Structures and This

People are people and they have individual needs. But society needs order so it can breathe and function. Talcott Parsons talks of functional prerequisites that society must provide if it is to function orderly. these are basic needs and requirements that need to be met if society is to  continue.
One is to provide goals for the members of society - money, work, qualifications. Government must provide the means to achieve these goals through schooling, employment etc. Society also has to provided an adequate standard of living for its members (Parsons called this Adaptation), it also has to provide harmony and integration, make people they feel part of a bigger picture, they belong to something. parsons completed this list with a word 'latency'. This meant that everyone needed to believe that society was being well looked after, maintained.

As I teach this virtually to students online, I wonder if Parsons's prerequisites are being held up as we venture under This. How are the structures in our society coping? parsons was a structuralist, he believed in top down societal management. So lets look at the government. This is a huge job for any government to manage. The goals are obvious - get through This. The Prime Minister has tried to use his election winning slogan Get This Done to little avail. He is now ill and his ministers are meeting with him virtually. But the goal remains, get through This. The strategy has ramped up, gently removing the right for free movement and consumption. This has proven difficult for them in a number of ways. As I've stated before ideologically they are not used to curbing liberties (unless you are an immigrant), especially economic ones. They have to decide what is a key worker, no longer the banker or hedge fund manager but now the NHS worker, the shelf stacker, the corner shop owner, the social worker, the probation officer, the police officer, the refuse collector, teachers, the list goes on. The list provides another difficulty for this government. These are the people they have been cutting or freezing the wages of since 2010 in a war on austerity. There are also huge concerns with the self employed and small business holders. Exactly the people this government would champion. To help maintain the goal we all share regardless of political beliefs there have been huge promises of financial aide. The sort of spending this government have won several elections opposing, in fact much more than even Labour's ambitious 2019 manifesto promised. This could be seen as adaption, and necessary to maintain society. the government has had to look at reality and it needs to maintain society as best as it can.

To reach the goals the government want to promote we look to education. Now mostly in a hiatus. Teachers trying to continue to educate, motivate and dare I say it inspire pupils and students at home. We do this without knowing the situation that our work reaches. Adaption may be necessary even if schools reopen in September, can we really expect GCSE and A level students to achieve the same as they would have if they'd had a term and a half on in school teaching? But our workforce needs these skilled workers. As I say adaption may be needed. There is a worry that children from lower income families may lack the tech that is required, may have poor wi fi or even none. There's also the problem that their parents may not know exactly what is needed to home educate. The Marxist Bordieu called this cultural capital. It may seem patronising and of course many working class parents will be strong home educators, but research shows that a barrier for learning for some pupils is that their parents cannot afford or know how to help with their education. I remember years ago in Coronation Street a deeply moving scene where Toyah Battersby was struggling with college work and her mother Janice broke down and said "I want to help you but I don't know how". i have heard this from many parents over the last twenty years. But teachers will continue as all workers will as we share the same goals. We all must adapt and play our part.

The summer brings many cultural and sporting events mostly cancelled. These would have been part of Parsons's harmony prerequisite (he called it Integration). The Euros, Wimbledon, Glastonbury, the Olympics have all been cancelled or postponed. Holidays are cancelled, gigs or parties all cancelled or moved to what looks like a really packed autumn. This is worrying in ways because these things and TV shows such as Love Island provide a focus point for people. calendars are set by them, they are things to look forward to, to talk about. if they are not there people might feel marginalised. However, the wireless of our modern globalised times is social media, pub quizes, gigs and chatrooms are ablaze keeping people connected. I miss my daily newspaper and  find the online version not as adequate. Older people are having there's delivered, again  by heroic corner shop workers. We are connected and the media in all its forms is helping with adaption. You could worry that the darker more conspiratorial side of the web full of plots and criticisms might be dangerous but I feel that Parsons would see this as keeping such people who need to make sense of This in their own way connected. It's only dangerous when it makes people feel they can have house parties (no virtual) or behave normally socially. Again the worry is what if you don't have this tech?

Religion is suffering, holy places largely empty. People praying at home. The media plays a role here too. I'm not religious but I listened to a church service on BBC R3 and the choir removed me to tears. DVDs and CDs are being delivered to isolated parishoners.

What of the cornerstone of our society? the first structure we experience? The family? The family is all important to realise goals, maintain harmony and help with integration. Many families are now compact units, spending time together. The worry is those family units which are not compact, those which are poor or abusive or simply malfunctioning. Parsons believed in resocialisation, if a family unit is broken other structures can help fix it - education etc. But what if these structures are closed. Some schools are still open to the vulnerable and children of key workers. But how do you operationalise these?

The government have these problems to solve. As well as managing the virus. They may not know it but they are working within the framework as provided by Parsons.

Observation: this morning I saw a neighbour talking to another from their upstairs windows, both gable windows.

People in This

As I often say to parents and students wanting to know what sociology is, it is the study of society and what is society? well it's structures obviously but these structures wouldn't exist if it weren't for people. And people are what we are largely dealing with in all of This. Preventing their illness, their deaths. It is people who are afraid, suffering, anxious or losing loved ones.

So what are the reactions to a partial lock down? Phenomenologists believe that we make sense of the world and the changes that it brings by relying on past experiences. This is what a lot of people are doing. Sticking to a routine to make life as normal as possible. Like the student making his or her first home away from home as much like home as possible with posters etc British people are trying to keep a routine going. I'm in with this lot. Get up at 6am, exercise, wake kids at 7am, breakfast showers, then work at 8 til 4, having breaks to spend with the children and to give their mother respite. I still don't drink alcohol during the working week. Many people will have their own routines worked out. Older people will remember similar times although they may not be as long as this. The most I remember being confined in is two weeks snowed in.

There is also a pause effect going on. Some people are finding that their lives are paused. They don't have to move forward. They can spend time with their families, or enjoy simple pleasures, an old school friend of mine has taken up Airfix modelling of World War Two aeroplanes, something he hasn't done since his childhood.  There is also a dark side, women at home with abusive partners or husbands.Those who live alone, those with mental health issues. Also not everyone has the luxury of a pause. Some people have been thrown into public service in ways they may never have imagined. The NHS worker, the shop worker and many more. Their lives are very different now, their jobs far from routine as before.


There are also those who ignore government advice. Queuing in Morrison's last week I was behind two women who happily told me they's been to all of the supermarkets in town that morning, just to see what it was like. Cars drive by loaded with young people, music booming. I suspect they will become fewer as the weeks go on, this is new to them, this may be their version of a routine. The main issue is that we live in a society where our individualism and choice has been promoted really heavily.  In government we have a new right minister who told us not be trust in experts several years ago. Now he is stood behind a podium telling us very much to trust in experts. Individualism in a neo liberal or post modern sense of the word is ingrained in us all. Since the demolition of the post war consensus and deindustrialisation we have been encouraged to see ourselves as consumers. We are continuously marketed. Now we have to queue to get into a partially stocked supermarket. The government has become necessarily authoritative. It is telling us when we can shop rather than encouraging us to buy buy buy. But that ingrained  buying impulse is hard to shed off hence the panic buyers / hoarders. All we know is how to shop.  some of the perceived government failings are, i think, ideological.  A new right government doesn't find curbing liberty easy. The individualism it champions is hard to sanction. Perhaps that is why they were slow to move.  The libertarian philosopher Roger Scruton once said  of New Labour prime minister Tony Blair that he was naturally illiberal as he was of 'socialist stock'. Now there are hundreds of arguments we could have over that statement but one thing Scruton is correct on is that Labour always finds being authoritative easier - think NHS, Sure Start, minimum wage, fox hunting ban. New Labour were severe on foot and mouth in the early 2000s.  Many of Corbyn's state interventionalist ideas are now being enforced albeit in more palatable form.   But these are not political times, a government must act in the interest of the people. It's just that the people are used to their interests being more about themselves.

There is a great sense of community, people helping others, shopping for the vulnerable, clapping for the NHS, care workers locking themselves in with patients. Social solidarity is rife in many ways. There is a chance that our collective values as a society are being checked to see if they are still fit for purpose. Emile Durkheim would look  approvingly on this.

Social media, much derided of late, is proving necessary. FaceTime, Skype etc are keeping us in touch with others. WhatsApp groups, memes and so on helping people stay in touch. There are conspiracies on there too, people finding what they see as darker truths. It depends on how you use it.  this is an example of media saturation working for good. people can shop but now online. However if you want a food shop good luck. I've found that I've reconnected with people online in a way I didn't before. I'm lucky, I have the time.

There is a fear of what Durkheim called anomie , people feeling more marginalised, disconnected with others. The media both social and traditional plays a role here but is not a substitute for real social interaction. There will have to be something in place to remedy anomie.

At the moment our society continues, that slow evolution taking a slight detour. Weber once said Sunday worship would be replaced by the Sunday newspapers. With churches online, it is another type of media that has if not replaced it then changed it.

Sociology of This 1 - Making sense of Lock Down Data

Week 2 of a partial lock down is a strange thing to make sense of. I'm a sociology teacher and have been since 2001. before that I worked in various jobs, before that I was a social studies undergraduate and before that sociology was one of my A levels. I'll stop going back, instead I want to look at now. I make sense of the world through sociology, I've long given up religion and science is an interest but I don't think it explains everything. I may not be an actual sociologist but sociology as a discipline does explain life to me and helps comfort me in a way.  maybe it will you too. If there's anybody out there.

1) Data - quantitative data scares me - the numbers of death actual or predicted. The rise in numbers. 20,000, 200,000. I actually prefer qualitative data here, friends with the virus posting their experiences, newspaper stories and explanations. I particularly like  to hear the stories of people either infected, working on the frontline (which includes a vast number of people not just NHS workers) this makes it more understandable, something that is a real experience. My partner shared this link as a response to my grump that washing our hands is the equivilent to 'duck and dive'.

https://medium.com/@amcarter/i-had-no-immune-system-for-months-after-my-bone-marrow-transplant-1b097f16040c


This woman's experiences and tips are helpful and comforting. The statistics are there to inform us but there are so many things missing from them that it is only looking underneath the numbers that we can make sense of them. A friend posts a daily update on his health and experiences of having the virus. It shows his friends how he is doing but also teaches us what to expect. I found interesting his observation that his lack of taste doesn't extend to salt, he can taste salt and craves it.   Learning from the experiences of others can help us prepare, know what to look out for.

The negative side of all of this is of course misinformation and rumour. Social media is rife with these. I told my students when we were still together in a physical classroom to avoid anything which has 'maybe' , 'if' or 'could' in it. The newspapers splash scare stories and huge clamatory headlines which are often not true or only partially true. Of course they want readers (mostly online) and are competing with social media themselves.  Their news values are dictated by this and who wants good news? Me. However if you read underneath these headlines things are usually not as bad or you learn that it is only speculative.

Weber's work dealt with the concept of verstehen - understanding. We must place ourselves in other's shoes. Largely a response to positivist explanations which are usually more quantitative - scientific. The statistics are important but we must look deeper. We are human beings with feelings and non uniform responses. The bulk buyers were selfish but I stood in Morrison's and looked at a man and his family pile their trolley full of food they'd never get through (hence bins now full of wasted food). I saw fear in his eyes, his wife tried to stop him buying lots of bottled water he kept saying "We need it. We need it". Who am I to judge this man? What he was doing was/is wrong but he was doing it for his family. His reasoning was just. I guess Weber's response would be that the role of the government is to reassure this man, make him realise he doesn't need to do this. But government is concerned with numbers and quantitative data. Its response will be to crack down and regulate. It has to because it can't get bogged down in personal experiences. It governs for the many. The sociologist Paul Thomas told me that Kirklees council was only interested in quantitative research because it deals with big numbers. It's more scientific.

My view is in line with Weber. The statistics are important but to survive we need verstehen, we must understand.