In the Sociology of Gender textbook, I spend a chapter discussing the idea of institutions. I define the term as “persistent patterns of social interaction aimed at meeting the needs of a society that can’t easily be met by individuals alone.” These needs include educating the next generation, providing health care, ensuring safety, and enabling efficient transportation. These things are done better and more efficiently if we all chip in and put together a system.
What is interesting about institutions from a sociological perspective is that, once they’re in place, it is essentially impossible to opt out. You can choose not to buy a car, for example, but the government is still going to spend your tax dollars on highway infrastructure. You can amass as much medical knowledge and experience as you like, but you’ll still be a criminal if you practice medicine without a licence. You can believe the government is corrupt and stay home on voting day, but Congress is still going to pass legislation to which you will be held accountable.
You get the picture.
In any case, I thought of this when I came across the striking photography of Eric Valli. Valli seems to specialize in capturing the lives of people living very close to the earth. In one series, he follows a group of individuals who have decided to live “off the grid.” That is, they’ve “unplugged” from the social institutions that sustain us.
The photographs reveal people who are committed to being off the grid. It’s no joke. And, yet, as I scrolled through them, I couldn’t help to notice how many trappings of the rest of the world were part and parcel of their lives (canoes, coats, oil lamps, cooking and eating utensils, halters, firearms, hot sauce, etc).
I’m not questioning, at all, whether or not these people are off the grid. They certainly appear to be. But it is interesting to notice how much of the grid is still a part of their lives.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 49
Lala — June 18, 2012
It's a wilderness class/seminar thing. They don't live "off the grid".
http://www.lynxvilden.com/
Yrro Simyarin — June 18, 2012
This is also why it's nice to solve as many problems as we can through free exchange and organization, rather than the force of law. You can opt out of a market, though you lose whatever benefits it supplies, but you can't opt out of a law.
The pictures do point out why I still can't enjoy reading Thoreau. A cabin in the wilderness is so much nicer when you have all of society still toiling to grow food for you, and all of the bears were driven out decades before.
Hanover — June 18, 2012
It would seem that the only way to live off the grid, is to live before the grid is created. It is difficult to conceive of an individual or a group of individuals living with insitutions. It makes me think of the competing visions of Locke and Hobbes.
Jesse — June 18, 2012
Perhaps the language should change from "off-the-grid" to "low-grid." It would recognize that these people need to use some, but not all, available "grid" resources.
putnamp — June 18, 2012
As I've understood it, living off the grid is more or as much about sustainability and doing so without an explicit reliance on the Big Stuff like the electrical grid, though I'm sure people's reasons can vary widely. I'm also going anecdotally off of one or two people who toyed with the idea at various times in their lives.
Still, though, it's an interesting point that you really can't decouple yourself from society or culture. This is at odds somewhat with our cultural sense of individualism where we like to believe we have the ability to dictate the parameters of our live (typical caveat that the 'we' here speaks primarily to the financially secure white male identity that permeates our culture).
Anonymouse — June 18, 2012
Amish don't have telephones- but they're happy enough to use the one at the neighbors' place.
Megan K. — June 18, 2012
Lisa, I hope that while writing your Sociology of Gender textbook that you are including extensive information about individuals across the gender spectrum (not just the socially-constructed gender binary) and the issues that they face; this not only includes transsexual (MtF or FtM) people but also those of us who identify beyond the binary (genderqueer, nongender, third gender, etc. etc.) and have no intention of medically transitioning. Too often, when people speak of gender, people whose gender is beyond the binary are left out. Hopefully you will not make that mistake! :)
Norman Lewis — June 18, 2012
"I define the term as “persistent patterns of social interaction aimed at meeting the needs of a society that can’t easily be met by individuals alone.”
"once they’re in place, it is essentially impossible to opt out."
The difficulty with the above definition is that the latter is not strictly true for all cases. In many band societies, there are persisting patterns of social interaction aimed at meeting the needs of a society that can't easily be met by individuals alone. And yet one of the common characteristics of a band society is the ease and voluntarism with which a person can leave one band and join another one, with differing patterns.
I think a key word left out of the definition of 'institution' is 'self-reproducing'. An institution is a self-reproducing pattern of social interaction, so that the organisations of the people in a society exert pressure on future modes of organisation to reproduce the structures of those organisations, to the extent that regardless of changes in the surrounding material condition, the structural features of that society exert a pressure to maintain existing patterns rather than experiment freely and possibly adapt behaviour.
If the patterns of social interaction experience the material reality around them as a primary driver of their recurrence, then changes in that reality will tend to effect changes in the patterned interaction. But if the patterns of social interaction experience the structure of previous social interaction to be their primary driver, then they have become institutionalised. They will tend to persist and adapt 'on their own terms', based on what preserves the most of their defining structural components. After a while, an institution need not even be aimed at meeting the needs of society; it might simply have adapted to construct those needs.
Kyle Coldwell — June 18, 2012
As a person with a disability, I find people who do this fascinating. While I respect their convinctions, I consider what they're doing to be egregiously defeatist. "I don't like X institution, so I'll just drop out of it." Well, for those of us who can't just drop out of it, it's a bit of an affront to what we're trying to accomplish withing institutions, which is greater equality and better lives.
Robinliebman — June 18, 2012
Well, I mean, isn't this sort of a no-brainer? It's like someone saying "I'm going to stop being human!!!"
RexSchrader — June 18, 2012
While it's certainly possible for individuals or small groups to go "off the grid", I don't think that it is possible for everyone to do so - it does not scale. As you point out, even those who are almost entirely off the grid still take advantage of many of the benefits of the institutions which they decline to take part in. Those institutions and the benefits they provide are necessary to support a population of our size - someone has to make sure the (metaphorical) trains run on time.
I think the mistake is in looking at the inefficiencies or excesses of the institution and incorrectly believing that the entire institution is corrupt and should be avoided. To use the car/road example, we decry the quality of our local roads, but forget that 99% of our food is delivered over those roads. Others may decry law enforcement and decide to wander in the forest . . . but they do so without fear that they will be randomly attacked by another band of off-the-griders and killed for their supplies.
Like vaccination deniers (or whatever they call themselves), they benefit for the participation of the rest of the population and reap the benefit of not having their kids die of mumps, measles, or polio while not participating in the system that makes that possible. They are essentially free riders on the power of our institutions, benefiting from their output without contributing.
They talk about sustainability without understanding that it would not be possible for the entire population to live in that supposed "sustainable" way. There is not enough land, enough animals, enough resources to support any but a fraction of our current population.
Our institutions exist for a reason. If they are not working properly, they need to be reformed, not avoided.
MSoB — June 18, 2012
I have to say that your definition of institution is the most satisfying I've ever come across for the term. I never formally studied sociology but I did study public policy, and I remember in an intro to public policy course I took that on the first day the professor asked the students to define "institution." Students thought mainly of things like universities and scientific research facilities, the things that would occupy some big building, but then I brought up the "institution of marriage" and there were some thoughtful "oh...right"'s but I don't recall that we ever really came up with a good enough definition to embrace all these different kinds of institutions. So, thank you!
myblackfriendsays — June 18, 2012
lol at "hot sauce."
Áine MacDermot — June 18, 2012
Using modern technologies to disconnect from the grid is not really a problem. Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are all viable technologies that can disconnect you from the corporate energy grid and allow you to live more cheaply (long-term). After all, why reinvent the wheel? There are better, cleaner, healthier ways of living on this planet. It doesn't mean you have to become a neanderthal to do so.
asiacont — June 19, 2012
"Off the grid," as others have mentioned, means many things. I like the suggestion of "low grid."
My sister lived for many years off the grid (in the 80s). For her this meant not only the electrical grid, but also operating in a cash/barter economy, with no credit cards, no bank account, no monthly bills to pay, no state IDs beyond the birth certificate (and perhaps a SS card) and so forth. When she decided to "move to town," she had no credit existence, no current ID, nothing. Took her a long time to get "on the grid."
Gilbert Pinfold — June 19, 2012
In a way I'm surprised at the mostly negative reaction here. I guess outside the US this sort of thing is associated with far Left, deep green, radical hippie types; whereas in the US far Right survivalists may be more to the fore.
In general, though, I would have thought that a group has as much right to retreat out of modernity, as a not-previously-'civilized' group has to stay out of modernity. I know the IRS would not see it that way, but then they would try to register the blue guys in Avatar too.
Rae — June 19, 2012
Insisting that anyone be
loyal to only one set of rules, yea even those who would struggle to "opt
out," is the same kind of dogmatic, ideological thinking which has
afflicted human beings for centuries. Lisa herself cites the unavoidability (in
some form or fashion) of being implicated as a card-carrying member of society.
This article felt to me like an attempt to point out the hypocrisy seen in the
artist's photographs. I saw people doing what they feel is appropriate for
their needs. And hot sauce is f****** good.
Supt247 — June 30, 2012
Where would a person find these types of communities? I want to learn more. Possibly try my hand @ living off the land.
Eric Valli sau povesti in imagini | greenspotter — July 3, 2012
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Scarlett Fairchild — March 6, 2014
Marcuse said that it wasn't.