POSTMODERN UNDERSTANDINGS OF SOCIAL SPACE:
COMMODIFICATION AND THE DE-SANCTIFICATIONS OF SACRED SPACE
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It is a very human thing to do; to sanctify the time and the place. In pre-modern understandings, sanctification depends upon the presence of a holy spirit...or at least the possibility of connecting to a realm of supernatural spirituality. Modernist approaches to sanctification and to sacred space tend to discount them as mythologies inherited from a more primitive and ignorant past...from primitive peoples, if you will.
Postmodern understandings of sacred times and sacred places are a bit more complex; a bit more forgiving of pre-modern knowledge processes. In brief, postmodern understandings accept that sacred times and sacred places have a variable reality quotient; one dependent upon the activity of human beings in time and space. Human beings live in symbolic social life worlds. They can and do sanctify; they can and do vilify time and space. Sacred places thus have the same real, partial, existence as do non-sacred places. Jerusalem, as a sacred place, has same symbolic interactional origins as, say, Philadelphia, London, Jakarta, Lima, Moscow or Tokyo. A church/temple, as a sacred place, has the same reality potential as General Mills, MacDonald's, Macy's or Walmart. Both sacred and profane spaces are created by a four-part symbolic interactional process which begins with human definitions of the situations and ends with humans organizing their behavior to fulfill the prophecy inherent in the definition.
In like manner, the de-sanctification of sacred space is entirely a human process. Devils, ogres, witches, Beelzebubs, satans, fiends, ghosts and Mephistopheles are human inventions with which to transfer agency--and guilt--from human beings to super-natural beings.
In this mini-lecture, I want to explain how capitalism and commodification de-sanctify sacred times and sacred places...and how modernity is complicit in the process.
The most general point I want to make about sanctification is that it everywhere and always involves the treatment of some human beings as cherished social objects filled with a gift of grace which others must honor. Parents are to be cherished by children; children are to be cherished by parents. Wives are to honor husbands; husbands are to cherish and protect wives. Princes are to protect and sustain subjects; subjects are to honor and obey Princes. Popes are to care for and to sanctify parishioners; parishioners are to honor and obey Popes. Presidents and citizens alike are to honor and uphold Constitutions which accord them status even if there are status differences and status hierarchies.
In similar fashion, de-sanctification is that it always and everywhere involves
the treatment of human beings as objects rather than as social subjects with status honor.
Parents de-sanctify children when they exploit them sexually, beat them cruelly or
sell them into servitude. Spouses de-sanctify marriages when they withdraw
emotional, financial or moral support from each other. Mere adultery does not
despoil a marriage; withdrawal of affection and respect does.
Princes de-sanctify subjects when they use them as pawns in warfare; as serfs in forced labor; as property to be traded to other princes. Popes despoil the sanctification process when they support status inequalities and status degradations for believers in that religion. Presidents dis-honor the office and de-sanctify the citizen when they sell the office to wealthy contributors or hold workers hostage to their personal devices and desires.
The concept of sacred space and sacred time is a nonsense notion unless human beings are treated as if they were cherished social beings. If we think of sacred space, we understand that it exists as a material base for a variety of Dramas of the Holy in which human beings are sanctified [as in baptism]; in which social relationships are sanctified [as in marriages]; in which social statuses are conferred [as in the swearing-in of a President or a Pope.
Sacred space is also used to de-sanctify persons, officers and relationships. A court-room is a sacred space complete with sacred robes, sacred vows, sacred discourse and sacred office; that of the Judge. Court-rooms are, both dramaturgically and sociologically, dramas of the Holy in which social honor is confirmed or stripped of a person in the dock. If guilty, a person is transformed from a social agent with status honor into a non-person which may be treated as a depersonalized object.
A second most important point to make is that modern mass society is largely the child of capitalist political economies. The massification of markets, of schools, of churches and of politics are all and equally a product of cost/profit calculations.
And it is in mass societies where sacred times and sacred places shrink to smaller and smaller ratios of social life.
In the market place, status honor is an obstacle to wage and price policy. It is better by far from the point of view of a capitalist firm to treat workers as if they were mere objects to be used and discarded; to treat customers as if they were mere herds to be milked or butchered and skinned. As long as there are surplus workers or innocent customers, very little in the way of sanctification need be done.
Some firms, interested in higher productivity per worker will create the dramaturgical impression of status honor of their own workers. Some firms, interested in repeat business, will manage the impressions given off by clerks and supervisors such that there is the semblance of status honor projected toward customers-in-general.
But again, there is a gain/loss calculation. If productivity can be increased by other means and labor costs reduced, workers become faceless objects to be discarded. The semblance of status honor is stripped bare and the worker de-sanctified in the moment.
The same is true of the customer. There is a calculus of profit to consider. As long as status honor is low-cost, the customer is always right. When the cost of honoring the customer as social agent becomes too costly, a conflict relationship is bared and the economic power advantage of the firm is used to dis-honor the customer.
Insurance companies are the case in point. They honor small claims quickly and resist as long as possible large claims. A 100% record for paying off small claims translates, in public records and in advertisements, as 98% record in paying off all claims. Short term improvements are possible with a 50% record but generating new customers would then be a problem...especially if the state requires reports and publishes such reports; or if criminologists were interested in recording and reporting corporate crime. Criminologist are not so interested and, even if they were, the Code of Ethics of the American Sociological Association forbids intrusion into company records without informed consent.
[Such Codes of Ethics preserves Sociology as profession but hardly satisfies ethical imperatives].
Sanctified social space can encompass whole nations; whole peoples; whole
religions.
The Islam world stretches from the Philippines to West Africa. NATO reaches
from Poland to Canada and the USA. Jewish peoples around the world respond to Jewish
peoples in Goyish places.
But even within sacred spaces, sanctification and de-sanctification becomes hostage to claims of status honor of the membership of a given church. Some religions teach hatred toward other religions as a way to claim status honor for their own teachings and teachers.
Some Nations degrade and de-sanctify ethnic groups by demonizations of leader, policies or practices; practices not noticeably different from those of the dominate Ethnic group at other times and in other places. Britain and the USA condemn genocide in Germany without mentioning their own treatment of colonials, ethnic minorities or of indigenous peoples.
But is commodification which strips both time and place of its status honor. Profit is the catalyst which destroys sanctifications. Food, shelter, health care, education, transport and recreations are essential groundings for human being. Lord Action said that absolute power corrupts; he might have said that relative deprivation also corrupts both prince and prelate; the poor as well as the rich.
When everything has a price, the cost of that price is too often human standing and human dignity.
Part of the commodification process is the management of desire. Layer after layer of new and often trivial needs are added to the basic survival needs of human beings. In the rush to obtain surplus needs, human beings degrade themselves and/or are degraded in the moment.
Organized Crime is little more than a process by which supplies used to create sacred times and sacred places are transformed into profane commodities. Psychogens everywhere have been used as pathways to the Holy: alcohol, drugs, dance and danger transform everyday time and space into esoteric times and places. Special foods, special clothing, special words and special acts are defined as sacred when used within drams of the Holy; defined as corrupt when used for purely private purpose.
The smoking of tobacco and other plants bring altered psychological states which are defined and re-defined as purifications essential to contact with the Spirit World.
Gambling as the throwing of dice, the fall of cards or the display of sticks have, time of of mind, been used to read the Will of the Gods. Gambling for private profit has, everywhere been defined as corrupt, evil, sinful and the work of the Devil.
It is not a oddity that gambling, alcohol and prostitution; profane embodiments of holy things, are being legalized in a market economy. If it is profitable, it resonates with free market philosophy. If it is highly profitable, the State can displace organized crime and solve some of its fiscal problems by claiming state monopoly.
The most remarkable thing is that sanctifications. continue. Even in the most massified markets; even in the most impersonal bureaus; even in the most profane prisons, human contact and human dignity can be found.
Affirmative postmodern religious philosophy holds that sanctification is essential to the human project even if it is merely and remarkably a human process. Affirmative postmodern religious sensibility demands that markets be constrained within the human project; that profits take second place to human dignity. Affirmative postmodern religious teachings require that education be a holy thing filled with values and embued with compassion by teacher and student alike. Affirmative postmodern politics demand a rich democratic process which extends to work, market, church, school and playtime as well as to the mere election of representatives.
Indeed a rich democracy requires that ever more issues be resolved by ever more referenda...until Representative are reduced to mere public servants carrying out the Will of the People after full and free public discourse.
Then and only then will the process toward de-sanctification of all that is Holy be slowed and perchance reversed.
Go in peace with your God, TR Young
SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES
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