The Voice and the Eye: Social Movements, prequel.

Alain Touraine writes on page 78 of The Voice and The Eye:

“The representation of social movements that we have inherited from industrial society is as follows: a dominator imposes laws, beliefs and a political regime just as much as it imposes an economic system; the people submit to these impositions but revolt against them when their physical and cultural existence becomes threatened. This revolt is not only defensive, it is also a preparation for the future since it explodes the contradictions of the social order and destroys the barriers erected by individual interest and blocking the way for the general and natural progress of society. This vision conflicts with the idea of social movements as I have defined it over two vital issues” (Touraine, Alain (1981) The Voice and The Eye. An analysis of social movements. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Emphasis is mine)

I highlight this piece of text here since it pins down two things about Touraine I am working on and what also may be of interest to someone else. Social movements sit at the heart of society and without them there is no “real” movement in society. All societal change has to do with social movements that convey the energies of individual actors. The way Touraine explains this is elegant and very exact and is best found in the mentioned book The Voice And the Eye. I am currently working on the analysis of my first article so this is something I’ll be using later.

So, Touraine is using a very concrete example to tell us how his vision of social movements is different from all the other contemporary (it was published originally in French in late 70’s) accounts. Remember, at that time it was customary to (over) emphasize the Working Movements meaning to world history. Touraine is not saying that it’s not so but his account cautions us to attribute any collective phenomenon as a true social movement.

The representation of social movements in industrial societies miss the point of Touraines Social Movements in two key dimensions.

1. The actor (or a ‘group’) is not truly social. This is because the ‘revolt’ is only an expression of ad hoc tensions or a product of natural phenomena (people who are forced to act in order to save themselves, for an example). A true actor (or a ‘group’) is truly social: the tension is not in the situation of the revolt. The situation only expresses the tension but the movement is real and in the heart of the entire society. A social actor (or historical actor, as Touraine calls them) is defined by a social relation between it and the ‘other’ he/she is struggling against.

2. The action is not seen as emanating from society but it can only be understood by looking at what it is trying to achieve. This means, the social movement is reduced to it’s utopia: it has separated the original action from the interpretation of the action. A true Social Movement ‘happens’ right now. Utopia, or the alternative cultural relation of the revolting group is an important part of the Tourainean vision but it’s not the source of action as such. To be precise: the struggle creates it’s own aims: it is not going towards  a certain anticipated end but towards an end-in-the-making by the actors themselves.

Touraine himself gives an exhausting and careful explanation of what he sees as a Social Movement. On page 31 he writes:

“A Social Movement is the collective organized action through which a class actor battles for the social control of historicity in a given and identifiable historical context”.

And he elaborates this on page 77.

“A social movement is the organized collective behavior of a class actor struggling against his class adversary for the social control of historicity in a concrete community”.

 

 

What I will do this spring is an article where I will analyze certain aspects of Transhumanism (as a general term). I will try to see it as a historical actor, or, a genuine and real Social Movement. From now on I will not elaborate too much on the details but I will try to keep my thinking “out in the public” during the writing process of the article.