The August Bank Holiday Weekend must be the busiest of the year for British campsites, especially when we actually get nice weather, but do our happy caravanners know that they’re actually acting out the perfect analogy for our postmodern society….
At least according to the famous (and recently deceased, RIP) Postmodern Marxist sociologist Zygmunt Bauman – as outlined in his classic work Liquid Modernity (pages 23-4)...
Quote from Bauman's Liquid Modernity...
“Modern society in its present form may be likened to the pattern of a caravan site. The place is open to everyone with his or own caravan and enough money to pay the rent. Guests come and go, none of them takes much interest in how the site is run, providing the customers have been allocated plots big enough to park the caravans, the electric sockets and water taps are in good order and noise the owners of the caravans parked nearby do not make too much noise.
Drivers bring to the site their own homes equipped with all the appliances they need for their stay, which at any rate they intend to be short. Each driver has his or her own itinerary and time schedule. What the drivers want from the site's managers is not much more (but no less either) than to be left alone and not interfered with. In exchange, they promise not to challenge the managers' authority and to pay the rent when due.
Since they pay, they also demand. They tend to be quite adamant when arguing for their rights to the promised services but otherwise want to go their own ways and would be angry if they were not allowed to do so. On occasion, they may clamour for better service; if they are outspoken, vociferous and resolute enough they may even get it. On occasion, they may find the managers' promises not kept, the caravanners may complain and demand their due - but it won't occur to them to question and renegotiate the managerial philosophy of the site, much less to take over the responsibility of running the place. They may, at the utmost, make a mental note never to use the site again and not to recommend it to their friends.
When they leave, the site remains much the same as it was before their arrival, unaffected by past campers and waiting for others to come; though if some complaints go on being lodged by successive cohorts of caravanners, the services provided may be modified to prevent repetitive discontents from being voiced again in the future.”
My comment/ further elaboration
Bauman goes on to contrast this analogy to the 1940s – 1960s, suggesting that people used to engage with society as if were their permanent household – acting as if they were part of a shared household and had the right to redecorate it, and to make structural alterations – by being more engaged with politics and local communities, for example. Because people used to see society as ‘their society’, because life was more stable and societies tighter knit, they had to give back to the social, and ‘care about’ society.
Bauman sees what he calls ‘the individualised society’ as a problem – because increasingly people today tend to expect the economy and the state to deliver services, but to be able to disengage from politics and not put anything back, or caring about the ‘bigger picture’.
The challenge according to Bauman is how we get people back into engaging with society….
Do peer to peer networks change all this?
I also think it’s interesting to reflect briefly on whether communities like this one on Steemit reflect, and/ or will come to reflect a caravan park, with people just posting and not engaging with others… or whether people will treat it like their home – all muscling along together in some sort of spirit of community?
NB - Liquid Modernity is a cracking good read!
And my favorite picture of the man himself...
