Modern Man

I must be careful not to turn into Laurie Taylor, but I must tell you about this gentleman I saw outside the bank yesterday morning. The bank was closed because they were having a spot of trouble with the cash dispenser.

A few people, including me, waited outside in the hope that they would soon finish and open up. As it happened, they took some time, so I went home and tried later. But not before witnessing two customers expressing their dissatisfaction with the state of things. One elderly gentleman came up to me and said, leaning right into my face: “If they want to check their security systems they should do it in their time, not ours.” He then hopped onto his mobility scooter and glided off to pastures new. I’m sure he was never one of those students who are busy doing other things in their lessons.
Another man seemed only too eager to take the opportunity to explain what was going on to anyone he knew passing by, using as many expletives as possible. He made his unhappiness with the bank and then the police (two traffic officers had stopped a driver and were going through the paperwork in their car) and then uttered his despair at ‘this modern life’.
Well actually it was more like “this ****** modern ******** life.
Hmm: I think this man must have read Giddens or something. The reference to ‘this modern life’ struck me as being the sort of thing Giddens gets excited about and calls ‘reflexivity’. And in many ways he’s right; the man was showing an awareness of his environment and social situation. He was, as sociologists say, ‘acting’. And the aggressive swearing I took as a sign of general anger and bitterness against social institutions and structures – like banks and the police force.
In a way, the man was an amateur sociologist. What full-time sociologists try to do is similar; but they try to avoid the anger, avoid the swearing, and use systematic research methods to investigate why things happen the way they do in ‘this modern life’.