appears as a set of
events which cannot be determined as sociological
facts. Its essence was firstly well expressed in W. I.
Thomas’ theorem: “If men define situations as real,
they are real in their consequences” (W. I. Thomas
and D. S. Thomas 1928: 572). Later the principles of
antipositivist thinking—knowledge depends on
language and social learning, the limits of different
theories, critical analysis of timeless truths, direct
involvement in social change, etc.—were developed
within the critical theory by Horkheimer and Adorno
in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1987).
The Third Generation The theories interpret the social and cultural dynamics
as uncertain fluctuations (P. A. Sorokin), choices of
actors in non-equilibrium systems (T. Parsons), and
Sociology Study 3(11) 828
ambivalences (R. K. Merton). They elaborated the
integral metaparadigm. It states that social and cultural
changes are becoming more and more dynamic, and
there appear the evident facts of “ageing” of the
previous paradigms. The proposed metaparadigm
includes the theories of non-equilibrium systems
proving that the complete systems based on the
determinist
processes
are
exceptions.
The
methodology of the integral metaparadigm postulates
cultural pluralism, and assumes integrated use of
channels of knowledge. At this historic time Mills
proposed the theory of sociological imagination, the
essence of which was dynamic-integral thinking in
terms of increasing varieties and ambivalences of
order and chaos. Mills wrote:
The social scientist seeks to understand the human
variety in an orderly way, but considering the range and
depth of this variety, he might well be asked: Is this really
possible? … Order as well as disorder is relative to
viewpoint: to come to an orderly understanding of men and
societies requires a set of viewpoints that simple enough to
make understanding possible, yet comprehensive enough to
permit us to include in our views the range and depth of the
human variety. (1959: 133)
Merton also showed the increasing varieties and
ambivalences and argued: “In this situation of stress,
all manner of adaptive behaviors are called into play,
some of these being far beyond the mores of science”
(1973: 323).
The Fourth Generation The theories analyze modernity, its main
characteristics such as institutional and individual
reflexivity. They form the reflective metaparadigm of
radicalized/reflexive modernity (or second modernity
in reference to the first industrial one). It is being
crystallized under the influence of fragmentation,
dispersion, and breaks of the social reality in which
self-organized actors operate. The methodology of this
metaparadigm defines the extreme dynamism of
nowadays world, and the individuals become
predisposed to change their self-identities. The
reflexive modernity has brought institutional,
culturally cultivated risks in our life that is why the
living becomes disorienting. According to Giddens,
“the reflexivity of modern social life consists in the
fact that social practices are constantly examined and
reformed in the light of incoming information about
those very practices, thus constantly altering their
character” (1990: 38). It is necessary to add the
tendencies of structural and functional “ageing” of the
societies of Europe that became the subject of special
sociological investigation1. As a result, there appeared
the reflexive type of sociological imagination.
Sztompka (1991) made a fruitful effort to work out a
new theory of the sociological imagination that was
aimed at interpreting reflexive social life in constant
dynamics. According to him, the essence of this type
of the sociological imagination is innovative, reflexive
thinking about “social becoming” (Sztompka 1991).
Its basic tenets are: to consider all social phenomena
as a result of social agency, and to identify them; to
understand the phenomena hidden behind the surface
of the structural and cultural resources and constraints
that affect the social life; to study the previous
traditions, the living legacy of the past and its
continuous impact on the present; to take social life in
its dynamics, recognition of the huge variety of
options and forms of social life2.
The Fifth Generation The theories study non-linear social and cultural
dynamics, processes of social and climate turbulences
(Giddens 2009; Urry 2011), providing the appearance
of a new type order developed from chaos and
turbulences, and also the theories analyzing the
desocialized socium, putting “the end to the social”.
As Baudrillard wrote: “The only ‘sociological’ work I
can claim is my effort to put an end to the social, to
the concept of the social” (1993: 106). The theories of
this generation manifest the non-linear metaparadigm
of postmodernity that is caused by the transition of
Kravchenko some socium, a new threshold of dynamic complexity
thus entering the stage characterized by non-linear
self-development, globalization and glocalization as
well as new risks (Beck 2010) and vulnerabilities in
the form of “normal accidents” (Perrow 2011) or
“collateral damage” (Bauman 2011). For non-linear
social and cultural dynamics traumas and breaks of
socium are becoming natural. The rhizome
development (metaphor of uncertainty coined by G.
Deleuze and F. Guattari) has come into our life that, in
essence, promotes the end of the familiar world and
creation of the new world with the new understanding
of order, chaos, vulnerabilities and turbulences. The
very complexity of the new metaparadigm
presupposes the need for different types of
sociological imagination, the pluralism of them. In
Ritzer’s view, “different imagers of the subject matter
are the key paradigmatic splits in sociology” (2001:
62). As a result, sociologists have to deal with the
pluralism of models of sociological thinking and
imagination.
One of the attempts to construct a new model was
recently undertaken by the British sociologist Steve
Fuller in The New Sociological Imagination. The
author sums up his idea to write this work in the
following way:
The original idea was for me to write a 21st century
version of C. Wright Mills’ 1959 classic, The Sociological
Imagination. This book shares Mills’ somewhat paranoid
political sensibility, his broadly positivistic methodological
sympathies, his allergy to trendy academic Newspeak (with
structural- functionalism here replaced by postmodernism)
and his conviction that social science is vital to confronting
the (now very different) future that awaits us. A sense of just
how much the world has changed since Mills’ day can be
gleaned by glancing at the terms and definitions listed in this
book’s Glossary, only about half of which he would
recognize. (Fuller 2008: 7)
The book critically examines the history of the
social sciences to discover what the key contributions
of sociology have been and how relevant they remain,
and demonstrates how biological and sociological
829
themes have been intertwined. Fuller argued that in
terms of reflexivity Giddens replaced “theory” in the
Marxist sense of a second-order epistemological
critique with a less threatening Wittgensteinian
first-order mapping of the lived social ontology, or
“lifeworld”. Social theorizing in Giddensian mode
constitutes spontaneity’s reification. The above
developments have subverted the social scientific
imagination from opposing sides—that is, from
humanities and the natural sciences (Fuller 2008: 19).
This theory of sociological imagination also
presupposes a new type of theoretical integrity of
sociology with “progressive” sciences of sociobiology,
evolutionary psychology, and behavioral genetics
(Fuller 2008: 29). At the same time, the author argued
for revisiting the aspects of biological research from
which the classical sociological theorist originally
drew intellectual sustenance. The histories of
sociology and biology have been always intertwined
(Fuller 2008: 80). The proposed methodological
integrity certainly facilitates new opportunities to
investigate the reflexive socium, especially it concerns
our control over the consequences of human’s
activities (Fuller 2008: 54).
There appeared one more theory of sociological
imagination though quite a different one. U. Beck, the
author of the theories of “Risk Society” (1992) and
“World at Risk” (2010) agued that “we need a new
sociological imagination, one that is sensitive to the
concrete paradoxes and challenges of reflexive
modernity and which at the same time, is thoughtful
and strong enough to open up the walls of abstraction
in which academic routines are captured” (2007: 212).
Through his sociological imagination Beck
innovatively interpreted the history of humanity:
The concept of risk reverses the relation of past, present
and future. The past loses its power to determine the present.
Its place as the cause of present-day experience and action is
taken by the future, that is to say, something non-existent,
constructed and fictitious. We are discussing and arguing
about something which is not the case, but could happen if
830
we were not to change course. (Beck 2007: 214)
Through the prism of his sociological imagination
Beck (2007: 215-224) also analysed the unintended
consequences of the logic of control, manufactured
uncertainties,
growing
unawareness
and
non-knowledge in the wake of the modernization of
knowledge, risk trap, self-critical societies, loss of
clear distinction between nature and culture, risks as
man-made hybrids, relations to definitions and others.
In one of his latest book World at Risk, the sociologist
argued that “the theory of world risk society makes a
distinction between old and new risks” that exhibited
three
characteristic
features:
delocalization,
incalculability, non-compensatability (Beck 2010: 52).
These and other attempts to work out a new model
of sociological imagination or to use its approaches
(Elwell 2006; Ray 2007) manifest the importance of
this problem. All these attempts are scientifically
fruitful. But all these attempts lack the humanitarian
basis and special ethics of humanism that are very
important for the interpretation of the becoming
complex socium. Under these conditions still a new
type of sociological imagination is needed.
FOR A NON­LINEAR HUMANISTIC SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION The valid analysis of a complex society requires the
synthesis of the natural sciences, social science and
humanities. Such integration, on the one hand, would
take into maximum consideration the socio-cultural
dynamics, all sorts of paradoxes, dispersion and
turbulence of society, developing together with nature,
and, on the other hand, is to search for new forms of
humanism, including the humanistic orientation of any
research that is becoming an ethical imperative of the
global community of nations. The non-linear
humanistic sociological imagination should in
principle be based on the adequate and deeper
understanding ambivalent realities of the becoming
Sociology Study 3(11) complex socium. All the above discussed types of
thinking and sociological imagination are very
significant in the scientific sense, because in one or
another way they efficiently reflect the important
aspects of becoming increasingly complex socium.
But for all their undoubted merits each of these types
of sociological imagination focuses on rather specific
aspects of the becoming complex socium and what is
more important—lacks the problem of humanistic
orientation of its agency.
Taking into consideration the realities of
becoming complex socium, a “humanistic turn” in
sociology is needed, whereby societies should be
examined through the patterns and character of their
complexity-dependence
and
human
agencyconsequences. This implies a newer type of
sociological imagination based on the synthesis of
social, hard and humane sciences. The methodological
instruments of this type of sociological imagination
include both non-linear and humanistic aspects. In the
most general way, the non-linear humanistic
sociological imagination can be defined as follows. It
deals with the acceleration of socio-cultural dynamics
and glocal (Robertson 1995) complexity, the integrity
of the interdependent humanity, and synergetically
takes into consideration paradoxical synthesis, breaks,
risks, and dispersions of socium, its objective,
subjectively constructed, and virtual realities
(becoming social meanings), searching for new forms
of humanism, based on men’s existential needs.
Passing over to the non-linear humanistic
sociological imagination is not realized spontaneously,
without active conscious effort on the part of social
scientists and sociologists. Here the principle of
laissez fair simply does not work, there required a
sociological agency. The non-linear humanistic
sociological imagination should be based, according
to Mills, on its own original methodology that
includes both the non-linear and humanistic
components:
(1) Critical reflection of the becoming complex
Kravchenko socium. In this case the criticism is directed to the
seriously distorted account of the humanistic
component of the becoming complex socium. The
underestimation of it is the factor of many glocal
problems of reflexive modernity;
(2) Rediscovering the potentials of the human
capital under the condition of social and climate
turbulences, resource dependence with the purpose to
study the human agency and its unintended
consequences, which in particular allows to reveal the
ambivalence of innovative thinking of the most
scientific work, to identify under what conditions they
produce the Good and the Evil to the people. The
non-linear effect of the unintended consequences
increases due to the existing anthropocentric
technologies. Sociology, as Urry wrote, failed to
notice that modern world was incredibly
resource-dependent. He argued for a “resource turn”
in sociology: “I seek nothing less than the
development of post-carbon sociology and, much
more important, a post-carbon society” (Urry 2011:
16);
(3) Praxis should be rediscovered as well: it
should mean humane praxis—humanistic creative
agency, the main aim of which is to preserve the
human capital of all the generations and to maintain
the balance between scientific, technological
innovations and key environmental processes;
(4) Analysis of new forms of alienations. There
appeared quite new processes of vivid dehumanization.
Ritzer argued that the social world was “increasingly
characterized by nothing”. In this case nothing refers
to “social forms largely devoid of distinctive content”
(Ritzer 2011: 172). Nothing is expressed in non-places,
non-things, non-people, and non-services (Ritzer 2011:
172-173). Bauman stated that “human identities are
narrated, they are ineffable” as people lose their place
on earth becoming new untouchables, unthinkables,
and unimaginables (2009: 45). Giddens analysed the
effect of threats to humanity calling it “Giddens’
paradox”. According to it:
831
Since the dangers posed by global warming aren’t
tangible, immediate or visible in the course of day-to-day
life, however awesome they appear, many will sit on their
hands and do nothing of a concrete nature about them…
People find it hard to give the same level of reality to the
future as they do to the present. (Giddens 2009: 2)
(5) Extrapolation of the previous types of the
sociological imagination, which involves the
rediscovery of the knowledge of the classical and
modern sociology through the challenges of the
becoming complex socium;
(6) Riskological turn that is based on the thesis
that the mainstream of the world sociological thought
becomes the investigation of the non-linear, reflexive,
turbulent socium. Of course, not all sociologists
declare that they study risks and uncertainties. The
problem is deeper—the modern type of the
sociological thinking cannot help be directed to the
inner reflexivity of complex socium.
The
non-linear
humanistic
sociological
imagination is a heuristic device helping to get rid of
“zombie terms” (Beck 2007) and to rediscover the
existing ones. Here are some examples. There
appeared the vulnerabilities to the human capital.
Until recently in the history of mankind in the
implementation of technological modernization, the
question about the humanistic ways and means to
achieve the goals was not even discussed. There is an
established view shared by public and even scientists
that any possible cataclysms (revolutions, innovations,
modernizations, etc.) will affect first of all the “oldest,
most obsolescent” social forms. Some groups and
even classes with their related institutional
infrastructure will possibly retire, while continuing
viability of the society and its human capital in
general is not even questioned. Today it is time to
recognize the real threats for human capital: the trends
of chaotization, disrupted continuity of value system,
socio-cultural traumas resulting from endless
upheavals of referents may lead to irreversible effects
so that the society will become incapable to control
832
these processes. Any pragmatic and rational intentions
by themselves do not lead to prosperity, harmony,
peace, if they do not provide the production of
humanism, its penetration into social institutions. It is
necessary to consider the delayed hazard as derived
from the scientific research and innovation: the effect
of “normal accidents” should be extended not only on
scientific and technological innovations but also on
economic and political spheres, as well as on the
processes of medicalization, urban design, new
information technologies, tourism, fashion, diet, etc.
Nowadays the world needs of humane modernization
that can be achieved due to a humanistic turn in
sociology, its orientation on the non-linear humanistic
sociological imagination.
Addressing the issues of new vulnerabilities would
require to revise established conceptions of latent
components of human rationality and irrationality.
Bauman (2009) expressed the essence of social
practices based on the cult of rationality using a
“metaphor of gardener”: “The gardener knows better
what kinds of plants should, and what sorts of plants
should not grow in the plot under his care”. “Weeds”
(social risk groups, people on the fringe, minorities,
opponents, competitors, dissidents, etc.) should be
accordingly “uprooted” for the sake of harmony and
rationality. At the same time, the gardener is
“encouraging the growth of the right types of plants
(mostly the plants he himself has sown or planted)”.
He therefore acted as an “expert” of right-mindedness
and purposefulness (Bauman 2009: 99). However,
lacking a humanistic component, the ambition of
people to always maintain rationality and perfection
often leads to dysfunctions in a form of irremediable
loss of “wrong” human capital. Rationality is
ambivalent for the human capital: without it, the
present complex social environment would not be able
to operate, although rationality provides no panacea
for improvement of human relations and may even
produce new vulnerabilities. Therefore, the irrational
component of human capital is one that should be
Sociology Study 3(11) carefully preserved.
A new approach is needed to the openness of the
society. The concept of open society is known as
promoted by Popper (1992) who demonstrated that
historic development of human civilization supposed
the transition from a closed society with its detailed
regulation of life in every aspect to an open society
that allowed the development of individual freedoms.
This ideal as a kind of “universal human value” came
into Russia as well. It was called for by M. Gorbachev
in connection with his policy known as “new thinking”
that directly led to liquidation of “iron curtain”. Since
then, Russia has become a genuinely open society.
Today however this process inspires not only
enthusiasm as regards these actually obtained
freedoms but also social fears and anxiety resulting
from instability and uncertainty that it entailed as well
as concerns about external threats. The openness
appeared to involve a number of unintended effects.
While bringing a variety of benefits, it also offers
people a quite limited freedom of selecting between
evils that jeopardize social security and stability. The
key point is not in increasing penetration of cultural
artifacts via globalization, but in chaos and
inconsistency that result from expansion of various
subcultures and countercultures, sharp growth of
uncontrolled migration in both ends, and the
development of new deviant and criminal forms of
behavior.
The
non-linear
humanistic
sociological
imagination rediscovers the essence of disasters.
Comparatively not long ago, a disaster was
understood as an event that caused irreparable
damages. Besides, until very recently, scientists
tended to find causes of disasters among external
factors such as natural processes or human activities.
Perrow (2011), a sociologist who introduced a concept
of “normal accident”, showed that disasters were
gaining an increasing non-linear complexity. Now
they may be caused by internal factors generated by
natural (normal) interaction of people with complex
Kravchenko systems. In his new book The Next Catastrophe:
Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial,
and Terrorist Disasters, he demonstrated that
vulnerabilities became increasingly complex in their
nature: “concentrations of hazardous materials,
populations, and economic power in our critical
infrastructure make us more vulnerable to natural
disasters, industrial/technological disasters, and
terrorist attacts” (2011: vii). The only way to
minimize the risk, according to the sociologist, is by
full abandonment of sophisticated systems.
Normal Accident Theory (NAT)—Perrow states—
argued that if we had systems with catastrophic potential that
might fail because of their complexity and tight coupling,
even if everyone played as safe as humanly possible, these
systems should have been abandoned. Catastrophes would
be rare, but if inevitable, we should not run the risk. (Perrow
2011: xxii)
Perhaps, this is not the only way out. Risks of
“normal accidents” should be minimized not by way
of complex systems abandonment, but rather through
their comprehensive humanization.
The humankind is entering the era of
“cosmopolitan dualities” of global and local,
international and national, Western and non-Western.
The space of social environment has radically changed
so that its borders now stretch beyond the frontiers of
state or nation. In the increasingly globalizing world,
multinational
corporations,
non-governmental
supranational social actors start playing a dominant
role, and social networks are established everywhere.
Therefore, Beck (2010) stood for “cosmopolitan
sociology” that addressed these new realities. This
sociology requires the non-linear humanistic
sociological imagination.
It is of special importance modern morality that
should be rediscoved through the non-linear
humanistic sociological imagination. Bauman
deployed the concept of “adiaphorization” by which
he meant “stratagems of placing, intentionally or by
833
default, certain acts and/or omitted acts regarding
certain categories of humans outside the
moral-immoral axis—that is, outside the ‘universe of
moral obligation’ and outside the realm of phenomena
subject to moral evaluation” (Bauman and Donskis
2013: 40).
The
non-linear
humanistic
sociological
imagination will be of great help to anyone interested
in the complexity of modern society. Nowadays
practically rediscovery of terms and corresponding
realities is needed in all social spheres. This process
has just begun.
Notes 1. Refer to The 6th Conference of the European Sociological
Association, September 23-26, 2003, Murcia (Spain).
2. Retrieved (http://www.sociolog.net/publ.htlm).
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Bio Sergey A. Kravchenko, professor, head of Department of
Sociology, MGIMO-University; research fields: sociological
theory, risks, vulnerabilities.