Hall and Gilroy's Sociological Understanding of Contemporary Society - Essay Example

For any two of the thinkers, outline their key ideas and assess their contribution to the sociological understanding of contemporary society’ StuartHall and Paul Gilroy This essay will explore ideas of two thinkers, Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. Firstly, both writers’ ideas will be outlined in a constructive manner while discussing the similarities between the two. This will be followed by an analysis of whether, and if so, how Hall and Gilroy have contributed to the understanding of contemporary society. The notion of personal identity has modified its meaning over time. An important thinker in this discourse about the concept of ‘identity’ is Stuart Hall, who was a cultural scholar. Hall proposes a perspective that seems to be somewhat expected or usual of cultural scholars. Hall’s fundamental idea is that personal identity has transformed over time. The core arrangement of Hall’s argument is characterised by what he views as the three phases of development towards the current notion of identity. These three phases he identifies as enlightenment, sociological, and postmodern (Kalaga and Kubisz, 2008). Hall explained how globalisation influenced personal identities. According to him personal identities have been consolidated or homogenised by globalisation. Personal identities have prevailed in modern history, but with the advent and continuous growth of globalisation these personal identities have been largely dislocated. Hall portrayed in this change in personal identities as caused by globalisation in terms of ‘time-space compression’, which states that temporal and spatial factors become irrelevant due to the forces accompanying globalism, such as the informational technology revolution and the Internet. The themes of ideology and representation are essential in Hall’s method of analysing of culture and society. Hall’s formulation of the notions of ideology and representation is explained through thorough analysis of major Marxian texts, such as The German Ideology (Baker et al., 1996: 210). Halls definition of globalisation can be summarised as: the process by which relatively separate areas of the globe come to intersect in a single imaginary ‘space’; when their respective histories are convened in a time-zone or time- frame dominated by the time of the West; when the sharp boundaries reinforced by space and distance are bridged by connections (travel, trade, conquest, colonisation, markets, capital and the flows of labour, goods and profits) which gradually eroded the clear-cut distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ (Iwabuchi, 2002: 15). He says that globalisation comprises the movement of products, ideas, and so on, that, by means of technological developments in the media, removes the disparity between imagined dissimilarities, differences, and diversities among people. In a similar way, Gilroy cautions against ethnic history traditions or narratives that exclude the experiences of individuals rooted in their difference from ‘normal’ lifestyles; he claims that perceptions or interpretations of black culture in relation to restricted geographic spaces or nations, such as Afro-Caribbean and African-American, unavoidably segregate or seclude individuals and/or groups who do not match or belong strictly into those domains (Glenn, 2009). Gilroy explains how the hegemonic interpretation of identity, race, and culture in the British setting has merged ‘race’ with ‘nation’ and thus fused ‘biological’ with ‘cultural’ ancestry. The law of citizenship in Britain, as it raises principles of kinship, also established concepts of ‘race’ and thus excludes individuals and/or groups from the ‘national race’ based on ‘racial roots’ (Mazlish, 2005). Gilroy, like Hall, aims to create a historical account that abandons the merging of ‘race’ with ‘nation’. Because he argues that the diasporic histories of the African people should not make themselves inferior to or restrict themselves within the histories and boundaries created by the notion of the nation-states, he suggests that a ‘diasporic perspective’ could be acquired by placing emphasis on the more inclusive systematic arena of the ‘black Atlantic’ (Baronian et al., 2007: 74). This helps people view the lives of African-Americans and other people of colour not as situated ‘between’ cultures but as belonging to a culture that goes beyond national borders. Gilroy reconstructs the narratives of individuals and/or groups who have been absent from the cultural and intellectual genealogies of ethnic and nationalist despotism (Gilroy, 1993). His illustrations of how the solidarity of the black Atlantic is created or constructed recognise a cluster of experiences historically isolated to or unreachable for women. Hall’s explanation of the notion of diaspora is more thorough and cautious than Gilroy. He acknowledges that identity is created. Gilroy sees globalisation as a force that erodes national borders. In this period of fast globalisation, personal identities are replaced by a single culture or cultural production. He argues that identities come into conflict with the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘nation’ because of globalism. “Never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (Baronian et al, 2007: 75). He argues that, “cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But like everything which is historical, they experience constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power” (Stald & Tufte, 2002: 220). Hall believes that diaspora is a continuously evolving representation which creates an ‘imaginary coherence’ for a group of historically constructed identities. Hall decisively defined diaspora in a metaphorical way and does not want the notion to direct individuals into a kind of identity that “can only be secured in relation to some sacred homeland to which they must at all costs return, even if it means pushing other people into the sea” (Mazlish, 2005: 102). Nevertheless, essentially, Gilroy and Hall had the same objective, to provide a balanced, objective view of ‘race’ and ‘culture’ (Kalaga & Kubisz, 2008). For both scholars, diversity should not be a hindrance to unity, but a reference point of analysis designed to deconstruct hegemonic ideas of identity and race. Stuart Hall’s ideas encourage people to examine and observe those numerous components of contemporary society. Not only media performance, but daily lives which could offer resources for a truly people-oriented cosmopolitanism by which to challenge the new form of ‘nationalism’ or ‘racial intolerance’. Labour leaders in Britain have traditionally been cautious of keenly endorsing cultural diversity in times of economic crisis (Glenn, 2009). Those who are influenced by Hall’s ideas can be effective and popular as it relates efforts against racial prejudice with the active process of social justice. Hall’s ideas are applicable to the political and social events taking place in the UK today, especially with regard to Labour leaders. The major systematic idea of Hall with regard to studying theme of class, gender, and race was that it was constantly vital to make sense of or identify their interrelatedness and shared complexity (Chen and Morley, 2006). Today, as people witness the rickety old mechanism of liberal democracy fully incapable of grasping finance resources, or the claims of the advocates, militants, and public for a greater degree of participation in the activities or programmes that influence them, this idea is more applicable and crucial than before (Chen and Morley, 2006). Nowadays, the rigidity or inflexibility of traditional left which Hall consistently opposed, unconcerned or apathetic to issues of gender and femininity, incapable of tackling ethnic and cultural diversities—is more broadly criticised than ever. According to Hall, it was constantly true that the intricacy of actual power affairs or associations called for a non-sectarian, pluralistic political system which could merge utopian goal with tactical realism (Mazlish, 2005). This theme was the core of Hall’s ideas, which fundamentally and abstractly could be interpreted as an effort to make sense of all social phenomena. He was often requested to explain the emergence of postmodernism in the 1980s, and his focus on the intricacy of social groups and constructions and to the power of new, developing phenomena allowed him to explain the emergence of the highly complex functioning of international postmodernity with remarkable idea and accuracy (Baker et al, 1996). Hall encourages labour and socialist campaigns to improve themselves to new forces and to look for new prospects. In view of this, it is easy to say that Hall’s ideas are most definitely more applicable and useful to contemporary society. In the age of the Internet and information and communications technologies, the world is starting to witness and feel the significant opportunities for knowledge creation and involved learning in the new millennium. However, the bureaucratisation and marketisation of education, and the widespread criticisms of the welfare state, which Hall detests and opposes, have undermined the ability of educational institutions to achieve that aim (Chen and Morley, 2006). As long as these trends exist, Hall’s ideas will stay relevant and an asset which is critical for making sense of, and transforming, the contemporary society. In the meantime, although several critics interpret the cultural and social effect that the unity or convergence of spatial and temporal factors has on the contemporary society, where material processes across the world speeded up and shrunk the spaces between distant locations others have placed their emphasis on history to study what kinds the transcontinental has become in the past. Distant from contradicting each other, historical models of the transcontinental match their more current equivalents and understand mechanisms that have been operating for decades (Glenn, 2009). Moreover, historical concerns do not essentially refute that people today live in a period of transcontinental economies. Rather, such ideas, like those of Hall and Gilroy, explore a possible weakness of arguments interested solely in the contemporary period. This revisiting of historical ideas uncovers diversities or differences that could otherwise be ignored in the urgency to gain accurate knowledge of how globalisation of economies operates. The historical analysis of contemporary ideas of globalisation occurs irrespective of how carefully critics have studied the types of diversities, class, gender, religious, and ethnicity to which people should deal with in making sense of globalisation (Kalaga and Kubisz, 2008). Gilroy defines and explains black identity in the Americas and Europe as a continuous mechanism of transaction and travel all over the Atlantic. He attempts to make sense of this new position of the black subject with regard to European modernism. His book The Black Atlantic provides an introductory explanation of its theme “The specificity of the modern political and cultural formation I call the Black Atlantic can be defined, on one level, through desire to transcend, both the structures of the nation state and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity. These desires are relevant to understanding political organising and cultural criticism. They have always sat uneasily alongside the strategic choices forced on black movements and individuals embedded in national, political cultures and nation-states in America, the Caribbean, and Europe” (Gilroy, 1993: 19). Essentially, Gilroy’s relevance to contemporary society rests in his efforts to understand or explain Black cultures across the Atlantic as being marginalised or obtained from hegemonic national cultures. Instead Gilroy claims that black scholars have journeyed and operated in a transcontinental setting that prevents anything but a shallow relationship with their homeland or country of origin. To conclude, Gilroy’s ideas are still relevant until now because of their emphasis on the intricate historical development of African-diasporic literary, scholarly culture that is particularly transcontinental. He uses well-known individuals to emphasise his point, such as W.E.B Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, as well as popular philosophers of modernism Nietzsche, Marx, and Hegel (Baronian et al, 2007). Gilroy supports a modernity that includes or takes into consideration those who are marginalised, and giving them their rightful position. Therefore, Gilroy’s relevance to contemporary society lies in his comprehensive discussion of the Black Atlantic’s intellectual history and how current scholarship and education should promote the position of marginalised groups. Both Gilroy and Hall promote the reassessment of the historical development of the concepts of ‘race’, ‘culture’, and ‘identity, and how globalisation speeds up the process of such revisiting of important historical narratives. References Baker, H et al (1996) Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader. UK: University of Chicago Press. Baronian, M et al (2007) Diaspora and Memory: Figures of Displacement in Contemporary Literature, Arts and Politics. UK: Rodopi. Chen, K & Morley, D (2006) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. UK: Routledge. Gilroy, P (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. New York: Harvard University Press. Glenn, E (2009) Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters. New York: Stanford University Press. Kalaga, W & Kubisz, M (2008) Multicultural Dilemmas: Identity, Difference, Otherness. UK: Peter Lang. Iwabuchi, K (2002) Recentering Globalisation: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. New York: Duke University Press. Mazlish, B (2005) The Global History Reader. UK: Psychology Press. Stald, G & Tufte, T (2002) Global Encounters: Media and Cultural Transformation. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Read More