ABSTRACT
Francis Fukuyama (2011) has used the phrase ‘getting to Denmark’ in referring to an imagined, ideal liberal democracy. Another Scandinavian land, Norway, is the best society in the world to live in, according to the UN.1 In this chapter,2 the notion of ‘getting to Norway’ refers to the actual country, the best one the contemporary world has to offer. If Norway is the exemplary version of a contemporary society, leading sociological theorists should have something to say when it comes to explaining it. I will discuss how the insights of Zygmunt Bauman and Pierre Bourdieu may be applied to Norwegian society. Why Bauman and Bourdieu? Firstly, because the critical dimension is
paramount in the works of both of these thinkers, and after ‘the death of Pierre Bourdieu, Bauman emerges as the most central social critic of our time’ (Nilsen 2005: 10).3 Criticism is often blended with pessimism. Bourdieu said towards the end of his life that the more he learned about society, the more reasons he found to be pessimistic about the future (Prieur 2006: 210). Bauman too offers ‘a rather pessimistic worldview’, according to Mark Davis (2008: 107). His theory of liquid modernity is probably the most pessimistic diagnosis of the contemporary era available in sociology. ‘If you take social pessimism from a sociologist, you take away his happiness’, claims Gunnar C. Aakvaag, paraphrasing Henrik Ibsen.4 The critical dimension is certainly something sociology should be proud of, but it sometimes leads to gloomy analyses that blind us to the positive achievements of modern societies. Secondly, comparisons and critical discussions of leading theorists are a
central part of sociological discourse. There are, however, curiously few discussions of Bauman and Bourdieu.5 This is somewhat strange, because they share some obvious points of reference. Bourdieu is the most influential contemporary sociologist when it comes to scrutinising the connections between culture, power, consumption and lifestyles, and Bauman, more persistently than any other leading sociologist, insists that we in fact live in a consumer society. The prime example of a consumer society today is ‘not the US but
Norway’, claims Daniel Miller (2012: viii). If this is so, the case of Norway should be an interesting battleground for the theories of Bauman and Bourdieu. I want to confront Bauman’s liquid vision of society with Bourdieu’s more solid one: the thrust of my argument is that Bauman’s perspective is too liquid while Bourdieu’s is too solid. They also have common weaknesses. We need an understanding of agency, power and democracy different from Bauman’s and Bourdieu’s in order to explain both the social order and the development of Norwegian society. I will begin by presenting and interpreting key elements in the sociology of Bauman and Bourdieu.
