Why the Third Way Failed: Economics, Morality and the Origins of the 'Big Society' by Bill Jordan

Author:Bill Jordan [Jordan, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Social Policy, Social Science, Political Science, Sociology, Economic Policy, General
ISBN: 9781847426567
Google: gxBoUKEs7RoC
Goodreads: 10208632
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2010-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

How morality shapes action

The Third Way version of morality was in contrast with the account given by Émile Durkheim ([1893] 1933, 1898). Durkheim recognised individualism as the emerging moral code of the upper middle classes in European countries of his time. But he analysed it as ‘a religion in which man is at once the worshipper and the god’ because the human person ‘is considered sacred in the ritual sense of the word’; it was a code which ‘penetrates our institutions and our mores’ (Durkheim, 1898, p 46). It provided the constraining moral reality through which individuals understood their world, and within which they felt obliged to act. Above all, in their decisions and actions they felt compelled to account for themselves as authors of their destinies–to say what they had made of themselves (Jordan et al, 1994, pp 24-30).

In other words, Durkheim explained individualism within the same framework in which he understood the religious moralities of earlier periods, and indeed the codes which governed the behaviour of members of hunter-gatherer tribes. Hence he sought to explain the force of morality through rituals and symbols, as much in the society of his day as in past history and among aboriginal peoples. Beliefs and moral codes were sustained by ritual practices, by symbols of the sacred objects of the society (Durkheim, 1912). Ideas could become consecrated in the same way as totems or icons (Durkheim, 1912, pp 243-4).

So Durkheim argued that morality was a product of ritual. In simple societies with a strong group identity, rituals such as feasts and celebrations gave a heightened sense of intersubjectivity and energy, conferred on symbols of the group and of goodness (1912, p 242); this was respected and valued for its own sake. But the same mechanisms can apply in individual interactions, which have particular emotional significance (Collins, 2004, pp 42-3). To understand the morality of individualism, we need first to understand how individuals (rather than groups and their symbols) are made sacred.

Here the analysis of morality in the tradition of Durkheim and Douglas focuses on situations rather than people–on moments rather than those who are supposed to make them. But these situations are not necessarily ceremonial, nor do they necessarily involve large groups. Erving Goffman (1967a, 1967b) showed how even informal, everyday encounters involved rituals which affirmed the moral order of society, defining (even creating) social reality itself. These rituals can be as stereotyped as greetings and minor conversational routines, but they indicate degrees of intimacy or respect. He adopted Durkheim’s view of ritual: ‘[R]ites are the rules of conduct which prescribe how a man should comport himself in the presence of these sacred objects’ (Durkheim, 1912, p 56). Goffman wrote, ‘I use the term “ritual” because this activity, however informal and secular, represents a way in which the individual must guard and design the symbolic implications of his act while in the immediate presence of an object that has a special value for him’ (Goffman, 1967b, p 57).

Among these sacred objects, honouring

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