Smart Society

A Sociological Perspective on Smart Living

Roberta Iannone, Romina Gurashi, Ilaria Iannuzzi, Giovanni de Ghantuz Cubbe, Melissa Sessa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429574856
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Stadtplanung & Stadtentwicklung

Increasingly, we hear of 'smart' cities, communities, governance and people as constituting the basis of initiatives by which we might address various social and environmental problems, particularly those connected with sustainability, usually by means of an 'intelligent' connection with the 'network society'. This book addresses the issues raised by the emergence of 'smart' dimensions and initiatives in society, critically engaging with questions surrounding the feasibility of what smart initiatives propose and the extent to which they can really offer solutions to the challenges we face. With attention to the notion of 'smart' as applied to the individual, the community, politics and the home, the authors consider the interconnections between these various facets of 'smart living' and their relationship to the notion of the smart society as a whole. Drawing on a concrete study of an attempt to concretize smart ideas in the design of a smart, solar home as part of an international project, Smart Society offers the first extended sociological engagement with the notion of smart living.

1 Smart society

The critical sense of a world strategy

Roberta Iannone

Around and within the ‘smart’ world

By virtue of a certain information redundancy, the adjective ‘smart’ is now monopolizing the scientific literature in every disciplinary field: from engineering to economics and political science, from sociology to urban planning. Even the pages of the newspapers use the term ‘smart’ at least as frequently as the academic congresses. The conversations between scientists as well as between journalists, between politicians and between citizens, between consumers and between producers find in this adjective one of the most used and abused words. The translations of the term are often varied, its interpretations disparate and its meanings polysemic.

The city is certainly the most natural habitat of the smart world and the literature on smartness is dominated by the ‘smart city’ (Aa.Vv. 2014; Marciano 2015), to the point that almost all theoretical insights focus on this meaning (De Luca 2012) and on the relative distinctions. This is the case of the city of networks (or net city), of the open city, of the sentient city, of the participatory city (or wiki city), of the neo-bohemian city (or creative city) and, again, the resilient city, the 2.0 city, and finally the city as a platform (or cloud city) (Dominici 2012).

Beyond or next to the city, according to the most consolidated literature on the subject (Amitrano and Bifulco 2016), it is possible to trace at least six declinations of ‘smartness’:

1. smart economy
2. smart people
3. smart governance
4. smart mobility
5. smart environment
6. smart living

In economics (Balaceanu et al. 2017), the word smart refers to more dynamic and competitive, innovative and entrepreneurial activities.

Smart people (Barrett 2017; Bates and Gupta 2017; Gurashi 2018; Kar et al. 2017) are instead the expression of citizens who are creative and flexible, but also professionally qualified and open to forms of participation and social integration.

The political participation of citizens in the decision-making process is instead the distinctive element of ‘smart governance’ (Vinod Kumar 2015; Willke 2007), where the participation in the creation of public services contributes to making governance more transparent and democratic.

The ‘smart mobility’ (European Environment Agency 2016) refers, instead, to the transport system, to the national and international accessibility of mobility and to the possibility of making it innovative and safe.

Finally, the ‘smart environment’ (European Environment Agency 2017; Urban Land Institute 1998) refers to a sustainable management of natural resources and to the preservation and protection of the green areas of a city. ‘Smart Community’ (D’Aloisi et al. 2013; Manfredi 2015; Rizzi 2014; Urban Land Institute 1998), ‘smart land’ (Bonomi and Masiero 2014), ‘smart home’ (Balta-Ozkan et al. 2013; Briere 2003; Capolla 2011; Gurashi et al. 2019; Harper 2003; Saul-Rinaldi et al. 2014; Sessa 2018) and ‘smart working’ (Corso et al. 2016; Lake 2013) complete, then, the framework of the possible variations of the concept. But what is the common denominator of all these ‘smart’ worlds?

Thinking smart is first of all thinking in an ‘integrated’ way and the main integration is that which is realized between people, environment and technologies. We could long argue about the centrality of information technology with respect to smartness because indeed without technology none of these forms of intelligence would be possible. And yet the smart city, and with it all its variations of smartness, is not a mere digital city. ‘Smart’ and ‘digital’ are not synonyms, but rather they allude to diversified even intersected plans and the smart city is something more than a mere digital city (Aurugi 2005; Dameri and Giovannacci 2015) or information city (Mola et al. 2015).

In this sense, the ‘smart society’ (Hayman 1998; Mallapaty 2018; Ramachander 2018; Valkenburg et al. 2016; Voronkova and Kyvliuk 2017) becomes central. The smart society is the real protagonist and it is only within a systemic logic that it is possible to think and act ‘smart’. Society is the social system that makes every smart initiative possible, whether it is economic, political, working or housing; plus, it integrates people, environment and technologies. It is that amalgam, that cohesion, that set of ties and relationships, that intersection of plans and social formations that only makes the smart dimension possible, beyond any possible declination.

Understanding ‘smartness’ therefore means understanding the dimension of integration that comes before any form of ‘intelligence’, making it possible. A new systemic integration based on digital technologies and aimed at saving energy.

(Gabrielli and Granelli 2014)

Around and within the smart world there is then a very strong and constitutive reference to the idea of ​​intelligent growth that is, at the same time, also sustainable growth and inclusive growth. This is what emerges from the 2020 Horizon program (the European Union Framework Program for Research and Innovation) and from the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development (the Global Program for Sustainable Development) which constitute the referential regulatory and value frameworks in this regard.

From theory to practice: the heart of the question

However, if we move from theory to practice, the question becomes more complicated and the difficulties seem to lie precisely in a joint declination of these elements. The impression that moves these pages is that often the goal of smartness understood as ‘intelligent growth’ – no matter what the level on which it stands (micro, meso, macro) or the field of experience with which one desires to decline it (home, city, work, etc.) – is separated from sustainable growth and inclusive growth. To say, through the absolutizations of the economy, albeit based on knowledge and innovation, uprooting it from a greener economy, as well as from an economy capable of employment and cohesion. In this way, not only the smartness becomes synonymous with mere technological efficiency, but it loses all the ‘intelligence’ charge that it had promised. At that point it will not appear unfounded to wonder why using a new term, such as smart precisely, is better than instead of using the more traditional terms of technological, digital or simply efficient society.

It is therefore opportune to rest and reflect on the somewhat ‘holistic’ character that the term ‘smart’ brings with respect to the triple dimension of sustainability on the one hand and of inclusiveness on the other. The word ‘smart’ itself, if combined with intelligence, can lead to a truly integrated, smart society.

The impression is that, beyond the often very fascinating rhetoric of the smart world as a technological and competitive world, nothing can ever be truly ‘intelligent’ if technology and economy do not find their place in society. It is the place with which both these dimensions of social experience were born and which for millennia has given them a function for the guarantees of order and development of society.

This aspect, debated but still minor in the dominant literature and which needs to be brought to light in terms of sociological theory and empirical research attentive to the ensuing practical implications, is central to every realistic idea of ​​smart society. It is not possible to talk about the smart society if we are not confronted with the problem of the current and potential boundaries of technology and economy. And if these boundaries continue to be read with the technical or engineering look, and not in reference to that system of needs and interests that we call society and to that axiological cultural heritage that we call culture.

It is a question of rethinking the cultural and social sense that economy and technology have not only with respect to the needs of order, but also for progress (more and better than growth). An engineering use of new technologies is not enough, because efficiency is not in itself a guarantee of development. To be intelligent, the use of technology must be based on a vision upstream of the relationship between technology and society, which re-establishes the original terms of the relationship and the placement of the techné in society. Technique, like technology, has always been considered an indispensable condition for human existence. On the contrary: they can be considered as the very essence of man (Galimberti 2009). And this is because man, not being codified by instincts like animals, can survive only if he immediately becomes technician. When, however, the technique from medium becomes an end in itself, it is likely to assume that one enters the realm of technicalities as a method to transform a technique into a given abstract and general system (Postman 1981).

The same can be said for economy. Born as a sphere between the spheres aimed at satisfying the needs of the community and its possibilities of development, economy currently finds itself as the dominant sphere. It emerges from its original location, which saw it as part of a larger social system, or more precisely a social subsystem. When this happens, the market imposes itself and from an institution immersed into the social sphere, it becomes the institution that forms society and expresses a certain economic hegemony. The market becomes the scene of representation of the whole sociability, it becomes the formula through which the quantitative objectification of exchange is realized in modern culture. Likewise, among the key values ​​of late modernity, profit and efficiency are affirmed far beyond economic action, invading every area of ​​social experience, and invalidating the economic value itself, which is increasingly self-referential, rather than constructed and oriented towards society. The economy then becomes economism, a real ideology that informs every area of ​​associated life (Mongardini 1997).

As Pareto has already noted, and as we should never forget, there is the profit of society but also the profit for society: the former is not always compatible with the latter and we must be careful not to confuse “the maximum utility for a collectivity, with the maximum utility of a community” (1916: par. 2133). In the first case, it is the utilities of the individual that prevail. In the second case it is society that is considered as a unit whose purpose prevails over individual ends.

This is the framework within which it is considered appropriate to frame the theme of the smart society and its actual concretizations. A framework that is broader than the one that follows individual acts or specific behaviors in the technical and economic sphere, without prejudice to the centrality of technique/technology and the economy for the smart dimension to succeed in its consolidation.

Hence, therefore, the conceptual continuum that this book intends to investigate. It considers the problems of the smart society mostly linked to the distortions inherent in the sense of the economy, in the direction of economics and the economy ‘as an ideology’, and of technology in the sense given by technicalization and technicality. Consequently, the smart society becomes economy and technique more ‘aware’ of their role, with related limits and potential, through a more conscious economy and a more intelligent technique/technology.

We still need to understand which ‘smart’ areas must be perfected for this to happen de facto and beyond the declarations of principle, creating an integrated social order.

Conclusions

In the performative society that smartness brings with it, production efficiency is essential. But is efficiency possible without integration?¹ If we want to verify the ideal of efficiency, we must focus on integration. And on an integration that is not mere agreement between the interests of a stakeholder society, but true social cement. A mechanical and organic solidarity together, Durkheim would say. The threats, however, are known and go under the names of hyperspecialism and consequent social fragmentation, solipsism or individual atomization. Added to this are the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1. Smart society: The critical sense of a world strategy
• 2. Smart politics: The political dimension of ‘smartness’
• 3. Smart people and prosumers: The individual challenge to the Fourth Industrial Revolution
• 4. Smart community: A new way of being together?
• 5. Home smart home: A sociology of living in the age of reflective materialism
• 6. From theory to empiricism: The challenge to the future of the Sapienza University at Solar Decathlon Middle East
• Index