The translocal society: notes to understand the changing times
Emilio Pantojas García1
The COVID-19 pandemic is a critical event that marks the transformation of modern society into one that can be defined as translocal. A pandemic is a critical event, an unforeseen occurrence with consequences that transcend the moment and circumstances in which it happens.
In ethnography, the analysis of critical events allows us to clearly observe variables and relationships in the real world that appear opaque in everyday life. In this essay, we present the thesis that the pandemic is a critical event that serves as a catalyst for the arrival of a new era. We speak of a cybernetic world and a digital age, dominated by “new” information and communication technologies (ICTs). When we speak of a “new era,” we are referring to a historical moment of fundamental transformation in the social relations of power and the production of life. This includes changes in the relationship between the state and civil society, capital and labor, and institutionalized human relations: education, family, and religion.
We understand that social institutions and the configuration of social groups, which are constantly changing, are currently undergoing fundamental and permanent transformations. For example, education as a social activity is transitioning toward a new form and new content. Traditional, in-person, "banking" education—the hierarchical transfer of knowledge through schools—will undergo permanent and irreversible changes.
In this essay we propose that we are transitioning to a new type of society.
We are witnessing the culmination of what Zygmunt Bauman (2000, 13) called “liquid modernity,” which refers to the blurring of the modern institutional and social order: “Social institutions, roles, and norms have been ‘liquefied.’ They are not fixed; they no longer have the force they once did.” In this process of “liquefaction” of values, norms, and social institutions, digitalization, virtual activity, and globalization now combine to shape a new translocal society.
The notion of translocality has been used to link the fluidity and continuity of migrant and diaspora communities (Laó-Montes 1997; 2007). In a translocal context, identities are affirmed as a geohistorical relationship, beyond geographical determinism and the colonization of subjects. Thus, for example, Puerto Rican identity is not limited to the island of Puerto Rico, nor to political independence, nor to the Spanish language; it is constituted historically and culturally across time and geographical space. I would add that translocal affections and cultural ties are created, which were previously cemented by the human movement between the colony and the metropolis (“the air bus”) and are now facilitated and enhanced by ICTs. While an imagined nation is created (Anderson 1983), which is the basis of a translocal nation-building project, translocality also constructs imagined and virtual communities and identities that transcend nationalities and traditional borders. Other contexts of non-national translocal communities and identities would be the LGBTTQ community, Afro-descendants, etc.
The new social organization
Ferdinand Tönnies formulated the distinction between community and society—Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft—which would be adopted as ideal models of human organization by classical sociology. This dichotomy arose from the debate with liberal philosophers who argued that before modern society people lived in a state of nature. It was contrasted with notions such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "noble savage" and Thomas Hobbes's "Leviathan," the selfish and power-hungry man (Schluchter 2011).
Tönies argued that before society, human beings lived in communities. These were defined as organically cohesive communities with established traditions, shared values, roles ascribed or predetermined by gender and social class, and the subordination of the individual to the collective need and good. Typically, these communities developed within agrarian production systems.
In contrast, the society produced by the capitalist system and urban contexts was governed by contractual interpersonal relationships, aspirational values (social mobility), non-ascribed or predetermined roles, and the primacy of the individual over the collective, individualism.
Other characteristics that differentiated the community from society had to do with the notion of objective freedom (of the community) versus that of the individual and the forms of communication, oral/personal or written and by means of telecommunications (telephone, radio, etc.). (Table 1).
This distinction between ideal types of human organization should not be viewed as a chronology of social evolution. Nor should they be understood as pure and mutually exclusive characterizations. Nevertheless, despite the limitations of these typologies, the community/society distinction—summarized in the first two columns of Table 1—served as the basis for schools of thought such as the sociology of modernization and the sociology of socio-economic development. The notion that industrial development was made possible by the preponderance of modern social values was popularized from Max Weber's seminal work, *The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism* (written between 1904 and 1905), to the book by social psychologist David McClelland, *The Achieving Society* (1961), from which the notion that capitalism was a “state of mind” likely originated.
From the Second World War onwards, technological, cultural, social and economic changes were recorded that strengthened the path to modernity.
The integration of women into the manufacturing workforce, the mechanization of domestic life (washing machines, dishwashers, clothes dryers, canned and frozen foods, refrigerators, and electric and gas ovens and stoves), expanded women's opportunities for participation. Secularization, the development of telecommunications, and international transportation (the introduction of jets in commercial flights) laid the groundwork for the social demands that would crystallize in the 1968 protests (Paris, Prague, Mexico City), as well as for the cultural revolution of the hippies and the pacifist movement, expressed in flower power and the global opposition to the Vietnam War. Democracy as a value, respect for peoples emerging from colonialism (respect for diversity), the aspiration for socioeconomic equality among genders, nationalities, and ethnicities, and other values were cultivated in the counterculture movements of the 1960s. The emblematic song of these values would be "Imagine" (1971), by John Lennon. These processes marked the beginning of the end of “modern society” as we know it; here lay the seeds of “liquid modernity” (Bauman 2000). The third column of Table 1 presents a summary of the attributes of this new form of modernity in comparison with the “ideal types” constructed by Tönnies.
Since the 1980s, social scientists have observed and conceptualized significant changes in values and social relations. Studies on the postmodern condition (Lyotard 1987, originally 1979) and hybrid societies (García Canclini 1989) challenged models and conceptual constructions of modern societies. In his book Hybrid Cultures, García Canclini explores Latin American societies with a new paradigmatic perspective that questions the notion of modern societies and modernization in Latin America. For García Canclini, “the uncertainty about the meaning and value of modernity derives not only from what separates nations, ethnicities, and classes, but also from the sociocultural intersections where the traditional and the modern are mixed.” (14)
Likewise, Latin American modernization, rather than an external and dominant force that would operate by replacing the traditional and the local, translated into an attempt at renewal with which various sectors take charge of the multi-temporal heterogeneity of each nation (15).
Heterogeneity replaces modern homogenization; the uniqueness of social phenomena is opposed to universality. We are not merely dealing with hybrid cultures, but with hybrid societies. Modern and traditional forms and relationships do not merely coexist, but intertwine, producing new ways of doing, knowing, and relating. The promise of modernity was unfulfilled, but in its place emerged hybrid cultures and societies—autonomous, vigorous, and distinct. In a classic dialectical movement, modern society carried within it the seeds of its own transcendence, not its destruction.
Liquid Modernity and Translocal Society
Right at the end of the 20th century, Bauman's book, Liquid Modernity (2000), was published in English, in which he declared the collapse of modernity, of its scientistic, mathematical, universalist, homogenizing framework: “The power of liquefaction has shifted from 'system' to 'society,' from 'politics' to 'life politics'... or has descended from the 'macro level' to the 'micro level' of social cohabitation. As a result, ours is a privatized version of modernity, in which the burden of pattern-making and failure falls primarily on the shoulders of the individual” (13).
Modern society has failed to deliver on its promise of a better world anchored in rational institutions; its structure has collapsed. The process of bureaucratic rationalization described by Max Weber gave way to a political class interested in perpetuating its power, which produced ossified institutions. Modern public service has become inefficient bureaucracies, and the ruling classes have become rent-seeking kakistocracies that have transformed public resources into clientelistic fiefdoms and state revenues into sources of income for their own enrichment. Party machines and populist movements run the state like corporations or estates owned by cliques or mafias. Corruption, not efficiency, and profit, not service, are the norm in most modern governments. Social mobility through education has become a myth, as has hard work as a means to achieve well-being and happiness. Earning more or less money no longer depends on work and education, but on the individual's "ability" to "make ends meet." Society owes nothing to the individual. The neoliberal state broke the Keynesian “social contract” established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his “New Deal” policies. We have transitioned from the welfare state to the corrupt state, with narco-states and failed states proliferating in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Society has moved toward “hyper-individualism,” placing “the burden of constructing norms… on the shoulders of individuals,” as Bauman (2000, 13) states. This is the era of the iPhone, the iMac, the iPod; salvation is individual—this is the mantra of unfettered capitalism.
If we refer again to the third column of Table 1, we see that the values of this new era—which Bauman calls liquid modernity and we call translocal society—remain aspirational. However, for the generation raised in liquid modernity, this translates not into achievements based on merit but into reward and notoriety. The notion that achievements and fame are the product of hard work and dedication has been replaced by the notion that what is achieved is a reward obtained not through merit or work, but as compensation for services or political astuteness.
Meritocracy has been replaced by political opportunism; networks of friends and acquaintances, along with one's resume, are more important than work and experience. Thus, for example, some experts argue that the most important aspect of private education is the networks and contacts that are developed and transformed into business networks and exchanges of favors.
Notoriety is more important than fame; social media influencers are not necessarily what in modern times would be called scholars or exemplary citizens. The reggaeton genre and underground music exemplify the new values of liquid modernity. The hypersexualized, individualistic imagination and fantasy of Bad Bunny's trap music are not comparable to the poetic and cultural imagery of the "nueva trova" produced by the group Haciendo Punto en Otro Son.
We are at the beginning of a new era and, therefore, of the emergence of new forms of organization of social relations.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to a boiling point the mix of emerging trends that will shape this new society. New ways of understanding and relating to each other are on the horizon. We are not futurists, but we can preliminarily anticipate some changes:
1. Globalization has created a translocal society. The capacity for human communication and organization transcends geographical space and the limits of synchronic time. This is the “de-spatialization” (Martín Barbero 2004, 75) of society and human relations. The Internet and ICTs will dominate work and entertainment spaces. Digital communication will take precedence over face-to-face encounters.
2. The digital divide will become a more acute and important criterion for stratification. This will be an additional boundary/barrier in the access to and distribution of social goods and wealth. Information flows will accelerate the structural trends of society (Martín-Barbero 2004, 78).
3. A new state/society relationship is emerging: the welfare state was dismantled by the neoliberal state. Now, a state is taking shape that intervenes to stabilize recurring social crises with targeted programs. The focus is on incentives and stimuli, not benefits. The objective is to stimulate the economy, not necessarily to "protect" or "assist" individuals in the long term.
4. Transportation, tourism, medical, cleaning, domestic, maintenance, retail, and shopping center services will be affected by the need for physical distancing, translocality, and virtual interaction. New business models and new working relationships and conditions will need to be developed.
5. Some of the practices that emerged before the pandemic – online shopping, virtual conferences (webinars), distance education, online dating – will become predominant everyday practices.
In this new era, solidarity is virtual; the best examples of this are virtual wakes and the building of translocal communities. The materiality of existence has been replaced by a shift between the real world and the virtual world.
Just as in Juan Rulfo's novel Pedro Páramo, where the world of the living and the world of the dead are blurred and intertwined, in translocal society the material world and cyberspace are indistinguishable. Institutional structures have dissolved; virtual, imagined communities exist. In what geographical space, for example, is the LGBTQ+ community located?
The new era will incorporate and redefine trends and changes that were already underway. Some of the measures taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 will remain as new habits, even after a vaccine is developed (mask use, physical distancing). International travel, cruises, hotels, and enclosed shopping malls will need to restructure their business models. This does not mean that some institutions and spaces of modernity will not survive. We will have to see what happens with sporting events and mass concerts, dance halls, and nightclubs. Just as television did not displace radio, nor digital books displaced printed ones, modern, pre-modern, and postmodern practices will coexist in the new translocal society framed within a liquid modernity.
1- Sociologist, Researcher at the Center for Social Research and Professor of Sociology at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Member of the Working Group: Crisis, Responses and Alternatives in the Greater Caribbean. Article published on May 22, 2020 at 80grados.net/la-sociedad-translocal-notas-para-entender-el-cambio-de-epoca/. The author thanks his colleagues at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, Luz del Alba Acevedo, Lanny Thompson-Womacks, and Jorge Giovannetti, as well as his research assistant Juan K. Astacio, and his former student Luis J. Cintrón Gutiérrez for their important comments and contributions to this work.
Highlighted
-Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities; Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
-Bauman, Zygmunt. 2003. Liquid Modernity. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
-García Canclini, Néstor. 1989. Hybrid Cultures, Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Mexico: Grijalbo.
-Laó-Montes, Agustín. 1997. “Islands at the Crossroads: Puerto Rican-ess traveling between the translocal nation and the global city.” In Puerto Rican Jam: Rethinking Nationalism and Colonialism. Edited by Frances Negron-Muntaner and Ramon Grosfoguel, 169-188. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
-2007. “Decolonial Moves: Trans-Locating African Diaspora Spaces.” Cultural Studies 21 (2-3): 309-338.
-Lyotard, Jean-François. 1987. The Postmodern Condition. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra.
-Martín-Barbero, Jesús. 2004. “Urban Mediations and New Communication Scenarios.” In Latin American Cities in the New (Dis)Order World. Coordinators, Patricio Navia and Marc Zimmerman, 73-84. Mexico City: Siglo XXI.
-McClelland, David C. 1961. The Achieving Society. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrad.
-Schluchter, Wolfgang. 2011. “Ferdinand Tönnies: Community and Society”. Philosophical Signs XIII (26): 43-62.
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