Mirrored Spaces

Front matter

_palgraverpivot | Mirrored Spaces

Jörg Scheffer

OPENACESS Bie macmillan

Chapter 1

Introduction: Technological Competence and Social Change in a Spatial Perspective

Abstract Examining the entrenched inequality of opportunity between privileged and disadvantaged segments of society from the vantage point of digitalisation is a matter of urgency. The promise of individual technological empowerment should have an impact on the entire society and provide especially those who are disadvantaged with new opportunities. This guiding question will be elaborated on in the following, highlighting the special relevance of a spatial perspective. With a view on the chapters following, the subsequent approach will be laid out.

Keywords Digitalisation - Space - Internet - Opportunity - Social advancement

Where do you want to go today?

When Microsoft used this question in its image campaign in the mid- 1990s, the technical possibilities of the emerging age of digitalisation were already looming on the horizon. The PC had become an established feature at desks all over the world and the internet was showing rapid growth rates. It could be utilised for the advertising promise of technological empowerment in a convincing way. Wherever users want to go, the software giant’s promise went, its user-friendly technology provided the means.

© The Author(s) 2024 1 J. Scheffer, Mirrored Spaces, Geographies of Media, https: //doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-42793-1_1

A quarter of a century later, the big tech companies are no less ambitious. The telecommunications provider Cisco is picking up on the empowerment narrative with the slogan “The Bridge to possible”, while Samsung, the world’s largest producer of smartphones, is drawing attention to new options for action that are open to networked users in its “Do what you can’t” campaign.

Together, they are pointing to a future full of possibilities that is already becoming evident in many ways. Smart cities dispose of automated ways to provide for their consumers, artificial intelligence liberates workers from more arduous types of labour and “omniscient” digital assistants follow our orders on demand. At the same time, driverless transport is becoming more and more normal, and with the help of our smartphones we can control and monitor networked objects. In light of these developments, individual opportunities seem to be multiplying: The promise of unrestricted mobility no longer refers only to the internet or the use of office applications, but it even affects the actions we perform offline. Smart services offer us the promise of taking over unpleasant activities, giving us more comfort, time and freedom.

Digital business models from online shopping and holiday bookings to telemedicine demonstrate the enormous potential of the digital economy’s new service providers. Here, technological empowerment reveals itself in the ability to relocate entire value chains with the help of digital services. Even in traditional industries, efficiency and cost benefits from digitalisation are now so obvious that any clinging to familiar operating procedures proves problematic as soon as competitors are taking advantage of the new opportunities. More than ever, the ability to adapt quickly to innovations is a question of economic survival.

In light of these developments, policymakers are called upon to pave the way for digitalisation through successful funding policies, infrastructure and education measures, which is reflected in national and EU-wide initiatives as well as in the rhetoric of politicians. During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital service gained even more in importance in the public and private sectors alike. There are other major challenges that the digital transformation offers solutions for. Planners envision resource-efficient cities as an answer to the environmental crisis and offer intelligent control in the face of overburdened transport systems.

Another challenge is presented by the increasing social divide in numerous countries. Even in the more advanced economies whose populations enjoy a high level of prosperity on average, growing differences

1 INTRODUCTION: TECHNOLOGICAL COMPETENCE ... 3 within societies cannot be denied. Numerous studies have identified a sharp rise in income polarisation and increasing wealth concentration caused by massive dislocation processes. They reveal inequality between rich and poor not only in terms of quality of life, opportunities of participation and realisation, but also in the limited options of disadvantaged segments of the population to modify social stratification, as resources to improve one’s social position are also unequally distributed. Consequently, the different contexts of education and socialisation contribute to a perpetuation of inequality and polarisation in society thus turns into a structural problem.

Against the backdrop of entrenched inequality, digitalisation appears as an obvious solution. The promise of technological empowerment mentioned above should have an effect on society as a whole, offering new options to the disadvantaged segments of the population. If the reason business leaders and politicians demand a greater investment in digitalisation lies in the potential of the new technologies for society as a whole, this should also mean that it includes new opportunities for the disadvantaged segments of the population as well. The general promise of mobility behind slogans such as “Where do you want to go today?” or “Do what you can’t” needs to be put to the test.

Today, smartphones are ubiquitous in all parts of society, and free apps and many other easily accessible services seem to offer new options for action. Potentially, they could spread resources relevant for advancement such as education, social contacts, ideas and life paths, counteracting structural inequality in a sustainable way. Based on these premises, the possible impact of the digital revolution on the social question needs to be explored.

Several studies from the fields of media pedagogy and education research are tying the acquisition of competencies and knowledge to the new offers from digital media. While they show that the empowerment hypothesis needs to be qualified to the extent that conditions for media acquisition and usage are not equal across society (digital divides), the opportunities created by digitalisation are also acknowledged (Glaveanu et al. 2020; Rienties et al. 2022). From the perspective of social theory, the widespread euphoria about the technical possibilities is countered with the unequal control over the technical infrastructure, which is always tied to the question of power. Moreover, sociologists of technology are pointing out that the digital technologies are increasingly acting autonomously, influencing the world around them (Airoldi 2022;

Rohlinger and Sobieraj 2022). Only certain actors can program them, a fact which brings social hierarchies back into the picture (i.e., Kitchin & Dodge 2011). The widespread discourse on surveillance also argues against the potential that digital technologies offer to users, viewing them as forms of control and discipline instead. With frequent reference to Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” (1979), new technologies have been understood as a means of maintaining the existing order by subjecting every individual to a sense of permanent visibility (Klauser et al. 2014; Gabrys 2014).

Finally, the empowerment hypothesis can also be countered with the current discourse on privacy (Beyvers et al. 2017). The use of new technologies is here associated with the loss of the private sphere through the surrender of personal data. This leads to a transparency of each individual which has a far-reaching effect on the social regime by influencing power structures and inequalities that were tied to the practices of privacy.

Those who are more optimistic about the consequences of digitalisation could reply that many of these arguments tend to point out general challenges that disadvantaged segments of the population are not necessarily affected by. While it may be true that societies are changing because of digitalisation and that surveillance, control and loss of privacy are real issues, the opportunity for individual social mobility is also real (Ferger 2018; Daniela 2022).

The present study wants to contribute to this this contradictory debate about the social effects of digitalisation. However, it does so with a clear focus on individual socialisation conditions and opportunities for advancement as well as a related analysis of the conditions of technical empowerment in the context of a growing social divide.

Throughout, the question of digital empowerment will be explored from a spatial perspective. The central argument is that social disadvantage corresponds to spatial structures and that the entrenchment of social inequality can only be understood in a spatial context. Only by countering the unequal social conditions in physical real space with other conditions that claim to be more favourable for social advancement can the alleged possibilities of digitalisation be put to the test.

Based on current findings about the growing social divide in numerous societies, we will first look at its causes (Chapter 2.1-2.2). A broad concept of social inequality, going beyond wealth and income, reveals a fundamental inequality of opportunity between different segments of the population. Germany is used as an example to demonstrate how

1 INTRODUCTION: TECHNOLOGICAL COMPETENCE ... 5 inequality results from different socialisation conditions and how these unequal conditions for obtaining education and work are in turn reproduced. Pierre Bourdieu’s classic studies will be used for a more in-depth analysis of the mechanisms of social perpetuation.

In a spatial context, the unequal distribution of opportunities turns out to be even more restrictive (Chapter 2.3). The opportunity structure of each individual in the urban space is greatly determined by the neighbourhood. Resources for upward mobility, as differentiated in Bourdieu’s various types of capital, are unequally divided in space and because of mechanisms of distinction and differentiation, they are also unequally accessible. If we assume that spaces and spatial conditions are created on a daily basis, as done by Martina Low in her relational concept of space, a further kind of resource-dependent inequality becomes evident: Socialisation and opportunities for advancement are regimented on a spatial level as capital-strong actors can obtain more favourable conditions than capital-poor ones.

Based on these social and spatial mechanisms of perpetuation, Chapter 3 will ask how digitalisation can be used to help disadvantaged segments of the population. The parallel world created by cyberspace calls for a reflection on how its structures and opportunities for action differ from real space and under what conditions an acquisition of capital can facilitate social advancement. Chapter 4 will enhance the debate over social empowerment through digital technologies with a look at the costs. Users of digital technologies pay for them with personal data. These are then tied to products, information and services and sent back to the users. While many other studies focus on (governmental) surveillance or the loss of privacy, the leitmotif of the present investigation is the importance of self-mirroring through the data economy. What are the social implications of user targeting when this means an economic translation of the user’s own dispositions?

Further exploring the possibilities of a recursive acquisition, Chapter 5 takes us back to the neighbourhood. Based on commercially traded data, individual German cities will be used as examples to ask in what way a data-based exploitation logic reaches the neighbourhoods and their residents and what this implies for socialisation and the social question in general. Finally, Chapter 6 will summarise the findings and connect them again to the hypothesis of digital empowerment. What is apparent for the digital age is an economically defined opportunity structure which transmits social opportunities in a highly unequal way, thereby shedding a new light on the social question. In the interpenetration of the physical and virtual space, the new networking technologies have a structuring power that remains hidden behind the technological promise of slogans like “Do what you can’t”.

Step by step, this study will reveal that in our digitalised present, the social stratification processes in fact have to be looked at in a different way, albeit not in the sense of technological empowerment. What a spatial perspective actually reveals is that the socially disadvantaged segments of the population are confronted with new reproductive mechanisms that solidify the status quo and cement social differences. Surprisingly, the more the digital offers are used, the likelier this is.

Airoldi, Massimo (2022): Machine Habitus: Toward a Sociology of Algorithms. Cambridge: Polity.

Daniela, Linda (ed.) (2022): Inclusive Digital Education. Cham: Springer.

Ferger, Edwin (2018): Anwendungen der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie und die Mediatisierung sozialer Inklusion. In: Aljoscha Burchardt & Hans Uszkoreit (eds.): IT fiir soziale Inklusion. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 69-76.

Foucault, Michel (1979): Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alexandria: Alexander Street Press.

Gabrys, Jennifer (2014): Programming Environments: Environmentality and Citizen Sensing in the Smart City. Environment and Planning D 32 (1), 30-48.

Glaveanu, Vlad; Ness, Ingunn & Saint Laurent, Constance de (eds.) (2020): Creative Learning in Digital and Virtual Environments: Opportunities and Challenges of Technology-Enabled Learning and Creativity. New York: Routledge.

Kitchin, Rob & Dodge, Martin (2011): Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Klauser, Francisco; Paasche, Till & Söderström, Ola (2014): Michel Foucault and the Smart City: Power Dynamics Inherent in Contemporary Governing Through Code. Environment and Planning D 32 (5), 869-885.

Rienties, Bart C.; Hampel, Regine; Scanlon, Eileen & Whitelock, Denise (eds.) (2022): Open World Learning: Research, Innovation and the Challenges of High-Quality Education. London: Routledge.

1 INTRODUCTION: TECHNOLOGICAL COMPETENCE ... 7

Rohlinger, Deana A. & Sobieraj, Sarah (2022): The Oxford Handbook of Digital Media Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.

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CHAPTER2

Abstract The social upheavals happening in Western countries through a drifting apart of society—creating a wealthy minority on the one hand and increasing insecurity on the other—carry a great potential for conflict especially when they seem to become structurally entrenched. Starting with the development and the causes of social inequality today, the process of social reproduction needs to be examined closely, the goal being a stepby-step comprehension of upward mobility in the internet age. To this end, the acquisition of knowledge and qualification (according to Pierre Bourdieu and Martina Löw, among others) must be put in the larger context of socialisation and its spatial contingency in order to be able to identify group-specific mechanisms of privilege and discrimination more thoroughly.

Keywords Social advancement - Socialisation - Bourdieu - Site effects - Cultural capital - Relational space

Despite its continuing relevance, the classic topic of social inequality between and within societies has gone through different phases over the decades in terms of the attention it has received, influencing public discourse in different ways. The question of what constitutes inequality is, by its nature, normative and charged with value. It depends on what is considered valuable and desirable within a society and to what

© The Author(s) 2024 9 J. Scheffer, Mirrored Spaces, Geographies of Media, https: //doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-42793-1_2 extent corresponding goods and services are attainable for the individual. The limited nature of material wealth, power or prestige and the selective accessibility of resources lead to differences in distribution, whose meaning must always be defined and negotiated in the socio-political context. Different viewpoints notwithstanding, in general the acceptance of social stratification seems to be decreasing when individual options for action are restricted to such an extent that an improvement of one’s social position is hardly possible. In the recent past, more and more findings have corroborated this development. Not only is it clear that income and wealth are becoming more and more polarised in the wealthiest countries, but also that the losers are permanently forfeiting essential opportunities, passing this burden on to their children. In addition to the distribution of economic resources, socialisation and educational contexts contribute to a class-related segregation that greatly limits social advancement.

The current revival of the debate on inequality draws important arguments from this logic of reproduction. Adding further relevance to it is the fact that in the post-Fordist economies, many occupations are now being lost that used to secure resources and a sense of belonging for workers. The emerging digital age is accompanied by completely new skills requirements. Education will become even more important, and with it the question of accessibility. If digital technologies such as the smartphone are also seen as new tools for acquiring knowledge and qualifications, there seems to be no quick answer to the question of which groups will emerge as the loser from the process of change on the labour market. In fact, some researchers in the field of education argue that this transformation could uncover hitherto unknown access to resources, to the benefit of those who were disadvantaged in a reproductive distribution system.

To assess the opportunities for advancement in the internet age, the process of social reproduction has to be discussed in more detail, with the development and causes of social inequality in the present as the point of departure. In order to identify group-specific mechanisms of advantage and disadvantage more comprehensively, the acquisition of knowledge and qualifications must be placed in the broader context of socialisation and its spatial conditionality.

2.1 SOCIAL INEQUALITY IN POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

Characterising the present as a time of dramatic changes in the labour market, a dismantling of the welfare state and a dramatic increase in inequality of life chances also means comparing it to a past that was characterised by a high degree of social convergence. This is true for the Fordist post-war era of the 1950s and, in particular, the 1960s in Western Europe and the United States. Since the demise of this era in the 1970s, the debate over the social question, especially related to inequality of income, has again become relevant as the “new social question”. Presently, there is even talk of a dramatic regression, with parallels to the class divide of the nineteenth century in terms of inequality and life chances (Siebel 2012, p. 472).

While wages in the simple service sector are lagging behind overall income development, they are currently growing in the field of highproductivity (high-value) services. On the one hand, a growing number of unemployed or low-skilled workers, single parents or older people have difficulty coping with the demands of the modern labour market (Schürz 2016), while on the other hand the winners of modernisation benefit disproportionately. Over the years, high-income earners have been able to use their powerful positions to increase their income, even though the relative level compared to low incomes does not correspond to the respective productivity (Piketty 2014). Growing income inequality is evident in longitudinal studies for almost all highly developed service nations (Atkinson et al. 2011; Rohrbach 2008, p. 195ff; United Nations 2020; Kakwani 2022). A common finding is that the shares of households in the middle income groups are decreasing, while those in the upper and lower-income groups are clearly increasing. If we focus on the wealth situation of households, the contrasts that have emerged in recent decades become even sharper. In Europe alone, which still has the smallest contrasts in a continental comparison, there have been strong polarisations over the last few years: The Top 10% in Europe captures 58% of total household wealth, versus 38% for the Middle 40% and 4% for the Bottom 50% (Chancel et al. 2022). Within the country groups, the differences are sometimes even more drastic. In Germany, for example, the richest ten per cent of the population own more than 67% of total net wealth. For the richest one per cent it is over 35%, and for the richest one per thousand it is still 20% (Deutsche Bundesbank 2022).

The extreme inequality of wealth produces contrasting life realities of privilege and complete deprivation, which are not only evident in quality of life, opportunities of participation and realisation, but can also mean a difference in life expectancy of up to 10 years (Lampert and Rosenbrock 2017).

Among the numerous explanations for the extreme accumulation of wealth among the propertied classes is the productivity of capital, whose income generally grows faster in percentage terms than the economy as a whole (Piketty and Saez 2006). Other reasons are the options of tax reduction or evasion (tax havens) (Druyen et al. 2009), or the increasingly unequal distribution of inherited income (Frick and Grabka 2009).

Yet, the most important explanation of social polarisation processes concerns the question of income generation and its preconditions. Economic and sociological studies point in two directions here: Among economists, the thesis of skill-biased technological change can be found frequently, which sees the increasing importance of relevant qualifications as the main reason for rising income inequality. Against the backdrop of technological change, especially in connection with the spread of modern computers, the demand for highly qualified workers is rising sharply. As has been widely demonstrated in the early stages of computer diffusion in the United States, this leads to substantial wage gaps between skilled and unskilled workers, which are increasing over time (Bound and Johnson 1992; Levy and Murnane 1992; Autor et al. 1999, among others). The outlined polarisations within the growing service spectrum between unskilled labour and highly specialised activities fit into this diagnosis. The emerging integration of industrial production with modern information and communication technology (“Industry 4.0”) will give further impetus to the polarisation processes, as highly paid services continue to displace industrial activities. Further ahead, scholars are predicting the emergence of a global precariat in a fully connected world, when it will be possible to distribute most digital services under global competition on increasingly poor terms (Graham and Anwar 2019).

To counter this economic explanation of income inequality as a function of supply and demand, sociologists use closure theory (for an overview, see Mackert 2004). According to this, elites manage to secure increasing incomes for themselves and exclude others from professional fields of activity and the wealth gains of the national economy through discrimination mechanisms, processes of distinction, institutional changes and class conflicts. From this perspective, privilege through citizenship can be as much a restriction on competition as the requirement of degrees for certain professions.

Both approaches focus on the lack of social mobility of low-income earners, which, according to the concept of skill-biased technological change, is also based on the need for education and qualifications. This raises the question of equal opportunity with regard to individual education. In many OECD countries, the educational path taken greatly depends on the income and qualifications of the parents, resulting in the reproduction of social inequality. Children from lower-status backgrounds are demonstrably less likely to acquire a higher educational qualification than children from higher-status backgrounds. Further limits to social mobility are set by the difficulties to enter the education market or a certain educational institution faced by older people, single parents or immigrants.

Closure theory views social mobility as regulated from the outside, which highlights the importance of the exclusion mechanisms that are already taking effect in the education process. While a lack of education and training certificates itself acts as a closure mechanism, other mechanisms of empowerment or restriction, which have to do with social background, milieu, place of residence and other socialisation conditions, are at play even before. From this perspective, too, an inequality of opportunity with self-reinforcing effects can be observed: While the “inside” creates a sense of belonging and guarantees access to resources relevant for advancement that consolidate the status achieved, the “outside” deprives the individual of the necessary access, cements or diminishes the existing position and puts them at a relative disadvantage in the competition with others. Therefore, for the study of social polarisation it makes sense to first look at the fields of opportunity and access to resources that individuals and groups dispose of.

The ability to individually improve one’s social position depends not only on personal preconditions but also on living conditions. These are usually divided into the categories of differences in education, gainful employment, wealth, power, prestige, as well as different working, living and leisure conditions (cf. also Rössel 2009). Education is at the centre of this web of enablers and constraints. Its paramount importance is reflected in countless publications that analyse it in the context of changing occupational demands or—more generally—conceptualise it as the most important enabler of social participation (Miethe et al. 2017; Piketty 2014; Castells 2009; chapter 4). It is to be understood here in both respects—as a never-ending process that facilitates the development of an independent personality capable of solving problems and mastering life, and therefore having a very fundamental effect on the individual’s options for action.

Yet viewing education as a central prerequisite for professional and social success should not make us forget that education systems are only one aspect of a comprehensive socialisation process whose complex components are made up of individual psychological and external social conditions. The individual’s chances of succeeding in the labour market through education and knowledge are thus dependent both on personality formation and development and on the social and material environment mediated by society. With their model of productive processing of reality, Hurrelmann and Bauer (2018) have placed socialisation in this double context of internal and external reality. Accordingly, personality development is conceived as a constant interaction of individual development and the surrounding factors. “Whether or not the individual is successful in coping with these tasks depends on the personal and social resources available to him or her. The demand to balance personal individualisation and social integration in order to safeguard selfidentity is present in all phases of life and development” (Hurrelmann and Bauer 2018, p. 23). The authors divide the socio-spatial conditions into contextual factors, which concern the material equipment, the symbolic occupation as well as the standardisation of a surrounding space, and into compositional factors. The latter denote the composition of the group to which people belong or in which they act.

While education and the acquisition of knowledge in the socialisation process thus generally hold the promise of social participation, this promise depends on equal opportunities in the acquisition of education. Tracing the life course of the individual, which takes place in stages from the early years, through young adulthood, middle adulthood to older and oldest adulthood, reveals that the living conditions, or—in terms of socialisation theory—the contextual and compositional factors in these stages differ considerably between rich and poor.

Serious social inequalities can be documented for all phases of life, which in turn contribute to the inequalities in the socialisation process. A central part of this process is the ongoing internalisation of experiences, the aforementioned “productive processing of the internal and external reality” (Hurrelmann and Bauer 2018, p. 23), which ties back to the individual reservoir of action and perception, providing specific options.

Pierre Bourdieu’s famous theory of class (especially 1984) offers itself as a starting point for a deeper examination of the different chances to reach upwardly relevant resources in physical real space and, on further consideration, in virtual space. It connects well with Hurrelmann’s dualism of personality development and environmental influences: Bourdieu resolves the polarity between the objectivist and subjectivist position, between socially shaped and autonomously acting individuals via the habitus concept, which takes up the social structure and in turn structures people’s thoughts and actions. The individual does not face his environment in isolation, but incorporates it and unites with it. Objective structures of living conditions—such as income or level of education—and subjective motives for action, dispositions and knowledge thus correspond to a high degree.

2.2 APPROACHES FOLLOWING THE THEORY OF PIERRE BOURDIEU

Bourdieu’s theory of class has long been established in the fields of socialisation, education and stratification research, proving its theoretical adaptability and explanatory power until the present. Furthermore, it has provided an interdisciplinary reference point for a wide range of research interests. Depending on the approach, the French sociologist’s extensive oeuvre is taken up as a model of lifestyles, theory of practice or habitus concept, all of which in no way denies the consistent design of the basic theoretical framework. The following summary of some of Bourdieu’s central findings focuses on the relevance of his work for socialisation theory—mainly with reference to his most important study (Bourdieu 1979, 1984)—by addressing capital acquisition and intra-class habitus acquisition of reproductive patterns of disposition. In a further step, the relevance of the physical space can be connected to this, something which Bourdieu himself did only to a limited extent (Bourdieu 1991, 1999). Bourdieu developed the concept of social space as a foundation for explaining economic-social conditions (classes) and lifestyles and how they mutually condition one another. He understands social space as a relational structure of social positions (not to be confused with places or territories in real space) whose coordinates reflect the positions of individuals and groups. On a first level, class-related positioning can be determined in this web of social relations. As is well known, Bourdieu defines this according to the capital endowment, which he detaches from a purely economic view, in contrast to the previous analysis of class: “The primary differences, those which distinguish the major classes of conditions of existence, derive from the overall volume of capital, understood as the set of actually usable resources and powers...” (Bourdieu 1984, S. 114). Besides economic capital, which is capital that can be converted into money (such as property and assets), Bourdieu refers here to social and cultural capital. Cultural capital can take on three forms, as (a) embodied, (b) objective and (c) institutionalised capital:

a. Embodied cultural capital refers to knowledge and education. In the broadest sense, education encompasses different capabilities and skills that individuals acquire in an ongoing socialisation process in the family, at school and in the social environment. This includes specialised knowledge in a field of science just as much as preferences in taste, personal appearance in the context of what is appropriate or individual speaking skills. These are acquired capabilities and skills that cannot be bought with money nor can they be inherited. At the same time, their incorporation is based on a class-based potential related to patterns of education, access to cultural incentives or social contacts in the neighbourhood. Thus the described perpetuation of the social class puts the focus on the incorporated capital through ongoing internalisation of the available educational offers and the reproduction of available resources. From the point of view of closure theory, the unequal opportunity to invest in education can be understood as a guarded advantage of the elites. They are the ones setting the rules that define which cultural norms are legitimate and which are not.