Sociality
Sociality – the propensity to associate with others and form social groups – is an issue at the heart of anthropological analysis. ‘Belonging’ to groups is a profound dimension of our research subjects’ lives. Today, however, an increasingly diverse range of idioms of ‘belonging’ confronts the researcher: international networks, lists of Facebook friends, ‘the global village’ or ‘Brothers in Christ’. This proliferation of idioms does not only point to the diverse range of entities to which one can ‘belong’. The very resonance of what it means to be part of a group may itself be transformed, raising fundamental questions over how sociality is conceived, forged and maintained.
It has long been argued that group membership is less a fact than a claim or an attribution. Nevertheless, such claims are only ever affirmed or subverted by the concrete practicalities of social interaction. Likewise, pronouncements of epochal social transformations – the emergence of a ‘neoliberal’ society, or a ‘culture of consumerism’ – often presume distinctive modes of human interaction at the very smallest scale. Our research track works to enrich scholarly understanding of such apparent ‘transformations’ by studying, through close ethnographic analysis, how particular notions of connection and sociality are both propagated and grappled with as subjects actively contribute to social change and as they work to conserve the status quo.
Cambridge’s distinctive brand of collaborative anthropology provides us with the methodological tools needed to investigate these issues. It is only through constructive engagement with our research participants as intellectual peers and a deep commitment to capturing their multiple perspectives that we can develop accurate assessments of precisely how new ways of perceiving and constituting the social emerge, and why some succeed and endure while others perish. Our research track will thus shed a fresh light on contemporary social change, historical transformations such as nationalism, postcolonialism, and postsocialism, as well as those situations of apparent conservatism and stability. Theoretically it promises to yield a rich harvest of insights into the relationships between sociality, temporality and social transformation.
Our Research Priorities:
- To assess how structural changes in the world economy influence sociality. Do innovations such as the mass production of consumer goods, globalisation, neoliberalism, the ‘informatisation’ of the economy or the current financial crisis have tangible effects on how people form social groups and networks? To what extent have these concepts become what Henrietta Moore has termed ‘concept-metaphors’: abstractions, often ‘borrowed’ from the social sciences, through which people now interpret and restructure their imagined and experienced worlds? How can ethnographic studies attentive to these complexities both enrich and qualify the epochal modes of description that dominate both the academy and the public sphere?
- To investigate the extent to which emergent forms of sociality are, and should be, considered to have their precursors in the social forms that preceded them. Why do some social forms themselves draw heavily upon genealogical narratives of their origins, whilst others are understood as genuinely novel? Might these social forms construct, and be constructed in, multiple temporalities? What implications does this have for how they operate? And how do modalities of sociality that were operative in the past re-emerge in the present, underpinning movements that are widely held to be ‘new’?
- To better understand the material technologies of sociality. Interaction with others is materially mediated. As people around the world gain access to a wider range of communication technologies than ever before, what new practices of, and claims to, sociality are emerging? How do the ways in which people imagine themselves to be part of a particular form of association determine the ways they use the technologies available to them?
- Our enquiry thus also extends to the technologies of imagination underpinning sociality. How and why do people imagine themselves to be connected in particular ways? Are their capacities to imagine shaped by their historical and cultural circumstances, and the legacies of the past? For example, do ‘sociality’ and ‘the social’ take on a different resonance in societies that have previously experienced socialism? How do memory and aspiration infuse sociality in the present?
- To examine the extent to which social transformation is instigated, and the implications of this for its trajectory. Around the world, people are actively trying to design new forms of sociality for themselves and/or others. What assumptions underpin their efforts, and how can we understand why plans succeed or fail? Does success lie in the accuracy of the behavioural models employed by projects’ designers? Is it dependent on how participants are captivated by the opportunities the new form of sociality affords? Does it matter if the sociality is felt to be planned – and if so, does it matter who is doing the planning? These questions link the propensity to associate with others with broader existential issues of freedom, choice, and what it means to be a human in the world.
