Existentialising existence theory and expanding the sociology of existential milestones

Abstract

This paper responds to the ‘existence theory’ proposed by Baert, Morgan and Ushiyama. It considers their proposals in light of two main thematics: the general account of human existence, and the more empirical sociology of existential milestones. Both elements are appraised in light of existentialist philosophy and earlier attempts at ‘existentialist sociology’. It is suggested that the authors engage with generational theory, and also give an account of the commodification of significant life-stages by the milestones culture industry.

Patrick Baert, Marcus Morgan and Rin Ushiyama (hereafter: ‘the authors’) have proposed ‘existence theory’ as a new kind of social theory. In this paper, I set out a response to their position. I focus both on the theory and the research programme which the theory drives.

Synopsis

The main features of the authors’ viewpoint and programme can be summarised under the following headings.

Forerunners

The authors say that their position has ‘affinities’ (p. 8) with earlier symbolic interactionist (Mead), phenomenological (Schutz), existential (Sartre, Jaspers) and existential-phenomenological (Heidegger) positions in philosophy and sociology, because of ‘the centrality of time for understanding the experience of being human’ in such thinkers’ works (p. 8). These earlier positions are augmented by ‘a greater sensitivity to the social as both an enabler and a constraint on one’s phenomenological existence’ (p. 8). The so-called ‘existentialist sociology’ of the 1970s and 1980s, which was primarily an efflorescence in US sociological circles (e.g. Douglas and Johnson, 1977; Kotarba and Fontana, 1984; Manning, 1973; with the theoretical forerunner of Tiryakian, 1962, 1965) is acknowledged as having some similarities to the proposed focus on ‘exploring the flow, feelings and emotions of everyday life’ (p. 8). But in contrast to that earlier constellation, the authors take a ‘longer temporal perspective, paying attention to how individuals organise their lives around broader projects’ than those mostly analysed by the self-proclaimed existentialist sociologists of a generation ago (p. 8). The proposed position is intended to be part of a broader trend to develop forms of critical humanism within sociological thinking (p. 9).

Theoretical claims

‘Existence theory’ is at root a ‘theory of social behaviour that centres around the temporality of existence in society’ (p. 8). A central contention is that ‘people have the ability to reflect on their lives as a perceived whole from the perspective of projected trajectories – that is, they can and sometimes do conceive of their personal biographies as “accomplished projects.” They can imagine what their life stories will look like if they would lead them in particular ways and they often organise their behaviour around the projection of these accomplished projects’ (p. 9). Therefore, people can and do ‘imagine, or feel, “future pasts”; that is, completed pasts from these different future vantage points, and given a social actor’s awareness of chance and contingent outcomes, such “future pasts” may be multiple for a singular decision’ (p. 9). In sum, ‘modern social actors (and, one suspects, “traditional” actors too!) reflect on the milestones they are expected to accomplish, and act in patterned and constrained, yet also fundamentally open ways on the basis of such reflection’ (p. 24).

Temporality is put into the centre of the theoretical framework in this way: ‘people’s awareness of the irreversibility of time and of the finitude of existence regularly feeds into the way they act and make decisions. Decisions cannot be postponed forever and what is not accomplished by a certain point might never be achieved at all’ (p. 9). The key notion of ‘existential milestones’ is set out thus: individuals organise ‘their lives around a limited set of socially induced ‘existential milestones’. These are ‘events that are considered so essential to the individuals involved (and their immediate community) that without their achievement those lives will be experienced as somehow incomplete’ (p. 9). These milestones are taken to be so (literally) vitally important that in ‘the long run, goals deemed less important than the existential milestones are typically subordinated to them’ by many or most people (p. 10).

Different types of milestones relate to each other at both the societal level and within individual biographies. Some may be dependent on others: in many societies, ‘coming of age’ is a pre-requisite for getting married, which in turn is the condition for socially legitimate childbirth. The relation between the milestones constitutes the ‘existential ladder’ of a group or wider social formation (p. 12). The phrase ‘existential urgency’ points to ‘people’s anticipation that they might have to forego a particular existential milestone if it is not obtained by a certain juncture’ (p. 12). Such urgency ‘can become more intense as people realise that foregoing one particular existential milestone may lead to the relinquishing of other milestones further down the line. In this manner, existential decisions made in the here-and-now are limited or afforded by those made in the past, and in turn limit or afford those that can be made in the future’ (p. 13).

Four types of ‘temporal constraints’ on individuals achieving existential milestones are identified: (1) biological factors, including the central fact of human mortality, as well as various forms of diminishing physical capacity; (2) social-institutional factors; (3) physical environments; and (4) ‘norms specific to particular societies’, which ‘structure social expectations as to the appropriate age or life-stage at which a particular existential milestone ought to be achieved, and transgressing such norms can lead to social sanctions’ (p. 12).

‘Power inequalities’ (p. 11) are factored into the model as follows. The ‘possibility of pursuing existential milestones is structured and socially differentiated: reproductive freedom, for instance, is likely to be regulated along racial, ethnic, gender and class lines’ (p. 13). Forms of ‘material privilege afford . . . actors the ability to construct autobiographies with longer temporal horizons (towards both the past and the future) (p. 18). Therefore, ‘all other things being equal . . . more privileged actors or groups in a particular social domain will (a) possess more ambitious normative definitions of existential milestones, (b) hold an enhanced capacity to fulfil existential milestones, and (c) have greater capacity to redefine existential milestones for themselves and for others, or the moments at which such existential milestones are to be achieved’ (p. 19; emphasis in original). Understanding unequal power dynamics in regard to milestones means ‘analysing not only the discrepancies between normative expectations and the likely fulfilment of existential milestones in tandem’, but also providing ‘a comparative account of the discrepancies between different normatively defined existential milestones themselves, as well as an individual’s relative capacity to impose or resist a particular milestone’ (p. 19).

The authors occasionally move into Boudieusian themes and terminology when they write that ‘the failure to achieve a certain existential milestone may result in the individual attributing the cause of failure to their personal qualities, rather than questioning the legitimacy of such milestones or drawing attention to structural conditions that enhance or inhibit opportunities . . . a form of self-exclusion that might be considered through the Bourdieusian concept of “symbolic violence” . . . Such behaviour helps reproduce the doxic normative conditions within society’ (pp. 16, 19).

‘Modern’ society/societies

Every social order presumably has, and to a certain extent revolves around, both the defining of existential milestones for individuals and groups, and the achievement (or not) by such persons. Characteristically ‘modern’ social formations multiply options and therefore ambiguities and possible forms of non-conventional thought and action too. A modern social formation’s lack of ‘perfect homology between an individual’s existential milestones and a society’s dominant expectations of such milestones’ has to be recognised. This recognition is claimed to provide ‘dynamism’ to the authors’ framework, and ‘allows it to account for imperfect social patterning or what might be called the empirical “mess” of social life’ (p. 13).

A modern social order is accordingly characterised by the ‘multiplication of value systems, and the associated proliferation of often-conflicting existential milestones’ (p. 14). Such a situation may constitute ‘a social basis for the intensification of a mainstay feature of existential philosophy: the angst produced by the simultaneous necessity and impossibility of choice in an increasingly pluralistic world in which we are “condemned to be free”’ (p. 14). ‘Contradictory milestones’ (p. 11) are those which individuals, couples, or perhaps larger groups find themselves torn between dealing with, lacking the resources to achieve all of them, with some having to be deferred or relinquished. In a modern social order, there is likely to be ‘greater social acceptance of heterodox interpretations of what constitutes legitimate existential milestones often results’ (p. 14). There is more scope for individual and group innovation: ‘In a drive towards authenticity, some people are keen to set their own existential milestones, whether this is the completion of an intellectual or artistic project, an adventure, financial independence or sports achievement’ (pp. 13–14). Certain milestones, or specific modes of achieving them, may be passively relinquished or actively opposed, at individual or group levels, involving action which defies ‘expectations and redefine[s] normative conventions’ (pp. 16–17). Such a focus connects micro- and macro-levels of analysis: we need ‘to develop a better understanding of when and how organised opposition to existential milestones accumulates to the point of initiating broader social change, thereby connecting the micro-social (sense of self) to the macro-social (political change, legal reform)’ (p. 12). If conventionally defined milestones are still accepted, they may be strategically delayed until later points in time, especially by those who are resource-rich, or pursued vicariously through others, often offspring (p. 15).

Explanation

The authors posit ‘existence theory’ as the way to deal with milestone issues. But they do not embrace much contemporary social theory as an aid to fleshing it out, including in terms of explaining why certain milestone phenomena come to be as they are.

However, they do reject some theoretical positions with global pretensions to explain all aspects of social life: Beckerian rational choice theory and Bourdieusian habitus/field theory are explicitly named in this regard. Openness is framed in empirical terms: ‘Rather than impute fixed motives to social actions a priori, we remain theoretically open to the broad range of empirically determinable factors that might contribute to the pursuit of existential milestones, such as a strive towards the realisation of an “authentic” self, romantic love, economic interests, familial obligation and the construction of a future autobiography of “a life well lived”’ (p. 11). Moreover, while ‘those aspiring to predict particular cases on the basis of general models may find this aspect of our model unsatisfactory, we feel that this feature allows for a complexity that better reflects the manner’ in which social order vis-à-vis the acceptance, rejection and construction and modes of observing them ‘is in fact achieved and broken’ (p. 24).

It seems that existence theory on its own may be sufficient to do the analytical work on milestone phenomena. At most, specific themes – for example symbolic violence, culled from Bourdieu’s wider theoretical repertoire – can be deployed in limited ways in the service of existence-theoretical analysis of milestone matters.

Research programme

The authors propose a research programme, which may be carried out by themselves and/or others, involving the comparative study of existential milestones, as informed by ‘existence theory’. The approach ‘allows us to understand and provide systematic cross-cultural and cross-historical comparisons of the normative architectures unique to particular societies’ (p. 17).

This seems to involve a dual move: studying how milestones are defined and organised in a given social order tells us a lot about such a society, while the study of a society can or should be done through analysis of its typical and non-typical milestones and ways of dealing with them. I think this is the sense of the claim that ‘examining dominant expectations of what an existential milestone should be for a particular category of social actor, and at what particular moment or life stage this existential milestone ought to be achieved, reveals a key element of the normative structure specific to that particular society across an individual’s life course’ (p. 16).

Appraisal

In what follows, I am not going to focus so much on what I agree with in the authors’ position. Suffice to say that it has stimulated me in these ways: to start thinking more about existential milestones as an important focal point for sociology and related disciplines (an empirical plus); to consider more how actors imagine their future selves and social positions, and project back from imagined futures to their current situations as regards what they want to do, and how, in planning out their lives (a sociological plus); and to think through how existential philosophy and previous attempts at ‘existential sociology’ may be rendered once again productive for social theory (a theoretical plus).

I have sporadically thought about the latter over the course of my career. This was stimulated some time ago by reading about Raymond Aron’s taunt in the late 1950s to Sartre that he was engaged in the impossible task of reconciling Kierkegaard (representative of philosophy, theology, existentialism, individualism, difficult choices, pessimism) and Marx (representative of sociology – or sociologism – plus atheism, collectivism, determinism, progressivism, optimism) (Flynn, 2012). As both figures were simultaneously very amusing and deadly serious writers, it has for a long time struck me as being valuable to try to create such a synthesis of them, which Aron said was impossible, but which Sartre (2004), in Critique of Dialectical Reason, had a rather good go at, even if all such syntheses are doomed to fail, at least in the eyes of the critics. It is pleasing to see Kierkegaard at least gestured to, and drawn upon a little, in a sociology/social theory paper, as the authors do here. A fully-fledged Kierkegaardian sociology remains an elusive possibility, and one which at some point in the future I will seek to produce for the purposes of entertaining myself during forthcoming ‘polar nights of icy darkness’. ¹ But such a sociological enterprise has been made a little more possible now through the authors’ invoking of Kierkegaard as (distant, fleeting) inspiration for a contemporary form of social theory.

‘Existence theory’ as proposed here is in its early stages. In the paper I am commenting on, it exists as notes towards a theoretical framework, at the same stage in its evolution, perhaps, as Manning (1973) said ‘existential sociology’ was in its’ own development in the early 1970s.

In my view, what the authors have proposed is not yet a ‘theory’ as such. A social ‘theory’ requires worked-out accounts of many things, including: what is ‘in’ each human being (mind, self, cognition, rationality, emotion, affect action, agency, body, corporeality, etc.); what exists between them (social relations of various types, forms of interplay, communications methods, etc); what (perhaps) exists over, above and outside of them (structures, systems, cultural formations, collective memories, historical influences); how they relate to different types of non-humans (objects of many kinds, technologies and their affordances, non-human animals, the physical environment, etc.); and what sorts of social formations people live in (pre-eminently, and conventionally, supposedly pre-modern and modern variants).

A ‘theory’ also explains why things happen. At the moment ‘existence theory’ points out that in a general sense humans deal with ‘life’ by projecting ahead and projecting backwards. But as yet it has an inchoate vocabulary to describe and account for how and why they project backwards and forwards in some ways and not others. All these sorts of things have been theorised in many ways over the centuries. Various major positions on such matters are well-known. ‘Existence theory’ as proposed by the authors is not yet at a stage where it has elaborated, worked-out positions on all these matters, but it will have to if it is to become what its name implies and what they claim for it, namely a wide-ranging account of multiple aspects of existence. Only that way can it do what social theories are meant to do: defining what is going on in human (and non-human) existence, and also giving a compelling account as to why.

The authors say that ‘we will not delve into the intricacies of existentialist philosophies, nor elaborate at length on how our views relate to those philosophies or to sociological approaches inspired by them’ (p. 6). But I think that if ‘existence theory’ is to advance towards becoming a more fully-fledged theory as such, that that is precisely what they profitably could indeed do. They need to define how their position is the same as, differs from, and overlaps with, previous positions within existentialism, phenomenology and existential-phenomenology, and to take inspiration from sources they have not yet drawn upon, both more well-known ones and less remembered ones too.

Some suggestions

Here are some suggestions in that regard. First, a theory of existence probably needs to relate to and utilise elements of Merleau-Ponty’s (2010) existential-phenomenology of the human mind/body nexus, and the viscerally embodied nature of perception and action. Already almost three decades ago Crossley (1995) aimed to set up Merleau-Pontian ontology and epistemology as a central foundation of social theory. However, how that form of phenomenology could be connected to core sociological issues of social power remained unresolved (Howson and Inglis, 2001). Existence theory’s conceptualisation of power could unfold in a dialectical relationship to those conceptual challenges, perhaps helping to resolve them to some extent.

Second, the philosophy of Sartre, both earlier and later, may still be a relatively untapped resource for developing ‘existence theory’ specifically and social theory more broadly, especially as American existential sociology of the 1970s arguably under-used Sartre. Baert’s (2015) appreciation of Sartre places him in an ideal position for such acts of recuperation. I also have a few suggestions in this regard. Craib (1976) has suggested that the early Sartre is close to Goffman’s focus on role-playing in social relations (also Ashworth, 1985), while the later Sartre offers a sociologically fertile typology of social formations. One can claim, as does Dalmas (2020), that Sartre was already developing a kind of sociology in his literary works of the late 1930s, implicitly ranged against the Durkheimian orthodoxies of the time, work in which anomie was presented as pure hopelessness for the individual, but alienation was understood as a force that the individual could productively struggle against (Hayim, 1980). Perhaps that insight could be resurrected in both ‘existence theory’ and the study of milestones.

Moreover, in the later Critique of Dialectical Reason, there is interesting analysis of a key milestone in Christian culture, a child’s baptism (Sartre, 2004: 486). Sartre’s analysis of social ensembles makes a distinction between un-self-conscious collectives and self-conscious groups. Sartre analyses how human praxis creates social structures, and individual freedom consists of acts by which external structure is interiorised, actualised and transcended by actors to achieve their various purposes. Against this backdrop, the existential milestone of baptism emerges less as an expression of simple control of the child by the Catholic group – a viewpoint one might expect from atheistic existentialism a la the earlier Sartre – and, perhaps surprisingly, more as a potential source of agency for that individual, in that the baptism’s creation of group membership and shared affiliation can be empowering as well as disempowering (Doran, 2013). Here, then, is a form of existential analysis of milestones, groups, structures and agency that may well resonate with, and be a potential inspiration for, the further elaboration of ‘existence theory’ by the authors, combining existential and sociological themes and taking appreciation of the existential ramifications of milestones in unexpected directions.

In the same vein, the authors have been attentive to issues of gendered and ethnic power inequalities in how milestones are socially organised and individually engaged with, and the work of Sartre’s companion and collaborator Simone de Beauvoir merits some consideration in that light. As Simons (2012) notes, De Beauvoir’s (1997) The Second Sex was influenced by the African-American novelist Richard Wright, whose account of the existential dilemmas of black people compelled to operate within the racist context of white-dominated social order, was in turn indebted to the pioneering sociology of the dynamics of ethnic oppression offered by Du Bois (2008). Thus, there are some sociological roots within de Beauvoir’s existentialist account of oppression, and these may form part of what the authors may wish to construct as the bases of their approach in both classical sociology and classic existentialism.

Third, Tiryakian’s (1962, 1965) idiosyncratic attempt to combine existentialist and existential-phenomenological positions with mainstream sociological ones – Heidegger and Husserl meet Durkheim – despite criticism at the time (Rastogi, 1966), is still interesting and provocative, and it is worth being used today beyond being a mere ritualistic reference, occasionally cited but never really engaged with. (I read it recently, and it is not wholly beholden to the debates of its time, precisely because it is so idiosyncratic.) Tiryakian (1965: 686) believed his proposed synthesis of apparent incompatibles opened up the ‘possibility of a general theory of social existence’, whereby ‘sociological theory can remain true to itself and yet renovate its formulations by focussing on the existential horizon of social life’ (p. 687). This sounds rather like what the current authors are aiming for, so some detailed accounting of how far Tiryakian got in this regard, and how he went ‘wrong’, would be valuable for them, reading his attempts in light of more than five decades’ worth of theoretical hindsight. A related text, also languishing in neglect today, which the authors could draw upon, is Natanson’s (1970) The Journeying Self, an attempted synthesis of existential, phenomenological and sociological thematics, which highlights the dialectics between socially-imposed roles and individuals’ transcendence of them, a position which could illuminate certain aspects of how people deal with milestones.

Fourth, Natanson’s and Tiryakian’s theoretical forays were one jumping-off point for American ‘existential sociology’ of the 1970s (a mapping of this intellectual terrain is offered by Bogart, 1977; Fontana, 1980; Manning, 1973). This loose field is perhaps best characterised more as a radical phenomenological research programme than an exercise animated by any form of guiding ‘theory’. Still, the existentialist elements come through in their contrast to the phenomenological ones: human intentionality and imaginative forward projection, of the sorts highlighted by Baert et al., are also foregrounded in this American work of the time, in contrast to conventional phenomenology, which focuses more on the ‘natural’ attitude and the doxic structures of life-worlds (Manning, 1973). Other existentialist themes in this body of work include the endless struggle for meaning among and between human actors, persons being thrown into circumstances not of their own choosing, the denial of one’s own agency and the projection of it onto external structures and systems, the primacy of emotions over rationality in driving preferences and actions, the unavoidable necessity of making choices and then dealing with the effects of those choices (Johnson, 2012). All of these sociological takes on existentialist themes, or existentialist twists on sociological issues, could profitably be taken up and rewired by the authors.

The works of Douglas (1970, 1967; Douglas and Johnson, 1977; Douglas et al., 1977) and his followers remain of interest today for the eclecticism of their epistemological orientations and their single-minded commitment to demonstrating how unofficial life-worlds may seriously differ from what their official versions are supposed to be like; for example, in-situ moral judgements may depart very much from official, socially sanctioned moral systems (Johnson, 2015). Douglas (1967) brought back an existentialist dimension to the post-Durkheim sociological study of the quintessentially existential issue of suicide, which is a sort of existential milestone in itself, or perhaps the ultimate relinquishing of all milestones. Lyman and Scott’s (1970) ‘sociology of the absurd’ imports into sociology the existentialist theme of the absurdity of life in a meaningless universe, where all meaning has to be constantly elaborated by participants in social interactions. Persons’ definitions of situations are understood as radically open and negotiated, not predefined. This is partly because of the human capacity to imagine future selves, and to plan variant courses of action, as the current authors emphasise.

Thus, a sociology of milestones could take inspiration from such writings and their vocabularies, and accordingly seek to examine in detail how milestone observance at the experiential level replicates, differs from, subverts, and departs from, how particular milestones are ‘supposed’ to be dealt with. Such an approach can also draw on the point made by existential sociologists in the 1980s that both negative emotions – the Kierkegaardian dispositions of dread, alienation, being-unto-death, ressentiment, emptiness (Tiryakian, 1985) – and positive emotions are involved in human doings in general, and in individuals’ epiphanies and existential turning points in particular, the latter phenomena already explored by some existential sociologists (Kotarba and Fontana, 1984). The fear and loathing involved in, and the unremitted joy of dealing with, existential milestones, are two ends of a socio-emotional scale that would be fascinating to research more.

Moreover, existential sociology was highly suspicious of the objectifying terminology of grand social theoretical vocabulary, such as the then-dominant terms urbanisation, modernisation, bureaucratisation, etc (Manning, 1973). This acts as a caution against ‘existence theory’ drawing in unmediated ways on today’s equivalents, such as Beck’s notion of individualisation processes, and Giddens’ account of de-traditionalisation in selfhood and relationships. Perhaps a more existentially sensitive account of contemporary subjecthood is offered by Touraine and Khosrokhavar (2000).

The sociology of milestones and existentialist thinking

In my synopsis of the authors’ position, I deliberately separated out ‘existence theory’ and the research programme it is said to animate, which involves the study of ‘existential milestones’. I realise that the authors probably regard these as inseparable. But it is possible to study existential milestones without that specific conceptual apparatus. Conversely, it is possible to develop some sort of ‘existence theory’ without reference to such milestones, or at least not making them so central as the objects of analysis as they are proposed here. Indeed, when I was approached to write a comment on this paper, and was informed it concerned ‘existence theory’, I thought it would be a more full-blown exercise in existential, phenomenological, and existential-phenomenological theorising than it is. Much of the paper is more about the sociology of milestones, and less about a theory of ‘existence’, whether the theory be more philosophical, or social-theoretical, or a combination of these two meta-genres.

In terms of the sociology of milestones, it would be interesting to hear what specialists in life-course studies would make of the authors’ approach to subject matter they have long been dealing with, while it remains to be seen more fully how the authors deal with materials from that field, in terms of what uses they put empirical findings to, and how they deal with the theorisations of such findings by life-course specialists. It would also be helpful to know what anthropologists would make of such matters, given the long-standing anthropological interest in milestone matters around the world, and the apparently unavoidable classic conceptualisations of rites-de-passage events offered by Van Gennep (1960), Turner (1974) and many others following in their wake. ‘Existence theory’ certainly will have to make its relations to anthropological theory and empirical studies more evident. I do not necessarily mean here making reference to the currently fashionable ersatz Heideggerianism of Ingold (2011); a more interesting entry point here is perhaps Denizeau (2015).

These two research fields come together quite strikingly in a recent paper by Bengtsson and Flisbäck (2021), who are life-course scholars specialised in the study of that quintessential modern milestone, retirement from formal working life. They offer what they see as a novel ‘existentialist’ approach to retirement studies. Their orientation certainly seems to resonate with that of the authors we are concerned with. They focus on recent retirees’ ‘choices, concerns, worries’ (p. 198), and their awareness of mortality, especially in situations of elements of life feeling broken, missing or lost. The analysts emphasise how retirees must take responsibility for creating their own – real and imagined – future lives post-retirement. They define ‘existential imperatives’ as ‘life situations when existential questions tend to be awakened or reinforced as the limitations in time and space become apparent to the individual’ (p. 204). They also examine linkages between feelings of mortality and forms of professed and tacit spirituality (p. 206). Their approach takes inspiration from the American existential sociology alluded to above, including its focus on how sociologically unpredictable actions may be engaged in by those people being studied, arising from longings for love, trust, dignity, recognition, and so on (Kotarba and Johnson, 2002).

This in turn follows from a methodological commitment, derived from the phenomenological elements of American existential sociology, to operate with as presupposition-less an orientation in one’s methodology, methods and data-gathering procedures as possible, to lay open the possibility of turning up the unexpected in the life-worlds one is studying (Douglas and Johnson, 1977). How the authors wish to relate ‘existence’ theory to methodological matters such as these could also be a future focus for them.

The present authors could also consider to what extent what scholars like Bengttson and Flisbäck are doing fits with, departs from and – crucial for any position that claims to be ‘new’ – already anticipates and achieves, what it is they believe themselves to be doing, now and in the future. Moreover, Bengttson and Flisbäck also take inspiration from the anthropologist Jackson (2005), a figure not referred to by the authors, but whose work can be said to be self-consciously ‘existential’ anthropology, and which thereby is worth attending to in this context. His fieldwork has been both shaped by and works as stimulus for existentialist concerns. These include the inevitable precariousness of individual lives and social relations, how persons in different societies handle questions of life and death, how they think about and deal with uncertain possibilities, and how human existence is a constant struggle in and for being, to be a who and not a what, desiring and working towards being an active actor in one’s life circumstances. In this form of post-universalist, critical humanism, all humans are haunted by senses of insufficiency and loss, but at the same time life transitions (milestones in another terminology) are hoped to bring a revitalising sense of being different from what one has been or currently is (Jackson, 2005; Jackson and Piette, 2015). Clearly the work of this scholar and others like him, such as Albert Piette, can be a resource for both ‘existence theory’ and the sociology of milestones. Accounting for how far other writers beyond the authors have already gone in the direction of both a theoretical account of ‘existence’ and in the empirical study of transitions/milestones will help nuance claims as to what is new and not-so-new in the proposed programme.

The sociology of existential milestones and other sorts of ‘theory’

The authors have set out a research programme and outlined the contours of a certain set of empirical phenomena which are defined to be in need of theoretically oriented understanding. Because what is offered at the existence-theoretical level is not yet a fully-fledged theory per se, that means that different sorts of existing theoretical orientations can – and probably must – be brought to bear on the understanding of those phenomena. I think that the authors tacitly agree on that point when they note in passing that some milestone phenomena could be looked at in light of the Bourdieusian notion of symbolic violence. More generally, all sorts of milestone-related phenomena could and should be examined from the points of view of existing kinds of social theory. Here, then, are some existing theoretical orientations that could be applied by the authors and others to existential milestones. Various other possibilities could be suggested as well, but I will stick here to those that I find most immediately appealing.

In a generally Marxist vein, at least two possibilities are immediately obvious. The first involves a Gramsci-inspired (Filippini, 2017) investigation of the hegemonic nature of certain existential milestones in a specific social formation. This involves three interrelated aspects:

• Understanding the degree to which large numbers of people observe such milestones at all, precisely because they have been defined hegemonically as unavoidable and must be marked somehow. For millennia, religious functionaries and institutions have sought to define which milestones are meaningful, and how they must be observed, a point that would have been appreciated by Max Weber in his sociology of religion. Softer and harder interpreters of religious credos, often co-existing in relations of rivalry with each other, have variously sought to impose their understandings on the laity as to what gets marked, when and how (Eisenstadt, 1971). Secularisation processes alter who gets to carry out such defining. Thus Durkheim (2002 [1912]) notes how the revolutionaries of 1789 sought to obliterate the mental traces of the ancient regime by imposing a wholly new calendar, with new names for months and novel holiday periods, innovations which in turn impacted on when and how certain pre-existing milestones like baptisms and marriages could take place. The hegemonic aspect of defining socially acceptable milestones would also involve consideration of cases where persons must go out of their way to avoid or reject observance of a milestone, because it so powerfully defined in their social context as something that is important to the point of virtual unavoidability.

• Analysing the ways in which particular milestones are observed and celebrated in hegemonically defined manners, or alternatively in ways which escape such hegemonic definition, or are explicitly ranged against them in counter-hegemonic fashions (Billings, 1990).

• Identifying the residual, dominant and emergent types of existential milestones, and the ways of dealing with them, in a given social formation (following the Gramsci-inspired terminology of Williams, 1977). That is, one can consider which milestones and modes of observing them, in and across specific places, and at and across certain points in time, are:

• currently dominant and part of the doxic fabric of everyday life; here one considers how their dominance is both created and expressed;

• in the process of arising and, in social orders where fashion dynamics are possible (Inglis et al., 2021), coming into fashion; here one analyses how and why new ways of doing milestone-related things come into existence.

The second Marxist way of examining existential milestones involves considering their commodification. Adorno and Horkheimer’s (1992 [1944]) analysis of cultural commodification still has some mileage in this regard. Life events and occasions hegemonically defined as important and compulsory in their observance are certainly colonised to a very significant extent today by a multi-faceted ‘milestones industry’, which creates and promotes frameworks for a person’s milestones – for example, the now widespread idea of ticking off a personalised ‘bucket list’ of allegedly essential things to do before you die – and also sells consumers a multitude of products and services to make such lists ‘come true’. If the main existential focal point is death – all existence will end in death (Heidegger), and the most crucial philosophical question concerns whether to commit suicide (Camus) – the bucket list is a very emblematic phenomenon of late capitalism: a person journeys towards their ultimate end, and marks the stages on their way, by buying stuff.

The commodified items on sale for milestones in general, and bucket list purposes more specifically, range from greetings cards to safari holidays. Just as the multiple apparatuses of consumer capitalism rely on compulsory gift-giving at Christmas holiday time as a massive mechanism for commodity consumption (Caplow, 1982), so too do they rely on compulsory recognition and observance of milestones by tens of millions of people to create needs for goods and services that would otherwise not exist. And for profits to be enhanced, or at least not to become stagnant, the market for such commodities must be constantly expanded, into new consumer groups and into hitherto unreached regions of the world (Renton, 2001). The compulsory observance of milestones runs together with, and is to a significant extent a result of, the modes of obligatory consumption which the consumer capitalist system must impose on those who spend money to serve it.

The early Frankfurt School noted that the Culture Industry had to instil in its consumers feelings characterised by anxiety, involving fear of being left out from what apparently everyone else was doing, if they did not purchase the most recent products offered to them. This is an early account of what Foucault (2008) would later call governmentality: techniques deployed by certain groups to shape the thoughts and actions of large numbers of people. Conjoining Marxism with Foucauldianism, we can see that the existential milestones culture industry has arguably created multiple such techniques in and through its advertising models. These are centred around ‘care of the self’, another key Foucauldian thematic: a person is encouraged to define themselves in relation to the sorts of milestones that the industry wants to sell them goods and services for, and in so doing, the person is encouraged to purchase these things as both forms and evidence of self-affirmation.

One notable factor here is the marketing concept of the self-gift (Mick, 1996). This is an extension of the post-Mauss literature on the obligatory nature of gift giving and receiving – a literature that existence theory may profit by through engaging with. It is not only other people who are expected to purchase commodities and commodified services as tokens of recognition of a person reaching a milestone, it is often also that person who is expected to reward themself. Therefore, I buy myself a racing car for my 45th birthday – or I buy myself something equally lavish but anything other than a racing car, because of its cultural associations with male mid-life crises. Either way, milestones are defined within consumer capitalism as requiring gifts. I am empowered to buy myself a gift on reaching or surpassing a milestone, both because that is what is defined as what I should do in such circumstances, and also because ‘I am worth it’. My worth is measured in the economic or broader cultural worth of the gift that I donate to myself as marker of the milestone (Almila, forthcoming). Here gift theory meets Marxism meets Foucault.

The early Frankfurt School also conjoined Marx’s analysis of commodification and reification with Max Weber’s account of the rationalisation of social spheres, including that of cultural production. The milestones industry is also a highly rationalised entity, which, like the Culture Industry identified by Adorno and Horkheimer, sells strongly standardised conveyor-belt products as unique, charismatic entities. Hence the bucket list-defined safari trip that a newly retired person from the more affluent sectors of the Developed World takes in order to mark their movement into retired status, is sold to them as a unique, and uniquely meaningful, ‘experience’.

But it is a standardised tourist product, marketed to tens of thousands of other persons in similar social situations too. Theoretically-informed empirical examination of individuals’ bucket lists across the Developed World would likely reveal very strong recurring patterns: the same destinations – Machu Picchu, Easter Island, Kilimanjaro, etc. – which are defined by the tourist culture industry as the extra-special ones that you ‘must see’ before you die, the same sorts of activities and the same aspirations being expressed in and through them. It is not at all fashionable in theory circles today to talk of ‘mass society’, but I suspect that data about such matters would reveal strong evidence of the massification of existential milestones and the means by which they are meant to be handled, with the handling primarily involving paying money to intermediaries to provide one with ‘meaningful experiences’ that have already been pre-processed in the ways that culture industries do, and which will service in a standardised manner, which hides its own nature, the existential needs of millions of people. Those needs themselves are fabricated both in terms of form (I must do something to mark my retirement, I want to do something special for my 50th birthday) and content (I want to go on a safari; I want to see tigers in the wild).

We can note in passing here that a theory of existential milestones could take some limited inspiration from Norbert Elias on civilising processes, in terms of changing definitions of what are acceptable ways to mark milestones, vis-à-vis levels of physical violence involved. In the 1920s, upper middle class tourists and adventurers would want to shoot wild animals while on safari; nowadays, with a few exceptions, they generally wish, and are compelled by the regulations, to photograph them instead. Moreover, the ‘experiences’ fabricated by producers and intermediaries as bucket list entries and milestone markers are assemblages of human and non-human actants, as indicated by Actor Network Theory authors (Law, 1999) and those inspired by them (Lury, 2004). Existence theory could usefully incorporate these various theoretical models, for they all point to diverse but overlapping milestone phenomena.

The existential milestones business – or rather, set of overlapping business fields – is a remarkably McDonaldized social realm (Ritzer, 2018), where production-line commodities are deployed in highly bureaucratically organised ways, but disguised such that the person on the receiving end of them is meant to feel that their innermost needs and desires are being both met, and, more importantly, actively and freely expressed. But if we agree with Sartre’s existentialist version of Marxism, this is bad faith: it is to ‘misrecognise’ (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990) as a pure expression of voluntary will and desire what is, when looked at coldly, the use of money and social privilege to buy off-the-peg touristified, commodified, rationalised ‘experiences’.

Of course, one may object that the important thing here is not what a ‘cynical’ external analyst might think about such things, but rather how, phenomenologically speaking, the person engaged in the ‘experience’ feels about it, presumably ranging on a scale from outright disappointment (‘it was all so phoney’), to mild frustration (‘we went to this forest in India to see tigers, but I only saw a tail’), to more modest or more unabashed levels of satisfaction and joy. The value judgement one wishes to put on such empirical phenomena depends on the analyst’s tastes in theory. Some will prefer a more neutral phenomenology, while some will prefer a more existentialist approach which is not afraid to call out bad faith where it sees it. That point is a reminder that (various types of) phenomenology and (various types of) existentialism as outlooks on the world and how to study it, both overlap, and are also in certain ways different, with variant emphases and orientations (McBride, 2012). Any attempt at an ‘existence theory’ probably needs to work out its relations to such matters in some depth.

The authors could also seek to connect their position to the literature concerning the sociology of generations. At the empirical level, the reasons are obvious. Different generations within a given social formation may observe the same existential milestones similarly or differently, while some milestones may have great significance for some generations, and little or no meaning or visibility for others.

I am thinking here, for example, of the originally American concept of the high school graduation. Under the influence of US films and TV, and through the encouragement of the local milestones culture industry, today’s 18/19-year-olds in Finland think high school graduation is a very big deal indeed, which involves expensive festivities and obligatory gift-giving from relatives and family friends. But their grandparents’ generation, which had a very different set of experiences of education – typically leaving school far earlier than 18/19 – often regard such graduation ceremonies and attendant compulsory gift-buying with benign wonderment or even awe, for such events and the concepts animating them did not at all figure in their experience of their teenage years. High school graduation is a ceremonially-marked milestone which is both imported from abroad – in a rather unequivocal instance of Americanisation – and which also has helped to perform into existence that which it claims merely to mark, namely a turning-point of late teenagerhood.

Generational issues are briefly alluded to by the authors (p. 18). An engagement by existence theory with the sociology of generations would be meaningful at a deeper, more theoretical level too. That field of sociology was pioneered by Mannheim (1952 [1927]), as part of his much wider project of developing a sociology of knowledge. Mannheim figures in Tiryakian’s (1965: 676) rendering of the history of sociological thought as a kind of existential-phenomenological thinker, as well as a synthesiser of the classical sociologies of Weber, Durkheim, Marx, and others. The existential-phenomenological aspect rests in Mannheim’s account of the individual persons who are members of a generation understanding themselves and the world around them in the shared, socio-culturally constructed terms characteristic, and partly definitive, of the generation. It is these shared terms – which include ideas as to what is most existentially important, and one’s location in time – which are at the heart both of the generation’s self-consciousness as a generation, and of the members’ perceptions of themselves as members of that generation. A generation ‘exists’ when its members feel that they have various specified things in common with other people perceived to be of the same generation. In such cases, a mere age cohort, which lacks any sense of felt groupness, becomes a self-conscious group, equipped with feelings of membership and affiliation among individuals (similar matters of collectivities are analysed by Sartre, 2004.)

Despite criticisms of its alleged outdatedness in an age of globalisation, trans-national processes, and electronic communications, in a recent analysis I argued that Mannheim’s conceptualisation of social generations remains both crucial and fertile, with most of the criticisms being based on not reading his original works carefully enough (Inglis and Thorpe, 2019). Indeed a Mannheimian understanding of generations is a crucial additive to two dominant trends today in generations analysis: (a) journalistic accounts of so-called Generations X and Y, millennials, baby boomers and so on – all very vague terms; and (b) notions of so-called ‘global generations’, of the like suggested by Edmunds and Turner (2005) and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2009), where generations are seen to be markedly trans-national in nature today.

‘Existence theory’ could certainly engage with such writings, in order to get a handle on how existential milestones and social generations are bound up together, especially in terms of how each constructs the other, as well as how people in certain generations may tend to validate or repudiate certain sorts of milestones and certain modes of marking them. Still, the problem with especially the Beck formulation of trans-national generations is that it is not clearly defined or demonstrated what such generations ‘are’; what their social, cultural and geographical extents and limits may be; by which means they come into existence (through collective traumas shared by the members of the group, or through shared tastes in popular culture, for example); or exactly how, why, and to what extent a given age cohort (e.g. all people born between 1945 and 1960), may become a self-conscious ‘generation’, the members of which actively define themselves as such (Inglis and Thorpe, 2019).

Mannheim already before WWII had developed precise concepts and methodological approaches to such matters. I believe that little progress can be made in specifying how generations come into existence today, including trans-nationally, without operating according to Mannheim’s rigorous conceptual specifications. That necessary Mannheimian approach to understanding the relations between social conditions, including globalised ones, and the creation and operation of generations, can and must be drawn on by those wishing to develop analyses of the relations between specific generations and particular existential milestones. Mannheim’s original stipulations, sensitively updated, will be a great help in fostering better comprehension of how each of those sets of phenomena may variously constitute, or help to change and dissolve, the other. Thus, an appropriately handled set of ideas from generational theory can augment the theory of milestones.

Conversely, a theoretical and empirical focus on milestones brings something to the sociology of generations. That is, how the elaboration of certain milestones as meaningful, and the performance of their marking in certain sorts of ways, by large numbers of people in similar ways, may create generations, in the sense of milestones being important mechanisms for the mutation of age cohorts into self-conscious generations, the members of which define themselves as members of a certain generation. This is not a focal point in much previous writing on generations, but it deserves to become so, and here is an instance where the position taken by the authors may indeed truly invigorate other domains of inquiry.

Conclusion

Baert, Morgan and Ushiyama have produced a very promising outline of a theory and a productive programme of research that goes along side it. In this paper I have suggested some augmentations, theoretical and empirical. Will ‘existence theory’ come to meet its own future existential milestones, and climb up its own existential ladder? Time will tell, but I do hope that it will come to fulfil in time its’ very promising multiple potentials.