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+ | ====== 1991 Commencement Speech: James Coleman, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago ====== | ||
+ | **Source:** // | ||
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+ | Every generation arriving into adulthood confronts a society it did not create. This is a society created by the generations that have gone before, and by the events that those generations have experienced and coped with. The society you confront at this stage of your life is one that you will inherit, but one that for some years remains under the control of an earlier generation - insofar as its processes are under anyone' | ||
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+ | Yet this society that you confront as you come into adulthood will become, before you leave the stage some 50, 60, or 70 years hence, the society you have created. You confront it now as a society of a certain character, and you, together with events you cannot fully control individually or collectively, | ||
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+ | All that I've said is true for every generation. But what I will say next is very specific to your generation. For the society you see now is changing especially rapidly, through technological developments and demographic changes. These changes create dilemmas, some of which you will confront individually, | ||
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+ | The technological changes that will create dilemmas are at least three: Productivity without labor, the conquest of physical distance, and the biological revolution. Productivity without labor is already evident in the shrinking labor content that goes into manufactured goods - not merely the export of manufacturing jobs to developing countries, but the capture of those jobs, and others, by smart machines of one sort or another. The problem this creates for an individual - for each of you - is how to gain skills that the smart machines will not also learn and then displace you. The problem this creates for a society is how to insure that, with the scarcity of work that can compete with the smart machines, the society does not divide into two: a small class which can still outsmart the machines, and thus contribute to productivity and earn a living, and a large class whose productivity is no longer competitive with that of the machines, and becomes a dependent class. | ||
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+ | The second technological change is the conquest of physical distance. This conquest has taken, and continues to take, two forms. One is the increase in speed and ease of travel, which shrinks the globe. One of my sons, with a job in London in an English firm, is in the process of buying a house there. Some of you will in a similar way break the boundaries of your nation and make your job moves not from one city to another but from one continent to another. Even more will this be true of your children. Thus even the definition of what constitutes your " | ||
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+ | Physical distance is also conquered in a different way. It is conquered by the transmission of information instead of things. | ||
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+ | Ever since the discovery of DNA, and the recognition that this molecule is an enormously complex code to transmit genetic information across generations, | ||
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+ | The biological revolution is a third important element in technological change. Standing on the threshold of genetic modification, | ||
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+ | College students may see it as a lag, which can make, for example, business school graduates a glut on the market when graduation time comes, though they were in high demand a admission time. Economists call this the "hog cycle": | ||
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+ | Choice of gender at birth can turn the ratio of men to women at time of adulthood into a massive hog cycle, ricocheting back and forth from an oversupply of men to an oversupply of women, a ratio perpetually out of balance. The lag between a production decision, to have a boy child or a girl child, and a marketable product is about 20 years, a lag that could make the demand and supply of the two sexes perpetually unsynchronized. | ||
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+ | This example raises the question, does a greater range of choice always mean greater happiness? Not if the aggregation of those choices produces unintended social consequences. Yet as biology undergoes a knowledge explosion, choice replaces chance in an increasing number of areas - and with choice, social dilemmas that we've never before confronted. | ||
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+ | But the technological changes may not be the most consequential of those you will experience. Demographic changes will make America a far different place than it is now. This is already evident in the changes that have taken place; but those changes have only begun. As an example, a recent newspaper contained an account of "gang wars" in Long Beach California, between youth of the old settlers and the newer immigrants. The "old settlers" | ||
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+ | The struggle between the "old settler" | ||
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+ | The United States itself will become, not a nation with " | ||
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+ | I have described a number of changes that you can expect, changes that will make the world you confront through adulthood different from the one into which you were born. But you will also create a new world, a world that is partly due to these changes that cannot be wished away, but is partly due to your actions. When you are ready to hand over the world to your successors, it will be a world you have created, a world shaped not merely be the changes I have described, but by your actions. A part of those actions will consist of your resolution of certain dilemmas, dilemmas that one can see even now, but dilemmas that will become more urgent as the changes I have described take place. I want to indicate what some of those dilemmas are. As with all true dilemmas, there is no easy choice: There is not a "good answer" | ||
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+ | __National coherence vs. multiculturalism__ | ||
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+ | An important dilemma you will confront is a consequence of the immigration that accompanies the emerging global economic system. This is the dilemma of national coherence vs. maintenance of diverse cultural heritages. The issue currently can be seen in the battles over multiculturalism in schools and colleges. There is much to be said on both sides of the dilemma. On the national coherence side, there are the examples of countries split between different cultures or fragmented along ethnic and linguistic lines: countries as different as the Soviet Union, Canada, and Belgium. On the cultural heritage side is the importance of such a heritage to family functioning, | ||
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+ | Experience in other countries suggests that maintenance of different linguistic enclaves within a nation state is harmful to national coherence, often disastrously so. For linguistic enclaves to live in proximity and harmony, coexistent with national coherence, would require some social inventions; but short of that, how can this dilemma be solved as the 21st Century forces it on us? It is a dilemma that I place in your lap, as new graduates, as young adults, to mull over and, as you begin to create the world of the 21st Century, to address. | ||
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+ | __Commercial society vs. communal society__ | ||
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+ | There arises a dilemma today that goes fundamentally to the way a society is organized. This can be described as a dilemma of commercial society vs. communal society. Commercial society is built on formal organizations, | ||
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+ | But this is only one way to organize a social system. In communal society, no transactions are at arm's length; all are between persons who see the transaction from the other' | ||
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+ | The society of a hundred years ago, at the end of the 19th Century, was one in which communal society was still strong, but was under insistent challenge from commercial society. The family was still the dominant social institution, | ||
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+ | In the meantime, over the last hundred years, the insistent challenge of the commercial society has overwhelmed the communal society. The family is no longer the dominant institution in society; it has been replaced by the corporation. First the husband and father left the household as the locus of his productive labor, for the job in a factory or office; more recently, the woman has similarly left the household for employment in the commercial society. The farms, which in the 19th Century were the principal locus of production and of residence, have given way to the family, the office, the city and suburb. The traveling salesman jokes no longer make the rounds; they are irrelevant, because the farmer' | ||
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+ | But this movement from communal society to commercial society leaves several problems in its wake. The interpenetration of selves that is intrinsic to the communal society meant that its institutions embraced quite naturally the problems of dependency: care of the young, the old, and the infirm; care of friends and relatives who are temporarily down on their luck; incorporation into the household of those who had no immediate family. There was no homelessness, | ||
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+ | The hallmark of the commercial society is celebration of the individual. From the perspective of the communal society, the result is rampant individualism, | ||
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+ | Yet it is unlikely that a society can continue to exist based wholly upon the individualistic incentive structures of the commercial society, no matter how well designed. It is likely that both mechanisms of a social system, the incentive structures of commercial society and the interpenetration of selves of communal society, are necessary to the society' | ||
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+ | Brokers advertise that they are not engaged in transactions, | ||
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+ | The dilemma of these two societies, commercial and communal, will confront you individually and collectively. It will confront you individually as you divide your life between family, community, and church on the one hand and work, career and individual freedom on the other. It will confront you collectively as you construct the institutions of the future. How will you construct, or reconstruct, | ||
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+ | The current institutions for addressing dependency in society, a crude amalgam of the remnants of communal society and defective constructions of commercial society, are less than adequate: many families are failing their children, yet schools have not filled the breech: there is a health care crisis; the homeless increase in numbers each year, and the welfare rolls show a long-term upward trend. | ||
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+ | The dilemma, at a collective level, is a dilemma of which structures to strengthen, the incentive structures of commercial society that when well designed will motivate individuals to work in ways that while benefitting themselves financially and in their careers also benefit others; or the less tangible structures of relationships based on interpenetration of selves - structures that lead persons directly to care for dependent others. Perhaps the dilemma is not so stark as this; perhaps there are effective combinations that can build upon both the external incentive structures and the internal interpenetration of selves. If so, it will be your task to discover these combinations. But however the dilemma is resolved, this will be the society you create. | ||
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+ | There are other dilemmas that you will confront as you move through adulthood. I have mentioned two, national coherence vs. multiculturalism, |