Keeping a sharp eye – on society and on social research

There is already a transnational social space. There is a heavily increasing amount of social relations that develop crossways to national borders. Many people commute between places in two different nations. Looking for a job abroad is no longer an exotic thing. Indian Bhangra sound influences DJs in London, New York and Tokyo. Economic globalisation has been the driving force, supported by cheaper air travel, new media, and technological innovation. This is a social fact, one which many forces would wish to prevent. These forces have a stake – economic and often emotional - in preserving the status quo, and any change in the current system could represent a threat. The task is not to build walls (again) or to make existing walls higher. The task is to face reality. In this new social space, we must find ways to cope with that reality and suggest how different kinds of people with different cultural and religious backgrounds could live with – and respect – one another.

Strengthening civic engagement in global, local and “glocalized” contexts certainly is a key topic. It includes various aspects, like educating citizens to participate in self-politics, establishing institutions, fighting prejudices and providing a minimum amount of social, cultural and material wealth.

However, before we can intervene in society it is necessary to get an adequate view on it. Society is dynamic. For that reason, the categories that are applied to describe society, need to be questioned and reflected constantly. These categories, which national societies had been observed with, become redundant, when transnational social space is investigated. Society is traditionally seen as society within the boundaries of the nation-state. The nation-state works as a seemingly ontologic frame for a wide variety of diagnoses ranging from unemployment rate to victories in the field of sports. There is an in-group and nationality functions as the key feature to decide if you’re in or if you’re out.

It is essential for the formation of a transnational European space to make clear that the national frame is not ontological, but a construction. The idea of the nation-state has never been based on a pre-political, ethnic homogeneity but on legal solidarity as common denominator to make heterogeneity possible. It almost took a century to change traditional loyalties to family and dynasty into loyalty to the nation-state. In pre-nation-state times solidarity and loyalty were based on communities, whose members knew each other and shared a common ethnic background. The foundation of the nation-state marks the crucial step from community to society, whose members do not know each other any more. Solidarity within the nation-state is based on legal principles, not on common ethnic, cultural, religious, etc. background. Nevertheless this quasi-ontological common background has long been used as a national narrative to create solidarity and community. That actually was the principle of the nation-state: to emphasize the differences between the national in-group and the rest and to marginalize the differences within the national in-group. It was the desperate search for an unambiguity that simply doesn’t exist. This enduring longing for unambiguity is visible, for instance, in the discussion about a German ‘Leitkultur’. A transnational European space cannot be denied any more and finally reveals the error of regarding national society as community with common cultural roots. It is required to impose other categories, which are not tied to the nation-state as a natural frame for all kinds of social phenomenon but open to changes in social structures.

There is another important aspect to be considered when dealing with the emergence of a transnational social space. Traditionally community based upon geography. The unity of time, space and community has been a self-evident fact. In our post-industrial, post-modern age this unity is decaying, to be more precise: a pluralism of social community is emerging: there still exist communities, which are bound to a geographic place, but an ever-growing number of communities are developing, which no longer depend on geographic places. Members of these communities make heavy use of new media to communicate with each other. Further, there are hybrid forms of community that rely upon settings which are can be geographic (a café, a student organization), virtual (an internet forum), and often both (a website that allows like-minded individuals in the same community to meet one another in-person).

All of which reveals that it is urgently required to question traditional categories, ideas and narratives and to be willing to break with them. It is important to question the ways in which civic engagement can be strengthened - on both local and global levels. But before trying to find an answer, we must examine the wide range of social phenomenon that take place in social space. By doing so, it is essential to reflect the usually unreflected categories of social phenomenon, as the applied categories heavily influence the results of social research and as a consequence the reception of society. If community and geographic place are regarded as an unseperable unity, an ever-growing lack of community is noticed. If new forms of community are taken into consideration, not a lack of, but a change in the forms of community can be noticed.

Strengthening civic engagement is crucial in times of individualisation, increasing unemployment and social exclusion. The starting point is the society. For that reason it is essential to get an impression of society that is as close as possible to its reality. This is only possible if social research keeps its finger on the pulse of society and – more importantly – simultaneously keeps a sharp eye on its equipment.