ANOMIE AND ALIENATION: VIOLENCE AND KNOWLEDGE IN YOUTH SUBCULTURES

Anomie and alienation: Violence and knowledge in youth subcultures
Nikos Gousgounis
Pedagogical Institute of Athens
ngousg@itel.gr
YOUTH'S SUBCULTURES: IDENTITY FORMATION AND VIOLENT MANISFESTATION CASE STUDY: GREEK SOCCER FANS MANIFESTING SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE o First test of creative selection and interpretation o Second test on goals, means ,social knowledge and school alienation o Third test on maturation o Fourth test on ritual participation , membership, stigma, social exclusion and marginalization and violence (addressed only to the second group of hooligans) . RESULTS AND DISCUSSION CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS REFERENCES
Introduction
Youth research has taken to be to a considerable extend a concrete unit tied to a concrete sedimentation of age. However, things start to change when youth is comprehended and interpreted as a phenomenon produced within social practice. New questions need immediate responses under this optique and these responses are directly related to the processes that form an understanding of what youth is, in other words they have to clarify how the components, categories and conceptions of youth are produced socially under actual postmodern conditions.
Anomie as described first by Durkheim in his classical " suicide" 100 years ago ( 1897), is a phenomenon affecting all categories of population that cannot formulate patterns of happiness due to social constraints and inconveniences because their wants are not proportionate to their current means (material resources or personal skills). It is more probable that people with socially limited means will never succeed to realise their wants or inner desires, than more privileged persons do. However, the crucial question is : who is motivating these unprivileged people to formulate these high goals ? (Most of the times" transferred to their children if not realised by themselves ). This question has been replied in a complete way by Merton () 60 years after the first definition of anomic situation. Merton distinguished two types of societies : those which lay great emphasis on goals but little on means pushing individuals into adopting the technically most efficient means to the goal ,even if these means are illegitimate (American society of self-made men & women )and those which don't lay importance to high goals neither to means (Indian society of zero degree of social mobility due to its traditional castic horizontal stratification ).
Today, 40 years after Merton's clarification and a century after Durkheimian conception, anomie has to be examined under recent socio-cultural transitions that in early nineties have been described in the post-industrialised societies as postmodern condition. Still, some theorists as Giddens insist to name our actuality as post-traditional, emphasizing on the fact of a relative disappearance of societal norms -so powerful before- and the emergence of individual characteristics over former solidarity patterns. With the consequent public sphere in retreat replaced by the private space as enforced by the triumph of technologically mediated virtuality, youths stand today in crucial crossroads -to use a fashionable expression-between desired solidarity and socially imposed mass-mediated privacy. Actual anomic phenomena interpreted under this point of view, take the dimensions of protest and decided ( partial ) marginalization from a complicated society with confused values and misleading messages. Means are much richer ( materially speaking) than in the beginning of this century, but goals are confused and ideals deriving from ideologies are in decline. Significant experiences that youths need to form their identity are most important when received from media than from learning at school or from family's examples. Knowledge evaluation is in eclipse and school instructors repeat huge amounts of conventional information presented as knowledge that students have to memorize with no comprehension aiming to pass conventional exams playing the role of postmodern "passing rituals ".
Clearly the basic component of our everyday social reality is the confusion of aims in the midst of rich material resources and of pluralism of means. There are many reasons to that. People characterized as "primitive" because of their elementary organisation of economy, had developed to a higher level a symmetry between self and society. Rational choices proposed by the dominant cultural model of our occidental postmodernity has been estranged to that ideal symmetry and balance. The self as a social product is confused in its identity formation as a reflection of the confusion that this society generates. After Giddens "if society is the structure , the self is the agent as characterized by the agent " ( ). Messages as propagated by the dominant cultural model ( media and computer technology) are fragmented , non demanded and simulated. Loss of referential frames and a general hybridisation of values are also common patterns of our everyday realities. We live in a world of false impressions that are created by some invisible producers who have their commercial reasons for their actions. Spectacularization of free time entertainment and consumption of visual images, are the substances of our reality.
Alienation that has been described by Marx as an estrangement from the self due mainly to monotonous labour's conditions in the Fordish modelled industrial settings, has also modified its sense under present conditions. A first shift of its meaning is that alienation characterises mostly our free time instead of labour time. During recreation and relaxing consumption but not production, humans have more "chances" to plunge into false impressions while absorbing as hypnotized meaningless information. Alienation can be defined by these terms as the representation of these false impressions. False because of the simulative character of pictorial information that falsify reality. False also, because of the accelerating esthetization of this reality, that tries to describe impressions and tastes as original approaches of truth instead of defining ( better demystifying ) the true meanings of this organised masquerade. Individuals feel isolated in their private space and this is the " powerlessness" aspect of alienation as described by Seeman in his well-known classification of 1949. Another of alienation's multiple aspects is the "self- estrangement" occurring when humans are not able to discover psychologically rewarding activities . An interpretation also of the " meaninglessness" aspect of alienation is that the individual feels that illegitimate means are required to achieve valued goals. This last interpretation of alienation brings it close to the actual interpretation of anomie.
There is one more aspect of postmodern alienation characterizing students as its subjects and related to education and knowledge transmission. Today's educational systems are in real difficulty to define and guarantee the validity of information that they transmit as knowledge. We are witnessing the end of authorities and originalities. Technological facilities of copying and imitating true knowledge of some validity, have resulted to a flux of information offered with no cost but with important consequences for educational processes. Most of today's research for the creation of pure and original knowledge is oriented to commercial profits and is loosing its originality. Another part is strictly theoretical with no application possibilities. The impact of this originality crisis in the realm of knowledge production, is too great to be neglected , concerning especially students. To learn non demanded topics constitutes an act of alienation per se. Moreover to be confused about the eventual use or application of these learning is alienation in the second degree. In the meantime a considerable shift has occurred in the process of education : Instructors have adopted mediatic typed techniques of persuasion ( video, computers) to make students think that knowledge taking is a type of game the same as T.V. listening and this spectacular aspect of school learning has many supporters among the education specialists.
By these means youths are in double alienation condition : learning alienation and generalised confusion of means and aims that is common also to their adult parents. Some, have interests to make out of youth the ideal customers/consumers of next millennium. Even youth revolt attempts are aesthetic typed and refer to styles and fashions constructed by media. Easy-riders or hooligans, punks or rockers of late modernity were following the cultural trends of media advertisements and the MTV video-clip logic. Revolt, drugs, homosexuality, violence, even deviation and abnormal behaviour are all fashionable and parts of a broader commercial system that simply needs new customers. These temporary "happy innovations" generated by media producers and fashion makers, compose the preface of a future life-long dependence and compromise to a social context that needs individuality as a prerequisite for controlled "consumership" and hates every possible form of human solidarity judging it as a conspiracy and deviation from its rules. Mass messages to the private space of each individual, resulted to the gradual establishment of what is called : "loneliness in the midst of anonymous and indifferent crowd"
YOUTH'S SUBCULTURES: IDENTITY FORMATION AND VIOLENT MANISFESTATION
Traditional theories concerned to interpret the subcultural phenomena in Occidental societies, emphasised the class stratification of these societies as cause of subcultures' birth. Youth as a social category has been difficult to classify into the scheme of class division even if some authors in late fifties speak about juvenile working-class characteristics in British hooliganism descriptions.( ). The reason for this difficulty is that youth in a transitional socialization and roles' allocation period presented the image of a non predicted factor for future professional and family careers and that phenomena of juvenile delinquency demonstrated common " operative elements" such as : peer groups' importance for the shaping of a youth's culture, special interests of these groups' members for common taste, fashion and style, preference for leisure instead of work. Hence, the interpretation was that social inequalities caused reactive attitudes and behaviours to the members of the lower classes to the limits of deviation from the cultural model of the dominant class. This explanation that viewed differences in the expressive styles of various subcultures as related to the social origins of their members, could not explain the homogenized styles of adolescents who neglected class differences. By this sense traditional theories of class inequalities could not interpret why young members of peer-groups behaved in a more " democratic" way that their adult kin. Today, theories as the ones mentioned above, have one more difficulty to face : It is impossible to define what dominant culture is, because of its fragmentation to many cultural subspecies . In the time of political suupremacy and ideological priority over cultural trends, collective movements of adults neglected cultural factors as minor and regarded social changes through political means. The devaluation of role of political leaders, the emergence of individuality over solidarity and the triumph of the privacy over the public sphere, changed gradually the scenery in early postmodernity and even financial interests started massive investisments in cultural industries feeling the societal shift towards the cultural direction and the abandon of political solutions. Education changed its orientation and became more unofficial marking the end of authorities' domination. In the same time communications became easier for the average citizen marking the end of state 's monopolies and control over them. Under these conditions, the definition of adolescents' subcultures as working-class protests against dominant ideology and culture, seem out of reality. Even theories as such of Bourdieu's developed in the mid-seventies( ) relative to the inheritance or transmission of cultural capital to the offspring of the most privileged classes, seem inadequate to explain the homogenitive elements of youth's subcultural expressions under postmodern terms.
The most important point of differentiation between youth's culture and whatever other culture's meaning or expression, is the fact of youth's relative retardation to undertake important life responsibilities due to a prolongation of studies' period. Thus, the differentiation from parental values and attitudes can be characterized as a "generational" pattern but not necessarily a cultural one. The analytical approach of juvenile subcultural attitudes, must be focused on the role that identity formation plays for the crystallization of such attitudes and behaviours. While socialization is a three stages process (elementary in the family, secondary at school and last in adult age) individuals learn and accept norms and values by the internalization process during the first two stages only when their identity is not yet definitely formatted. However, the overall shift that modenization has contributed to occidental societies towards the direction of aesthetization, confuses this internationalization process and transports the "weight" of socialization to another meta-level : that of the " impressionist one, in which young people wish to enhance their own self-image by gaining acceptance and status " in the eyes of the others". This adaptation of personal needs to others' expectations, is a social consequence of the spectacular messages' overflow as circulated through mass-media and of the importance that aesthetic forms , styles and fashions play in the expense of meanings. This aesthetization of everyday life-that signs also a distanciation from moral values aiming to the Truth definitions- enforcing the victory of the simulated in the expense of the real and the copy in the expense of the original, is transferred also to the socialization process and confused identity formation. The shift occurred in the new era, is the retardation of the second stage of socialization and its prolongation in the beginning of the adult life. Even if the age limit of adulthood is considered the 18th year as the border between school attainment and work or university studies, youth transpose the role undertaking to the later stage of official adulthood while trying to get the basic elements of socialization through the indirect way of subcultural socialization. Hence, the importance that adolescents attribute to the "membership" pattern and their need to belong to a small group -usually called as peer group-rather than developing personal friendships that are troublesome and demanding personal courage and emotional pain. Belonging to a peer-group and expressing one's self by the cultural means that a subcultural collective selection imposes, needs much less responsibility and gives the feeling of belonging to a fashionable social environment. The feeling that one is not " ready" for the roles that the broader society requires, is very frequent to adolescents crossing the threshold of the 18th year and entering " officially" in their adult stage of age. Recent measurements of the adolescents' self-esteem in America prove that youth feel immature to undertake serious roles for their future lives, in a much later age than their parents did a generation ago.
Under another theoretical scope, identity is the sum of activities in which an actor create new kinds of social significations within historicallly situated conditions ( Eyerman). A generation ago, Erikson in his classic : " Identity , Youth and Crisis" (1968) , distinguished the so called " ego-identity" from the social identity. He argued that the formation of the latter was based on the conflict exercised between the ego-identity and the confusing multisourced social information. The outcome of this conflict was the crisis expressed by the famous youth movements of anti-war and feminist protest of late sixties and early seventies. After the same author -who proved to be too much influential for the next generation of researchers - this identity crisis of youth could be prolonged by a decade or so in an individual's life because of the inability or lack of desire from the part of this individual to re-establish a stable and viable role repertoire and world view over a certain period of time. Today, Erikson would have great difficulty to precise this period of time since cultural shifts are happening in much more accelerated rhythms and the adaptation confusion is more intense. From the other hand individual styles of expression are greatly encouraged by media, and subcultural phenomena are much more fragmented-the same as mediated messages are- than their analogues of early seventies in the time of political ideologies and solidarity movements. In our era one cannot speak about collective movements and theorists of social movements are found to be rather historians of social movements of the past. Under postmodern conditions, organized reaction against trends such as aesthetisation and fetichisation of the object-product resulting to blind consumerism, proves to be more effective if exercised e.g. by small groups of ecologists than by massive demonstrations of the anti-war era. By this sense, ecological or feminist small groups of praxis ( practical application in everyday life of theoretical concepts and believings) are operative to a much sufficient and satisfactory degree for their members and could be characterized as subcultural because of the particular " culture" or ideas' system propagated and exercised by their members. The paradox of our era is that in the midst of massive impressions, fashions and styles generated by massive messages, human groups are more efficient if smaller and separated from generalised fashions, leading their " individual typed" itineraries. This trend to the direction of small communities' solidarity has its analogues in the youth's subcultural participation. Adolescents of today trust with difficulty each other, but they seek of some "order" or societal norms to be respected by a minimum of " members" within a group formation. General societal goals are difficult to construct, the means are material but seldom ethical or cognitive, education is as a copy of a falsificatory T.V. channel simulating reality -that remains obscure- and yet youth need to clarify their means and their aims while formatting these small peer groups before even attempting to form their own identities !
Under this optique, criminologists' attempts to define all subcultures as deviant, are false and guided by a juridique rather than a sociological point of view. The violent expressions of some representatives of such subcultural groups, must be analysed under the anomic focus as first defined by Durkheim ,but elaborated and adapted to face actual needs. The dilemma of aggressivity's biological origins in juxta- position with generalised violence's aesthetic sources of symbolic origin, must be analysed hereafter. If we theorize violent behaviour as a part of human instinct expressed in social context, all ceremonial and ritualised acts invented during the long process of humanization must be conceived as efforts for the construction of solid frameworks aiming to a need for social order and regularity. If violence is the transgression of rules and various ritualised taboos inscribed in the sacred sphere, violence is the profanation of the order that these rules or taboos assure. The paradoxical reality is that the power of regulation is rather reinforced if violent manifestations form the "exception of the rule". Only in the case of violent social movements, that end to a political revolt the establishment is threatened and risks to be overturn.
Youth's subcultural forms, act mainly to the direction of symbolic violence. In some cases the expression of this violence takes the dramatic dimensions of vandalism and material destructions -hooliganism-( ). However, what is seen as irrational collective behaviour reduced to subcultural participation of its members, does not constitute the best explanation of this phenomenon because these youth subcultures are neither coherent nor significative of an authentic marginalised life-style. The desperate search of a significative part of youth for new styles of communal life consists an " escapist" element which combined with the disaffiliation feeling from the majority culture -or the culture of the dominant others gave the characteristical appellation of underground for this trend. Stigmatization of this centrifuge tension of a part of today's youth, consists a criminologist's approach charged with heavy moral standardization. The task of sociology as scientific discipline is to study, describe analytically these trends, then to explain the results of its possible " measurements" as synthetic outcomes of this thoroughful observation and mainly to propose new ways of behaviour anticipating after its acquired experience, possible future alternatives of the phenomenon under study. By this means social studies will serve as a consulting discipline helping laymen to understand and interpret some aspects of the confused riddle of their existence. Meaningful explanations of complex phenomena are of common interest and youth needs them to be analytically tought as a part of school curricula. Sociological research of ambiguous phenomena such as youth's violent or subcultural behaviour, has not to be oriented to an academic end but to be ready to contribute to the comprehension of their deeds to the very actors of these behaviours. If a young hooligan has no conscience of the reasons of his behaviour, somebody has to explain to him the reason of his actions and his alienation. If he rejects societal norms and rules as too formal and oppressive claiming to an anarchic type of freedom, somebody has to demonstrate and prove to him the weight of this freedom and the negative consequences of its abuse.
We insist that new analytical knowledge aiming to the elaboration of innovative synthesis and final proposals, is the only remedy for the exit from this alienating situation of phenomenal liberation ending to unconscious violent acts. (symbolic and real ). This knowledge has to be produced through participatory -and collaborative-observation where there are no more "authoritative authorities" but equal collaborators. In other words this commonly acquired knowledge needs to justify its proper name "strictu sensu ": social knowledge. An example of collective violence manifestation : Hooliganism. If we study for example a collective action such as hooligan violence, we need to search or their collective identity since these hooligans are the real actors of the manifested violence. A descriptive account of what activists do, feel and say is the demanded information . To avoid a superimposition by external standards, codes, customs and values, we need to search the very original collective activity which makes for the shaping of social knowledge as prescribed above. We need also not to neglect the symbolic sense of this type of actions.
Meanings hidden behind the natural or brute acts are not evident in all cases and in some of these cases they depend from social conventions. Since actors can act and also give accounts of their acts as explanations or justifications, the role of the social researcher is to identify the nature of meaning of " specific actions" not through conventional social signification due to cultural context, but using the actor's accounts. The problem is how and according to which kind of criteria, sociologists impute to the actors the bestowal of meanings on their own actions as well as on those of others participants and also according to what kind of criteria can a sociologist relate this subjective bestowal of meaning on those social actions, to the actors' real actions. In other words, actors' accounts are useful for objective or neutral observers in order to clarify further or additional information on the actions already realised by them. But the value of subjective estimations of an actor's very acts about this same act, is relative to the criteria sociologists as objective observers use to explain the inner motives that actors dispose to proceed in such accounts.
In a famous study related to the hooliganism and rules of disorder in British soccer championship ( ) the principal aim was to demonstrate that the apparently aggressive and uncontrolled behaviour of hooligans do not breach civilised values, neither express primitive or bestial instincts. In the contrary, these fans have tightly structured rules of their own, guided by their specific social competence. All conflicts and confrontations are rather symbolic (e.g. occupation of a space considered as "home" ) and do not produce harmful results. When a rival group was submitted ( i.e. by looking downwards and ceasing hostilities) aggression was terminated before either part was hurt. The risk notion was conceived as an effort to oblige the rivals to obey one's symbolic code. Once this was realised, rivalries and hostilities had practically no more sense.
If we have to explain hooligan actions as violent, we need also to prove that the irrationality included in the notion of violence is not completely meaningless. That means that violence has is own rules. Hooliganism as a collective behaviour can produce its own practical type of cognition. The problem is that people who use and study this cognition , are much different from the actors themselves. Their usual interpretation takes the shape of categorization of spectators into dangerous and harmless. Concerning the first, they propose preventive measures for the diminution of future violent phenomena such as speeches in schools, visits at home etc. The absolute failure of this type of "preventive measures" does not excuse the public expenses. However, these measures serve just as alibi for governmental policy. The values that are motivated by the hooligan socio-cultural context may be different from the established values' system but this fact does not confirm that hooligans have to be classified in special subcultures. Simply rules and norms accepted by hooligans are more permissible than the conventional ones especially when emotional manifestations are concerned. Excitement and self-esteem of fans are enforced during the game and according to March, acts of violence become symbolic actions aiming to construct a profile of identity within some of the roles dictated by the group. After the same author, symbolic hooliganism provides a safety valve to aggressions which could expand otherwise out of football terraces. i.e. in schools. To interpret the evolution of symbolic violence of young fans into real acts of violence ( material destructions) March justifies its manifestation as a label effect i.e. hooligans are heavily stigmatized by media as dangerous individuals. All the "soft risks" they undertake , turn now to real risks and their behaviour as persons conscious of their stigma becomes really risky. If there are controversies about fans' estimations i.e. one fan emphasises violence and another not, this is explained by the so-called need for rhetoric of danger while not a real risk is undertaken.
This theory that constructs an ideal type of soccer fan , succeeds in avoiding social classification of fans-focusing on their actions rather than on social structure-but fails when neglecting the inner organisation and meaning given to accounts by fans themselves. Who is responsible to evaluate and criticise the fans'accounts' organisation ? Are the researcher's observations coinciding with the "correct" accounts ? Harre proposed a "triangulation"method that means that a variety of different accounts from different sources should be collected to allow the researcher to determine the " correct" version of events. But this method based on variability of accounts proposed for investigation seems to be inadequate to provide information about the informal organisation of different accounts.
CASE STUDY: GREEK SOCCER FANS MANIFESTING SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE
Our work-hypothesis of symbolic violence exercise during football games and also during school-time has been tested with a selected sample of 17 years old male graduating students of greater Athens area. The basic hypothesis has been that youth subcultural modes of expression was symbolic and unoffencing, the violence was rather verbal and non material, and that fans themselves were alienated by the means that could not distinguish their personal aims from the collective ones ( the victory of their favourite clubs ). Also, the image or stigma attributed to these youngsters by media and its impacts on adolescents' identity formation. Students were divided in two groups, the first in which no fanatic supporters of clubs were declared and the second including only hooligans. The first group had a background of sociological teaching during the last year while the hooligan group had never been tought topics such as : anomie and alienation theory, creativity, social knowledge, communication theory, interests, ideology, individuality, norms, habits, values and rituals.
o First test of creative selection and interpretation
A set of questions have been given to students as follows :
1/ Name five values and interpret your choices. 2/ Why our era is characterised by a values crisis ? 3/What are the prerequisites of meanings in the social sciences ? 4/ What is the connection between creation and knowledge ? Why ? 5/ What are the limits of individuality and solidarity ? Why ? 6/ What is the difference between conservatism and progress ?Why? 7/ Ideology and its disputes 8/ What is social cohesion and why do we need it ? 9/ Connections between social knowledge and ideology. 10/ Means or aims are the most important ? Why ? 11/ Ideology, social knowledge and alienation 12/ From information to knowledge 13/ Anomie, alienation 14/ What are the criteria of self-evaluation ? Why ? 15/ The limits of freedom 16/ Technology and alienation. Possible relations. 17/ Happiness interrelated to the aim of life. How ? 18/ Mass culture and human identity 19/ Interests and profits 20/ Theories and practices. 21/ Inflation or individuality drives to leisure ideology ? 22/ What creativity may mean ?
The factor of knowledge background has been scored as the most important for differences of approach in the two groups compared. But the factor of creativity as an alternative, could replace the knowledge gap and propose its aspects successfully. The relation between the two factors has been complementary.: The creativity factor was more operative when the knowledge related to the question was poor and inversely, when the knowledge was better , creative was poor. The interpretation is that students are accustomed to invest on their memory and give stereotyped answers if they " "feel" that answers can be related to the knowledge acquired. But the validation of their understanding proves that high scores of success are obtained by these ones who understand a topic in a constructive way e.g. by introducing personal patterns of interpretation that substitutes in a way all gaps of knowledge. Personal opinions are proved to be as valuable as real elaborated knowledge only when not spontaneous but products of selection and choice under rationalised criteria of evaluation.
For example in the first question, students of both groups manifested no differences in the way of approach because of the personalised type of the question formulation. However, the interpretation by the students themselves of their choices, was different because the first group of the students tought, produced more stereotyped choices close to the academic conventional standards or models (( i.e. sincerity, justice, love etc. ) in the contrary of the second group students who had to invent subjective answers that represented better their inner needs, dispositions and ideas. The first felt obliged to report what is "considered as objectively worthy to be named as a true value " enchaining their selections. The rest felt the need to create their own answers in a less restricted way and the result was choices closer to their own subjectivity. Lack of knowledge tought, obliges students to "ask" themselves for answers in the contrary of knowledge offered that obliges students to adapt their choices to them and express not what they really believed as correct but what they believed that the others (who tought them the KNOWLEDGE ) should like to hear as correct ( in correspondence with their teaching). The question is : who of the two students' categories approached better the Truth and who created the most original and innovative meanings.
o Second test on goals, means ,social knowledge and school alienation
Returning to our initial quest : "what is the meaning of the knowledge" we shall examine the motivation and aims for this knowledge's acquisition. We argue that motivation as well as educational aims are absurd since evaluation rewards such as degrees, do not consist serious criteria of motivation and goals such as entrance to a university is related only to future professional status as realised by the pupils viewpoint. However, there is an idealistic aspect -now in tactical retreat- in some students that education is useful for generalised cultural performance and for scientific research. Educational motivation has neglected this third aspect and verbalises the supposed to be as true aims of schooling . Thus, motivation has never been connected with its real object : the development of interests. Another much neglected target is the encouragement of axiological criteria development.
A second test was given to the same sample of students asking in indirect way their preferences between means and goals. Next, the students were asked to formulate their own social knowledge estimation by means of personal interpretation of the same answers they had given the previous day. The students were not tought any supplementary themes and the new test was scheduled in a way that gave not advantages to the first category of previously tought students. Both categories were mixed in this test.
This test included :
1/ A set of Christmas cards posted by different persons expressing wishes and greetings. Students were asked to describe and analyse what did they think about the aims and their reasons as expressed in the cards. Students were also asked to classify the most important values indirectly expressed and to interpret the emotional or rational content of them.
2/ A famous poem by Cavafy ( a Greek poet of Diaspora died in the thirties in Alexandria ) related to the legendary Ulyssean travel of return to his home place in Ithaca. In this poem ,aims and means are artistically mixed and students are asked what they should do in the place of Ulysses.
3/Questions 5/, 9/ , 11/ and 13/ of the previous test were given once more under a different prism. The focus was set now not on the description of notions but on synthetically interpretation of what the students would do if found themselves in the situations described in the previous test. Antithetical factors of individuality/solidarity, practical social knowledge/imaginary ideas , as well as alienation /anomie , were tested and compared with analogue aspects expressed by the same subjects a day before.
o Third test on maturation
1/ A question about what rewards students would consider as appropriate for their intellectual efforts. We "measure" the balance of taking/giving resources as an indicator of maturity. Ambition and moderated ego also are evaluated by these means.
2/ Responsibility question: Students are asked to describe how they theorise to apply their social knowledge -in the way they mean it- to a field or context of social practice. Tensions to form a personal context are estimated important and give high score of maturity.
3/ Adaptation question: Students are asked to propose criteria of optimal adaptation into socially prescribed values considering their personal cases. Reflexivity of means of adaptation as well as stability of aims are appreciated. Their criteria proposals are analysed and estimated after their richness of perspectives.
4/ The same question of five personal values classification with the addition of relativity of these values with their creators real lives. Are appreciated the capability of responders to focus on their proper cases and needs in practical terms. Also the sincerity of aims and the practical sense of life are estimated since some of the day before described values, are changing when needed to be adapted to personal data.
5/ Identity interpretation : Subjects are asked to interprete their identity status as a whole and then to analyse partially its components after their free will. The aim of this question is to certify the self-control and self-knowledge as a sign of maturation.
6/ A question on trust : Subjects are asked to name what kind of persons could they trust easily or less easily after their personal criteria of confidence. The antithetical relation of trust/naiveté is " measured" as an indicator of personal self-esteem and self- confidence.
7/ The same question related to the values' crisis is put again with the addition of application on the subject under question himself of the given crisis. Responders are asked to describe how would they try to overcome by personal means such a value's crisis and what personal values would they propose and adopt to succeed. to this end. Are estimated possible differences with the values described in the same question of the first test. Personification of values and quality of proposed solutions are highly appreciated as positive indices of self-equilibrium and maturation.
8/ Motivation of interests : Students are asked to describe what would be their inner hopes for interests development . What type of interests do they prefer , to what aim and what is the analogy with their actual interests. Also whom they consider proper to inspire them these" missing dreamed interests". Are appreciated the correspondence of needed interests to the already existing, as well as responders' sense of trust to persons considered as able to motivate useful interests for them.
9/ Innovative knowledge creation : a question asking to describe how students could create new knowledge by interpreting the World after their personal values. Are estimated the synthesis and interpretation abilities as factors of mature conscience.
10/ Metron ( measure) : a question on metron conception . It is asked to describe theoretically the possible uses of metron in everyday needs and to correlate it with the subject's personal rhythms. Is evaluated the theoretical ability of description compared with the sincerity of desired aims as an indices of identity's stability and maturity.
o Fourth test on ritual participation , membership, stigma, social exclusion and marginalization and violence (addressed only to the second group of hooligans) .
1/ A question on what the notion of group means to the young fans Are evaluated the degree of attachment to a group under various excuses.
2/ A question asking to describe the difference between membership to a group such as a football club's fans-group and participation in violent acts in and out of athletic stadiums. Are "validated" or rather estimated the answers attempting to describe the process by which a conscious member of such a group feels the need to act towards the direction of a common goal forgetting his individual ego.
3/ " Whom you consider as hooligans ? " This question created various interesting reactions from the part of persons inquired. Most of answers turned to the common motto : " they are people like me that simply surpassed their limits". The hidden referent of this motto can be summarised as follows : the person speaking does not excludes the possibility to himself to react in a similar way if the circumstances will " ask" for it. Stigmatization and social exclusion also are scored after the answers given to this question.
4/ "What do you consider as violence ? " In this general question are evaluated the estimation that persons considered as hooligans have for the cause or the result of their acts. Answers demonstrate that violence is a confused issue in the conscience of its actors since they are not able to distinguish he pre-existing diffused violence in its symbolic form with the violence exercised by themselves.
5/ " Do you feel marginal ? " In this question, are estimated the extend of " anomic feelings " of persons interviewed.
6/ " What are your habits while supporting your club ?". Are validated the conscience of having personal habits or common rituals while supporting a club. Some answers made reference of the expression "our club is our religion".
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
1/ Alienation of everyday practical choices starts from a false identity formation correlated to significant learning experiences. We argue that during a long school career that lasts 12 years, identity is built in a significant degree based on the learning experiences of youth and this building is influential for all future choices , selections, distinctions and mainly significant interests development. We propose to call this confusion: ALIENATION OF MENTALITY.
The human animal is capable of adjusting its behaviour to differing environmental circumstances be they physical or social. In fact, the human animal is uniquely adroit at such adjustments. However, as time passes, the level of flexibility to respond to new situations diminishes in a sense because of the commitment made to other behavioural schemes in previous circumstances. Even if we bracket the pressure to conform to socially articulated solutions to common human needs, sooner or later the sheer weight of our previous experiences slows our ability to adjust. The most appropriate metaphor of such a situation is the iceberg. (in this analogy) the mass under the water is small, so in a sense what you see is what you get. But as the individual acquires a set of preferred behaviours (and we all do) the mass under the water grows and limits the perception of options available to that individual. (Hahen Finley : discussion on Bourdieu conception of fields as inspired after our question through the internet list of Bourdieu 10/8/1997)
While exercising their "ritualised" debt to their clubs -characterised by some of the adepts as "religion" young fans confuse completely their individual goals and appropriate means, with some secondary goals ( victory of their club) presented as extremely important. In the same time, these common goals give to their fans the feeling of "belonging" that is so much missing from their everyday routine. Furthermore this feeling is connected with active participation and creates in some way an " atmosphere" that influences the outcome of a game. By these means the adolescent fanatics in the midst of their confused goals, feel still that they " contribute into writing the History of the Present ". If we consider violent manifestations in se as a proof of collective alienation, we need also to reefer to analogue " rituals"of traditional communities or small societies of the past. These "rituals of passage" as described by Van-Gennep included as rituals of initiation all possible variants of violence going from painful bodily exercises to mutilations. Personal habits become unsignifying when compared to collective rituals in the field of a supposed collective solidarity. However, the illusion of togetherness cannot reveal the real face of loneliness to its very subjects. To feel secured while risking to be arrested and sentenced for vandalism consists an alienating situation but youth are accustomed to it and live with their happy illusions. Our society of spectacular impressions and simulated or falsified results has a ready solution for violence's inhibition by neutralising it in the realm of esthetization. Violence becomes one more mean for human alienation falsifying reality there where only illusion can exist, and promising original action while being neutralised a priori by a system that manages to "sell " it as a spectacular show proper for media programmes, having the advantage of being "real". Presented as a so-called "reality-show" violence constitutes one more visual good of consumption. Reality is once more defeated by its symbolic representation. Idols are more potential that their originals and humans cannot escape from the vicious circle of their illusion/alienation. The drama starts in the following day, when individuality has to face the everyday routine and inconveniences of school/family relations.
2/ Anomie as the condition of living out of impossible norms , is the only really dominant phenomenon in a multi-fragmented cultural system that has lost its dominant ideology. Expressions such as " dominant culture" are of no sense under actual postmodern conditions and marginalization seems to acquire for the first time in the History of this World some positive aspects by the means that some people who choose to stay out of the current happenings of a spectacular society, in the search of personal meanings and their hidden self, can respect some values that have been exterminated by the dominant commercial interests as non "rendering". Concerning hooligans , their marginalization or stigmatization effect is temporary and they are well accepted to "return to normality" after they will enter in the productive process. The general political apathy of youth and the absence of trust for leaders, enforces the tension for fanatical manifestations addressed to clubs as substitutes of lost nations or religions. Where societal norms fail to persuade youth for their validity, collective ceremonial rituals addressed to ridiculous targets succeed. Goals are no more high to attend as in the era f Durkheim describing anomie for the first time , they are just symbolic or virtual, referring to other contexts or " fields" that are not necessarily real or true. Actual citizens -or candidate citizens cannot say that they are not happy because they lack the means for goals' attainment. They need not to commit illegitimate acts to acquire money or status as it was the case during the great Depression of thirties. They need neither to commit suicide if they fail to attend their goals. Powerful state mechanisms give forgiveness while neutralising violent acts and transporting the importance to our coloured screens. The spectacularization of life gives to the direction of its MacDonaldation and people have to correspond happily because THEY DON'T DARE TO KNOW THE CAUSE OF THE THINGS. Dichotomy between alienation and anomie under these terms, means to choose to live a conformist life of mass messages looking and doing what others have already chosen for you, or to adopt new styles of expression and norms of group participation as e.g. the hooligan paradigm demonstrates. However, the risk of alienation is omnipresent even under this supposed to be sub-cultural condition. As demonstrated above, the illusion of being a member and belonging in a common goal looses its power if the goal is symbolic and touches the limits of meaningless. Serious goals are difficult to be found in collectivity especially if not oriented towards the direction of power and domination exercises. There are plenty of means in our era, but people lack methods of use. The conclusion is that to respect values and to develop serious meaningful interests aiming to important goals, constitute rather a impossible combination that gives not a good customer to the commercial Imperium. The positive marginalization as an aspect of postmodern anomie is the fact in which one chooses to stay far from fashions, spectacular styles and alienating groups. In the midst of a dissolved society of confused and falsified artificial norms, that could easily claim the title of " anomic society" , to marginalize oneself seems as the best of remedies.
3/ The quality of knowledge tought and learned through the schooling process, is in direct correlation with the views as expressed by students when asked to develop their arguments on a tought subject. If the teaching process is following a restricted code of knowledge transfer, limiting creativity from the part of students, the last will try to reproduce this model even if they don't believe and trust its ways and meanings. They will try to perform answers " academically " or conventionally accepted in the contrary of untought students who will try to express their true believing even lacking strong argumentation. No axiological criteria of knowledge validation are developed during the academic conventional teaching. The most often terms such as self-esteem have nothing to do with what we argue and define as significant learning experience. To have a high degree of self-esteem based on false estimation of what is true and important is not really a significative factor of evaluation. Usually, school and academia rewards are conventional, leaving little space to students' creative innovations and self-expression possibilities. Instead of lecturing sterile and useless sums of encyclopaedic knowledge to the students with no possibility of their transform into praxis , it would be more interesting to teach them methods and techniques of knowledge appropriation to help them to find ways for searching the type of knowledge they really need and judge as useful to themselves. Knowledge must be viewed rather as Eureka result of a long inquiry than a given set of information presented as the only true possibility. Furthermore the change on the conception of what really knowledge represents in our lives, will exercise strong influence on the way adolescents build their identity.
4/ Maturity has been proved to be a direct correlation of social knowledge considered under its double sense: theoretical and practical. Maturity is not the final aim of knowledge because the next natural stem is death. In the contrary maturity as a gradual sociopsychic phenomenon is a mean for better understanding and interpretation of knowledge under personal ( however powerful) criteria. An almost absolute indicator of an individual's intellectual maturation is his/her repulsion for easy rewards concerning the very object of interest : knowledge. Rewards chase gives to ambition development and future authorship with all its power sub-results. True knowledge has been proved to be created far from power games and social status exercises.
Maturity cannot be obtained under conditions of social isolation. Personal rhythms have to be adapted to social rhythms. However, the minimum stability required for this maturity is seldom propagated by the social context. One has to find an individual equilibrium or Metron of maturation to overcome the restricted needs of the educational system. Elaboration of personal codes consists the optimal liberation from the tyranny of restricted codes and their context of reference conceived as granted. Alienation is the phenomenon of the impossibility of such a maturation during a life span. Maturation process need sentimental and rational elements in equilibrated co-operation but the confusion between aims and means illustrates a lack of self-confidence and an impossibility to undertake creative initiatives. Students can classify values easily when these values are generalised but they are in confusion when they need to pass from theory to Praxis and operate these values in their own lives. Immature identities are a direct result of the constraints young individuals face when demanded to resolve problems of social adaptation in a dynamic and rational way before their emotional stabilisation of needs and wills. Usually youth of 17 years old in the threshold of their academic or professional choices are proved to be immature when needed to distinguish aims from means. Motivation of aims achievement is too low in traditional school environments. Instead of propagating motivation of interests, school distributes false rewards for absurd aims. Students use false means to achieve these aims that are not planified by the themselves, but by social needs or fashions. Absolute lack of moral criteria for the construction of serious long-term goals, reduces the remaining goals to the aesthetic sphere where not the slightest suspicion of truth is required. Youth trust aesthetic values as frequently propagated by media -in a fragmentary way- but they know that this selection is neither true nor eternal. Aesthetic fashions shift from one year to the other reminding the everyday actuality spread by media. However, no one from the potential listeners of these spectacular simulated shows leading to a consumer's attitude construction, has been maturated while following their fragmented rhythms. Human maturation needs gradual rhythms of additional knowledge accompanied with the analogue creative skills encouragement. Theory and Praxis have to co-operate in a constant dialectical way and the resulting equilibrium from this act could be named a dynamic process of maturation.
CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS
1/ Subcultures under present condition do not constitute a threat for any established power system or state since their characterization as "deviant" is rather false if taking into consideration their highly symbolic characteristics .
2/ These characteristics of symbolic mentioned above constitute the major pattern of our postmodern culture including violence and sex as its attributes. This is a par-excellence prerequisite for the emergence of alienating conditions,
3/ Aesthetization of our lives is the cause and the result of this massive alienation as facilitated by the fragmented and false non-demanded visual messages and information overflowing our sensorial systems. Meaninglessness and non-sense are the basic characteristics of these messages to which postmodern citizens cannot respond. Violence and sex became also inoffensive aesthetic categories of commercial interest. It is proved that they "sell well" under their symbolic "mask"
4/ Under present conditions one cannot speak about dominant culture but rather about multilevel cultural "fields"
5/ Socialisation is exercised today in a much differentiated way than in the past. One can acquire learning experiences along all his/her life-span but the real problem is what the quality of the provided knowledge might be. Identity formation is tightly connected with significative learning experience and especially that category of knowledge identified as social.
6/ Anomic situation that was unwanted marginalization from society in the past ( with all the subsequent unhappiness) must be defined in an almost inverse way nowadays : As a scission or dichotomy from its first cousin named alienation. To accept one's own values and to escape societal norms one need to narginalise himself in his individuality or amidst a small group with concrete goals . Also, one needs not to be limited by means of any type. There is a possibility of finding plenty of means in our era , the most important being the knowledge of their fruitful application to the direction of the aim's attainment. What started as Hybris in the era of Greeks , named Anomie 100 years ago by the sense of unhappy escape from the "solidary" society, today takes the shape of happy distanciation and marginalization from an alienating social environment of the " majority". The future belongs to some "different" minorities. It is not appropriate to call all these minorities as subcultural. Maybe their cultural patterns will prove to be more important that we think today.
7/ Under financial pressure the overall social organisation takes the characteristics of strict rationalism, but the major controversy remains that while the average citizen is confronted to the rational model, all signs of everyday routine refer to the irrational dance of impressions and simulated representations. What was evident as controversy from the time of Max Weber, today makes the rule due to the absolute domination of the mass-mediated life-style.
8/ Individuality has two facets : The negative one conceived usually as loneliness and lack of efficient communicative features, and the positive conceived as a return to the self in an effort to understand or to "KNOW" it. Under today's condition individuality is much more connected with identity formation of the young that is however much prolonged due to the relative degree of immaturity that adolescents feel. Solidarity movements of the past that helped their members to feel that they belonged to a reference site while creating the prerequisites of social changes,, have given their place to small or large groups of "unknown fellows" with confusing means aiming to meaningless goals. This phenomenon is partly responsible for the "freedom's illusion" characterising actual youth. One feels free to participate to many collective " adventures" but the rituals of these collectivities are not ever for the best. To live under conditions of high risk and yet to feel securised in a society pretending to envelop its citizens with all possible assurance resources, constitutes another major controversy of our times.
9/ Humanity that evolved from ritualised forms of organisation in the time of oral tradition towards the institutionalised forms of norms during the Enlightenment and finally towards the direction of rationalised and strict juridico-bureaucratical system of nowadays that obliges citizens to obey its regulations ( more severe than norms) evolves towards an undefined direction of return to the "ritual stage" with all small groups' possibilities and with a nostalgia for the lost "sacred" character of our everydayness. The desacralazition of our future is the most probable event to take place in the next Millennium after a century of technological progress and spectacular profanation and rational demystification of all the past myths. Humanity needs to discover its new myths for the next Millennium.
10/ Knowledge is the best remedy for alienating process of self- estrangement. Knowledge means conscience of what we do learn. Under these terms, knowledge is the knowledge of things but knowledge of the reasons of its own existence and creation. Knowledge creates new identity and enrich the relation of the individual with his/her self. In its social dimension knowledge's claim sounds as the highest of democratic values but it is not easy to attain its goal. The reason is not the difficulty to accept that all humans have equal rights but to accept and prove that all humans may have THE SAME INTERESTS moreover THE SAME ZEAL TO PRODUCE INNOVATIVE AND CREATIVE KNOWLEDGE FOR THE OTHERS. Humans are much more educated today than in the past , but this education is not oriented usually to the direction of creativity and interests' discovery. Education if not professionally specialised is oriented to a general conception named "academic" but today this is synonymous to the informative pseudo-knowledge propagated by media that does not presupposes the lowest concentration aiming at most in the breaking of meanings under its fragmentary form. Knowledge can liberate human not only from the darkness of ignorance of physical World -as it was claimed during the past two centuries- but also from the darkness of his/her ignorance of the self. Identity construction is a final product of creative knowledge's evolution through the life-span. If this trend is named progress, its form is not necessarily linear. The modes of harmonic evolution are elliptical , that meaning leaving "holes" during the process and this constitutes the ideal type of METRON or the Ancient measure so praised in its time for knowing how to avoid extremities for the sake of the MEDIUM. This golden rule that created Parthenon, so much neglected in our era of speed and extremities might be the optimist goal for next century. Group solidarities based on rituals and emotions will replace rational spirit of blind organisation and inability of evaluation of its own discoveries ! The creativity of the future will have the shape and the meaning of irrationality ! We shall learn too, to develop our interests in an irrational way much different of the present one as propagated by the routine educational systems.
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