Shifting Social Contracts and the Sociological Imagination

Introduction

“NEW YORK – Today’s 20-somethings are the first generation, as a whole, to face downward economic mobility compared to their parents’ generation,” according to a new report from national policy center Demos and youth advocacy organization Young Invincibles. The report, entitled “The State of Young America,” details how the Great Recession has intensified the impact of thirty years of negative economic trends across young Americans’ lives starting with an analysis of wages: Almost all young people make less than the previous generation at the same age, with young men making $.90 for every dollar they earned in 1980 and those with only a high school diploma far less (Demos 2011:1).” This change is remarkable given the increased rates of education in the population, with over 30% of the adult population having, for the first time, a college degree; it is a striking example of some of what I mean by shifting social contracts.

My basic argument is that thinking about social contracts, what they are and how they have changed is a powerful way to understand society and social change at multiple levels of analysis and in multiple contexts. This article has five main sections as follows. I first discuss different conceptions of social contracts. Second, I discuss some of the factors that changed social contracts in the United States and focus on four aspects of those changes. The third section turns to some research on generational differences to illustrate shifting social contracts. The fourth section provides some examples of shifting social contracts across a number of institutions, and the fifth section concludes with some thoughts about possibilities for sociology and society. The purpose of this article is to generate interest in using this theoretical approach to a wide range of areas in sociology. I begin with conceptions of the social contract.

Conceptions of the Social Contract:

I have been thinking about the social contract and shifting social contracts since I wrote Shifts in the Social Contract (Rubin 1996). I have found the idea appealing for a number of reasons; social contracts exist across institutions, organizations and interactional forms. The concept of social contracts provides a way of ordering observations of social life and social change. A third aspect of the idea of social contracts is that social contracts are a conceptual vehicle that links the individual and her/his schemas to the larger social structure in which she or he is situated and on which she or he acts.

In other words, thinking about social contracts provides a theoretical way of engaging in that fundamental sociological task of using one’s sociological imagination (Mills 1959) and connecting individual troubles to public issues, or of connecting the micro to macro. The concept of social contracts has its origins and it’s extensions in related disciplines that I discuss briefly below.

Political Conceptions

The social contract is the cornerstone of political theory in which the philosophers Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Rawls sought to understand the consent of the governed to be governed. While the approaches differ, each begins with a notion of a hypothetical state of nature (one without government) and from there it proceeds to the motivations for giving up some freedoms to a sovereign state.

For Hobbes (1588–1679), the state of nature is a war of all against all; for Locke (1632–1704), it is a place where the nonproductive steal the fruits of the labor of the productive. For Rousseau (1712–78), exiting the state of nature into the social contract allows individuals to fulfill their full humanity through “civil freedom.” Rawls’ (1971) theory of justice, while not invoking the same state of nature, identifies the veil of ignorance that allows us to determine principles of justice devoid of self-interest. In all instances, these theories argue that political authority derives from the decision of humans to become a collective, give up hypothetical “natural rights” and create, in political terms, a government – in sociological terms, a society.

Economic Conceptions

Economists also have strong conceptions of contracts, but here they refer to binding transactions or exchanges. Economists view contracts as the strategy...