John Holley

‘Brat’ Summer 2024: Grasping a Media Moment

At a time when wars, political campaigns, and an Olympics were going on, in Summer 2024, ‘brat’ popped up with no apparent connection to these. Here was a girl youth phenomenon expressing itself through Charli xcx’s sudden, huge celebrity.

It started with singer song writer Charli xcx’s sixth album, ‘Brat.’ Its bold green rectangle on the album cover could have writing on it. The whole package, the singer’s style, songs, and visual image, suddenly took off and became a mega hit.

Are those who study youth ready to include this moment’s splash? In a general way, sociologists recognize that media objects illuminate young people’s lives and relationships. But are we capable of grasping this phenomenon in all its various pieces? Here is a social space, radiating its meaning in a particular slice of time. Let’s list some of the dimensions of this. Its many components deliver different messages, all in a very short time.

The album cover has a catchy green rectangle. On this text can appear.

The music and lyrics are themselves memorable – Charli xcx has been recording for a number of years.

The album title is ‘Brat,’ which is a pejorative term; the written word catches attention by being unusual. The verbal meaning is deepened by Charli’s extended explanation.

Charli said that “brat” means “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party … maybe says dumb things sometimes … who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown but parties through it … is very honest, very blunt, a little bit volatile.

The word brat is used adjectivally in the phrases ‘brat girl’ and ‘brat summer.’

Note that the vision of girlhood here has contradictory opposites; it describes a girl who has many feelings and contrasting behaviors.

Brat turns out to be a good thing, not a term of disapprobation. It is a cool persona for its, mainly Gen Z, audience. It has been use supportively for the woman American presidential candidate with the phrase ‘Kamala is brat,’ suggesting that she is young at heart and cool!

My question for sociologists is whether we have put enough effort into understanding how suddenly appearing, generationally embraced images redefine what is desirable and acceptable in people. Does each generation change what it wants people to be like? Does this express what a generation feels society needs? Are social scientists able to see what is going on in this densely expressive mode of communication? My impression is that influential media events, like ‘brat’ in Summer 2024, are still dismissed by older people as too complicated, and disappearing too fast, to be credited with being influential.

This is sad because people in every generation remember the big media events of their growing up; these are defining moments, unforgettable for how they changed the picture of what produces successful and happy people. We can all remember examples of these; illuminating moments are part of our collective understanding and should not, surely, be missing from social science descriptions of modern of life.

A Response to Abrutun’s ‘Why Not Affectivism?’

See sethabrutyn.com Why Not Affectivism? April 29, 2024

What does Abrutyn see as a key issue in sociology today? Interestingly, he argues that sociological explanations are derived rationally from inspirations of our field’s Founding Fathers, and that these are unrealistically rational and insufficiently affectual. I find this a very interesting statement as it addresses a central aspect of how we undertake sociological analysis.

This has made me think about what the sociological writing I do involves and how the profession rewards some kinds of writing with publication and recognition, while offering no interest in some other field. This makes us think, as Abrutyn already does, about other fields of natural and social science. For obvious, and selfish reasons, I start with my own work which is on people’s personal lives. People’s relationships, successive generations, and the influence of these on society is clearly sociological. Their families and private lives are obviously not politics or economics. As interpersonal relationships and as synchronized generational mobilizations, they are not psychology either. Incidentally, academic psychology departments typically see themselves as medical and biological scientists, and not as social science at all.

So how does the branch of sociology I am working in fit in with Abrutyn’s concerns? First, it is important to remind ourselves that the Founding Fathers of sociology had absolutely nothing to say about the family. Feminists know that Martineau wrote about private lives, and that Marianne Weber wrote about marriage, before organizing Max’s stuff. But there can be no argument that, in my field, an excessive rationality from the founding fathers influenced the current sociology of personal life. Indeed, the reverse is true; interpersonal relationships are not lacking in strong feelings or can be discussed without emotions of attraction and rejection (Moore 1998), desires (Hey 1997), or discussion of personal and group affect in courtship patterns (Grazian 2007, Bogle 2008).

But let’s look at the broad influence and status of this field. Sociology in North America generally seems not to be interested at all in this area. The ASA has no stream in Youth, Generations, and Life Course. It is as though people have nothing interesting sociologically going on as they grow up, or as different generations influence society. A quick look I made at sociologists’ careers in youth studies, particularly in research on girls, show that these, almost universally women, authors are very rarely able to continue an academic career in this. They leave academic sociology, or shift into fields such as education, culture, or ethnicity. Important theoretical studies appear to be forgotten (Patterson 1998).

All this tells me that personal life, growing up, and families is a very low status topic and not at all admired as a field within sociology. It tells me that American sociology doesn’t like feelings, nor the challenge it involves of conceptualizing affect as a source human action. A lot of this supports what Abrutyn is saying, but, in the case of personal life the absence of affect comes not from what the Founding Fathers said, but rather what they omitted.

A bigger challenge may involve why the sociological profession prefers ‘roles’ in formal organizations that use rules and rationality, rather than ‘relationships’ chosen by mutual attraction that rely on the affects of feelings and sustained commitment.

Media Influencers and Understanding Media: Paris Hilton and Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan needs to be credited with identifying, in the 1960s, the first media cultural generation, that we now call the Boomers. We know that this has been followed by subsequent generations, each identified by its own popular culture. McLuhan made a brilliant start by identifying media users as a new sociological feature of countries. He invented the name ‘media’ and recognized its importance for the cohort of people who grew up with it.

But where McLuhan went wrong was misrepresenting what this media-using cohort of people were actually achieving. McLuhan called this media use by young people a form of ‘tribalism.’ With this term he saw youth as failing. McLuhan regarded the only useful contribution to society as what was political and ideological. For him the newly appearing Baby Boomers lacked all serious literary and moral impact…unlike his own generation.

For himself, and people his age who lacked any surrounding media, McLuhan regarded people as influential only when they were literary individuals, private thinkers who worked alone and thought for themselves, and whose only support was alcohol. McLuhan expected men – and not women or youth – to be private, boozy, and essentially moral and politically oriented contributors to the institutional order of their society.

McLuhan couldn’t see any useful purpose for the ‘tribalism’ displayed by the media-using young people of the Sixties. For him, their deficiency, was their inability to contribute abstract concepts to the ideological discourse of the state.

Let’s jump forward forty years and look at somebody else who made, in my opinion, an equally important analysis of the meaning of media. I’m talking about Paris Hilton and her contribution to media influence through fashion and beauty. Around the Millennium, Paris Hilton was criticized by the older generation for ‘not doing anything’ and therefore not deserving any fame.

But Paris Hilton did make a huge contribution. She demonstrated that being beautiful, wearing the right clothing, hair and makeup was enough. You didn’t have to do anything that was political, ideological or charitable, in order to be influential. Being beautiful was enough, because it was an effective use of the power of media. Paris Hilton showed that political, ideological, and philanthropic activities were irrelevant to the popularity of the media. Today’s ‘media influencers’ now understand this basic truth. At the Millennium, it was not clear how much work went into presenting oneself. Before she went out, Hilton had to spend 45 minutes on hair, and another 45 minutes on makeup, as well as finding and wearing the right clothing. She would make changes of clothing during the day so that news photographers could publish her pictures at different events on the same day. This was not ‘doing nothing’; this was hard work that was relevant and necessary to effective deployment of media.

In sum, Paris Hilton’s achievement was showing that being beautiful is enough; through media, anyone can be influential with youth and affect society. You don’t need to be conceptual, policy oriented, or a political advocate for one cause or another. The media is its own thing, a fact which every subsequent generation has learnt for itself, and inspires so many of our young women to become media influencers. McLuhan was wrong. He could not have predicted the profound change which has shifted society away from literary high culture and politics. Much of the old ruling heights of political consciousness have lost influence due to the rise of media.

More sadly, social science generally, has failed to catch up with the importance of youth and media. Why did reading and print media decline? Without media, how do we know how young people see themselves collectively? What is each generation adding to media? The great transformation by which youth and media have been elevated into importance is demonstrated perfectly by Paris Hilton.

Today, people have largely forgotten Marshall McLuhan. His limitations are now all too obvious; businesses now study each youthful media cohort and report on what is new. These innovations are taken very seriously – and rightly so.

So it is disappointing that academic social science has so far failed to learn the Paris Hilton message that using the media is enough in itself. What is the mechanism by which media is so effective? How does the personal life of young people shape politics, economy, and popular culture? Our current social sciences cannot tell us the answer because, in important ways, our sociology and political science are stuck back in the McLuhan Era. They still suppose that written commentary, and policy making within formal organizations, are the only ways of steering society. Revisiting the legacy of Paris Hilton may be a good way to cast off the obsolete vision that still sees no purpose for the media in a modern country.

Government as Law or Listening to People?

The recent strikes in France against Macron’s perfectly reasonable plan to raise the retirement pension age, again pose the question of how good Continental ‘governance by rational law’ really is. The alternative is expressed by the English-speaking countries that operate by business style contracts, a reduced kind of law, and by listening to complaints that are based in actual lifestyle. Brexit and the recent battles, with Macron and Barnier, over how the UK should continue to interact with continental Europe, illustrate all the mutual incomprehension that arises from having two different systems behind the activities of government.

Recent strikes across France show what goes wrong when governments use a political approach based on law. The policy behind it appears absolutely clear; and to its fans, this looks a very rational way of proceeding. But Hugh Schofield (BBC News 7^th March 2023) reveals the ugly underside of this. All political gains from government policy are seen by their beneficiaries as eternal political rights, which need to be defended forever by violence if necessary. Schofield refers to the French Revolution as a foundation of this. Flexibility, compromise, and updating, because times and conditions have changed, all become impossible. What first appeared as rational turns into street battles between right and wrong.

English speaking countries, correctly see the advantages of their approach. Compromise and adaptation help things to move along more smoothly. They can change with the times in small, aggregating steps. There does exist, of course, an inherent disadvantage to this unwritten process. It is, definitely, less rational in that, at no point, is it necessary to put in writing, or to conceptualize in any broader way, what is going on. The English-speaking countries are notoriously bad at explaining themselves, to their own people and to outsiders. While explanations won’t stop the on-going, low level Mandevillean grumbling and complaining, serious minded audiences could usefully be told the underlying purposes and success rates of the various projects going on in the English-speaking system. A prime example comes from the advocates of Brexit who seem unable to explain its potential usefulness. Brexit may add resilience to the economy, diversity in industries, and robustness in employment, all of these being gains from avoiding the Continent’s legal absolutism.

So do we prefer the rigidity of everything signed as an international treaty (Macron, Merkel)? Or do we like inattention to detail (Johnson), or lost in detail (May)? Viewed within the current political scene, there appears to be no good choice. Fortunately, modern countries don’t rely only on the political sphere. Lots help comes from other sources – the economy and, even more, from a country’s sociology.

All three social science systems work by listening to people. Each has its own method for doing this. What picture and results they give us depends on how much time and effort society has put into the different zones of politics, economics, and sociology. Which best expresses the material reality of how people are living? Which of these should we be listening to most? These are big, yet to be decided, questions of social science that take us beyond particular politicians and specific moments in history.

The Connection Problem in Sociology

Our profession posits the existence of many features of social life. I’m interested in the synchronization of free individuals over their lifecourse. But whatever one’s topic of study, if it takes place in an advanced society of today, the connection problem remains to be answered. What is it that binds people together? If the facts we find cannot be linked to coercive institutions – the structural explanation – or explained by restrictive civilized culture – some -ism or -archy – our social science has got an explanation gap. How do autonomous individuals relate to each other across many varied phases of life and contrasting conditions? Every pattern sociologists find, from the smallest fad to the biggest macro trend, poses the same problem of connectivity. How are these people communicating? In our complex societies, how do patterns in private life exist at all?

This is the Hobbesian problem of social order writ large. Hobbes wanted a solution based on coercion – the Leviathan. Locke offered a solution based on shared, enlightened interest through property ownership. But today’s life demands explanations that are infinitely more detailed and reaching separate individuals. And, at the same time, our explanations must recognize differences over time. Individuals and generational cohorts innovate collectively across each decade. What is more, these manage to be collectively orderly. How can this be explained?

Where can our missing connectors be found? Let’s take an example of transition from courtship to committed relationship. Lydia Kiesling gives us a biographical account of her finding ‘the one’ at age 23 in a sudden revelation after a period of wild dating (The Cut 2019). Lydia knows she’s out of sync with her peers; too precocious early on, and too quick to commit to a life partner and enter the next phase. Other undergraduate students reading this account, circa 2020, recognized this girl as being out of sync too. Her age is essentially still undergraduate college, with today’s five and six year graduation rates in mind.

So one individual is free to be out of sync. But, at the same time everybody, individual and observers alike, knows what the normal and expected chronology here really is. What does this example tell us about generational sync overall?

What is the cause of it? Should we describe it as ‘normative’? This seems too strong by half. Our protagonist is not harmed in the least by being in breach of any such norm; she knows she has been ‘wild,’ but can do what she wants and end up with a happy result that suits her and her partner equally. What is the power of a norm if it doesn’t matter to the people involved?

But, apparently contradicting this, everybody shares a consensus understanding of what the right age is for each stage of the life course; this is a collective awareness held by the whole cohort. And this shared perception is validated by the fact that the average age members of one generation complete each phase of life close to the same age. People pair up in budget-sharing couplehood in their mid 20s, and marry at around 30. What is more, these age synchronizations are not inherited. They are different from their own parents’ age timing and in the content of their courtship process. e.g. the rules of dating, breaking up, and finding new suitors.

What conclusions can we draw from the facts we have found here? The evidence of collective sync suggests that some kind of norm or rule exists. We see this in one of young people’s most important choices – the selection of their life partner. On the other hand, breaking the chronological rule appears to be totally without any penalty. Apparently, the obedience to timing is completely optional. This latter implies that norms or rules carry no reward or cost for breaking them. How does something with no consequences get created and how can it be influential? This is part of a problem sociologists face in trying to understand what connects people in private life. Young people appear to be collectively coordinated by age, but in practice individuals are evidently free to operate separately. They can create their own futures, heedless of others. What sociological principle is at work here? Whatever connects people must be a new kind of order. It cannot be one of culturally defined rules of the type enforced by state civilizations. Nor can it be a principle of rational action based on reward or loss – of the economic kind. Youth courtship shows us neither norms, nor rewards and punishments. Fixed civilized fixed rules for everyone, or self-interest in the economy, just don’t seem to apply here.

So what should sociologists do? Do we throw our hands in the air and despair of ever explaining what goes on in private life? Should we retreat and confine our studies to politics and formal organizations? Is it just safer to pick topics that aren’t sociological – that are political and economic – because, and here is the huge paradox, sociologists are afraid to study topics that are sociological? They find that blaming problems on the economy and institutions is much easier to do! Trying to be a sociologist of the real lives of youth today may take you into a difficult terrain where rules exist but are optional for individuals. This new zone isn’t based on morals. Nor can we easily see good or bad consequences. It lacks all current explanation. In sum, it’s too hard for the modern mind to grapple with personal relationships and it appears only fiction writers and entertainers can present it – as drama and not social science. Can sociology as a discipline just accept that it has been defeated by this?

This author admits to being unconventional for a sociologist. I believe social science can escape from its ‘connection problems’ if it ventures into a new explanatory framework. If we take our entire private lifecourse as one topic and study it within its own relationship rules and logic, I feel confident that this will show us how private connections stand in the center of social life. And this, I believe, will reveal youth and lifecourse to be their own, shared sociological sphere.

Best Writings on Girls’ Relationships: From Which Have I have Learned Most?

Recently I’ve been thinking back over the last 25 years about what has been most helpful to me in academic writing on girls’ relationships. Here are the most memorable and conceptual for me as a sociologist.

Valerie Hey (1997) This founding study of schoolgirls’ relationships never grows old. The dynamics of Erin’s clique are unforgettable. And we are give a conceptualization of girlhood as a social space.

Sarah Baker (2004) Fascinating look at different ages of girls as they learn, share and hide the ‘too grown up stuff’ from younger girls. ‘Performance’ as dancing on the tables is a most memorable moment.

Martha Einerson (1998) First to emphasize centrality of media objects to girls’ groups. In this case ‘New Kids of the Block’ fall from fan idolization as girls deploy their moral judgement. Memorable are the hold-out girls, torn between abandoning their stars and keeping up with their girl peers’ changes.

Monica Moore (1995, 2002) How tween girls learn body language and use it for attraction and rejection signaling. How teen and adult women use this ‘agentically’ as courtship signaling at dances and clubs.

Sharon Lamb (2001) Young girls’ first group activities start with the ‘dare game.’ Madeline’s girl friends visit her house – and surprise her dad! What happens is most memorably described in 133 words.

Today, twenty five years after Val Hey’s classic study of girls in cliques, the original cases and concepts remain great. But never would I have imagined, back then, how little of this good stuff has become familiar in mainstream sociological thinking.

Sources

Hey, Valerie 1997 The Company She Keeps

Baker, Sarah 2004 “It’s Not about Candy” International Journal of Cultural Studies

Einerson, Martha J. “Fame, Fortune and Failure: Young Girls’ Moral Language Surrounding Popular Culture’ Youth and Society 30:2 (1998): 241-257

Moore, Monica M. 1995. “Courtship Signaling and Adolescents: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Journal of Sex Research 32(4):319-328 and 2002 “Courtship Communication and Perception” Perceptual and Motor Skills

Lamb, Sharon 2001 The Secret Lives of Girls

Why Can’t I See Society?

Here’s how I think people see things. We can see people as individuals but we can’t see ‘society in these people.’ I can see myself; I’m a person and the individual aspects of myself are clear to me. But I cannot see any society within me or showing up in my actions – whatever is going on kinda looks like it’s me as an individual. So, if society exists, why can’t I see it?

Let’s ask a parallel question, one that is about another feature of modern life – the economy. Can you, or anyone else, really ‘see the economy?’ We buy things; everybody buys stuff. But does all the buying by people and the selling by businesses really add up to something we can call ‘an economy’?

Most people today do believe that something called an economy really exists. This contrasts with the widespread doubt felt whether our society is any more than a nominal term – a shorthand for certain trends but which doesn’t actually exist as one, coherent thing.

In the past, the economy was not recognized as existing either. Back then, it wasn’t as highly developed as it is today and that didn’t help. But it, in the past, it was also true that people didn’t know where to look for what was economic. Where can you see the economy? What subsequently changed to make it believable?

The answer is that the economy has been given indicators that show how it is alive. Great effort has gone into data collection and this has resulted in well recognized indicators that measure revealing summaries of many recurring economic activities. We hear about prices, learn about its growth, and watch its sectors expand or contract. All these facts are revealed to us as trends because the measures are made repeatedly – again and again, at great expense, and with wide agreement about what they are studying. The result is that ordinary people can see the economy; we learn about its aggregate behavior in inflation, growth, and the rise or decline of whole industries.

Over time we discover whether the economy is growing, shrinking, or failing. The relevant measures are constructed repeatedly, a fact that involves a big commitment from social science. It is this which lets us see trends over time. Despite having no center – you cannot walk up to the economy’s castle, see its temple, or learn its commandments – but thanks to publicly available measurements, we see the evidence of the economy as a living entity in our country.

Social scientific measuring has given visibility to the economy. We can now see the living, breathing presence of this amorphous thing in our lives. We all believe the economy is real. But what about society? Is that doomed to be be forever invisible and unbelieved? Could society be real too?

My contention is simple. I have come to the conclusion that when we get around to collecting the equivalent data for society, people will see it too as a living reality around us. Being composed of small actions, being large and amorphous – these are not insurmountable obstacles to becoming visible. Someday we will be able to visualize our society; I am sure this can be done. In future, we will recognize society at work in our own lives and see its effects in the people around us. When that day comes, we will thank a new generation of social scientists for putting so much effort into finding and publicizing the data that is most informative and revealing.

Kylie Jenner and Society 2020

When I’m asked where to start a sociological analysis, I think of how I began, in 2020, to introduce my students to society. I started with this statement; ‘Kylie Jenner is the youngest self-made billionaire.’ Then I asked students to say what they thought about this. Student responses are very revealing. What they understand turns out to provide a perfect starting point for thinking about society.

Some students doubt the claim that Kylie Jenner is truly self-made; they point to the Kardashian family’s earlier fame and success. Some also guess that, in reality, her cosmetics business is worth less than a billion. But what students do all agree on is that she is famous and has a business. These universally known facts are profoundly important. As a sociologist, I see this knowledge as anchoring young people into society in ways that have previously been overlooked.

What is it that students know and how does this tell them about society?

Students learn through objects that express what Kylie is. Items of her cosmetics business are bought, worn, and displayed in photographs. Through these objects, the essence of ‘Kylieness’ is possessed and displayed.
Kylie’s objects are attached to the performance of the feminine.
As a person and as a designer, her objects anchor students’ experience in one particular year on the calendar. Kylie things will be understood and associated with the year 2020 when she was popular.
Kylie’s product-based fame constitutes her ‘price’ or ‘worth.’ This is a valuation of the behavior and activities associated with her objects. This is simultaneously both sociological and economic.
Kylie’s name and products will lose their ‘value of the moment’ as time elapses. In a year or two, these particular objects will no longer signify the exciting features of the feminine. New objects will be needed – which Kylie herself may be able to evolve into and create its replacements.

Taken together, we can see that meaningful objects root people into society in a variety of ways. You don’t yourself have to be feminine or interested in cosmetics for these objects to connect you; being in your age group and knowing your generational peers is enough to involve you in society. Everybody your age will know Kylie Jenner, what her family does, and what Kylie’s personality and brand stand for. The sociological lesson this gives my students is that generational objects connect the entire age group with their society.

Unfortunately for social science, Kylie Jenner and popular culture is absent from current explanations. Serious political and sociological thinking steers away from today’s material objects. Instead, theory directs social scientists toward institutions and word-based explanations. Political theory, of the ‘problem of order’ in Hobbes and Locke, looks to government and economic property to explain people’s behavior. Objects don’t get a look in here; they are not considered capable of influencing people. Sociological theory hasn’t done any better. Durkheim’s ‘anomie’ and Marx’s ‘alienation’ both claim that people are disconnected from society or alienated by harsh money economics. Weber emphasized rational action in the institutions of government and business. But celebrities, meaningful objects, and how we dress to express ourselves in our own generation is totally missing from official social science. This makes it impossible to see how buying and sharing meaningful objects integrates people into society.

Student understanding of Kylie Jenner reveals that seeing, possessing and performing with key objects connects an entire generation with its society. This is a great way to start thinking about sociology. People’s choice of stars and merchandise gives each generation shared bonds. If a celebrity like Kylie can be known and admired through her image and her products, the way is opened up to discover what else binds generations to their society – which is the purpose of studying sociology.

Why Can’t Experts Understand Wall Street and the Fed? The Missing Sociology

I have just watched Frontline’s “The Power of the Fed” (PBS 13th July 2021) and witnessed interviews with a whole range of financial people, though no politicians, who one might expect to have clear opinions about the money they vote to spend. Here some thoughts.

The Fed (US Federal Reserve, America’s central bank) has spent trillions of dollars, after 2008 (due to the mortgage lending collapse) and again in 2020 (due to the Covid-19 pandemic), on boosting the economy in ways that are utterly new.
Its employees and advisors are evidently incapable of understanding or explaining the Fed’s policies in recent years which are, admittedly, very new.
Some, often older, people inside or close to it, think the Fed is seriously wrong in the effects it is having. e.g. not helping ‘widget’ making (metal bashing) industries, not helping ordinary or low income people.
Most commentators agree that, at present, it is impossible to find the price of a business; a corporation may look overburdened with debt and about to collapse – but suddenly its stock increases hugely in value due to Federal Reserve support.
Commentators confine their analysis to within the United States. They ask ‘Is it good for America?’ But maybe the problem is broader than American markets or whether U.S. politicians can be regulate banking.
With today’s connectedness, shouldn’t we be analyzing New York (‘Wall Street), and London (‘The City’) in the context of the banking needs of the entire World?

As a sociologist, what do I think of this? To me what is obviously missing is the phenomenon of youth. Young people are a whole cluster who are active in society. What is fascinating about this group is that they are simultaneously sociological and economic. Young people are capable of creating shared styles of consumption, so they must be active sociologically to be able to stamp things with their generational mark. At the same time, youth is important for its size and the variety of industries that dependent on its purchasing; these must keep up with youth’s changing demand for new styles and expression though objects. I like to call this combination ‘econo-sociology.’

What follows from this is that sociologists need to rethink youth as a phase of life and conceptualize how it collectively influences society. Economists need to change too. Their explanations of consumption and the economy should include demographics and the innovation that comes from the ‘invisibles’ needed by generations of youth. In my view, the problem of trying to understand ‘The Fed’ means understanding what today’s econo-sociology really is.

First, our economy and polity are not what they were a century ago when central banks and current textbooks about economics came into being. The old thinking saw economic activity as sales on Main Street/ High Street and business responding by making ‘widgets’ in metal bashing factories. And all this happened within one country. So its central bank, a political institution of one country, could control the economy by finding the right policies.

As the documentary, ‘The Power of the Fed,’ showed, old assumptions evidently no longer work. The economy is now international – consider exporters like China, sovereign funds, and global supply lines. Leading economies have earnings from ‘invisibles’ such as finance and banking, youth consumption, and knowledge services. All these require the hiring of talent, not just routine workers. All these show economy now combining itself with sociology. Consider how world-wide consumers of popular culture, smaller family size, parents investing in education and enriching experiences for youth all put new requirement on businesses. They must collect new information, organize talent in new ways, and discover new routes for delivering product. Together, these are enough to explain why prices no longer guide businesses, or the Fed to the right policies.

Current confusion among public policy experts indicates that we need a new social science, an econo-sociology, to show what an old institution like the Fed needs to do. Right now, due to a missing social science of what is actually happening in the world, nobody today can say what the Fed ought to be doing and why. It’s time for this to change!

After a Crisis – What Can We Expect?

Here is a list of things we know about crises that have been observed in the past.

The events of crisis reverse our collective life back to conditions in the past. We start having to live like our ancestors in various stressful, primitive, and diminished ways.
- What gets sacrificed are the higher level needs we love as our quality of life.
- The reported news, expressed by government officials and reported by mainstream media, if it starts out in denial, typically ends up stressing the bad, demanding that people observe rules, deny themselves, and subordinate how they live to the need for getting through the crisis, preventing deaths, etc.
- All this personal sacrifice leads some leaders to demand that a better society should emerge after the crisis. Others expect a return to the old normality just like it was before.
- What does not appear to happen is a permanent collapse; recovery usually happens fast, some of it expressed by exuberance of the survivors.

Why do sudden ‘events,’ however fast happening, violent and dangerous, rarely inflict long term damage? Do we have an explanation for this? Natural disasters and disease are not expressions of society. When these external tragedies pop up, they make society fail. But society comes back as soon as its steady, continuous processes restart; these pick up and revive individuals and quickly aggregate into generating processes within society.

After the worst of the crisis is over, people start rethinking about it more calmly. What do we personally, and social collectively, want to prioritized next? Is there a take away lesson to be learnt from the crisis? At such a moment in time, people will bring to mind their varied experiences. Many will have things to grieve, the crisis having forced some people to suffer loss and others to be denied things that couldn’t happen. During the crisis, the immediate stress raised antagonisms: those who wanted lockdown demanded everyone conform as a matter of continuing to breathe, as a issue of life and death; those who bore the loss of higher level need for relationships met in contravention of some these official rules. The details of which public policies were efficacious, by how much, and whether something entirely different can be done next time, will be debated as long as this particular crisis is discussed.

After a disaster, Rosling’s advice is helpful; we should keep two contrasting ideas in our minds at the same time. People didn’t all suffer the same way, but all real experiences should be recognized and validated. Multiple ways of looking at what went on will continue to be needed. At the same time, around us, we will see societies rebuilding themselves. Modern countries don’t depend on the political. Society is resilient; the pop-ups of crisis are event driven and disappear fast. As a crisis ends, our sociology, economy, and popular culture provide many routes back into sustainable and supportive life. This rapid revival reminds us how resilient and constructive our underlying shared progress really is. But because of what people suffered, the crisis must not be forgotten. Those losses sustained during the disaster will later be able to be discussed more sympathetically and constructively. In the end, I remain optimistic that a catastrophe can be overcome, first by the rapid reappearance of society, second, by a sustained reflection on what different kinds of people suffered.