| Chapter 2: | The Sociology of Freedom of Speech |
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occupying the social group, and the social group may be studied as having its own distinct existence. In this discussion, the focus will be on freedom of expression having direct and virtually independent benefit to the social organism as opposed to the real but distinct benefits to the individual members of society.
A distinction or dichotomy between the social approach and the individual approach is that society has separate requirements for it to flourish and be successful than has the individual, and rights designed to focus on promoting and fostering individualism may lead to social ructions or disharmony in society as a whole. The solution is likely to involve a balancing of the different interests as is contemplated by the European Convention that specifically recognises both privacy and freedom of expression as basic rights.
While social science–based studies have been used to demonstrate how people actually engage in speech, this discussion will undertake a more fundamental and less empirical mission.1 It will pursue an approach based on the pioneering work of Emile Durkheim brought current by the ideas of Jurgen Habermas. Sociology is not being used in the conventional sense, such as a statistical study of behaviour, but rather as a theoretical study of the free speech expectations predicted by the structure of society itself. These free speech expectations should then be memorialised or institutionalised through laws. A sociological perspective of law has been defined as being an analysis or “perspective informed by social theory.”2 This discussion will employ sociological principles to ascertain the free speech expectations of a modern democratic society in which individual roles are marked by a very developed social and economic division of labour. The general thrust of the argument is that free speech and the laws surrounding speech are a function of the type of society being examined. Freedom of speech is an essential component determined by many social factors––most particularly, the division of labour in society.
Among the traditional justifications for free speech, with the exception of the democracy theory (discussed in chapter 5), which states that