3 - Communication, sociality, and the positionality of archaeology

Summary

Introduction

As illustrated, modernity can be understood as a systemic whole constituted by a configuration of industrialisation, rationalisation, commodification, bureaucratisation, citizenship, deconstruction of kinship/local ties, secularisation, and institutional segmentation and specialisation. These factors, although not all coming into being at once but over a period of time, became interconnected and mutually determinant, and their interdependence was mediated by a new form of sociality. By ‘sociality’ I mean the unity of customs and institutions, and a certain mode of sociality which gives rise to a social formation which can be characterised by the kinds of institutions that constitute it and by the way these institutions are interconnected. However, the description of institutions and how they are interconnected does not say much about sociality itself, i.e., how it is generated and reproduced (Giddens 1984). In particular, the sociality we experience in contemporary society is characterised by fluidity and dynamism rather than by static institutional characteristics. What we have to investigate is the dynamic, generative element of sociality, i.e., how sociality itself comes into being and is reproduced.

Scholars such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, as mentioned above, characterise contemporary social formation as ‘reflexive modernity’ (Beck et al. 1994). By that, they mean that virtually every field of social communication is subject to constant reflexive monitoring, the outcome of which is constantly fed back and continually alters the way people are involved in communication, as well as the way communication is structured and reproduced.