Page 105 - Cultural Theory

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••• John Scott •••

As well as collecting tax revenues, such states collected, retained, and controlled
information and knowledge, on an unprecedented scale, through record-keeping,
archiving, and surveillance. Writing was the principal means of communication and
information storage. Codified cultural knowledge is stored in texts and documents of
all kinds. This allowed mediated interactions to occur across large expanses of time
and space, and it encouraged the building of the institutional supports of state dom-
ination. The cultures of imperial systems comprised elaborate religious ideas and
institutions, and their religious orders were central to the legitimation of state power.
In the most developed imperial systems, these were ‘rationalized’ world religions
such as Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam, seen by Weber as the
seedbeds of systematic rational thought.
All pre-modern societies are organized through their ‘traditional’ culture.
Signification and legitimation build institutions that are sustained by custom, reli-
gion, and traditional authority. People conform to social expectations unreflectively,
largely without any rational consideration, simply on the basis of their emotional
commitment to traditional ways of acting and their corresponding habits of action.
By contrast, modern societies are built around a systematic rationalization of social
life that ushers in a reflexive culture. The socio-cultural lifeworld loses its traditional
character and becomes more supportive of rational, reflexive actions. Tradition is
challenged and undermined by rational forms of thought that transform social insti-
tutions into the radically new forms of modernity.
The break with the culture of traditionalism occurred first in Western Europe,
where feudal institutions gave way to rationalized forms of economic and political
domination and religious culture was subject to a process of secularization. The
Enlightenment thinkers ignited the spark of modernity. Disregarding the cultural
rules that underpinned traditionalism, they adopted new rules that required the
reflexive and calculative consideration of alternatives. Their ideas introduced ratio-
nal considerations to all areas of social life. The spread of these new rules lay behind
the observable transformation in social institutions. This institutional rationalization
occurred first in the economic sphere, as a result of the specific conjunction of cir-
cumstances highlighted by Weber in his account of the relationship between the
Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (Weber, 1904–5; 1919–20). It rapidly
spread to other spheres of social life and it acquired a momentum that was all but
irresistible. As rational organization transformed one area after another, tendencies
towards traditionalism were continually undermined. Pre-modern societies with
their ‘traditional’ characteristics survived in ever-diminishing enclaves as modernity
spread across the globe. These societies were, increasingly, drawn into the modern
world and found it more difficult to sustain their archaic characteristics. In the west-
ern heartland of modernity, the traditional elements persisted only in vestigial form,
as the world became ever more rationalized.
What, then, are the institutional characteristics of modernity, according to
Giddens? In describing these, he focuses on the characteristic patterns of domination
found in modern societies. These he sees as involving highly differentiated economic
and political institutions and their formation into capitalist economies and
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