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GLOBALISATION
(Anthony Giddens, BBC's Reith Lectures '99, delivered in London)
A friend of mine studies village life in
central Africa. A few years ago, she paid her first visit to a remote
area where she was to carry out her fieldwork. The evening she got
there, she was invited to a local home for an evening's entertainment.
She expected to find out about the traditional pastimes of this
isolated community. Instead, the evening turned out to be a viewing
of Basic Instinct on video. The film at that point hadn't even reached
the cinemas in London.
Such vignettes reveal something about our
world. And what they reveal isn't trivial. It isn't just a matter
of people adding modern paraphernalia - videos, TVs, personal computers
and so forth - to their traditional ways of life. We live in a world
of transformations, affecting almost every aspect of what we do.
For better or worse, we are being propelled into a global order
that no one fully understands, but which is making its effects felt
upon all of us.
Globalisation is the main theme of my lecture
tonight, and of the lectures as a whole. The term may not be - it
isn't - a particularly attractive or elegant one. But absolutely
no-one who wants to understand our prospects and possibilities at
century's end can ignore it. I travel a lot to speak abroad. I haven't
been to a single country recently where globalisation isn't being
intensively discussed. In France, the word is mondialisation. In
Spain and Latin America, it is globalizacion. The Germans say globalisierung.
The global spread of the term is evidence
of the very developments to which it refers. Every business guru
talks about it. No political speech is complete without reference
to it. Yet as little as 10 years ago the term was hardly used, either
in the academic literature or in everyday language. It has come
from nowhere to be almost everywhere. Given its sudden popularity,
we shouldn't be surprised that the meaning of the notion isn't always
clear, or that an intellectual reaction has set in against it. Globalisation
has something to do with the thesis that we now all live in one
world - but in what ways exactly, and is the idea really valid?
Different thinkers have taken almost completely
opposite views about globalisation in debates that have sprung up
over the past few years. Some dispute the whole thing. I'll call
them the sceptics. According to the sceptics, all the talk about
globalisation is only that - just talk. Whatever its benefits, its
trials and tribulations, the global economy isn't especially different
from that which existed at previous periods. The world carries on
much the same as it has done for many years.
Most countries, the sceptics argue, only
gain a small amount of their income from external trade. Moreover,
a good deal of economic exchange is between regions, rather than
being truly world-wide. The countries of the European Union, for
example, mostly trade among themselves. The same is true of the
other main trading blocs, such as those of the Asia Pacific or North
America.
Others, however, take a very different position.
I'll label them the radicals. The radicals argue that not only is
globalisation very real, but that its consequences can be felt everywhere.
The global marketplace, they say, is much more developed than even
two or three decades ago, and is indifferent to national borders.
Nations have lost most of the sovereignty they once had, and politicians
have lost most of their capability to influence events. It isn't
surprising that no one respects political leaders any more, or has
much interest in what they have to say. The era of the nation state
is over. Nations, as the Japanese business writer Keniche Ohmae
puts it, have become mere 'fictions'. Authors like Ohmae see the
economic difficulties of last year and this as demonstrating the
reality of globalisation, albeit seen from its disruptive side.
The sceptics tend to be on the political
left, especially the old left. For if all of this is essentially
a myth, governments can still intervene in economic life and the
welfare state remain intact. The notion of globalisation, according
to the sceptics, is an ideology put about by free-marketeers who
wish to dismantle welfare systems and cut back on state expenditures.
What has happened is at most a reversion to how the world was a
century ago. In the late 19th Century there was already an open
global economy, with a great deal of trade, including trade in currencies.
Well, who is right in this debate? I think
it is the radicals. The level of world trade today is much higher
than it ever was before, and involves a much wider range of goods
and services. But the biggest difference is in the level of finance
and capital flows. Geared as it is to electronic money - money that
exists only as digits in computers - the current world economy has
no parallels in earlier times. In the new global electronic economy,
fund managers, banks, corporations, as well as millions of individual
investors, can transfer vast amounts of capital from one side of
the world to another at the click of a mouse. As they do so, they
can destabilise what might have seemed rock-solid economies - as
happened in East Asia.
The volume of world financial transactions
is usually measured in US dollars. A million dollars is a lot of
money for most people. Measured as a stack of thousand dollar notes,
it would be eight inches high. A billion dollars - in other words,
a million million - would be over 120 miles high, 20 times higher
than Mount Everest.
Yet far more than a trillion dollars is
now turned over each day on global currency markets, a massive increase
from only 10 years ago, let alone the more distant past. The value
of whatever money we may have in our pockets, or our bank accounts,
shifts from moment to moment according to fluctuations in such markets.
I would have no hesitation, therefore, in saying that globalisation,
as we are experiencing it, is in many respects not only new, but
revolutionary.
However, I don't believe either the sceptics
or the radicals have properly understood either what it is or its
implications for us. Both groups see the phenomenon almost solely
in economic terms. This is a mistake. Globalisation is political,
technological and cultural, as well as economic. It has been influenced
above all by developments in systems of communication, dating back
only to the late 1960's.
In the mid-19th Century, a Massachusetts
portrait painter, Samuel Morse, transmitted the first message, "What
hath god wrought?", by electric telegraph. In so doing, he
initiated a new phase in world history. Never before could a message
be sent without someone going somewhere to carry it. Yet the advent
of satellite communications marks every bit as dramatic a break
with the past. The first communications satellite was launched only
just over 30 years ago. Now there are more than 200 such satellites
above the earth, each carrying a vast range of information. For
the first time ever, instantaneous communication is possible from
one side of the world to the other. Other types of electronic communication,
more and more integrated with satellite transmission, have also
accelerated over the past few years. No dedicated transatlantic
or transpacific cables existed at all until the late 1950's. The
first held less than 100 voice paths. Those of today carry more
than a million.
On the first of February 1999, about 150
years after Morse invented his system of dots and dashes, Morse
code finally disappeared from the world stage, discontinued as a
means of communication for the sea. In its place has come a system
using satellite technology, whereby any ship in distress can be
pinpointed immediately. Most countries prepared for the transition
some while before. The French, for example, stopped using Morse
as a distress code in their local waters two years ago, signing
off with a Gallic flourish: 'Calling all. This is our last cry before
our eternal silence'.
Instantaneous electronic communication isn't
just a way in which news or information is conveyed more quickly.
Its existence alters the very texture of our lives, rich and poor
alike. When the image of Nelson Mandela maybe is more familiar to
us than the face of our next door neighbour, something has changed
in the nature of our everyday experience.
Nelson Mandela is a global celebrity, and
celebrity itself is largely a product of new communications technology.
The reach of media technologies is growing with each wave of innovation.
It took 40 years for radio in the United States to gain an audience
of 50 million. The same number were using personal computers only
15 years after the PC was introduced. It needed a mere four years,
after it was made available for 50 million Americans to be regularly
using the Internet.
It is wrong to think of globalisation as
just concerning the big systems, like the world financial order.
Globalisation isn't only about what is 'out there', remote and far
away from the individual. It is an 'in here' phenomenon too, influencing
intimate and personal aspects of our lives. The debate about family
values, for example, that is going on in many countries, might seem
far removed from globalising influences. It isn't. Traditional family
systems are becoming transformed, or are under strain, in many parts
of the world, particularly as women stake claim to greater equality.
There has never before been a society, so far as we know from the
historical record, in which women have been even approximately equal
to men. This is a truly global revolution in everyday life, whose
consequences are being felt around the world in spheres from work
to politics.
Globalisation thus is a complex set of processes,
not a single one. And these operate in a contradictory or oppositional
fashion. Most people think of it as simply 'pulling away' power
or influence from local communities and nations into the global
arena. And indeed this is one of its consequences. Nations do lose
some of the economic power they once had. However, it also has an
opposite effect. Globalisation not only pulls upwards, it pushes
downwards, creating new pressures for local autonomy. The American
sociologist Daniel Bell expresses this very well when he says that
the nation becomes too small to solve the big problems, but also
too large to solve the small ones.
Globalisation is the reason for the revival
of local cultural identities in different parts of the world. If
one asks, for example, why the Scots want more independence in the
UK, or why there is a strong separatist movement in Quebec, the
answer is not to be found only in their cultural history. Local
nationalisms spring up as a response to globalising tendencies,
as the hold of older nation-states weakens.
Globalisation also squeezes sideways. It
creates new economic and cultural zones within and across nations.
Examples are the Hong Kong region, northern Italy, or Silicon Valley
in California. The area around Barcelona in northern Spain extends
over into France. Catalonia, where Barcelona is located, is closely
integrated into the European Union. It is part of Spain, yet also
looks outwards.
The changes are being propelled by a range
of factors, some structural, others more specific and historical.
Economic influences are certainly among the driving forces, especially
the global financial system. Yet they aren't like forces of nature.
They have been shaped by technology, and cultural diffusion, as
well as by the decisions of governments to liberalise and deregulate
their national economies.
The collapse of Soviet communism has added
further weight to such developments, since no significant group
of countries any longer stands outside. That collapse wasn't just
something that happened to occur. Globalisation explains both why
and how Soviet communism met its end. The Soviet Union and the East
European countries were comparable to the West in terms of growth
rates until somewhere around the early 1970s. After that point,
they fell rapidly behind. Soviet communism, with its emphasis upon
state-run enterprise and heavy industry, could not compete in the
global electronic economy. The ideological and cultural control
upon which communist political authority was based similarly could
not survive in an era of global media.
The Soviet and the East European regimes
were unable to prevent the reception of western radio and TV broadcasts.
Television played a direct role in the 1989 revolutions, which have
rightly been called the first "television revolutions".
Street protests taking place in one country were watched by the
audiences in others, large numbers of whom then took to the streets
themselves.
Globalisation, of course, isn't developing
in an even-handed way, and is by no means wholly benign in its consequences.
To many living outside Europe and North America, it looks uncomfortably
like Westernisation - or, perhaps, Americanisation, since the US
is now the sole superpower, with a dominant economic, cultural and
military position in the global order. Many of the most visible
cultural expressions of globalisation are American - Coca-Cola,
McDonald's.
Most of giant multinational companies are
based in the US too. Those that aren't all come from the rich countries,
not the poorer areas of the world. A pessimistic view of globalisation
would consider it largely an affair of the industrial North, in
which the developing societies of the South play little or no active
part. It would see it as destroying local cultures, widening world
inequalities and worsening the lot of the impoverished. Globalisation,
some argue, creates a world of winners and losers, a few on the
fast track to prosperity, the majority condemned to a life of misery
and despair.
And indeed the statistics are daunting.
The share of the poorest fifth of the world's population in global
income has dropped from 2.3% to 1.4% over the past 10 years. The
proportion taken by the richest fifth, on the other hand, has risen
from 70% to 85%. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 20 countries have lower
incomes per head in real terms than they did two decades ago. In
many less developed countries, safety and environmental regulations
are low or virtually non-existent. Some trans-national companies
sell goods there that are controlled or banned in the industrial
countries - poor quality medical drugs, destructive pesticides or
high tar and nicotine content cigarettes. As one writer put it recently,
rather than a global village, this is more like global pillage.
Along with ecological risk, to which it
is related, expanding inequality is the most serious problem facing
world society. It will not do, however, merely to blame it on the
wealthy. It is fundamental to my argument that globalisation today
is only partly Westernisation. Of course the western nations, and
more generally the industrial countries, still have far more influence
over world affairs than do the poorer states. But globalisation
is becoming increasingly de-centred - not under the control of any
group of nations, and still less of the large corporations. Its
effects are felt just as much in the western countries as elsewhere.
This is true of the global financial system,
communications and media, and of changes affecting the nature of
government itself. Examples of 'reverse colonisation' are becoming
more and more common. Reverse colonisation means that non-western
countries influence developments in the west. Examples abound -
such as the Latinising of Los Angeles, the emergence of a globally-oriented
high-tech sector in India, or the selling of Brazilian TV programmes
to Portugal.
Is globalisation a force promoting the general
good? The question can't be answered in simple way, given the complexity
of the phenomenon. People who ask it, and who blame globalisation
for deepening world inequalities, usually have in mind economic
globalisation, and within that, free trade. Now it is surely obvious
that free trade is not an unalloyed benefit. This is especially
so as concerns the less developed countries. Opening up a country,
or regions within it, to free trade can undermine a local subsistence
economy. An area that becomes dependent upon a few products sold
on world markets is very vulnerable to shifts in prices as well
as to technological change.
Trade always needs a framework of institutions,
as do other forms of economic development. Markets cannot be created
by purely economic means, and how far a given economy should be
exposed to the world marketplace must depend upon a range of criteria.
Yet to oppose economic globalisation, and to opt for economic protectionism,
would be a misplaced tactic for rich and poor nations alike. Protectionism
may be a necessary strategy at some times and in some countries.
In my view, for example, Malaysia was correct to introduce controls
in 1998, to stem the flood of capital from the country. But more
permanent forms of protectionism will not help the development of
the poor countries, and among the rich would lead to warring trade
blocs.
The debates about globalisation I mentioned
at the beginning have concentrated mainly upon its implications
for the nation-state. Are nation-states, and hence national political
leaders, still powerful, or are they becoming largely irrelevant
to the forces shaping the world? Nation-states are indeed still
powerful and political leaders have a large role to play in the
world. Yet at the same time the nation-state is being reshaped before
our eyes. National economic policy can't be as effective as it once
was. More importantly, nations have to rethink their identities
now the older forms of geopolitics are becoming obsolete. Although
this is a contentious point, I would say that, following the dissolving
of the cold war, nations no longer have enemies. Who are the enemies
of Britain, or France, or Japan? Nations today face risks and dangers
rather than enemies, a massive shift in their very nature.
It isn't only of the nation that such comments
could be made. Everywhere we look, we see institutions that appear
the same as they used to be from the outside, and carry the same
names, but inside have become quite different. We continue to talk
of the nation, the family, work, tradition, nature, as if they were
all the same as in the past. They are not. The outer shell remains,
but inside all is different - and this is happening not only in
the US, Britain, or France, but almost everywhere. They are what
I call shell institutions, and I shall talk about them quite a bit
in the lectures to come. They are institutions that have become
inadequate to the tasks they are called upon to perform.
As the changes I have described in this
lecture gather weight, they are creating something that has never
existed before, a global cosmopolitan society. We are the first
generation to live in this society, whose contours we can as yet
only dimly see. It is shaking up our existing ways of life, no matter
where we happen to be. This is not - at least at the moment - a
global order driven by collective human will. Instead, it is emerging
in an anarchic, haphazard, fashion, carried along by a mixture of
economic, technological and cultural imperatives.
It is not settled or secure, but fraught
with anxieties, as well as scarred by deep divisions. Many of us
feel in the grip of forces over which we have no control. Can we
re-impose our will upon them? I believe we can. The powerlessness
we experience is not a sign of personal failings, but reflects the
incapacities of our institutions. We need to reconstruct those we
have, or create new ones, in ways appropriate to the global age.
We should and we can look to achieve greater
control over our runaway world. We shan't be able to do so if we
shirk the challenges, or pretend that all can go on as before. For
globalisation is not incidental to our lives today. It is a shift
in our very life circumstances. It is the way we now live.
RISK
(Anthony Giddens, BBC's Reith Lectures '99, delivered in Hong Kong)
July 1998 was possibly the hottest month
in world history. 1998 as a whole may have been the hottest year.
Heat waves caused havoc in many areas of the northern hemisphere.
In Eilat, in Israel, for example, temperatures rose to almost 50
degrees Centigrade, while water consumption in the country went
up by 40%. Texas, in the United States, experienced temperatures
not far short of this. For the first eight months of the year, each
month topped the record for that month. A short while later, however,
in some of the areas affected by the heat waves, snow fell in places
that had never seen it before.
Are temperature shifts like this the result
of human interference with the world's climate? We can't be sure,
but we have to admit the possibility they might be, together with
the increased numbers of hurricanes, typhoons and storms that have
been noted in recent years. As a consequence of global industrial
development, we may have altered the world's climate, and damaged
a great deal more of our earthly habitat besides. We don't know
what further changes will result, or the dangers they will bring
in their train.
The theme of my lecture today is risk. I
hope to persuade you that this apparently simple notion unlocks
some of the most basic characteristics of the world in which we
now live.
At first sight, the concept of risk might
seem to have no specific relevance to our times, as compared to
previous ages. After all, haven't people always had to face their
fair share of risks? Life for the majority in the European Middle
Ages was nasty, brutish and short - as it is for many in poorer
areas of the world now.
But here we come across something really
interesting. Apart from some marginal contexts, in the Middle Ages
there was no concept of risk. Nor, so far as I have been able to
find out, was there in most other traditional cultures. The idea
of risk appears to have taken hold in the 16th and 17th centuries,
and was first coined by Western explorers as they set off on their
voyages across the world. The word 'risk' seems to have come into
English through Spanish or Portuguese, where it was used to refer
to sailing into uncharted waters. Originally, in other words, it
had an orientation to space. Later, it became transferred to time,
as used in banking and investment - to mean calculation of the probable
consequences of investment decisions for borrowers and lenders.
It subsequently came to refer to a wide range of other situations
of uncertainty.
The notion of risk, I should point out,
is inseparable from the ideas of probability and uncertainty. A
person can't be said to be running a risk where an outcome is 100%
certain.
There is an old joke that makes this point
rather neatly. A man jumps from the top of a hundred-story skyscraper.
As he passed each floor, on his way down, the people inside hear
him saying: 'so far so good', 'so far so good', 'so far so good',
… He acts as though he is making a risk calculation, but the
outcome is in fact determined. Traditional cultures didn't have
a concept of risk because they didn't need one. Risk isn't the same
as hazard or danger. Risk refers to hazards that are actively assessed
in relation to future possibilities. It only comes into wide usage
in a society that is future-oriented - which sees the future precisely
as a territory to be conquered or colonised. Risk presumes a society
that actively tries to break away from its past - the prime characteristic
indeed of modern industrial civilisation.
All previous cultures, including the great
early civilisations of the world, such as Rome, or traditional China,
have lived primarily in the past. They have used the ideas of fate,
luck or the 'will of the gods' where we now tend to substitute risk.
In traditional cultures, if someone meets with an accident, or conversely,
prospers - well, it is just one of those things, or it is what the
gods and spirits intended. Some cultures have denied the idea of
chance happenings altogether. The Azande, an African tribe, believe
that when a misfortune befalls someone it is the result of sorcery.
If an individual falls ill, for example, it is because an enemy
has been practising black magic.
Such views, of course, don't disappear completely
with modernisation. Magical notions, concepts of fate and cosmology
still have a hold. But often they continue on as superstitions,
in which people only half believe, and follow in a somewhat embarrassed
way. They use them to back up decisions of a more calculative nature.
Gamblers, and this includes gamblers on the stock exchange, mostly
have rituals that psychologically paper over the uncertainties they
must confront. The same applies to many risks that we can't help
running, since being alive at all is by definition a risky business.
It isn't in any way surprising, that people still consult astrologers,
especially at vital points of their lives.
Yet acceptance of risk is also the condition
of excitement and adventure - think of the pleasures some people
get from the risks of gambling, driving fast, sexual adventurism,
or the plunge of a fairground rollercoaster. Moreover, a positive
embrace of risk is the very source of that energy which creates
wealth in a modern economy.
The two aspects of risk - its negative and
positive sides - appear from the early days of modern industrial
society. Risk is the mobilising dynamic of a society bent on change,
that wants to determine its own future rather than leaving it to
religion, tradition, or the vagaries of nature. Modern capitalism
differs from all previous forms of economic system in terms of its
attitudes towards the future. Previous types of market enterprise
were irregular or partial. The activities of merchants and traders
for example, never made much dent in the basic structure of traditional
civilisations, which all remained heavily agricultural and rural.
Modern capitalism embeds itself into the future by calculating future
profit and loss, and therefore risk, as a continuous process. This
wasn't possible until the invention of double entry bookkeeping
in the 15th Century in Europe, which made it possible to track in
a precise way how money can be invested to make more money. Many
risks, of course, such as those affecting health, we do wish to
reduce as far as possible. This is why from its origins, the notion
of risk is accompanied by the rise of insurance. We shouldn't think
only of private or commercial insurance here. The welfare state,
whose development can be traced back to the Elizabethan poor laws
in England, is essentially a risk management system. It is designed
to protect against hazards that were once treated as at the disposition
of the gods - sickness, disablement, job loss and old age.
Insurance is the baseline against which
people are prepared to take risks, it is the basis of security where
fate has been ousted by an active engagement with the future. Like
the idea of risk, modern forms of insurance began with seafaring.
The earliest marine insurances were written in the 16th Century,
a London company first underwrote an overseas risk in 1782. Lloyds
of London took a leading position in the emerging insurance industry,
which it has sustained for two centuries. Insurance is only conceivable
where we believe in a humanly engineered future. It is one of the
means of doing that engineering. Insurance is about providing security,
but it is actually parasitic upon risk and people's attitudes towards
it. Those who provide insurance, whether in the shape of private
insurance or state welfare systems, are essentially simply redistributing
risk. If someone takes out fire insurance against his or her house
burning down, the risk doesn't go away. The householder trades off
the risk to the insurer in exchange for payment. The trading and
offloading of risk isn't just a casual feature of a capitalist economy.
Capitalism is actually unthinkable and unworkable without it.
For these reasons, the idea of risk has
always been involved in modernity, but I want to argue that in the
current period risk assumes a new and peculiar importance. Risk
was supposed to be a way of regulating the future, of normalising
it and bringing it under our dominion. Things haven't turned out
that way. Our very attempts to control the future tend to rebound
upon us, forcing us to look for different ways of relating to uncertainty.
The best way to explain what is going on
is to make a distinction between two types of risk. One I shall
call external risk. External risk is risk experienced as coming
from the outside, from the fixities of tradition or nature. I want
to distinguish this from manufactured risk, by which I mean risk
created by the very impact of our developing knowledge upon the
world. Manufactured risk refers to risk situations which we have
very little historical experience for confronting. Most environmental
risks, such as these connected with global warming, fall into this
category. They are directly influenced by the intensifying globalisation
I discussed in my opening lecture.
The best way I can clarify the distinction
between the two kinds of risk is as follows. In all traditional
cultures, one could say, and in industrial society right up to the
threshold of the present day, human beings worried about the risks
coming from external nature - from bad harvests, floods, plagues
or famines. At a certain point, however - very recently in historical
terms - we started worrying less about what nature can do to us,
and more about what we have done to nature. This marks the transition
from the predominance of external risk to that of manufactured risk.
Who are the 'we' here, doing the worrying?
Well I think now it is all of us, regardless of whether we are in
the richer or poorer areas of the world. At the same time, it is
obvious that there is a division that by and large separates the
affluent regions from the rest. Many more 'traditional' risks, of
the sort just mentioned - such as the risk of famine when the harvest
is bad - still exist in proper countries overlapping with the new
risks.
Our society lives after the end of nature.
The end of nature doesn't mean, obviously, that the physical world
or physical processes cease to exist. It refers to the fact that
there are few aspects of our surrounding material environment that
haven't been in some way affected by human intervention. Much of
what used to be natural isn't completely natural any more, although
we can't always be sure where the one stops and the other begins.
Last year there were big floods in central China, in which many
people lost their lives. The flooding of the major rivers has been
a recurrent part of Chinese history. Were these particular floods
more of the same, or were they influenced by global climate change?
No one knows, but there are some unusual features of the floods
that suggest their causes were not wholly natural.
Manufactured risk doesn't only concern nature
- or what used to be nature. It penetrates into other areas of life
too. Take, for example, marriage and the family, now undergoing
profound changes in the industrial countries and to some extent
world-wide. Two or three generations ago, when people got married,
they knew what it was they were doing. Marriage, largely fixed by
tradition and custom, was akin to a state of nature - as of course
remains true in many countries. Where traditional cultures are dissolving,
however, when people marry, or form relationships, there is an important
sense in which they don't know what they are doing, because the
institutions of marriage and the family have changed so much. Here
individuals are striking out afresh, like pioneers. It is inevitable
in such situations, whether they know it or not, that people start
thinking more and more in terms of risk. They have to confront personal
futures that are much more open than in the past, with all the opportunities
and hazards this brings.
As manufactured risk expands, there is a
new riskiness to risk. The rise of the idea of risk, as I pointed
out earlier, was closely tied to the possibility of calculation.
Most forms of insurance are based directly upon this connection.
Every time someone steps into a car, for instance, one can calculate
that person's chances of being involved in an accident. This is
actuarial prediction - there is a long time-series to go on. Situations
of manufactured risk aren't like this. We simply don't know what
the level of risk is, and in many cases we won't know for sure until
it is too late. Not long ago was the 10th anniversary of the accident
at the Chernobyl nuclear station in Ukraine. No one knows what its
long-term consequences will be. There might or might not be a stored-up
disaster to health due to happen some while from now. Exactly the
same is true of the BSE episode in the UK - the outbreak of so-called
mad cow disease, in terms of its implications for humans. At the
moment, we can't be sure whether at some point many more people
than at present will fall ill.
Or consider where we stand with world climate
change. Most scientists well versed in the field believe that global
warming is occurring and that measures should be taken against it.
Yet only about 25 or so years ago, orthodox scientific opinion was
that the world was in a phase of global cooling. Much the same evidence
that was deployed to support the hypothesis of global cooling is
now brought into play to bolster that of global warming - heat waves,
cold spells, unusual types of weather. Is global warming occurring,
and does it have human origins? Probably - but we won't, and can't,
be completely sure until it is too late.
In these circumstances, there is a new moral
climate of politics, marked by a push-and-pull between accusations
of scaremongering on the one hand, and of cover-ups on the other.
If anyone - government official, scientific expert or researcher
- takes a given risk seriously, he or she must proclaim it. It must
be widely publicised because people must be persuaded that the risk
is real - a fuss must be made about it. Yet if a fuss is indeed
created and the risk turns out to be minimal, those involved will
be accused of scaremongering.
Suppose, on the other hand, that the authorities
initially decide that the risk is not very great, as the British
government did in the case of contaminated beef. In this instance,
the government first of all said: we've got the backing of scientists
here; there isn't a significant risk, we can continue eating beef
without any worries. In such situations, if events turn out otherwise
- as in fact they did - the authorities will be accused of a cover-up
- as indeed they were.
Things are even more complex than these
examples suggest. Paradoxically, scaremongering may be necessary
to reduce risks we face - yet if it is successful, it appears as
just that, scaremongering. The case of AIDS is an example. Governments
and experts made great public play with the risks associated with
unsafe sex, to get people to change their sexual behaviour. Partly
as a consequence, in the developed countries, AIDS did not spread
as much as was originally predicted. Then the response was: why
were you scaring everyone like that? Yet as we know from its continuing
global spread - they were - and are - entirely right to do so.
This sort of paradox becomes routine in
contemporary society, but there is no easily available way of dealing
with it. For as I mentioned earlier, in most situations of manufactured
risk, even whether there are risks at all is likely to be disputed.
We cannot know beforehand when we are actually scare-mongering and
when we are not.
Our relationship to science and technology
today is different from that characteristic of earlier times. In
Western society, for some two centuries, science functioned as a
sort of tradition. Scientific knowledge was supposed to overcome
tradition, but actually in a way became one in its own right. It
was something that most people respected, but was external to their
activities. Lay people 'took' opinions from the experts.
The more science and technology intrude
into our lives, and do so on a global level the less this perspective
holds. Most of us - including government authorities and politicians
- have, and have to have, a much more active or engaged relationship
with science and technology than used to be the case.
We cannot simply 'accept' the findings which
scientists produce, if only because scientists so frequently disagree
with one another, particularly in situations of manufactured risk.
And everyone now recognises the essentially sceptical character
of science. Whenever someone decides what to eat, what to have for
breakfast, whether to drink decaffeinated or ordinary coffee, that
person takes a decision in the context of conflicting and changeable
scientific and technological information.
Consider, for instance, red wine. As with
other alcoholic drinks, red wine was once thought harmful to health.
Research then indicated that drinking red wine in reasonable quantities
protects against heart disease. Subsequently it was found that any
form of alcohol will do, but it is only protective for people above
age 40. Who knows what the next set of findings will show?
Some say that the most effective way to
cope with the rise of manufactured risk is to limit responsibility
by adopting the so-called 'precautionary principle'. The notion
of the precautionary principle first emerged in Germany about 15
years ago, in the context of the ecological debates that were carried
on there. At its simplest, it proposes that action on environmental
issues (and by inference other forms of risk) should be taken even
though there is insecure scientific evidence about them. Thus in
the 1980's, in several Continental countries, programmes were initiated
to counter acid rain, whereas in Britain lack of conclusive evidence
was used to justify inactivity about this and other pollution problems
too.
Yet the precautionary principle isn't always
helpful or even applicable as a means of coping with problems of
risk and responsibility. The precept of 'staying close to nature',
or of limiting innovation rather than embracing it, can't always
apply. The reason is that the balance of benefits and dangers from
scientific and technological advance, and other forms of social
change too, is imponderable. We may need quite often to be bold
rather than cautious in supporting scientific innovation or other
forms of change. After all, one root of the term risk in the original
Portuguese means 'to dare'. Take as an example the controversy over
genetically modified foods. Genetically modified crops are already
growing on 35 million hectares of land across the world - an area
12 times the size of Britain. Most are being grown in North America
and China. Crops include soya, maize, cotton and potatoes.
No more obvious situation could be found
where nature is no longer nature. The risks involve a number of
unknowns - or, if I can put it this way, known unknowns, because
the world has a pronounced tendency to surprise us. There may be
other consequences that no one has yet anticipated. One type of
risk, is that the crops may carry medium or long-term healthy hazards.
After all, a good deal of gene technology, is essentially new, different
from older methods of cross-breeding.
Another possibility is that genes incorporated
into crops, to increase resistance to pests might spread to other
plants - creating 'super weeds'. This in turn could pose a threat
to biodiversity in the environment.
Since pressure to grow, and consume, genetically
modified crops is partly driven by sheer commercial interests, wouldn't
it be sensible to impose a global ban on them? But even supposing
such a ban were feasible, things - as ever - are not so simple.
The intensive agriculture widely practised today is not indefinitely
sustainable. It uses large amounts of chemical fertilisers and insecticides,
destructive to the environment. We can't go back to more traditional
modes of farming and still hope to feed the world's population.
Bioengineered crops could reduce the use
of chemical pollutants, and hence resolve these problems.
Whichever way you look at it, we are caught
up in risk management. With the spread of manufactured risk, governments
can't pretend such management isn't their business. And they need
to collaborate, since very few new-style risks, have anything to
do with the borders of nations.
But neither, as ordinary individuals, can
we ignore these new risks - or wait for definitive science evidence
to arrive. As consumers, each of us has to decide, whether to try
to avoid genetically modified products or not. These risks, and
the dilemmas surrounding them, have entered deeply into our everyday
lives.
Let me move towards some conclusions and
at the same time try to make sure my arguments are clear. Our age
is not more dangerous - not more risky - than those of earlier generations
- but the balance of risks and dangers has shifted. We live in a
world where hazards created by ourselves are as, or more, threatening
than those that come from the outside. Some of these are genuinely
catastrophic, such as global ecological risk, nuclear proliferation,
or the meltdown of the world economy. Others affect us as individuals
much more directly, for instance, those involved in diet, medicine,
or even marriage.
An era such as ours will inevitably breed
religious revivalism and diverse New Age philosophies, which turn
against a scientific outlook. Some ecological thinkers have become
hostile to science, and even to rational thought more generally,
because of ecological risks. This isn't an attitude that makes much
sense. We wouldn't even know about these risks without scientific
analysis. However, our relationship to science, for reasons already
given, won't and can't be the same as in previous times.
We do not currently possess institutions
which allow us to monitor technological change, nationally or globally.
The BSE debacle in Britain and elsewhere, might have been avoided,
if a public dialogue had already been established about technological
change and its problematic consequences. More public means of engaging
with science and technology wouldn't do away with the quandary of
scaremongering versus cover-ups, but it might allow us to reduce
some of its more damaging consequences.
Finally, there can be no question of merely
taking a negative attitude towards risk. Risk always needs to be
disciplined, but active risk-taking is a core element of a dynamic
economy and an innovative society. What more appropriate place could
there be to emphasise this than here in Hong Kong?
DEMOCRACY
Anthony Giddens, BBC's Reith Lectures '99)
On November 9th, 1989, I was in Berlin -
in what was then West Germany. At the meeting I had come to take
part in, some of those present were from East Berlin. One such person,
who was away that afternoon, later came back in a state of some
excitement. He had been in the East, and was told that the Berlin
Wall was on the point of being opened.
A small group of us got down there very
quickly. Ladders were being put against it and we started to climb
up. But we were pushed back by television crews who had just arrived
on the scene. They had to go up first, they said, so that they could
film us scaling the ladders and arriving at the top. They even persuaded
some people to go back down and climb up twice, to make sure they
had good TV footage.
Thus is history made in the closing years
of the 20th Century. Television not only gets there first, it stages
the spectacle. In a way, as I shall go on to argue, the TV crews
had the right to push themselves to the front. For television had
an important role in making the opening of the wall happen, as it
did more generally in the transformations of 1989 in Eastern Europe.
The driving force of the 1989 revolutions was democracy or self-rule.
And the spread of democracy in the recent period has been strongly
influenced by the advance of global communications.
Democracy is perhaps the most powerful energising
idea of the 20th Century. There are few states in the world today
that don't call themselves democratic. The Soviet Union and its
East European dependencies called themselves 'people's democracies',
as communist China continues to do. Virtually the only countries
that are explicitly non-democratic are the last remaining semi-feudal
states like Saudi Arabia - and even these are hardly untouched by
democratic currents.
What is democracy? The issue is a contentious
one, and many different interpretations have been offered. I shall
mean by it the following. Democracy is a system involving effective
competition between political parties for positions of power. In
a democracy, there are regular and fair elections, in which all
members of the population may take part. These rights of democratic
participation go along with civil liberties - freedom of expression
and discussion, together with the freedom to form and join political
groups or associations.
Democracy isn't an all or nothing thing.
There can be different forms, as well as different levels, of democratisation.
Democracy in Britain and the United States, for instance, isn't
all of a piece. A British traveller in the US once enquired of an
American companion: 'how can you bear to be governed by people you
wouldn't dream of inviting to dinner?' to which the American replied,
'how can you bear to be governed by people who wouldn't dream of
inviting you to dinner? More or less everyone is a democrat now,
but it certainly wasn't always so. Democratic ideas were fiercely
resisted by established elites and ruling groups in the 19th Century,
and often treated with derision. Democracy was the inspiring ideal
of the American and French revolutions, but for a long while its
hold was limited. Only a minority of the population had the vote.
Even some of the most fervent advocates of democratic government,
such as the philosopher John Stuart Mill, argued that limitations
should be imposed on it. Mill recommended that some of the electorate
should have more votes than others, so that in his words, the 'wiser
and talented' have more influence than the 'ignorant and less able'.
Democracy in the West only became fully
developed in the current century. Before the First World War, women
had the right to vote in only four countries - Finland, Norway,
Australia and New Zealand. They didn't get the vote in Switzerland
until as late as 1974. Moreover, some countries that became fully
democratic later experienced relapses. Germany, Italy, Austria,
Spain and Portugal all had periods of authoritarian rule or military
dictatorship during the period from the 1930's to the 1970's. Outside
Europe, North America and Australasia, there have only been a small
number of long-standing democracies, such as Costa Rica in Latin
America.
Over the past few decades, however, much
of this has changed, and in a remarkable way. Since the mid-1970s,
the number of democratic governments in the world has more than
doubled. Democracy has spread to over thirty more countries, while
all the existing democratic states have kept democratic institutions
in place. These changes began in Mediterranean Europe, with the
overthrow of the military regimes in Greece, Spain and Portugal.
The second group of countries where democracy spread - this time
mainly in the early 1980s, was in South and Central America. Some
twelve countries established or re-established democratic government,
including Brazil, Peru and Argentina.
The story continues across all continents.
The transition to democracy post 1989 in Eastern Europe, and parts
of the ex Soviet Union, was followed in a number of countries in
Africa. In Asia, with some problems and reversals, democratisation
has been going on over the whole period since the early 1970s -
in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Thailand and
Mongolia. India has remained a democratic state since its independence
in 1947.
Of course, some states making the transition
to democracy fall short of full democratisation, or appear to have
stalled along the way. Russia is only one of many examples. Others
are simply putting back what existed before. Argentina, and some
other Latin American countries, have had democratic government previously,
as have the Czech Republic, or Poland in Easter Europe. Since democratic
governments have in Eastern Europe often been overthrown, we can't
be sure how permanent any of these democratic transitions will be.
Yet democracy has made nearly as much advance during the past thirty
years as it did over more than a whole century before that. Why?
One possible answer is offered by those who take a triumphalist
view of the Western combination of democracy and free markets. This
is that other systems have been tried and have failed. Democracy
has come out top because it is best. It simply took most countries
outside the Western ambit some while to recognise this.
I wouldn't dispute part of the argument.
Democracy is best. But as an account of the recent waves of democratisation,
it is hardly adequate. It doesn't explain why such changes should
happen at this juncture in history.
To get a better explanation, we need to
resolve what I shall call the paradox of democracy. The paradox
of democracy is this. On the one hand, democracy is spreading over
the world, as I have just described. Yet in the mature democracies,
which the rest of the world is supposed to be copying, there is
widespread disillusionment with democratic processes. In most Western
countries, levels of trust in politicians have dropped over past
years. Fewer people turn out to vote than used to, particularly
in the US. More and more people say that they are uninterested in
parliamentary politics, especially among the younger generation.
Why are citizens in democratic countries apparently becoming disillusioned
with democratic government, at the same time as it is spreading
around the rest of the world?
The changes I have been analysing throughout
these lectures explain why. For increasing numbers across the world,
life is no longer lived as fate - as relatively fixed and determined
- authoritarian government becomes out of line with other life experiences,
including the flexibility and dynamism necessary to compete in the
global electronic economy. Political power based upon authoritarian
command can no longer draw upon reserves of traditional deference,
or respect.
In a world based upon active communication,
hard power - power that comes only from the top down - loses its
edge. The economic conditions that the Soviet Union couldn't handle
- the need for decentralisation and flexibility - were mirrored
in politics. Information monopoly, upon which the political system
was based, has no future in an intrinsically open framework of global
communications.
In the East European events of 1989, large
numbers of people took to the streets. But - unlike almost any other
revolution in history - there was remarkably little violence. What
seemed a system of implacable power - Communist totalitarianism
- faded away as though it had hardly existed. Few thought apartheid
in South Africa could disappear without being forcibly overthrown.
But it did.
The only episodes of violence that occurred
in 1989 were involved in the seizure of television stations. Those
who invaded them got their priorities right. The communications
revolution has produced more active, reflexive citizenries than
existed before. It is these very developments that are at the same
time producing disaffection in the long-established democracies.
In a detraditionalising world, politicians can't rely upon the old
forms of pomp and circumstance to justify what they do. Orthodox
parliamentary politics becomes remote from the flood of change sweeping
through people's lives.
Where does this leave democracy itself?
Should we accept that democratic institutions are becoming marginal
just at the point where democracy seems on a roll?
Some very interesting findings are revealed
in the opinion polls carried out in different Western countries
about trust in government. People have indeed lost a good deal of
the trust they used to have in politicians and orthodox democratic
procedures. They haven't lost their faith, however, in democratic
processes. In a recent survey in the US and the major West European
countries, well over 90% of the population said they approved of
democratic government. Moreover, contrary to what many assume, most
people aren't becoming uninterested in politics as such. The findings
actually show the reverse. People are more interested in politics
than they used to be. This includes the younger generation. Younger
people are not, as has so often been said a generation X, disaffected
and alienated.
What they are, or many of them are, is more
cynical about the claims politicians make and concerned about questions
that they feel politicians have little to say about. Many regard
politics as a corrupt business, in which political leaders are self-interested,
rather than having the good of their citizens at heart. Younger
people see issues such as ecological questions, human rights, family
policy and sexual freedom as most important. On an economic level,
they don't believe that politicians are able to deal with the forces
moving the world. As everyone understands, many of these go beyond
the level of the nation state. It isn't surprising that activists
should choose to put their energies into special interest groups,
since these promise what orthodox politics seems unable to deliver.
How can democracy and active government
be sustained when they seem to have lost their purchase on events?
I think there are answers. What is needed in the democratic countries
is a deepening of democracy itself. I shall call this democratising
democracy. But democracy today must also become transnational. We
need to democratise above the level of the nation. A globalising
era demands global responses, and this applies to politics just
as much as any other area.
A deepening of democracy is required, because
the old mechanisms of government don't work in a society where citizens
live in the same information environment as those in power over
them. Western democratic governments, of course, have never been
as secretive as communist states or other types of authoritarian
government. Yet secretive in some contexts they certainly have been.
Think, for example, of how much was concealed by the US and British
governments in the cold war period about nuclear testing and weapons
development. Western democratic systems have also involved old-boy
networks, political patronage and back stage deals. They frequently
make use of traditional symbolism, and traditional forms of power,
that are less than wholly democratic. The House of Lords in the
UK is only one of the most obvious of such examples. As traditions
lose their grip, what once seemed venerable, and worthy of respect,
almost overnight can come to appear quaint, or even ridiculous.
It was not by accident there have been so
many corruption scandals in politics around the world in the past
few years. From Japan to Germany, France and the US to the UK, corruption
cases have made the news. I doubt that corruption is more common
in democratic countries than it used to be. Rather, in an open information
society it is more visible, and the boundaries of what counts as
corruption have shifted. In Britain, for example, the old boy network
in the past was simply the way in which things were done, even when
left of centre parties were in power. Such networks have hardly
disappeared, but much of what used to happen through them, and be
widely accepted, is now defined as illegitimate.
The democratising of democracy will take
different forms in different countries, depending on their background.
But there isn't any country so advanced that it is exempt. Democratising
democracy means having an effective devolution of power, where -
as in Britain - power is still strongly concentrated at the national
level. It means having effective anti-corruption measures at all
levels.
It often implies constitutional reform,
and the promotion of greater transparency in political affairs.
We should also be prepared to experiment with alternative democratic
procedures, especially when these might help bring political decision-making
close to the everyday concerns of citizens. Peoples' juries, for
example, or electronic referenda, won't replace representative democracy,
but they can be a useful complement to it.
Political parties will have to get more
used to collaborating with single issue groups, such as ecological
pressure groups, than they have in the past. Some people see contemporary
societies as fragmented and disorganised, but in fact the opposite
is true. People are getting more involved in groups and associations
than they used to. In Britain, 20 times more people belong to voluntary
or self-help groups than are members of political parties, and much
the same is true of other countries.
Single issue groups are often at the forefront
in raising problems and questions that may go ignored in orthodox
political circles until too late. Thus well before the BSE crisis
in the UK groups and movements had been warning about the dangers
of contamination in the food chain.
The democratising of democracy also depends
upon the fostering of a strong civic culture. This is absolutely
central. Markets cannot produce such a culture. Nor can a pluralism
of special interest groups. We shouldn't think of there being only
two sectors of society, the state and the marketplace - or the public
and the private. In between is the area of civil society, including
the family and other non-economic institutions. Building a democracy
of the emotions, of which I spoke last time, is one part of a progressive
civic culture. Civil society is the arena in which democratic attitudes,
including tolerance, have to be developed. The civic sphere can
be fostered by government, but is in its turn its cultural basis.
The democratising of democracy isn't relevant
only to the mature democracies. It can help build democratic institutions
where they are weak and undernourished. In Russia, for instance,
where gangster capitalism is rife, and strong authoritarian overtones
persist from the past, a more open and democratic society can't
be built in only a top down manner. It has to be constructed bottom
up, through a revival of civic culture. Replacing state control
with markets, even if they were more stable than they are, wouldn't
achieve this end. A well-functioning democracy has been aptly compared
to a three-legged stool. Government, the economy and civil society
need to be in balance. If one dominates over the others, unfortunate
consequences follow. In the former Soviet Union, the state dominated
most areas of life. Hence, there wasn't an energetic economy and
civil society was all but killed off.
We can't leave the media out of this equation.
The media, particularly television, have a double relation to democracy.
On the one hand, as I have stressed, the emergence of a global information
society, is a powerful democratising force. Yet television, and
the other media, tend to destroy the very public space of dialogue
they open up, through a relentless trivialising, and personalising,
of political issues. Moreover, the growth of giant multinational
media corporations means that unelected business tycoons can hold
enormous power.
Countering such power can't be a matter
of national policy alone. Crucially, the democratising of democracy
can't stop at the level of the nation state. As practised up to
now, democratic politics has presumed a national community that
is self-governing and able to shape most of the policies that concern
it. It has presumed the sovereign nation. But under the impact of
globalisation, sovereignty has become fuzzy. Nations and nation-states
remain powerful, but there are large democratic deficits opening
up - as the political scientist, David Held points out - between
them and the global forces that affect the lives of their citizens.
Environmental risks, fluctuations in the global economy, or global
technological change, do not respect the borders of nations. They
escape democratic process - one of the main reasons, as I said earlier,
for the declining appeal of democracy where it is best established.
Talk of democracy above the level of the
nation might seem quite unrealistic. Such ideas, after all, were
widely spoken of a hundred years ago. Instead of an era of global
harmony, there arrived two world wars, more than a hundred million
people have been killed in warfare during this century.
Are circumstances different now? Obviously
no one can say for sure, but I believe they are. I have given the
reasons why in earlier lectures. The world is much more interdependent
than it was a century ago, and the nature of world society has changed.
As a reverse side of the coin, the shared problems we face today
- such as global ecological risks - are also much greater.
How might democracy be fostered above the
level of the nation-state? I would look to the transnational organisations
as much as to the international ones. The United Nations, as its
very name indicates, is an association of nation states. For the
moment at least, it rarely challenges the sovereignty of nations,
and indeed its charter asserts that it should not do so. The European
Union is different. I would see it as forging a way that could,
and very likely will, be followed in other regions too. What is
important about the EU isn't that it is located in Europe, but that
is pioneering a form of transnational governance. Contrary to what
some of its supporters, and its critics say, it is not a federal
state or a super nation-state. But nor is it merely an association
of nations. The countries that have entered the EU have voluntarily
given up some of their sovereignty in order to do so.
Now the European Union isn't itself particularly
democratic. It has famously been said of the EU that if it applied
to join itself, it wouldn't get in. The EU doesn't meet the democratic
criteria it demands of its members. Yet there is nothing in principle
that prevents its further democratisation and we should press hard
for such change.
The existence of the EU drives home a cardinal
principle of democracy, when seen against the background of the
global order. This is that the transnational system can actively
contribute democracy within states, as well as between them. The
European courts, for example, have made a range of decisions, including
measures protecting individual rights that hold within the member
countries. As we look round the globe, at the end of the 20th Century,
we can see cause for optimism and pessimism in about equal measure.
The expansion of democracy is a case in point.
On the face of it, democracy seems a fragile
flower. In spite of its spread, oppressive regimes abound, while
human rights are routinely flouted in states around the world. In
Kosovo, that unfolding tragedy, hundreds of thousands have been
forced from their homes, and all pretence of the rule of law abandoned.
I would like to quote some words here, from a reporter on the spot:
'nearly half a million refugees' he says, are in Macedonia now.
How they are to be fed, nobody knows ... Come over into Macedonia
and help us!' This was published in the Toronto Daily Star. The
reporter was Ernest Hemingway, the date - October 20, 1922. One
might be forgiven for thinking that some problems are simply intractable,
without hope of resolution.
Democracy might appear to flourish only
in especially fertile soil, which has been cultivated in the long
term. In societies, or regions, that have little history of democratic
government, democracy seems to have shallow roots and is easily
swept away.
Yet perhaps all this is changing. Rather
than thinking of democracy as a fragile flower, easily trampled
underfoot, perhaps we should see it more as a sturdy plant, able
to grow even on quite barren ground. If my argument is correct,
the expansion of democracy is bound up with structural changes in
world society. Nothing comes without struggle. But the furthering
of democracy at all levels is worth fighting for and it can be achieved.
Our runaway world doesn't need less, but more government - and this,
only democratic institutions can provide.
TRADITION
- Anthony Giddens, BBC's Reith Lectures '99, delivered in New Delhi)
When Scots get together to celebrate their
national identity, they do so in ways steeped in tradition. Men
wear the kilt, with each clan having its own tartan - and their
ceremonials are accompanied by the wail of the bagpipes. By means
of these symbols, they show their loyalty to ancient rituals - rituals
whose origins go far back into antiquity.
Except for the fact that they don't. Along
with most other symbols of Scottishness, all these are quite recent
creations. The short kilt seems to have been invented by an English
industrialist from Lancashire, Thomas Rawlinson, in the early 18th
Century. He set out to alter the existing dress of highlanders to
make it convenient for workmen.
Kilts were a product of the industrial revolution.
The aim was not to preserve time-honoured customs, but the opposite
- to bring the highlanders out of the heather and into the factory.
The kilt didn't start life as the national dress of Scotland. The
lowlanders, who made up the large majority of Scots, saw highland
dress as a barbaric form of clothing, which most looked on with
some contempt. Similarly, many of the clan tartans worn now were
devised during the Victorian period, by enterprising tailors who
correctly saw a market in them.
Much of what we think of as traditional,
and steeped in the mists of time, is actually a product at most
of the last couple of centuries, and is often much more recent than
that. The case of the Scottish kilt comes from a celebrated volume
by the historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, called The Invention
of Tradition. They give examples of invented traditions from a variety
of different countries, including colonial India.
The British set up an archaeological survey
in the 1860s to identify the great monuments of India and to preserve
Indian 'heritage'. Believing local arts and crafts to be in decline,
they collected together artefacts to put in museums. Before 1860,
for example, Indian soldiers and the British both wore Western-style
uniforms. But in the eyes of the British, Indians had to look like
Indians. The dress uniforms were modified to include turbans, sashes
and tunics regarded as 'authentic'. Some of the traditions they
invented, or half invented, continue on in the country today, although
of course others were later rejected.
Tradition and custom - these have been the
stuff of most people's lives for most of human history. Yet it is
remarkable how little interest scholars and thinkers tend to show
in them. There are endless discussions of modernisation and what
it means to be modern, but few indeed about tradition. When I was
researching for this lecture, I came across dozens of academic books
in English with 'modernity' in the title. Indeed, I have written
a few myself - but I could only discover a couple of books specifically
about tradition.
It was the 18th Century Enlightenment in
Europe that gave tradition a bad name. One of its major figures,
the Baron D'Holbach, put things this way. I quote: 'Instructors
have long enough fixed men's eyes upon heaven, let them now turn
them upon earth. Fatigued with an inconceivable theology, ridiculous
fables, impenetrable mysteries, puerile ceremonies, let the human
mind apply itself to the study of nature, to intelligible objects,
sensible truths, and useful knowledge. Let the vain chimeras of
men be removed, and reasonable opinions will soon come of themselves,
into those heads which were thought to be forever destined to error'.
It is clear that D'Holbach never intended
a serious engagement with tradition and its role in society. Tradition
here is merely the shadow side of modernity, an implausible construct
that can be easily brushed aside. If we are really to get to grips
with tradition, we can't treat it merely as folly. The linguistic
roots of the word tradition are old. The English word has its origins
in the Latin term tradere, which meant to transmit, or give something
to another for safekeeping. Tradere was originally used in the context
of Roman Law, where it referred to the laws of inheritance. Property
that passed from one generation to another was supposed to be given
in trust - the inheritor had obligations to protect and nurture
it.
It might seem that the notion of tradition,
unlike kilts and bagpipes, has been around for many centuries. Once
more, appearances are deceptive. The term 'tradition' as it is used
it today is actually a product of the last 200 years in Europe.
Just like the concept of risk, which I talked about in my last lecture,
in mediaeval times there was no generic notion of tradition. There
was no call for such a word, precisely because tradition and custom
were everywhere.
The idea of tradition, then, is itself a
creation of modernity. That doesn't mean that one shouldn't use
it in relation to pre-modern or non-Western societies, but it does
imply that we should approach the discussion of tradition with some
care. By identifying tradition with dogma and ignorance, the Enlightenment
thinkers sought to justify their absorption with the new.
Disentangling ourselves from the prejudices
of the Enlightenment, how should we understand 'tradition'? We can
make a good start by going back to invented traditions. Invented
traditions and customs, Hobsbawm and Ranger suggest, aren't genuine
ones. They are contrived, rather than growing up spontaneously;
they are used as a means of power; and they haven't existed since
time immemorial. Whatever continuity they imply with the long-term
past is largely false.
I would turn their argument on its head.
All traditions, I would say, are invented traditions. No traditional
societies were wholly traditional, and traditions and customs have
been invented for a diversity of reasons. We shouldn't suppose that
the conscious construction of tradition is found only in the modern
period. Moreover, tradition always incorporates power, whether they
are constructed in a deliberate way or not. Kings, emperors, priests
and others have long invented traditions to suit themselves and
to legitimate their rule.
It is a myth to think of traditions as impervious
to change. Traditions evolve over time, but also can be quite suddenly
altered or transformed. If I can put it this way, they are invented
and reinvented.
Some traditions, of course, such as those
associated with the great religions, have lasted for hundreds of
years. There are core prescriptions of Islam, for instance, that
nearly all Muslim believers would hold to, and which have remained
recognisably the same over a very long period. Yet whatever continuity
there is in such doctrines goes along with many changes, even revolutionary
changes, in how they are interpreted and acted upon. There is no
such thing as a completely pure tradition. Like all the other world
religions, Islam drew upon a dazzling variety of cultural resources
- that is, other traditions. The same was true of the Ottoman empire
more generally, which incorporated Arab, Persian, Greek, Roman,
Berber, Turkish and Indian influences, among others, across the
years.
But it is simply wrong to suppose that for
a given set of symbols or practices to be traditional, they must
have existed for centuries. The Christmas address by the Queen,
which is broadcast every year in Britain, has become a tradition.
Yet it only started in 1932. Endurance over time is not the key
defining feature of tradition, or of its more diffuse cousin, custom.
The distinguishing characteristics of tradition are ritual and repetition.
Traditions are always properties of groups, communities or collectivities.
Individuals may follow traditions and customs, but traditions are
not a quality of individual behaviour in the way habits are.
What is distinctive about tradition is that
it defines a kind of truth. For someone following a traditional
practice, questions don't have to be asked about alternatives. However
much it may change, tradition provides a framework for action that
can go largely unquestioned. Traditions usually have guardians -
wise men, priests, sages. Guardians are not the same as experts.
They get their position and power from the fact that only they are
capable of interpreting tradition's ritual truth. Only they can
decipher the real meanings of the sacred texts or the other symbols
involved in the communal rituals.
The Enlightenment set out to destroy the
authority of tradition. It only partially succeeded. Traditions
remained strong for a long while in most of modern Europe and even
more firmly entrenched across most of the rest of the world. Many
traditions were reinvented and others were newly instituted. There
was a concerted attempt from some sectors of society to protect
or adapt the old traditions. After all, this is basically what conservative
philosophies have been, and are, all about. Tradition is perhaps
the most basic concept of conservatism, since conservatives believe
that it contains stored up wisdom.
A further reason for the persistence of
tradition in the industrial countries was that the institutional
changes signalled by modernity were largely confined to public institutions
- especially government and the economy. Traditional ways of doing
things tended to persist, or be re-established, in many other areas
of life, including everyday life. Once could even say there was
a sort of symbiosis between modernity and tradition. In most countries,
for example, the family, sexuality, and the divisions between the
sexes remained heavily saturated with tradition and custom.
Two basic changes are happening today under
the impact of globalisation. In the Western countries, not just
public institutions but everyday life is becoming opened up from
the hold of tradition. And other societies across the world that
remained more traditional are becoming detraditionalised. I take
it this is at the core of the emerging global cosmopolitan society
I have spoken of in previous lectures.
This is a society, I argued last week, living
after the end of nature. Few aspects of the physical world, in other
words, are any longer just natural - unaffected by human intervention.
It is also a society living after the end of tradition. The end
of tradition doesn't mean that tradition disappears, as the Enlightenment
thinkers wanted. On the contrary, in different versions, it continues
to flourish everywhere. But less and less - if I can put it this
fashion - is it tradition lived in the traditional way. The traditional
way means defending traditional activities through their own ritual
and symbolism - defending tradition through its internal claims
to truth.
A world where modernisation is not confined
to one geographical area, but makes itself felt globally, has a
number of consequences for tradition. Tradition and science sometimes
mingle in odd and interesting ways. Consider, for instance, the
much-discussed episode that happened in India in 1995, when the
deities in some Hindu shrines appeared to drink milk. On the same
day, several million people, not only in India but throughout the
world, tried to offer milk to a divine image.
Denis Vidal, an anthropologist who has written
about this phenomenon, remarks that I quote again: 'By manifesting
themselves simultaneously in every country of the world inhabited
by Indians, the Hindu deities may have succeeded in performing the
first ever miracle in tune with an era haunted by the slogan of
globalisation'. (muted laughter) Just as interestingly, it was widely
felt - by believers as well as non-believers - that scientific experiments
were needed to authenticate the miracle. Science was enlisted in
the service of faith.
Tradition in such an example isn't only
still alive, it is resurgent. Yet traditions also often succumb
to modernity, and are doing so in some situations all over the world.
Tradition that is drained of its content, and commercialised, becomes
either heritage or kitsch - the trinkets bought in the airport store.
As developed by the heritage industry, heritage is tradition repackaged
as spectacle. The refurbished buildings at tourist sites may look
splendid, and the refurbishment may even be authentic down to the
last detail. But the heritage that is thereby protected is severed
from the lifeblood of tradition, which is its connection with the
experience of everyday life.
In my view, it is entirely rational to recognise
that traditions are needed in society. We shouldn't accept the Enlightenment
idea that the world should rid itself of tradition altogether. Traditions
are needed, and will always persist, because they give continuity
and form to life. Take academic life, as an example. Everyone in
the academic world works within traditions. Even academic disciplines
as a whole, like economics, sociology or philosophy, have traditions.
The reason is that no one could work in a wholly eclectic fashion.
Without intellectual traditions, ideas would have no focus or direction.
However, it is part of academic life continually
to explore the limits of such traditions, and foster active interchange
between them. Tradition can perfectly well be defended in a non-traditional
way - and that should be its future. Ritual, ceremonial and repetition
have an important social role, something understood and acted upon
by most organisations, including governments. Traditions will continue
to be sustained insofar as they can effectively be justified - not
in terms of their own internal rituals, but as compared to other
traditions or ways of doing things.
This is true even of religious traditions.
Religion is normally associated with the idea of faith, a sort of
emotional leap into belief. Yet in a cosmopolitan world, more people
than ever before are regularly in contact with others who think
differently from them. They are required to justify their beliefs,
in an implicit way at least, both to themselves and others. There
cannot but be a large dollop of rationality in the persistence of
religious rituals and observances in a detraditionalising society.
And this is exactly as it should be.
As tradition changes its role, however,
new dynamics are introduced into our lives. These can be summarised
as a push and pull between autonomy of action and compulsiveness
on the one hand, and between cosmopolitanism and fundamentalism
on the other. Where tradition has retreated, we are forced to live
in a more open and reflective way. Autonomy and freedom can replace
the hidden power of tradition with more open discussion and dialogue.
But these freedoms bring other problems in their wake. A society
living on the other side of nature and tradition - as nearly all
Western countries now do - is one that calls for decision-making,
in everyday life as elsewhere. The dark side of decision-making
is the rise of addictions and compulsions. Something really intriguing,
but also disturbing, is going on here. It is mostly confined to
the developed countries, but is becoming seen among more middle
class groups elsewhere too. What I am speaking about is the spread
of the idea and the reality of addiction. The notion of addiction
was originally applied exclusively to alcoholism and drug-taking.
But now any area of activity can become invaded by it. One can be
addicted to work, exercise, food, sex - or even love. (muted laughter)
The reason is that these activities, and other parts of life too,
are much less structured by tradition and custom than once they
were.
Like tradition, addiction is about the influence
of the past upon the present; and as in the case of tradition, repetition
has a key role. The past in question is individual rather than collective,
and the repetition is driven by anxiety. I would see addiction as
frozen autonomy. Every context of detraditionalisation offers the
possibility of greater freedom of action than existed before. We
are talking here about human emancipation from the constraints of
the past. Addiction comes into play when choice, which should after
all be driven by autonomy, is subverted by anxiety. In tradition,
the past structures the present through shared collective beliefs
and sentiments. The addict is also in thrall to the past - but because
he or she cannot break away from what were originally freely chosen
lifestyle habits.
As the influence of tradition and custom
shrink on a world-wide level, the very basis of our self-identity
- our sense of self - changes. In more traditional situations, a
sense of self is sustained largely through the stability of the
social positions of individuals in the community. Where tradition
lapses, and life-style choice prevails, the self isn't exempt. Self-identity
has to be created and recreated on a more active basis than before.
This explains why therapy and counselling of all kinds have become
so popular in Western countries. When he initiated modern psychotherapy,
Freud thought he was establishing a scientific treatment for neurosis.
What he was in effect doing was constructing a method for the renewal
of self-identity, in the early stages of a detraditionalising culture.
After all, what happens in psychotherapy
is that the individual revisits his or her past in order to create
more autonomy for the future. Much the same is true in the self-help
groups that have become so common in Western societies. At alcoholics
anonymous meetings, for instance, individuals recount their life
histories, and receive support from others present in stating their
desire to change. They recover from their addiction essentially
through rewriting the story-line of their lives.
The struggle between addiction and autonomy
is at one pole of globalisation. At the other is the clash between
a cosmopolitan outlook and fundamentalism. One might think that
fundamentalism has always existed. This is not so - it has arisen
in response to the globalising influences we see all round us. The
term itself dates from the turn of the century, when it was used
to refer to the beliefs of some Protestant sects in America, particularly
those who rejected Darwin. Yet even in the late 1950's there was
no entry for the word 'fundamentalism' in the large Oxford English
dictionary. It has come into common coinage only over the past two
or three decades.
Fundamentalism is not the same as either
fanaticism or authoritarianism. Fundamentalists call for a return
to basic scriptures or texts, supposed to be read in a literal manner,
and they propose that the doctrines derived from such a reading
be applied to social, economic or political life. Fundamentalism
gives new vitality and importance to the guardians of tradition.
Only they have access to the 'exact meaning' of the texts. The clergy
or other privileged interpreters gain secular as well as religious
power. They may look to take over the reins of government directly
- as happened in Iran - or work in conjunction with political parties.
Fundamentalism is a controversial word,
because many of those called fundamentalists by others wouldn't
accept the term as applying to themselves. So can an objective meaning
be given to it? I think it can, and I would define it in the following
fashion. Fundamentalism is beleaguered tradition. It is tradition
defended in the traditional way - by reference to ritual truth -
in a globalising world that asks for reasons. Fundamentalism, therefore,
has nothing to do with the context of beliefs, religious or otherwise.
What matters is how the truth of beliefs is defended or asserted.
Fundamentalism isn't about what people believe
but, like tradition more generally, about why they believe it and
how they justify it. It isn't confined to religion. The Chinese
red guards, with their devotion to Mao's little red book, were surely
fundamentalists. Nor is fundamentalism primarily about the resistance
of more traditional cultures to Westernisation - a rejection of
Western decadence. Fundamentalism can develop on the soil of traditions
of all sorts. It has no time for ambiguity, multiple interpretation
or multiple identity - it is a refusal of dialogue in a world whose
peace and continuity depend on it.
Fundamentalism is a child of globalisation,
which it both responds to and utilises. Fundamentalist groups almost
everywhere have made extensive use of new communications technologies.
Before he came to power in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini circulated
videos and cassettes of his teachings. Hindutwa militants have made
extensive use of the Internet and electronic mail to create a 'feeling
of Hindu identity'.
Whatever form it takes - religious, ethnic,
nationalist, or directly political, I think it right to regard fundamentalism
as problematic. It is edged with the possibility of violence, and
it is the enemy of cosmopolitan dialogue.
Yet fundamentalism isn't just the antithesis
of globalising modernity, but poses questions to it. The most basic
one is this: can we live in a world where nothing is sacred? I have
to say, in conclusion, that I don't think we can. Cosmopolitans,
of whom I count myself one, have to make plain that tolerance and
dialogue can themselves be guided by values of a universal kind.
All of us need moral commitments that stand
above the petty concerns and squabbles of everyday life. We should
be prepared to mount an active defence of these values wherever
they are poorly developed, or threatened. None of us would have
anything to live for, if we didn't have something worth dying for.
FAMILY
- Anthony Giddens, BBC's Reith Lectures '99, delivered in Washington)
Among all the changes going on today, none
are more important than those happening in our personal lives -
in sexuality, emotional life, marriage and the family. There is
a global revolution going on in how we think of ourselves and how
we form ties and connections with others. It is a revolution advancing
unevenly in different regions and cultures, with many resistances.
As with other aspects of the runaway world,
we don't know what the ratio of advantages and anxieties will turn
out to be. In some ways, these are the most difficult and disturbing
transformations of all. Most of us can tune out from larger problems
for much of the time. We can't opt out, however, from the swirl
of change reaching right into the heart of our emotional lives.
There are few countries in the world where
there isn't intense discussion about sexual equality, the regulation
of sexuality and the future of the family. And where there isn't
open debate, this is mostly because it is actively repressed by
authoritarian governments or fundamentalist groups. In many cases,
these controversies are national or local - as are the social and
political reactions to them. Politicians and pressure groups will
suggest that if only family policy were modified, if only divorce
were made harder or easier to get in their particular country, solutions
to our problems could readily be found.
But the changes affecting the personal and
emotional spheres go far beyond the borders of any particular country,
even one as large as the United States. We find the same issues
almost everywhere, differing only in degree and according to the
cultural context in which they take place.
In China, for example, the state is considering
making divorce more difficult. In the aftermath of the Cultural
Revolution, very liberal marriage laws were passed. Marriage is
a working contract, that can be dissolved, I quote: 'when husband
and wife both desire it'.
Even if one partner objects, divorce can
be granted when 'mutual affection' has gone from the marriage. Only
a two week wait is required, after which the two pay $4 and are
henceforth independent. The Chinese divorce rate is still low as
compared with Western countries, but it is rising rapidly - as is
true in the other developing Asian societies. In Chinese cities,
not only divorce, but cohabitation is becoming more frequent
In the vast Chinese countryside, by contrast,
everything is different. Marriage and the family are much more traditional
- in spite of the official policy of limiting childbirth through
a mixture of incentives and punishment. Marriage is an arrangement
between two families, fixed by the parents rather than the individuals
concerned.
A recent study in the province of Gansu,
which has only a low level of economic development, found that 60%
of marriages are still arranged by parents. As a Chinese saying
has it: 'meet once, nod your head and marry'. There is a twist in
the tail in modernising China. Many of those currently divorcing
in the urban centres were married in the traditional manner in the
country.
In China there is much talk of protecting
the family. In many Western countries the debate is even more shrill.
The family is a site for the struggles between tradition and modernity,
but also a metaphor for them. There is perhaps more nostalgia surrounding
the lost haven of the family than for any other institution with
its roots in the past. Politicians and activists routinely diagnose
the breakdown of family life and call for a return to the traditional
family.
Now the 'traditional family' is very much
a catch-all category. There have been many different types of family
and kinship systems in different societies and cultures. The Chinese
family, for instance, was always distinct from family forms in the
West. Arranged marriage was never as common in most European countries,
as in China, or India. Yet the family in non-modern cultures did,
and does, have some features found more or less everywhere.
The traditional family was above all an
economic unit. Agricultural production normally involved the whole
family group, while among the gentry and aristocracy, transmission
of property was the main basis of marriage. In mediaeval Europe,
marriage was not contracted on the basis of sexual love, nor was
it regarded as a place where such love should flourish. As the French
historian, Georges Duby, puts it, marriage in the middle ages was
not to involve 'frivolity, passion, or fantasy'.
The inequality of men and women was intrinsic
to the traditional family. I don't think one could overstate the
importance of this. In Europe, women were the property of their
husbands or fathers - chattels as defined in law.
In the traditional family, it wasn't only
women who lacked rights - children did too. The idea of enshrining
children's rights in law is in historical terms relatively recent.
In premodern periods, as in traditional cultures today, children
weren't reared for their own sake, or for the satisfaction of the
parents. One could almost say that children weren't recognised as
individuals.
It wasn't that parents didn't love their
children, but they cared about them more for the contribution they
made to the common economic task than for themselves. Moreover,
the death rate of children was frightening. In Colonial America
nearly one in four infants died in their first year. Almost 50%
didn't live to age 10.
Except for certain courtly or elite groups,
in the traditional family sexuality was always dominated by reproduction.
This was a matter of tradition and nature combined. The absence
of effective contraception meant that for most women sexuality was
inevitably closely connected with childbirth. In many traditional
cultures, including in Western Europe up to the threshold of the
20th Century , a woman might have 10 or more pregnancies during
the course of her life.
Sexuality was regulated by the idea of female
virtue. The sexual double standard is often thought of as a creation
of the Victorian period. In fact, in one version or another it was
central to almost all non-modern societies. It involved a dualistic
view of female sexuality - a clear cut division between the virtuous
woman on the one hand and the libertine on the other.
Sexual promiscuity in many cultures has
been taken as a positive defining feature of masculinity. James
Bond is, or was, admired for his sexual as well as his physical
heroism. Sexually adventurous women, by contrast, have nearly always
been beyond the pale, no matter how much influence the mistresses
of some prominent figures might have achieved.
Attitudes towards homosexuality were also
governed by a mix of tradition and nature. Anthropological surveys
show that homosexuality - or male homosexuality |
