Telecommunications and the speed of social bargaining: the death of power distance

Margaret Grieco, Professor of Transport and Society, Napier University, Edinburgh EH 10 5BR and Visiting Fellow, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge

1. Adjacency, interactivity, iteration, rehearsal, performance: fundamental propositions for an electronic social theory.

As a young academic I was fascinated by the character of skill and its relationship to social organisation: this interest gained its published form in the academic literature in the 1980s and 1990s (Grieco, 1987; 1996). Skill, I argued along with those involved in the 'social process approach' to skill, was not an individual quality or characteristic but was a register of the communication efficiencies and effectiveness contained within social groups. In the words of my colleague, Dian Marie Hosking (now Professor at Tilburg University) 'enactment can never be a solitary business'.

My search for an understanding of skill - and for a correction of a sociological literature formed in the shadow of an elite which systematically disattended to working class competence and skill - caused me along with other colleagues to focus upon the role played by social adjacency in gaining knowledge and management of resources. Social adjacency provided a ground for iteration - the opportunity to have many and largely unmeasured attempts at gaining control over social practices. Opportunities for iteration provide the ground for rehearsal and for quiet rehearsal which carries the lesser risk of public failure. Rehearsal provides the ground for performance and performance is the dimension which legitimates the capture of the larger share of common, societal resources.

These issues seemed to me to be largely overlooked in the world of social theory and the implications of these understandings for the analysis of skill at every level of our hierarchical society became lost in rough social description which all too readily would attribute to football hooligans (http://www.footballhooligan.net/) the lack of ability to organise even when the acts of gross outrage by British hooligans took place in Corsica (http://www.geoexplorer.co.uk/sections/remote_sensing/archive_pages/pl_corsica.htm) and not Colchester (http://www.colchesterbuddhistcentre.com/). Low income communities are deemed lacking in social capital because they are low income communities with little attention being paid to the skilled dimensions of their social organisation such as fuel clubs or the pooled use of taxis. Skill in context or to provide a different label structuration never really managed to cut its way through the allegiance of academics to the knowledge structures of a class elite. Some community case studies, some work place based ethnographies which respected the worker but the fundamental discussion on the collective dimension of the acquisition of skill - and the denial of this collective dimension in the structures of legitimation that ensure inequity - never took place.

In my early engagement with adjacency, iteration, rehearsal and performance, I understood but failed to formalise the dimension of interactivity. I understood that the geographical separation of elites - and elites exist at all levels of social structure - from the less resourced resulted in information deprivation which prevented challenge. Historically, geographical separation prevents the knowing of the enemy or even the knowing of the forms of organisation of the more resourced - and the modern ability to force the transfer of resources from one social group to another without direct contact between the groups has resulted in a diffusing or blurring of the focus on the social opponent. Indeed, the Third Way would provide a very good example of diffusing or blurring of the contesting interests in current patterns of deprivation and privilege. The most deprived are honoured with further responsibilities whilst the most privileged receive bonuses which are amplified according to the excess share of social resources they already receive. We may want to tug a little at this formulation of the Third Way ( http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/thirdway.html) but there are some stark features of this dogma and ideology which give ground to the formulation and perhaps we can discuss these at more length within the question time that follows this presentation. My objective here, however, is simply to draw attention to the fact that historically the withdrawal of big play 'leadership' out of the run of the mill localities and into global centres has generated a diminished ground for interactivity between the haves and have nots.

And this is where telecommunications and speed of iteration come in. Interactivity is the critical dimension of the new information communication technologies. The distributed character of the new information communication technologies produced new dimensions of social adjacency, the technologies are interactive and enable levels of performance and rehearsal across social groups which were never previously obtainable. Social theory must undertake a change: the focus on face to face interaction as the primary building block and sole form of interaction worthy of our attention has to make way for the level of new social traffic and the importance of electronic adjacency. Granovetter's theory (1973) of the strength of weak ties posited the importance of weak links as an information gathering device and argued for the importance of information over influence in social action. Examining the role performed by weak links in Granovetter's well known study, the functions performed by these links could now be replicated very efficiently by a number of finger strokes on a key board which entered 'boston', 'computers', 'jobs', as a string into a Yahoo search engine.

The ability to interact with and through the new information communication technologies permits speed of iteration across social and geographical distances and in collective contexts which was never previously possible and this must necessarily affect the patterns of social relations which hold. Had I undertaken my theorisation of collective skill today it would have been impossible not to have noticed the importance of the dimension of interactivity. Along with my colleagues in the Odyssey Group (http://www.geocities.com/the_odyssey_group/; http://www.geocities.com/csps_ghana) and with community groups in the North East of England (http://www.goneat.org.uk/; http://www.geocities.com/moorparkexploreclub;http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/mobilitychallenge/index.html; http://www.geocities.com/whattransport) I have been exploring the potentials of the new telecommunications and their speed in iteration, not surprisingly there are many different views amongst us but my view as I have developed it with colleagues and in opposition to others is that the new information communication technologies has the potential to bring about the death of power distance. Through the new information communication technologies, low income community groups experiencing transport deprivation can with connectivity easily gain insight into the quality of transport arrangements elsewhere, track government policy on transport and social exclusion within their own area and elsewhere, develop data bases of their own on the deprivation they experience and enable global access to these data bases, place materials on 'expert' web sites in the Universities (http://www.its.leeds.ac.uk/projects/mobilenetwork/mobilenetwork.html and Government Departments in their own voice and indeed there is no good reason given the qualities of adjacency and interactivity the new technology provides why they should not take part in the management of services which affect their own area (http://www.geocities.com/allinonespot/grieco/open.html; http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/scotdemrep.html).

Indeed, the development of 'participant management' in Brazil and in other developing countries has much to do with the advent of new electronic means of communication (http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/ruralinclusion.html) as well as with the rolling back of the traditional large public sector bureaucratic state.

2. Proximity and social bargaining: informed consent, well-armed dissent.

In a world where communication was largely a matter of face to face relations, the relationship between physical proximity and social bargaining was clearly an important one. In a world where communication was increasingly mediated through symbolic forms which were not face to face such as literacy and numeracy, but where the speed of iteration and interactivity of these symbolic forms of communication was held down to a slow level by relatively cumbersome technologies, face to face interaction or proximity still retained very important dimensions. Indeed, the combination of the symbolic forms of literacy and numeracy with face to face interaction have passed through many formations and stages. Literacy and numeracy as tools which were secluded within the experience of elites but denied to the mass have important power dimensions: most particularly they substantially restrict the ability of the uneducated to communicate beyond the local arena and close off ready access to power centres which are increasingly located at a distance. However, historically, even amongst the most uneducated and local and remote of communities, information travelled. Children's folk rhymes (Opie and Opie, 1977) provide an indicator of one mechanism by which social and political news travelled, occupational song which tells of the dangers of particular workplaces, employers and occupational disasters is another such as the bothy ballads of the North East of Scotland (http://www.nefa.net/archive/songmusicdance/bothyballads.htm) or the songs of the Irish navvies (http://www.linuxlots.com/~dunne/ireland/McAlpines_Fusiliers.html) or the songs of mining communities (http://www.geocities.com/unionsonline/eventhistory.html) demonstrate.

The ability to seal and conceal information is never complete and the social theory of communication has never trully explored all the modes by which social reality is captured, expressed and challenge advanced. In researching, proximity and social bargaining within the hop fields of Kent and Hampshire historically, it became evident that 'parody' was used by the working class in their challenge to the legitimacy of the structures of inequity that surrounded them on the hop field in terms of their employment circumstances, social descriptions and poor remuneration (1996). Not surprisingly, parody is greatly used in on line electronic challenges to authority (http://www.re-skill.org.uk/papers/malaysia.htm).

Electronic adjacency enables those communities with collective histories of challenge to be in more direct contact with those with whom they share goals and indeed to interact with those agencies which in their own search for survival they must necessarily challenge (http://www.geocities.com/unionsonline/). Electronic adjacency affords opportunities for more cooperation as well as for more visible conflict. The visibility of anti-globalisation proponents is made possible by the development of globalised technologies (http://www.macobserver.com/article/2001/09/13.1.shtml). Visibility and the organisation of globally relevant information become aspects of social bargaining: the opposition to globalisation is not happening within the framework of withdrawal from global technology but rather through engagement with the technology. And through this engagement, larger communities of common interest can be mobilised and activated. New information communication technologies have become a major tool of social movements (http://www.geocities.com/e_collectivism/ukmap.html).

In the way that radical song was a cultural medium for the promotion of alternative world views so now web sites and other electronic fora perform this role. In the Netherlands, academics have begun to research the use of telecommunications in social movements (http://www.pscw.uva.nl/sociosite/TOPICS/activism.html) - and this literature is likely to provide a systematic assessment of the impact of electronic adjacency on social bargaining. For the moment and here and now, the goal is to draw the attention of this room to the advent of new social relationships of adjacency and their role in social bargaining.

The social organisation of information through the new information communication technologies opens up new opportunities for informed consent. From the position of the individual searching for information on which to make the most personal of medical decisions to the organisation of associations of sufferers of a shared medical complaint who organise web sites comparing medical practice, the opportunity to inform self and selves at low levels of transaction costs are many. The distance between expert and lay person is correspondingly diminished in such an information structure and the ability of the new information communications technology architecture to accommodate high levels of collective information data entry ensures that the transactions costs in developing sites can be almost as low as the transaction costs of accessing sites. The technology thus enables both informed consent as well as well-armed dissent in information terms.

The extent to which the new information communication technology enables a movement away from the traditional dimensions of social exchange in terms of the importance of repeated exchange between the same set of actors requires consideration. Historically, there was a dependence on the immediate social circle for support in social action and this dependence was then reduced in some contexts by the opportunity to make use of more asocial market structures. The new information communication technologies open up the opportunity of gaining social company for a range of activities on a more immediate or 'spot coordination' basis: groupings for activities can form and fade on a faster basis and given the infinity of access provided by the new technology to companions in a range of domains, the social structures which develop as a consequence must be the basis of social exploration and analysis.

To what extent is repeated exchange likely to remain a feature of the new technology? and to what extent is spot exchange likely to be expanded as a feature of the new technology? and what are the corresponding consequences for social bargaining and indeed for political structures?

3. Distributed technologies and power theory: shifting constraints, altered terrains.

The underlying argument is that information is power in combination with the ability to mobilise support for action that information reveals as necessary. In this respect the prospect of universal connectivity and of universal domestic access to new technology will necessarily require alterations in our understandings and concepts of power.

There is a growing literature on the importance of digital voicies and the ways in which digital voices move historical constraints on political participation and alter the terrain of governance http://www.benton.org/DigitalVoices/dv020300.html. The new information communication technologies enable the many voices to participate in decision making - indeed the recognition that participation in decision making is key is fundamental to the New Labour understanding of social capital formation in 'sink' communities - as the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister announces on its web site 'participation is more than consultation' (http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/exclusionnortheast.html).

The interactivity afforded by the technology enables the discourse of power to take place simultaneously in many localities - joint decision making can be taken from distributed venues. The spatial centralisation of decision making is no longer necessary and the economies which such centralisation afforded can now be captured through the efficient networking or electronic coordination of systems.

Local operation of facilities can be integrated into wider networks of activities and still provide seamless service in the most technical of service delivery areas. Distributed technologies and the capacity of these technologies to be integrated outside of the traditional organisational bureaucratic format raise questions about existing social power arrangements. Traditional political party structures are increasingly by passed by other political forms and fora and in time a political democratic deficit will be revealed through the communication technologies which have effected the by-pass. Indeed, such discussions and discourses are already to be found within trade union politics and have occurred within the transport politics of the United Kingdom. The perpetual crisis of the ministry of transport has been accentuated and amplified by the number of transport protest web sites and the social action which they have successfully mobilised.

Proximity generates the opportunity for practice and the shaping of the vision of entitlement and use. One very important aspect of the new information communication technology is the virtual opportunity it provides to experience and experiment with the world of the other: to take this talk back towards its theme of speed and the relationship of speed to power - the immediacy of effecting - it is now possible to virtually manage and control the experience of top end cars through the Internet and web ( http://srd.yahoo.com/srst/25432207/speed/8/1544/T=1025381736/F=5339cee61c0316b5e7f9123ff2f68a95/*http://www.needforspeed.com/).

What has the existence of a car afficionados' speed experience site got to do with power? It opens up an ontology of control over material experiences previously outwith the reach of large sections of society: and it does so in a world where teleporting has just occurred for the first time in history in Australia (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991888). Virtual realities require us to reflect on the relationship between ontology and power and how this is changing: teleporting - though its routine operation across the range of activities we now inhabit is clearly well in the future - is now a material reality and it would be a brave social theorist who assumed that the advent of tele-adjacency has and will have no consequences for the organisation of power in human society.

Physical adjacency, slow mode communication adjacency, electronic adjacency, tele-adjacency: is the organisation of human power set or is it affected by the mode, form and speed of communication? Let's see if as a room we can chart a discussion which meets our present technical moment.

4. Speed traps and power distance: global constraints on local choice.

In offering this short piece on speed of iteration and power distance, I have focused on the challenges to old arrangements that the new technologies pose. In the terms used by Paul Griffin in his recent doctorate on Scottish electronic politics (Napier, 2002), borrowed from Schwerin but further elaborated by Paul, I have charted a discourse on 'transformational politics'. The movement towards new forms of governance, management, institutions and partnerships that the technology affords have gained strong control over my thinking and Paul would remind me that the game is not a one way play. The new technologies also have reinforcement qualities that we should pay attention to: the tight coupling of the international economic system has consequences for and can place constraints upon local choices. Governments find themselves obliged to pay attention to economic factors which limit their discretion to make the changes that are being requested from various parts of society. There are speed traps in the new technical options and these speed traps may operate to reinforce existing power distances.

The response to the full form of the reinforcement argument is that crises are expensive within a tightly coupled system and there is a requirement to factor in the understanding that those with power but lessening legitimacy can be readily held to ransom. The ransom aspect has already made itself felt within the field of industrial relations (http://www.igc.org/solidarity/atc/moody77.html) and indeed we might argue the British ministry of transport. Currently, the British Government blames the press for much of its misfortune, however, a focus on the press may very well be the last clarion call of an outdated alliance between government and intellectual elite - the advent of the new information communication technology has provided a communication form which is faster than the press and as Bill Clinton found out through the activities of Matt Drudge every bit as effective at delegitimising authority.

5. Conclusion: Coalitions, collectivism and global conduct - balancing the assessment.

In concluding, indeed it seems that Giddens and Blair missed the character of the true Third Way: the active use of connectivity to enable the least resourced to gain control over the information and organisation necessary to better position them in the societal and collective operation of resources in a transparent world where challenge to the historical legitimacy of social inequity and leadership is a real possibility. The collapse of the legitimacy of socially polarising accountacy/business practices in the wake of Enron, WorldCom, Xerox, Arthur Andersen, and KMPG raises a new social vision. The technology enables and enforces greater transparency of economic practices and the visibility of inequities becomes more immediate and more widespread.

The death of power distance lies in the ability to fracture the social seclusion which attended elite context and practice and to force interaction and interventions between 'elite' and 'mass' in the social determination of the sharing of collective resources

Grieco references, relevant publications and on line links - an ontological exercise:

Pre-electronic understandings of social adjacency:
Grieco, M. (1987)Keeping it in the family: social networks and employment chance. Tavistock Publications: London

Grieco, M. (1996)Worker's dilemmas: recruitment, reliability and repeated exchange. Routledge:London

Emergent electronic understandings of social adjacency:
Organising in the information age. Ed with Len Holmes and Dian Hosking. Ashgate (in press, 2002)

Intelligent urban development: the emergence of wired administration and government. Ed with Len Holmes and Steve Little, Urban Studies 2000

Transforming contours: information technology in cities and regions in transition. European Spatial Research and Policy vol. 9/2002 no. 2. With Macdonald, K.I.(Guest editor: Professor Ryszard Domanski) http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/transform.html

The power of transparency: the Internet, e-mail, and the Malaysian political crisis. with Len Holmes. Asia Pacific Business Review, vol 8, no 2, winter 2001

Calling up culture: information spaces and information flows as the virtual dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. with S.Little and L. Holmes in Information, Technology and People.2001

'E-collectivism: Emergent opportunities for renewal' with Greene, A. M., Hogan, J. in B. Stanford-Smith and P. T. Kidd (eds.) E-Business: Key Issues, applications, technologies, IOS Press/Omsha 2000

Island histories, open cultures? the electronic transformation of identity, with S. E. Little and L. Holmes, South African Business Review 2000

Kente Connections : The Role Of The Internet In Developing An Economic Base For Ghana Ed. Hitchcock, M. 'Souvenirs: The material culture of tourism' Ashgate: Aldershot, 2000

Trade Unions on line:technology, transparency and bargaining power. with John Hogan in FuTUre: Working together for change. Published proceedings of the Second Scottish Trade Union Research Network Conference 2000

New deals, no wheels: social exclusion, tele-options and electronic ontology with Chris Carter, Urban Studies, 2000

Women's mobility and welfare to work: the need for appropriate transport policies. With Jeff Turner, Len Holmes and Nana Apt in Local Economy 2000

Cyber care and teleprompting: stimulating the socially isolated with Chris Carter, Journal of Community Nursing 2001

Technology, dialogue and the development process. With Stephen Denning in Urban Studies, 2000

Companion journeys and relevant literature:
M. Granovetter. Strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, (78):1360-- 1380, 1973

Opie, I., & Opie, P. (1977). The lore and language of schoolchildren. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Edward W. Schwerin, Mediation, Citizen Empowerment and Transformational Politics. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1995.

On line materials:
http://www.nefa.net/archive/songmusicdance/bothyballads.htm - Bothy Ballads

http://www.igc.org/solidarity/atc/moody77.html Kim Moody - Leverage.