Translator: Feike Laffeber Reviewer: Heleen van Maanen
This is how I always start my day, with a cup of coffee.
Coffee calms me down,
and I have to take three to four cups,
or my day doesn't start well, and I'll be extremely ill-humoured.
I can also become very annoyed
when I haven't had my three cups of morning coffee.
I'm a sociologist, and so I wondered:
is there a link between the morning coffee,
and this, aggression?
These imagines are likely well known by you.
This is London.
Not in the best of times.
Here people come to the streets in violence.
My question was:
is it possible that I don't get my morning coffee,
and I head to the streets in similar aggression?
Or is it possible that I don't get my morning coffee,
and that I direct that violence towards myself?
Two examples of senseless violence that especially interest me:
suicide and senseless violence on the streets,
'riots', as they are called in London, and so forth and so on.
We all know, that with the first acts of violence in the streets,
politicians often have a fit afterwards,
pointing a moralizing finger,
to say things have gone too far this time,
and proclaim the violence to be senseless.
This word 'senseless' really intrigues me.
Also in suicide, but especially in the senseless violence in the streets.
What does this 'senseless' violence mean?
Usually these politicians mean,
and Mr Sarkozy as well once spoke of "les crapules de banlieue",
the scum of the suburbs,
when riots broke out in 'his' suburbs in Paris,
they call this senseless violence too,
and much of the mainstream media do so as well.
Usually they mean that the people who engage in this violence
are committing a senseless act, an act they don't understand.
But in fact these gentlemen themselves don't understand
what the sense of the violence is.
They can't put meaning to it.
That's why they quickly resort to moral judgements,
threaten to severely punish, jail sentences and so forth.
We all know that when the outbursts of these politicians occur,
an entire army of these people is standing by:
scientists, like this sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman,
who claim this violence isn't senseless at all,
but has a clear, explainable cause,
the credit crunch, for example,
but also, increased structural, social and economic inequality.
And I think that these scientists, the army of philosophers,
mostly sociologists, sometimes economists, are often right.
They point to society's structural inequities.
Poor people who take to the streets, to claim a right, and so on.
Especially in societies that have a large gap between rich and poor,
we see this type of senseless violence occur.
However, one thing is overlooked here,
namely that in prosperous societies or places with large spread wealth
- for example in my home country, Belgium, which is quite prosperous -
in places where the wealth per capita is high compared to other counties,
the suicide rate is also particularly high.
So there's not necessarily a correlation
between economic prosperity and leading a happy life.
That explains the suicide rate.
I'm not only a sociologist, I'm also a cultural sociologist.
So my question is: what is the missing link?
What is missing in the explanation of this senseless violence?
The missing link, in my opinion, is quite simple.
Like I said, I am a cultural sociologist: culture.
What exactly is culture?
Culture is really a large reservoir of meaning.
An abundance of meanings creep into a culture,
that we can use to give us purpose,
to help us position ourselves in society,
to give purpose to the society we live in,
to give meaning to what we live in.
So culture is one of the most important elements in a society,
that position us in that society.
And what is the role of art?
Art constantly breaks open that culture.
When culture gives purpose,
and all habits we have, the cup of coffee we drink in the morning,
the rituals we have, from which we draw purpose,
art questions these rituals, these habits,
by constantly introducing what I call discord into culture.
While culture sets the tempo, the rhythm to which we are used in our lives,
art constantly opposes that and brings irregularity.
Precisely those dynamics keep a culture open,
that constantly keeps a culture dynamic,
giving way to the emergence of new meanings,
that people can draw from to give purpose.
So an important point is:
we need to put Marx upside down.
It's not the economy that forms the base or the foundation of a society.
No, culture forms the foundation of a society.
To give an example on economy:
economy is a way of giving purpose to transactions.
Economy is culture.
Politics is a way of giving purpose to a society,
to things such as power relations,
which is a form of culture.
So culture is the basis of our society,
from which we can draw to give purpose to our behaviour.
That is why we can understand phenomena like these:
literally a tag.
A tag means a symbol of oneself.
Your name, but expressed in graffiti,
often seen as criminal behaviour,
that's why artists like to flaunt it,
or sometimes even embrace it.
A tag is a meaning in which you,
through a small criminal act,
give meaning to yourself, give yourself a symbol,
in which you actually begin to reclaim your place in society.
And so we see this happening, just like violence,
on the fringes of culture.
If people can't give meaning to themselves
or find a place in society, they will do this.
And if they can't even do this, they will resort to violence.
Sometimes senseless violence against the public space,
or against themselves.
So back to my cup of coffee.
What does it do for me, exactly?
Of course, the caffeine does a lot for me,
but also the ritual of having that cup of coffee each morning,
repeating the same things every day.
That is the part of my culture that I have been able to make my own,
and why I'm not inclined to this senseless violence.
Thank you.
(Applause)