There were no trolls yet when the Jesuit sociologist, John J. Carroll, SJ, began writing on social theory and social change. Certainly, there was no Internet yet when I started reading those theories on change and politics. There were trolls in my mind, but they were those ugly dwarf, which, in turn, came from the Old Norse word that meant giant or, some say, demon.
Given the altered landscape, could I still employ the thoughts of the sociologist on how to bring about social change in the Philippines? There is a gamut of theorizing when it comes to changes and development—from the grand paradigms to small, simple frameworks—but I am personally fond of Carroll’s approaches. One reason is in his thoughts where I find processes that are different from mine. This alerts me to be critical, which is the right way to appraising constructs. As my old friends used to tease me for my tendency to intellectualize many things, “mauunawaan ba ito ng taga Quiapo?” Will those in Quiapo understand this? Meaning: Will the regular citizen understand what I am talking about?
There is another trait in how Carroll rethinks social phenomena and that is, any change is never easy. Speaking about the way to change people’s mind and driving them to action is difficult. Immediately, it is clear to us (me) that social theory is as agonizing as the change it purports to bring to reality.
In his paper, Social Theory and Social Change in the Philippines, a common reading in the social science subjects of Jesuit educational institutions in the country, Carroll writes plainly: “Social theory is not a reality, but a measuring instrument or a set of eyeglasses for looking at reality.” As for reality, he says it is “out there” and “it is always more complex than our formulations.”
He confronts us at the opening of the paper with a question about the two contrasting views of society: the consensus model or the coercion model?
We are familiar with both these models. The consensus, by the name itself, proposes that we, “as members of society” are “united by a common culture, a common understanding of what the world and society are all about…” This is as close to what political scientists envision as a nation.
Carroll goes on to articulate the other model, the coercion theory, which “pictures society as primarily a structure of power, and views inequality as simply the outcome of power relationships over time among individuals and interest groups.”
In the paper, it is clear which model is favored by Carroll. It is the coercion theory. Given the inequalities around us and given the fact that these imbalances are produced and nurtured by structures we assume to be working for us all, the theory paints society as “a structure of power, with power determining who gets what.”
So far, this old paper still resonates with what is happening at present. Listen when the sociologist enumerates the structures we envision should work for the people: “Meanwhile, national institutions such as the electoral process, the separation of powers, free public education and the mass media, and labor and peasant organizations, which in theory should have served to exercise control over the use of power, in the name of the whole society, have either been subverted or have proven unequal to the task.”
In the late ’80s, when this paper was first read, mass media then was composed of newspapers and magazines, radio and TV, and to a certain extent, music and cinema. In this present age, how has the mass media evolved into a subverted social media? Of course, we know the answer. It is all over the Internet; it is not the lack of information that has made us dumb but the abuse of too much information that is making us informed but ignorant.
What can we propose therefore faced as we are with social media necessarily and efficiently exploited to favor one side or distorted to prop up the heinous and unscrupulous? Would values have roles to play when facts are not distinguished from opinions?
I go back to what I have said about John J. Carroll’s paper: the solutions he proposes are not easy because politics and change do not tread on the facile and the painless. In what he defines as the central argument of the paper, Carroll underscores the curative powers of society as including both pressure and moral suasion. “Pressure” would come from the “organized poor, aided by those of the middle class who are committed to genuine social and not merely political change.” Not just a change in the faces of those who will occupy the Palace and the city halls and the municipio. As for moral suasion, he sees it as coming from the media and the churches as “custodian of society’s values.”
Figure that scenario in a world where we—the intelligentsia and the educated, the witty writers and deep thinkers, the owners of shiny laptops and fast Internet connections, the techies—gloat as we correct the grammar and spelling of those whose existence (how evil to be paid as trolls; so yucky and fu–ingly dumb) we have not cared about for hundreds of years.
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