Frontiers of Diversity: Explorations in Contemporary Pluralism (At the Interface Probing the Boundaries 18) (v. 18)

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Frontiers of Diversity Explorations in Contemporary Pluralism

At the Interface

Dr Robert Fisher Series Editor

Advisory Board Dr Margaret Sönser Breen Professor Margaret Chatterjee Professor Michael Goodman Dr Jones Irwin Professor Asa Kasher Revd Stephen Morris

Professor John Parry Dr David Seth Preston Professor Peter Twohig Professor S Ram Vemuri Professor Bernie Warren Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E

Volume 18 A volume in the Critical Issues project ‘Pluralism’

Probing the Boundaries

Frontiers of Diversity Explorations in Contemporary Pluralism

Edited by

Avery Plaw

Amsterdam – New York, NY 20054

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation – Paper of documents – Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1766-X ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2005 Printed in The Netherlands

Contents

PART I

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction

xi

Philosophical Pluralism A Defense of Tolerance as a Moral Virtue

3

Ronald Sandler and Cynthia Townley Is Monotheism Compatible with Pluralism? Reflections on Richard Rorty’s Critique of Religion 17 Nicholas H. Smith Political Philosophy and Pluralism in a Globalised World

33

Hanako Koyama PART II

Political Pluralism Pluralist Imperialism: The Emergent Paradigm of U.S. Foreign Policy

45

Avery Plaw Value-Pluralism and Human Rights

67

Mark Sivarajah Discourses on Immigration in South Africa: Managing Diversity in a New Nation Tara Polzer

83

PART III

Economic Pluralism Dollarization: The End of Monetary Pluralism in Latin America?

103

Anastasia Xenias The FDI Space Heterogeneity

119

Hasan Valiullin Underdevelopment as Cultural Resistance or Culture as Resistance to Underdevelopment

131

Manuel Branco PART IV

Cultural Pluralism Invention as Intervention: Negotiating the Margins of Pluralism

155

Vijay Devadas Historical Catharsis and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

171

Yianna Liatsos Religious Plurality, Referential Realism and Paradigms of Pluralism Douglas Pratt

191

Welcome to a Critical Issues Project Frontiers of Diversity is part of the Critical Issues: Pluralism project. This inter- and multi-disciplinary research project aims to explore the theme of ‘pluralism’ and the challenges it is posing across the world today. Pluralism has unleashed a reaction of paradigm consolidation in political, economic, social and cultural areas that are having a major impact on all aspects of our lives. The project will examine counter-pluralist trends, for example, globalisation, and both the meetings and the publication series will give people a chance to interact with others working in differing disciplines and professions who are exploring related ideas and areas The project will develop a focus on a number of core themes: • • • • • • • • • •

pluralism in political contexts pluralism in social and economic contexts how major trends in dominant economies affect the many weaker economies. pluralism and religion - and the question of the possibility of a religiously plural society pluralism in literature - with reference to recent trends in literary criticism pluralism in medicine - with reference to developments in medicine and medical practice and the growth in alternative systems of medicine and therapy Knowledge Pluralism Ecological Pluralism Managerial Pluralism Designing Pluralism

A significant sub-theme of the project is Managing Pluralism. The significance of this theme is the special importance given to finding ways to manage processes, structures and processes differently. The theme is both timely and significant as tendencies to pull in different directions are causing tremendous frustrations amongst policy makers, administrators and recipients. There is a cry for “doing things differently” but there is an intellectual vacuum that the conference is intending to fill, namely, how to do things differently in the light of existence of pluralism. Dr Robert Fisher Inter-Disciplinary.Net http://www.inter-disciplinary.net

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Acknowledgements Every book is a collaborative effort, but this one more than most. There are a large number of people without whom this book would not have come about. I would like to express appreciation, first of all, to Rob Fisher, the Senior Editor of this series, for organising the conference that brought the contributors to this volume together. I only hope that the book proves a worthy monument to the effort and emotion that he invested. Thanks also to the individual contributors to this volume. The quality of their work is clear enough in the chapters that follow, but I would like to add my personal gratitude for all the patience and support they've shown me over the last months. Rodopi press also deserves recognition for perceiving the value of this volume as well as for making the publication process comparatively painless. Finally, I'd like to express special thanks to my assistant in this project, Malene Bodington, whose boundless energy, enthusiasm and efficiency are perhaps most directly responsible for the successful completion of this book. Thank you, Malene. I am forever indebted.


Introduction Today, on the threshold of a new millennium, these vital pursuits [i.e., arts and humanities] in our individual lives and in the life of our democracy are more essential than ever to the endurance of our values of tolerance, pluralism and freedom, to our understanding of where we are and where we need to go. - Bill Clinton 1 This is the world's fight. This is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom. - George W. Bush 2 This book is composed of papers presented at the "First Global Conference on Critical Issues in Pluralism" held at Mansfield College, Oxford, from the 19th to the 21st of September, 2003. The interdisciplinary character of the conference, and of the notion of pluralism itself, is clearly reflected in the chapters that follow. They cover a range of disciplines from philosophy to economics to cultural and religious studies to politics. Some of the chapters raise questions about whether pluralism is necessary or desirable in the areas they examine, while other papers embrace it and examine its implications. In short, the chapters reflect all the diversity that their subject implies. One core idea which they do, however, share is that pluralism is a central feature of contemporary life as we know it and demands sustained examination both in terms of its significance for specific disciplines and its influence across disciplines. The current volume is intended to contribute to that examination. The first order of business in introducing this volume, then, is to briefly explain the idea of pluralism and its interest. In its simplest and most familiar usage, pluralism means 'diversity', with perhaps a positive connotation - suggesting that diversity is either natural or desirable. In this sense, pluralism has become a contemporary commonplace. Political leaders, for example, are notoriously quick to invoke growing pluralism, whether as a blessing or a curse, both within their own countries and in the world at large. The integration of pluralism into the lexicon of contemporary politics reflects its growing importance across a range of contemporary disciplines and discourses. The connotations of the term in these different domains, however, while always related, are not always identical. While this diversity of interpretation is perhaps appropriate to the term, it has given rise to a good deal of confusion and sterile dispute.

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___________________________________________________________ In this light, it may be helpful to briefly review the roots of the contemporary idea of pluralism. In its contemporary usage, pluralism rose to prominence first in ethics. 3 In the 1950s philosophers like Bernard Williams, Stuart Hampshire and most famously Isaiah Berlin used the term as a way of describing the diverse and potentially conflictual character of objective human values as we ordinarily experience them: The world that we encounter in ordinary experience is one in which we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute, the realization of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others. 4 Human values are said to be not only diverse, but also sometimes incompatible and incommensurable (or, insusceptible of a general rational ordering). 5 This type of diversity can produce particularly troubling value conflicts. As Berlin puts it, What is clear is that values can clash - that is why civilizations are incompatible. They can be incompatible between cultures, or groups in the same culture, or between you and me. You believe in always telling the truth, no matter what: I do not, because I believe that it can sometimes be too painful and too destructive. We can discuss each other's point of view, we can try to reach common ground, but in the end what you pursue may not be reconcilable with the ends to which I find I have dedicated my life. Values may clash within the breast of a single individual; and it does not follow that, if they do, some must be true and others false. Justice, rigorous justice, is for some people an absolute value, but it is not compatible with what may be no less ultimate values for them - mercy, compassion - as arises in concrete case. 6 Berlin argued that while these conflicts between distinct values may sometimes be rationally irresolvable, it is, nevertheless, important that we attend to them in their true light. Sometimes we may be able to at least reach a compromise or a trade-off. In other cases, no adequate resolution may be possible, but it is still better to recognise the reality of the conflict. To deny a genuine value conflict necessitates not only suppressing or

Introduction

xiii

___________________________________________________________ distorting at least one real value (and a reasonable claim that it supports), but also suppressing the legitimate expression of someone's identity. Yet this is exactly what Berlin thinks philosophical monists "have done and are doing still." 7 Philosophical monists are the primary opponents of pluralism. They hold that there is one right way of resolving value conflicts - either by appeal to some supreme value, or to some authoritative ordering of values, or to some common unit of measure according to which values can be compared. In one way or another, then, philosophical monists insist that there is a single right or best mechanism for resolving value conflicts in general. Pluralists deny that there is any one right method for resolving value conflicts. Philosophical pluralism then defines itself in contrast with this monist view about values, which it takes to have been for centuries the dominant view, in one form or another, of Western thought. In challenging the monist claim of one right answer to value conflicts, philosophical pluralism is often seen as allied with relativist or subjectivist challenges to monism. Relativism and subjectivism challenge the monist insistence on one right answer by treating all values simply as matters of belief or culture. By consequence, reason is seen as helpless to resolve conflicts between values. Indeed, relativists and subjectivists often raise doubts about whether people are able even to understand beliefs fundamentally different from their own, let alone to assess them rationally and determine which should take precedence. Yet pluralism also remains distinct, as Berlin repeatedly emphasised, from philosophical relativism or subjectivism in at least three key respects. In the first place, it advances an objective claim about values and their relationship - they are not simply matters of belief. In the second place, pluralists accept that there is at least a minimal core of human values that are both ultimate - meaning that they have the highest importance for many people - and universal (or virtually universal) among human cultures and societies, and that they therefore should not be superseded, at least beyond basic thresholds, in ordinary circumstances. The proscription of extra-judicial murder, for example, is both universal (or virtually so) to human societies and broadly recognised as integral to human well-being within them, and therefore should generally not be violated. Finally, the pluralist emphasis on the objective diversity of values relies on the possibility of understanding one dominant value or set of values from the perspective of another. In contrast then to relativist and subjectivist insistence on the opacity of one culture or moral perspective to another, pluralists are optimistic about the possibility of communication and understanding. Indeed, they see one of the central purposes of philosophy as drawing out and illuminating the sources of moral conflict

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___________________________________________________________ so that we can better understand one another, and can make informed choices about how to manage deep value conflict. 8 Berlin further emphasised that the pluralism of values was not just an ethical problem, but a political one as well. Indeed, his favourite examples of distinct and potentially clashing values were liberty and equality: Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted. 9 In short, Berlin saw political life, in large part, as the attempt to reconcile on a case by case basis distinctive and potentially conflicting values of just this type, and thus avoid, where possible, tragic political conflict. In reference to politics, then, pluralism primarily refers to the subset of leading public values - like liberty, justice, equality and community which are widely recognised as of the highest importance in designing public institutions and formulating public policy. The idea of political pluralism has proved particularly fertile, and has been taken up and developed in diverse directions by an impressive spectrum of political thinkers, including John Rawls, Michael Walzer, John Gray, Joseph Raz, William Galston, John Kekes and Martha Nussbaum. 10 While these thinkers have disagreed importantly on exactly how pluralism should be understood - for example, whether it should be seen as 'reasonable' or 'agonistic' - and even more sharply on its practical consequences for political life - whether, for example, it favours liberalism or conservatism or undermines both - they all at least agree that it is of central importance for modern public life. 11 The pluralist recognition and embrace of bounded diversity also has obvious resonance in cultural and religious studies, and has been widely adapted to those disciplines. Religions like Christianity and Buddhism, for example, are obviously different in their specific beliefs, structures and injunctions, and yet share certain core ideas - like the existence of a world beyond the normally perceptible and the immortality of the spirit. 12 Cultures too are distinct and yet similar in important respects. Western culture, for example, at least in its modern forms, is often said to prioritise the individual while Eastern cultures emphasise the collective good. 13 Yet both cultures embody visions of human welfare anchored in historical experience and tradition. Moreover, although

Introduction

xv

___________________________________________________________ religions and cultures (or, in Samuel Huntington's terms, "civilizations") can sometimes "clash" profoundly, the disciplines devoted to their study are premised on an assumption that at least some communication and understanding between them is possible. 14 Pluralism thus offers a very plausible and powerful paradigm through which to examine and compare the multiplicity of religions and cultures that characterise the modern world, and it is no surprise that enormous pluralist literatures have emerged in recent years in both domains. Here pluralism refers not so much to bounded diversity among particular values, but rather among complex and contested religious and cultural traditions which also each exhibit rich internal pluralities of interpretation. More recently, the idea of pluralism has begun to be explored in relation to economics, law, ecology and even biology. Some economists have begun to ask, for example, whether there is really only one general model for understanding economic behaviour (that is, the neoclassical model) or whether different historical and cultural contexts need to be approached through an understanding of their distinctive institutions and environments. Is there one right path to economic development, or perhaps a plurality of paths? 15 Legal scholars have begun to ask if there is necessarily a single best system or tradition of law (say, civil or common), or perhaps a multiplicity of approaches each with its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses. 16 Biologists have begun to ask, for example, whether there is a single all-explanatory mechanism of evolution and adaptation, or a plurality of contingently interacting mechanisms of biological change. 17 Environmentalists are raising the question of whether there is a single best way to interact with the natural environment, or diverse ranges of viable strategies connected with the form of life that communities seek to preserve and enhance. 18 In each of these latter cases, pluralism arises both as a question of methodology - what model(s) should be employed? - and a concern about the subject matter itself - for example, is there one evolutionary mechanism or many? In other word, the usages of pluralism turn out, themselves, to be complexly pluralistic, and increasingly so. Indeed, these areas of inquiry provide only a crude indication of the widening influence of pluralist thinking. A comprehensive overview of the contemporary influence of pluralist ideas is simply beyond the scope of this, and perhaps any single, volume. The primary focus here will be on philosophical, political, economic and cultural pluralism. Pluralism has clearly developed into an influential (albeit contentious) approach in each of these areas. In each case, however, pluralism raises as many questions as it answers. If, for example, pluralism encourages the recognition and celebration of the irreducibly

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___________________________________________________________ diverse ethical values, political systems, cultural traditions and religious convictions that characterise the world today, what does it recommend be done when they clash, and especially when, as it recognises is possible, the conflict proves irreconcilable or tragic? Are we doomed simply to fight it out until one of the conflicting sides is eliminated or assimilated? Is the celebration of even a bounded diversity practical? Can it, for example, contribute to stability, fairness, or progress? Is the prioritisation of a pluralist approach even strictly coherent, or is pluralism itself merely one idea or value among many, deserving, according to its own canons, no special privilege? The chapters in this volume wrestle with these and similar questions. In the opening section, devoted to philosophical questions, for example, Ronald Sandler and Cynthia Townley raise the question of whether the moral virtue of tolerance can survive in a culturally plural environment without lapsing into moral relativism. In the second chapter of Part I, Nicholas Smith examines the related question of whether pluralism (here as construed by Richard Rorty) can be genuinely sensitive to monotheists' experience of their own faith in a single, transcendental truth, or whether it is compelled to re-construe their devotion in terms of its own values (here utilitarian happiness) to justify toleration. In other words, can Rorty's pragmatic pluralism recognise monotheists as they see themselves? Finally, in the third and last chapter of the section, Hanako Koyama explores the question of whether pluralist political philosophy can provide the basis for establishing a stable and just global political order without a world government. This last chapter segues smoothly into the topic of the following section. Part II of the book addresses issues of political pluralism. In the opening chapter, Avery Plaw examines whether political pluralism (albeit in an imperial form) can provide a cohesive framework for understanding recent American foreign policy, and, in particular, America's seemingly increasing willingness to intervene militarily abroad without prior approval by the U.N. Security Council. In the following chapter, Mark Sivarajah then explores whether political pluralism is consistent with a strong regime of universal human rights. Finally, in the section's concluding chapter, Tara Polzer examines the way political pluralism has informed the evolving discourse around immigration policy in the domestic politics of South Africa. Have the newly pluralist politics of post-Apartheid South Africa been able to lay to rest the entrenched racism of its past? The book's third section turns to some of the growing range of concerns surrounding economic pluralism. In the section's first chapter, Anastasia Xenias considers the growing trend towards dollarization in

Introduction

xvii

___________________________________________________________ Latin America. Why, she asks, are Latin American countries adopting the currency of the United States, and how will they be affected both individually and as a group by the erosion of monetary pluralism in their region? In the next chapter, Hasan Valiullin examines developing trends in the distribution of foreign direct investment in both Russia and China. How pluralistic are such investments, in terms of their volume, distribution and the regulations governing their use, and how will these differences affect the economic development of the two countries? Finally, Manuel Branco confronts the orthodox economic view that cultural pluralism (and especially traditional culture) poses an obstacle to economic development. He argues that cultural distinctiveness, especially in Africa, is better understood as a means of resisting underdevelopment than as an obstacle to economic progress. Finally, Part IV, the last section of the book, examines issues related to cultural pluralism. In the section's opening chapter, Vijay Devadas examines the complex relationship between cultural pluralism and the politics of multiculturalism with particular reference to Australia. He explores whether pluralism might not encourage an essentialisation of the publicly recognised categories of multicultural difference, contributing to an arrest of healthy cultural evolution. In the following chapter, Yianna Liatsos explores the success of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in producing its intended effect of historical catharsis in two senses. Did it produce a purgation of the crimes of the past and did it clarify the singularity of individual experiences of the Apartheid Regime and the resistance to it? Finally, Douglas Pratt's contribution investigates the manner in which religions today address the diversity of alternative faiths with which they co-exist. The paradigm of pluralism has been widely employed, as noted above, as a framework for understanding religious differences, but, as Pratt observes, pluralism also presumes some core unity among distinct religious experiences. He argues that pluralism tends to view specific religions as expressions of, or response to, the same independent reality. But do religions refer to the same reality? Pratt employs this problematic to examine a range of pluralist paradigms that can be applied to the study of religion. Together these chapters exhibit something of the fertility of the concept of pluralism across a spectrum of fields, and at all levels of analysis, from individual to social to national and international, touching on cases from around the world. Through their diversity, they are intended to both promote cross-pollination between domains of study and experience, and to encourage reflection on pluralism as a powerful crossdisciplinary approach for understanding the contemporary world. Avery Plaw, Montreal, Canada

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Notes 1

Bill Clinton, "Shared Values and Soaring Spirit," U.S. Society and Values 3, 1 (June 1998); (20 June 2004). . Italics added. 2 George W. Bush, "George W. Bush's Address to Congress and the American People on Thursday, September 20, 2001," (20 June 2004). . Italics added. 3 In his chapter in this volume, Mark Sivarajah traces the roots of contemporary pluralism back to Oxford intuitionists like Ross and Pritchard; others emphasise the seminal influence of American psychologist and philosopher William James. While there is room for disagreement on this question of the roots of contemporary pluralism, Sivarajah accurately notes, some consensus has emerged at least on Berlin as its major populariser. 4 Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," in Four Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 168. 5 For a very helpful discussion of how pluralists use this term, see George Crowder, Liberalism and Value Pluralism (New York: Continuum, 2002), 49-54. 6 Isaiah Berlin, "The Pursuit of the Ideal," in The Proper Study of Mankind, ed.s Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (London: Pimlico, 1998), 10. 7 Isaiah Berlin, "Introduction," Four Essays on Liberty, xlix-li. 8 Isaiah Berlin, "Does Political Theory Still Exist?" in The Proper Study of Mankind, 71-4. 9 Isaiah Berlin, "the Pursuit of the Ideal," 10. 10 William Galston provides a helpful overview of what he calls the "value pluralist movement" in contemporary moral and political philosophy William Galston "Value Pluralism and Liberal Political Theory," American Political Science Review 93, 4 (1999): 769. 11 Rawls for example develops a version of 'reasonable pluralism' (see his Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) while John Gray advocates 'agonistic pluralism' (see his Isaiah Berlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996); William Galston argues that pluralism has liberal consequences (see his Liberal Pluralism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002) while John Kekes insists that it entails conservatism (see his The Morality of Pluralism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 12 Charles H. Lippy, Pluralism Comes of Age: American Religious Culture in the Twentieth Century (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2002); Sohail H. Hashmi, ed., Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism and

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___________________________________________________________ Conflict (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002); Paul Rhodes Eddy, John Hick's Pluralist Philosophy of World Religions (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002). 13 For recent examples, see Cris E. Toffolo, ed., Emancipating Cultural Pluralism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); Xenia Chryssochoou, Cultural Diversity: its Social Psychology (Oxford, UK; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004); Jocelyn Maclure, Quebec Identity: the Challenge of Pluralism (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003; Carol Weisbrod, Emblems of Pluralism: Cultural Differences and the State (Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002); Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns, ed.s, Cultural Pluralism, Identity Politics, and the Law (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2001). 14 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). 15 See, for example, the International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics, (20 June 2004) , and their conference in Kansas city last year; or Andrea Salanti and Ernesto Screpanti, ed.s, Pluralism in Economics: New Perspective in History and Methodology, (Lyme, N.H.: American International Distribution, 1997); and Charles P. Kindleberger, Centralization Versus Pluralism (Copenhagen Business School Press, 1996). 16 H. Patrick Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World: Sustainable Diversity in Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Arend Soeteman, ed., Pluralism and Law (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001); Leon Sheleff, The Future of Tradition: Customary Law, Common Law and Legal Pluralism (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000); Hanne Peterson and Henrik Zahle, ed.s, Legal Polycentricity: Consequences of Pluralism in Law (Brookfield: Dartmouth, 1995); or see the Journal of Legal Pluralism and Official Law (William S. Hein and Co.). 17 Sandra Mitchell, Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, MA.: the Belknap Press, 2002); Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 18 David Schlossberg, Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism: The Challenge of Difference for Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Val Plumwood, Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (New York: Routledge, 2002); Edward Weber, Pluralism by the Rules: Conflict and Cooperation in Environmental Regulation (Washington: Georgetown University Press,

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___________________________________________________________ 1998); George Hoberg, Pluralism by Design: Environmental Policy and the American Regulatory State (New York: Praeger, 1992).

References Berlin, Isaiah. Four Essays on Liberty. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. Berlin, Isaiah. "The Pursuit of the Ideal." In The Proper Study of Mankind, edited by Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer, 1-16. London: Pimlico, 1998. Berlin, Isaiah. "Does Political Theory Still Exist?" In The Proper Study of Mankind, edited by Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer, 59-90. London: Pimlico, 1998. Bush, George W. "George W. Bush's Address to Congress and the American People on Thursday, September 20, 2001." (20 June 2004). Clinton, Bill. "Shared Values and Soaring Spirit," U.S. Society and Values 3, 1 (June 1998). See (20 June 2004). Crowder, George. Liberalism and Value Pluralism. New York: Continuum, 2002. Chryssochoou, Xenia. Cultural Diversity: its Social Psychology. Oxford, UK; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. Eddy, Paul Rhodes. John Hick's Pluralist Philosophy of World Religions. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002. Galston, William. "Value Pluralism and Liberal Political Theory." American Political Science Review 93, 4 (1999): 769-778. Galston, William. Liberal Pluralism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

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___________________________________________________________ Glenn, H. Patrick. Legal Traditions of the World: Sustainable Diversity in Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Gould, Stephen Jay. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA.: the Belknap Press, 2002. Gray, John. Isaiah Berlin. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996. Hashmi, Sohail H., ed., Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism and Conflict. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Hoberg, George. Pluralism by Design: Environmental Policy and the American Regulatory State. New York: Praeger, 1992. Huntington, Samuel. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. The International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics. (20 June 2004). Journal of Legal Pluralism and Official Law. William S. Hein and Co. Kekes, John. The Morality of Pluralism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Kindleberger, Charles P. Centralization Versus Pluralism. Copenhagen Business School Press, 1996. Lippy, Charles H. Pluralism Comes of Age: American Religious Culture in the Twentieth Century. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2002. Maclure, Jocelyn. Quebec Identity: the Challenge of Pluralism. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003. Mayr, Ernst. What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Mitchell, Sandra. Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Peterson, Hanne and Henrik Zahle, ed.s, Legal Polycentricity: Consequences of Pluralism in Law. Brookfield: Dartmouth, 1995.

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___________________________________________________________ Plumwood, Val. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. New York: Routledge, 2002. Rawls, John. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Salanti, Andrea and Ernesto Screpanti, ed.s, Pluralism in Economics: New Perspective in History and Methodology. Lyme, N.H.: American International Distribution, 1997. Sarat, Austin and Thomas R. Kearns, ed.s, Cultural Pluralism, Identity Politics, and the Law. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Schlossberg, David. Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism: The Challenge of Difference for Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Sheleff, Leon. The Future of Tradition: Customary Law, Common Law and Legal Pluralism. London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000. Soeteman, Arend, ed., Pluralism and Law. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001. Toffolo, Cris E., ed., Emancipating Cultural Pluralism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Weber, Edward. Pluralism by the Rules: Conflict and Cooperation in Environmental Regulation. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1998. Weisbrod, Carol. Emblems of Pluralism: Cultural Differences and the State. Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Part I Philosophical Pluralism


A Defense of Tolerance as a Moral Virtue Ronald Sandler and Cynthia Townley

Abstract Some have claimed that a moral virtue of toleration is impossible because it requires an agent to believe both that she has decisive reasons to oppose actively what she judges morally wrong and that she ought not act on those reasons. This paradox of toleration is thought to be particularly daunting within an objectivist metaethical framework that attempts to accommodate cultural pluralism. The paradox thus suggests that one must deny pluralism, embrace moral relativism or forgo a moral virtue of tolerance. In this paper we argue that the paradox is illusory. The appearance of a paradox relies on conceiving of tolerance as a collection of justified episodic forbearances. When tolerance is conceived properly as the disposition one ought to have regarding her negative moral evaluations - the paradox dissolves. We conclude with reflections on the relationship between tolerance and pluralism.

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A Defense of Tolerance as a Moral Virtue

___________________________________________________________ 1.

Introduction Some philosophers claim that a moral virtue of toleration is impossible because it requires an agent to believe both that she has decisive reasons to oppose actively what she judges morally wrong and that she ought not act on those reasons. This paradox of toleration is thought to be particularly daunting within an objectivist metaethical framework that attempts to accommodate cultural pluralism. 1 Cultural pluralism purportedly instructs us that diverse social, political or cultural conceptions of the good can be equally legitimate and that each must be afforded due respect (often requiring non-interference), whereas a commitment to moral objectivism involves recognising that moral judgments are not appropriately attended by indifference, apathy or inaction. The paradox thus suggests that one must deny pluralism, embrace moral relativism or forgo a moral virtue of tolerance. 2 In what follows we argue that the paradox is illusory. 2.

The Paradox of Toleration Introducing Res Publica’s special issue on tolerance, Dario Castiglione and Catriona McKinnon ask: Why tolerate ideas, behaviour, and practices that one believes to be wrong? Tolerance looks like an impossible virtue because it would appear to be appropriate when an agent has good reason to be intolerant: but why should an agent refrain from acting on her good reasons, as tolerance demands? What sorts of reason, or other considerations, could explain the demands that the virtue of tolerance makes in order to trump the agent’s (first-order) good reasons? 3 Barry Barnes offers this more formal and narrow account of the paradox: the difficulty is that tolerance appears to require the acceptance of conflicting beliefs. Individual A believes action (of kind) X to be unethical or immoral, and hence something that she should oppose. And yet, being tolerant, A believes it right not to oppose X enacted by B, since it falls within the limits of what is tolerable. Thus, A’s tolerance appears to consist in her acceptance of beliefs that enjoin her to embark upon conflicting courses of action. 4

Ronald Sandler and Cynthia Townley

5

___________________________________________________________ According to these descriptions, tolerance requires simultaneously maintaining that one ought to intervene and that one ought not to intervene. But how, given the same set of considerations, can the preponderance of reasons favour both intervention and restraint? Such bifurcation of reason seems implausible. 5 The difficulty is particularly compelling in the case of moral assessments, which are typically regarded as decisive. If moral judgments are superordinate to other types of assessment, what other considerations could provide reasons that override one’s moral judgments? How can a moral assessment be both decisive and defeasible? There thus appears to be something deeply paradoxical in the very idea of a moral virtue of toleration. It is tempting to respond to this paradox by accepting its terms, and then attempt to identify considerations that provide reasons that justify inaction in the face of negative moral evaluations. 6 However, our response to the paradox is to show that its setup is spurious. We do not believe that a moral virtue of toleration really involves these problematic relations between reasons. 3.

A Formal Account of Tolerance Consider the following analysis of what it is for some agent, S, to tolerate some object (e.g., conduct, attitude, belief, or entity), O: For S to tolerate O is for S to maintain some negative evaluation regarding O, yet refrain from attempting to eliminate or interfere with O, despite believing that she possesses some capacity to do so. 7 This analysis is strictly descriptive of particular acts of tolerance. It makes no normative claims about when, if ever, tolerance is morally permissible or obligatory; it does not limit acts of tolerance to morally justified instances of forbearance; and it does not analyse acts of tolerance as forbearance arising from a disposition constitutive of a moral virtue of tolerance. In fact, it is neutral on whether there is a moral virtue of tolerance at all. It does, however, enable a formal account of the virtue. In what follows we use the term virtue to refer to an excellence in a particular function or activity, and the term character virtue for such an excellence involving deliberative action. The term moral virtue refers to any character virtue pertaining to at least some interactions or relationships with others. If there is a moral virtue of tolerance, then, there must be a human excellence pertaining to acts of toleration. A moral virtue of tolerance would be the maximally justified disposition to have regarding such situations. We thus propose the following formal account

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___________________________________________________________ of the moral virtue of tolerance: The virtue of tolerance is the maximally justified disposition for a human moral agent to have regarding instances when the agent maintains a negative evaluation of some object and believes she possesses some capacity to eliminate or interfere with that object. Like our analysis of an act of toleration, this account is neutral regarding whether there actually is a moral virtue of toleration. It merely specifies that for the virtue to obtain there must be a maximally justified disposition for human moral agents to have in the relevant situations and deliberations. 4.

Towards a Substantive Account of Tolerance Clearly, various toleration dispositions are possible. One might be disposed always to act to eliminate or interfere with a negatively evaluated object; one might be disposed never to act; one might be disposed to act only under certain circumstances - say, only when others are acting or only when there is no risk to oneself; one might be disposed to act only regarding certain kinds of objects - say, only those with which one has a personal history; one might be disposed to act on some kinds of negative evaluations but not others - say, on moral evaluations but not those of poor taste or bothersomeness. Individuals possessing different toleration dispositions would differ in the kinds of objects that they are disposed to tolerate, the conditions under which they are disposed to tolerate, the types of negative evaluations they maintain when they tolerate, the degree of forbearance they exhibit, or some combination thereof. Whether there is a moral virtue of toleration thus turns on whether any of these toleration dispositions (or some set of them) is more justified than the others. We cannot (given space restrictions, and perhaps not even in principle) provide a full substantive specification of the maximally justified toleration disposition. Our modest goals are to show that some toleration dispositions are more defensible than others and that the maximally justified toleration disposition would not be a disposition to interfere in all cases of negative moral evaluations. An (hopefully) uncontroversial example - matters of taste - shows that some toleration dispositions are more justified than others. Evaluations that are mere matters of taste lack the normative underpinnings (precisely in virtue of their being matters of mere taste) to justify interfering with or eliminating their objects when to do so would require overriding significant goods such as the welfare or autonomy of


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___________________________________________________________ others. A disposition to refrain from interference in such cases is thus more justified than a disposition to take whatever steps are necessary to eliminate the negatively evaluated object. If this is right, then at least some toleration dispositions are more justified than others. But what about moral evaluations of individual or group conduct, behaviour, and belief those judgments thought to generate a paradox of toleration with teeth. What could justify a toleration disposition that sometimes involves refraining from interfering on the basis of one’s moral evaluations? Recognising our limitations is one such reason. As human moral agents in this world our moral decisions are simply (often ineliminably) fallible, and this fact grounds a toleration disposition of considerable forbearance in many contexts. For example, some moral evaluations are subject to moral luck when, for instance, their propriety depends upon factors that are in principle unknowable at the time of action. 8 Lifestyle choices - such as whether to pursue a career as a screenwriter or as a lawyer - often have this feature. Even given all the available information and careful deliberation, there may be no answer regarding which ought to be pursued. Consequently one should tolerate - i.e., refrain from obstructing - an individual’s actions if she chooses the course you judge to be the wrong one. In such instances, tolerance functions neither as a remedial nor a transitional virtue. It is not because of a character defect in the agent that forbearance is proper in such cases. Because the uncertainty is built into the human condition it is not possible to transform one’s character or circumstances to the extent that the virtue will no longer be needed. So even a perfectionist account of the virtue will involve forbearance in some cases of moral assessment. The same holds when there is a fact of the matter at the time of evaluation, but it is inaccessible to human moral agents. This might apply to the evaluation of some religious beliefs and practices. There are, of course, cases where an agent’s fallibility can or should be remedied, or in which unfavourable conditions can be improved. Here a disposition towards forbearance will function in a remedial and (ideally) temporary capacity: one should be tolerant only until the possibility of error is sufficiently reduced - through further accumulation of evidence or the development of expertise, perhaps. When considering the fallibility of our moral judgments it is important to recognise that we develop and exercise moral agency in particular, not ideal, social circumstances. Specific contextual considerations need to be taken into account. Having been socialised in a patriarchal culture, among other more or less pernicious cultural

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___________________________________________________________ influences, we may have internalised certain racist, sexist, heterosexist, classist, ageist, or ableist biases. Indeed, these non-conscious attitudes may affect our moral and ethical evaluations with respect to the character, actions, or lifestyles of members of certain groups to which the hegemonic culture attaches stereotypes. A toleration disposition of forbearance in many cases, even given moral evaluations, is thus justified from our acknowledgement of the possibility of subtle (or not so subtle) biases, and the possibility of lapsing into complicity with the biases of others. 9 The recognition of epistemic fallibility, the possibility of distorted evaluation when it comes to self interest, and the tendency to find merit in those most like oneself and to respond less favourably to those perceived as “others” do not undermine all of an agent’s substantial moral commitments, nor do these considerations imply that forbearance is justified in all cases. Responsible tolerance need not collapse into moral skepticism, apathy or relativism. The virtue is the maximally defensible disposition, not the maximally lenient one. Rather, our temptations to act when moral commitments prompt us to interfere with objects of negative judgments are tempered by attention to contextual factors. Tolerance is in this way related to humility, and serves as the virtue that balances one’s moral self-assertion and integrity with respect for the autonomy of others (as well as other values). 10 Other considerations that justify a toleration disposition to forebear interference even given a negative moral evaluation include costs to the agent (in terms of her integrity and well-being) and social stability (including Hobbesian considerations). As members of a pluralistic society we have instrumental reasons to cultivate a disposition to refrain from interference when doing otherwise would be detrimental - in virtue of its effects on our relationships, community, or integrity - to our flourishing. Certain background conditions - such as a relatively peaceful and secure social environment - are necessary for persons to flourish. A community of those who mutually forbear intervention within certain parameters may be less prone to social distress than one that is intolerant. If we have to opt for pluralism with mutual toleration or pluralism without, the former seems preferable. Hostility and instability are not conducive to human flourishing. 11 Moreover, the particular actions that are required in order to intervene effectively might require of an agent that she compromise the integrity of some of her significant ground projects or engage in behaviour that she would judge morally reprehensible. In recognising the normative force of these sorts of considerations the tolerant person distinguishes herself from the fanatic - a person who pursues elimination of that which she finds objectionable without consideration of the means to that end. The maximally defensible toleration disposition is thus one that


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___________________________________________________________ appreciates the social locatedness of moral agents, respects the autonomy of others, recognises one’s own limitations, and understands that there is not always an acceptable means to a sought after end. It is thus a disposition to tolerate, even given negative moral evaluations, in a variety of circumstances. 12 5.

What Happened to the Paradox? The paradox relies on a conception of tolerance as justified noninterference in cases of negative moral evaluations. The paradox is generated because it seems part of the conception of moral reasons that they are decisive, implying that tolerance is neither rational nor virtuous. We have defended a conception of a moral virtue of tolerance that is not a collection of justified episodic forbearances, but a character disposition. It is the disposition that one ought to bring to situations and deliberations involving possible acts of toleration; the proper disposition for an individual to have regarding her negative moral evaluations. The paradox does not arise on this conception because when considering whether there is a moral virtue of toleration one evaluates toleration dispositions, not whether to tolerate in particular cases. There is thus no need to identify types of reasons that might override moral reasons, and therefore no paradox. A more precise and technical explanation of how the paradox is defused makes the point even more explicit. The paradox is avoided because (1) evaluating whether something is morally wrong is different from (2) evaluating, which toleration dispositions are justified and which are not. (2) also differs from (3) evaluating whether you should act on the basis of your negative judgment. One might be tempted to argue that it is the distinction between (1) and (3), rather than (1) and (2) as we have argued, that works to alleviate the paradox. But a collection of judgments of type (3), as with a collection of judgments of type (1), would not constitute a moral virtue of toleration. Judgments of type (3) concern whether one ought to intervene in particular cases. They do not specify the disposition that one ought to bring to deliberations about those cases. A virtuous agent’s moral judgments and actions stem from or express the right kind of disposition. As we have shown, the maximally justified disposition does not require acting to interfere with or obstruct in all cases of negative evaluation.

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___________________________________________________________ 6.

Conclusion: Toleration and Pluralism Besides resolving some confusions and paradoxes in the theory of a particular virtue, what do the above arguments and analysis of tolerance indicate regarding the moral dimensions of pluralism? They show us, among other things, that they are plural. This may sound trite, but we believe it is often overlooked. The concept or idea of ‘pluralism’ is ambiguous in any number of ways. When one considers pluralism, the possibility of pluralism, and the implications of pluralism one must always be clear about what sort of pluralism is at issue or one risks falling into equivocation, miscommunication, and, ultimately, misunderstanding. Indeed, even in the significantly focused discussion of tolerance above, we encountered pluralism among several overlapping dimensions. First, we encountered pluralism among conceptions of the good. This is perhaps the most common conception of pluralism: that different individuals, cultures, and subcultures often have dissimilar (sometimes contrary, sometimes compatible) conceptions of what it is to live a good human life, what is needed for an individual to flourish, and how society should be organised in order to facilitate flourishing among its members. This sort of pluralism, the fact that it obtains, is what makes a virtue of tolerance intelligible at all. It is what makes it relevant, significant, and operative. How are we to respond to this pluralism? What are the appropriate character dispositions to have regarding situations where these competing conceptions interact? These questions emerge from the recognition that there are pluralistic conceptions of the good, and they give rise to and make imperative discussions about tolerance. But different conceptions of the good are not merely intellectual fodder. They are not merely something that we discuss and try sort out the best we can. These are lived conceptions. They are expressed in particularisation in nearly all areas of human activity – mundane to sacred. So when we are tolerant, when we appropriately forbear interfering in instances where we judge something to be unacceptable, we are not immediately tolerating conceptions of the good (even when we may ultimately be doing so). We are tolerating, for example, particular dietary practices, particular approaches to education, particular religious practices, particular sexual practices, particular beliefs, particular attitudes, and the particular individuals and communities whose practices, beliefs and attitudes they are. There is thus pluralism in the possible objects of toleration. The limit to what can be the proper object of toleration is bounded only by the ways in which particular conceptions of the good can be expressed or embodied, and the capacity for us to judge and interfere (or forebear interfering) with those expressions. In our inquiry into the nature and limits of tolerance we also


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___________________________________________________________ encountered theoretical pluralism in regards to types of virtues. Part of the explanation for the susceptibility of virtue theory to the paradox of toleration is the tendency to look for a single theoretical model that holds for all the virtues. Particularly susceptible are those models that conceive of virtue as individual intellectual excellences. 13 The conception of tolerance that sets up the paradox is focused narrowly on the agent’s own integrity, convictions, and considered judgments, as well as the agent’s conduct towards others (specifically when others’ conduct, attitudes or beliefs are judged negatively). However, the account of tolerance that we have defended represents a decisive move towards the recognition of pluralism among types of virtues. Tolerance as we have articulated it is informed by a recognition of the social context and character of human life, as well as the limitations and imperfections (eliminable and not) of human moral agents. We must therefore be prepared to embrace pluralism among theories of virtue. Some virtues are clustered around aspects of individual character (e.g., bravery, integrity, wisdom), some around interpersonal relationships or the treatment of other individuals (e.g., honesty, compassion, charity), some around community or social environments (e.g., participation, cooperation, frugality). Some virtues characterise human ideals or perfections, but others are transitional or remedial. These categories are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, tolerance as we have articulated is sometimes interpersonal, sometimes communal, and sometimes remedial, sometimes ideal. Moreover, we find that there is no algorithm to be calculated and applied to determine which virtues are overriding in which cases. Sometimes personal virtues (like standing firm on one’s convictions) are properly overridden by social virtues (such as those associated with a well-functioning society). Conversely, on some occasions it is appropriate to prioritise one’s integrity over social harmony, as a conscientious objector might do. One ought not always act for personal integrity regardless of circumstances, but neither should one’s own values be swamped in all cases. The maximally justified disposition is contextually sensitive in its exercise; there is no single rule or principle that can be applied in each case to determine what one ought to do. Recognising this pluralism, grappling with, cultivating the character and wisdom, i.e., the virtue, that emerges from attentive, reflective experience is crucial for navigating individual commitments in a shared world. So it is not merely the case that we live in a pluralistic world; we live in a world of pluralisms. To appreciate this is to recognise the unlikelihood that some single principle or set of finite rules is going to provide sufficient guidance in all the situations and relationships in which we find ourselves embedded. We must be prepared to act for the right and

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___________________________________________________________ the good, but we must also cultivate sensitivity to the sophistication, the indeterminacy, and the ambiguity that also characterises much of our ethical experience. We are not ideal moral agents and ours is not an ideal world. Those who boast of moral clarity across all contexts are therefore properly viewed with suspicion.

Ronald Sandler is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. Cynthia Townley lectures in Philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Notes 1

Gordon Graham, “Tolerance, Pluralism, and Relativism,” in Toleration: an Elusive Virtue, ed. David Heyd (Princeton University Press, 1996), 4459. 2 This would be a significant implication since many proponents of toleration are both objectivists regarding human rights and advocates of pluralism. 3 Dario Castiglione and Catriona McKinnon, “Introduction: Beyond Toleration,” Res Publica 7, 226. 4 Barry Barnes, “Tolerance as a Primary Virtue,” Res Publica 7, 231. Formulations of the paradox can also be found in Bernard Williams, “Toleration: An Impossible Virtue?” in Toleration: an Elusive Virtue, 1827; and Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (London: The Macmillan Company, 1989). 5 For more on this point see Terrence Penner, “Plato and Davidson: Parts of the Soul and Weakness of Will,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (1990): 35-74. 6 David Heyd suggests some limits to this approach in the introduction to Toleration: an Elusive Virtue, 3-17. 7 This analysis, though different in important respects, is influenced by John Horton’s analysis in “Toleration as a Virtue,” in Toleration: an Elusive Virtue, 28-43; and Jeff Jordan’s analysis in “Concerning Moral Toleration” in Philosophy, Religion, and the Question of Intolerance, ed. Meddi Amin Ravazi and David Ambuel (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997).


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___________________________________________________________ There are several conceptual issues regarding this account that we will not address in this paper. We will not, for example, attempt to specify precisely what the proper objects of toleration are. Some have argued that only moral agents themselves are proper objects of toleration, whereas others have allowed for toleration of actions, attitudes, beliefs, and so on. Nor will we attempt to specify precisely which types of negative evaluations are operative in instances of toleration. Some have argued that only moral evaluations set the conditions of toleration, whereas others have argued that various types of non-moral evaluations can function in that capacity. Nor will we discuss the extent of forbearance requisite for toleration. For example, am I tolerant of my brother’s anti-war activism if I do not physically intercede with his demonstrations, but attempt to persuade him to willingly abandon his activities? Nor will we discuss whether the agent’s belief that she can in some way interfere with the object must be justified, and if so to what extent. There is also the related issue of whether one can properly be said to tolerate even if one lacks the power to effectively intervene? Some think not, arguing that one who tolerates must be in a position to do otherwise. However, others have argued that toleration can be analysed counterfactually, such that a tolerant disposition can be meaningfully attributed to the disempowered. 8 See Bernard Williams, “Moral Luck,” in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 20-39. 9 There is interesting philosophical work to be done determining, for particular contexts and particular objects, how much possibility of error is necessary to justify how much restraint. We here set aside this philosophically interesting and difficult issue. 10 The relationship between respect for the autonomy of others and a moral virtue of toleration is discussed in Robert Paul Churchill, “On the Difference between Non-Moral and Moral Conceptions of Toleration: The Case for Toleration as an Individual Virtue” in Philosophy, Religion, and the Question of Intolerance; and Heyd’s introduction to Toleration: An Elusive Virtue. 11 Further discussion of the social utility of tolerance can be found in Barnes’ “Tolerance as a Primary Virtue” and Jordan’s “Concerning Moral Toleration.” 12 We thus disagree with Tara Smith’s view - in “Tolerance & Forgiveness: Virtues or Vices?” Journal of Applied Philosophy 14, 1 (1997): 36 - that

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___________________________________________________________ “if a person does not doubt the propriety of his principles… he has no reason to allow actions which violate them.” 13 For critique of intellectualist Aristotelian conceptions of virtue and their inability to handle epistemic limitations see Julia Driver, Uneasy Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

References Barnes, Barry. “Tolerance as a Primary Virtue.” Res Publica 7, 231. Castiglione, Dario and Catriona McKinnon. “Introduction: Beyond Toleration.” Res Publica 7, 226. Churchill, Robert Paul. “On the Difference between Non-Moral and Moral Conceptions of Toleration: The Case for Toleration as an Individual Virtue.” In Philosophy, Religion, and the Question of Intolerance, edited by Meddi Amin Ravazi and David Ambuel. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. Driver, Julia. Uneasy Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Graham, Gordon. “Tolerance, Pluralism, and Relativism.” In Toleration: an Elusive Virtue, edited by David Heyd: 44-59. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Heyd, David. “Introduction.” In Toleration: an Elusive Virtue, edited by David Heyd: 3-17. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Horton, John. “Toleration as a Virtue.” In Toleration: an Elusive Virtue, edited by David Heyd: 28-43. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Jordan, Jeff. “Concerning Moral Toleration.” In Philosophy, Religion, and the Question of Intolerance, edited by Meddi Amin Ravazi and David Ambuel. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. Mendus, Susan. Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism. London: The Macmillan Company, 1989.


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___________________________________________________________ Penner, Terrence. “Plato and Davidson: Parts of the Soul and Weakness of Will.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (1990): 35-74. Smith, Tara. “Tolerance & Forgiveness: Virtues or Vices?” Journal of Applied Philosophy 14, 1 (1997): 31-42. Williams, Bernard. “Toleration: An Impossible Virtue?” In Toleration: an Elusive Virtue, edited by David Heyd: 18-27. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Williams, Bernard. “Moral Luck.” In Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980: 20-39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.


Is Monotheism Compatible with Pluralism? Reflections on Richard Rorty’s Critique of Religion Nicholas H. Smith

Abstract This paper examines Rorty's view of the relation between religion and philosophical pluralism. The first section deals with monotheism in the context of Rorty's pluralist approach to truth. The discussion here deals mainly with the reflexive stance towards belief that pluralism requires of the believer. The second section considers the way Rorty sketches the moral hopes embodied in pluralism, the basic kind of social relations that would typify a pluralist culture, and the capacity of monotheism to orient or sustain those relations. The general conclusion to be drawn from these considerations is that monotheism - at least in the sense Rorty gives to that term - is structurally at odds with pluralism in the ways Rorty suggests. In the third section, however, it is argued that Rorty's case is vitiated by its reliance on utilitarianism. Rorty invokes utilitarianism to show how religion can be made compatible with pluralism, but - as critics of utilitarianism have long argued - utilitarianism is badly suited to this purpose because it is insensitive to the specific normative content of religion.

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Is Monotheism Compatible with Pluralism?

___________________________________________________________ Whatever its object-domain, pluralism replaces the one with the many. Descriptive pluralism maintains that, as a matter of fact, the objectdomain in question is constituted by a fundamental multiplicity of items or features, items or features that cannot properly be understood as so many expressions of the one thing. Where the object-domain is modes of human enquiry, a descriptive pluralist will maintain that there are many ways of acquiring knowledge, gaining insight, producing truth, or reaching understanding, and will oppose the view that there is one correct method or procedure that unifies the sciences. Where the object-domain is modes of human life, as it is in moral and political theory, a descriptive pluralist will assert that, as a matter of fact, there are irreducibly many values worth pursuing, and irreducibly many legitimate ways of attaining happiness. This thesis stands opposed to the view that apparently divergent worthwhile ends of life really add up to the same thing (say, utility), or are so many expressions of the one good life for human beings, in terms of which they can be commensurated and ranked. Normative pluralism, as distinct from descriptive pluralism, commends and exalts the many over the one: it is glad about the “fact of pluralism” where it exists, and is critical of states of affairs where it does not. Normative pluralism in epistemology, for instance, encourages multiple modes of human enquiry, the better to serve the various goals of enquiry. And normative pluralism in moral and political theory celebrates the diversity of values and ways of life where such diversity exists. It is critical of forms of life that stifle diversity, and it is typically oriented by a utopian vision in which new norms, values and forms of life are allowed to proliferate freely. Pluralism is popular nowadays in both its descriptive and normative senses, and in epistemology as much as in moral and political theory. A number of thinkers have sought to bring out the connections between the epistemological, moral, political, descriptive and normative dimensions of pluralism. But amongst contemporary philosophers at least, none have done it in a more self-conscious and provocative way than Richard Rorty. Rorty offers us a comprehensively pluralist philosophy in which the one gives way to the many in the conception we have of ourselves both as knowers and as moral beings. While Rorty is less concerned than most other philosophical pluralists by the problems of pluralism – for instance, the problem of explaining how a just social order is possible amongst groups with rival conceptions of the good society – his work is exemplary in spelling out the consequences of embracing a radically pluralist vision. In an essay entitled ‘Pragmatism, Pluralism and Postmodernism’ (the ‘Afterword’ of Rorty’s Philosophy and Social Hope), Rorty defines philosophical pluralism as “the doctrine that there is a potential infinity of

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___________________________________________________________ equally valuable ways to lead a human life, and that these ways cannot be ranked in terms of degrees of excellence, but only in terms of the contribution to the happiness of the people who lead them and of the communities to which they belong.”1 Pluralists, on Rorty’s conception, reject the thought that human beings share a single nature or essence, which provides a “standard of excellence” against which to measure the worth of any particular way of life. Rather than supposing that there is one true or highest way of being human to which we all should aspire, or one particular form of life that ranks above all possible others, the pluralist has a vision in which individuals are free to pursue their own life projects, and to experiment with new ways of being human (or “post-human”) if they wish, so long as they do not thereby cause harm to others. The pluralist is dedicated “to the maximization of opportunities for individual variation, and group variation insofar as the latter facilitates the ability of individuals to recreate themselves.”2 Pluralism embraces the thought that “the point of social organization is to encourage the greatest possible human diversity,”3 for the reason laid out by J.S. Mill in On Liberty, that this is the best way of securing human happiness. For Rorty, the “liberal utopia” sketched by Mill - in which human beings flourish by being granted as much space for moral experimentation and self-creation as is compatible with the same space being granted to all - is the pluralist’s “highest hope.”4 Mill is not the only nineteenth-century source of Rorty’s philosophical pluralism. Nietzsche is another. Rorty reads Nietzsche’s perspectivism, especially as presented in The Gay Science, as a radically pluralist account of knowledge, according to which beliefs gain their value not by corresponding to reality but by serving multiple, non-unifiable human needs. As well as embracing this thought, Rorty also takes seriously Nietzsche’s suggestion that the pluralisation of truth fatally undermines monotheistic belief. Rorty is sympathetic to Nietzsche’s diagnosis of monotheism as a fetishism of the will to truth, whereby the power of the individual to create norms is sacrificed at the altar of a transcendent, non-human authority figure. Rorty adopts Nietzsche’s talk of seeking to replace monotheism with “polytheism”, which Rorty relates to the belief that “there is no actual or possible object of knowledge that would permit you to commensurate and rank all human needs.”5 Polytheism, in this sense, turns away from the monotheistic and metaphysical urge to claim what the world is ‘really like’ and what the good life for human beings ‘really’ consists in. At the same time, however, Rorty is uncomfortable with Nietzsche’s “militant atheism”, not least because he thinks it ends up betraying Nietzsche’s own pluralist impulse. Pluralists can, and should,

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___________________________________________________________ stop short of Nietzsche’s debunking of religion. They would be better off, Rorty maintains, turning to the philosophical pragmatists – James and Dewey especially – for an account of how religion fits within a radically pluralist vision. In this paper I shall examine the central features of such an account as Rorty presents them.6 The paper has three sections. In the first, I consider how monotheism fares in light of the pluralist approach to truth proposed by Rorty and the pragmatists. The discussion here deals mainly with the reflexive stance towards belief that pluralism requires of the believer. The second section considers the way Rorty sketches the moral hopes embodied in pluralism, the basic kind of social relations that would typify a pluralist culture, and the capacity of monotheism to orient or sustain those relations. The general conclusion I draw from these considerations is that monotheism – at least in the sense Rorty gives to that term - is structurally at odds with pluralism in the ways Rorty suggests. In the third section, however, I argue that Rorty’s case is vitiated by its reliance on utilitarianism. Rorty invokes utilitarianism to show how religion can be made compatible with pluralism, but - as critics of utilitarianism have long argued - utilitarianism is badly suited to this purpose because it is insensitive to the specific normative content of religion. 1.

Monotheism and Truth First, pragmatism provides a way of thinking about belief that is congenial to pluralists who think there are many equally legitimate kinds of belief. Pragmatism’s master-thought, according to Rorty, is that the worth of a belief is determined not by the accuracy of its depiction of something but by the usefulness of the way it deals with a matter. Beliefs are much more like tools than pictures. When we judge a belief, we always do so by considering how well, in connection with other beliefs, it serves a particular purpose. There is no further consideration to be taken into account, such as whether the belief truly represents the world. The measure of belief, in other words, is its success in getting something done, and has nothing to do with some putative reality to which it corresponds. If the measure of belief were “reality”, Rorty suggests, we would be entitled to think that true beliefs come in a single package. But that becomes an unreasonable expectation as soon as beliefs are regarded as habitual ways of dealing with things. As soon as one thinks about beliefs as tools for getting things done, as Rorty’s pragmatist does, one is relieved of the intellectual responsibility to unify one’s beliefs - a responsibility that seems incumbent on those who think that their beliefs are accountable to the way things really are. One should not have a bad conscience about

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___________________________________________________________ having diverse kinds of belief, beliefs that do not add up to a single take on the world, because the purposes beliefs serve vary widely, and rightly so. Our liability to feel guilty about this kind of pluralism, or to be intolerant towards it even within ourselves, is due in Rorty’s view to the baleful influence of two opposing anti-pluralist orientations. On the one hand, there is the homogenising tendency arising from what Gadamer called the “unassailable and anonymous authority” of modern science.7 If we take science as the model of intellectually respectable belief, and if our sense of intellectual responsibility impels us to bring unity to our beliefs, we might feel pressured to abandon those beliefs that do not fit the scientific outlook. Pragmatism relieves this pressure not, of course, by questioning the validity of science, but by questioning the idea that all beliefs should fit together into a harmonious whole. It does this by correcting the scientistic misunderstanding of the authority of science: for pragmatism, this authority is solid enough, but its source lies not in the one way the world is but in the many effective ways science takes charge of nature. The source of the authority of science is thus plural, and does not exclude the authoritativeness of other kinds of belief, in particular, religious belief. On the other hand, this conclusion should provide no solace for those who claim divine authority for their religious belief. For if there is no non-human authority behind science, a fortiori there is none behind religion either. The thought that a particular religion does indeed possess such authority – that it is intellectually unassailable because it is based on the Word of the one God - informs the second anti-pluralist disposition pragmatism aims to correct. From the pragmatist’s point of view, then, scientism and traditional monotheism are two sides of the same difference-hostile coin. The anti-representationalist account of belief, proposed by Rorty and other pragmatists, favours pluralism by including both scientific and religious beliefs as equally respectable “habits of action.” But it can only do this by excluding the anti-pluralist meta-beliefs contained in scientism and orthodox monotheism. The argument so far has been that pragmatism provides an intellectual space within which respect for science can sit alongside respect for religion in one and the same self. But the argument is easily extended to apply to a culture. Pragmatism is pluralist insofar as it does not force a choice between science and religion, but allows both kinds of belief to co-exist peacefully within the life of an individual or a culture. The key move involves a redescription of the aim of belief that takes us away from thinking that belief aims at the Truth, and towards the thought that it provides recipes for action. This has further implications for the pragmatist philosophy of religion. For one, it discourages us from seeking

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___________________________________________________________ to map cultural forms according to their capacity to put us in touch with “the Truth.” It therefore also deters us from supposing that some cultural forms are superior to others on account of realising that capacity more fully. There is no distinct “need to know the truth” for a culture to satisfy, and so no higher place for a culture to occupy in virtue of satisfying that need. Nor is there anything specially edifying about the so-called “love of truth”, which would be less misleadingly described, Rorty suggests, as the love some people have for winning arguments, or reaching agreement with others, or making successful predictions, and so forth.8 Rorty’s deflationary, de-edifying redescriptions of the “need to know the truth” and the “love of truth” are often addressed to those who have a one-sided or exclusionary conception of the cognitive achievements of Western science. But religious believers who delight in the deconstruction of science would be wrong to draw comfort from them, as if such redescriptions inflated the case for religious worldviews. For Rorty’s point is that the fetishisation of truth characteristic of exclusionary scientism has its original home nowhere else than in monotheism itself.9 The idea that beliefs are made good by bringing us in contact with a reality that transcends human practices, like the idea that lives are made good through such contact, is at root an onto-theological one. When believers in science talk of the love of truth, or the need to know the truth, or of cultural forms that capture the truth or satisfy the human longing for it, they merely reproduce the onto-theological vocabulary of their religious adversaries. In other words, Rorty’s “postmodern” critique of science is a critique of religion, or more precisely, a critique of the self-understanding of religion embodied in orthodox monotheism. Rorty wants to get rid of the fetishism of truth in all its forms. It has no place, he suggests, in a pluralist culture. On account of his anti-representationalist, pragmatic conception of truth, Rorty is routinely accused of irrationalism and facile relativism. But while Rorty often allows his polemic against the fetishisation of truth to get the better of him, the charge largely misses the mark and fails to appreciate the significance of pragmatism as a cultural intervention. For one thing, Rorty by no means collapses the distinction between truth and falsity. And he does not propose that cultures or systems of belief are immune from rational criticism, or that they are on an equal footing in regards to their truth. The point is rather that the authority of beliefs – the authority possessed by beliefs when they are true – does not reside somewhere beyond human practices, a point that needs making because we inhabit a cultural situation marked by an inclination to project and “thingify” that authority. For Rorty, the God of monotheism is the archetype of such fetishisation of authority, and its legacy summons our

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___________________________________________________________ vigilance. And on this Rorty surely has a point: it is a typical feature of monotheism that it posits not only the existence of one God, but the one divine, human-transcendent authority behind such positing. Where human authority is acknowledged, it is typically as a proxy for God’s. It is also typical of monotheism to ontologise the truth, to picture it as One and unchanging. Rorty has good grounds to suggest that this is not an accidental feature of monotheism, but is internally connected to the core monotheistic idea that the one God is the ultimate source of meaning and being, a source that brings unity to all the truths that really matter to human beings. Rorty presents pragmatism as an alternative to the traditional monotheistic view that beliefs are made authoritative by something morethan-human. But why, one might ask, does that feature, of itself, lend pragmatism a more pluralist character? Is pragmatism not just replacing one approach to truth with another, one that excludes its rival just as effectively as monotheism excluded it? And to the extent that pragmatism does function that way, is it not as hostile to pluralism as the position it opposes? It is not clear from what has been said so far why what we might call the anthropocentric orientation of pragmatism lends itself to pluralism more readily than a theocentric one. After all, a great many people with religious belief do rely on a sense of divine authority and would resist the move to redescribe that authority in anthropocentric terms. Would they not be just as entitled to resist such redescription in the name of pluralism? Rorty can respond in two ways. First, he can say that the questioning of authority will be an integral part of a pluralist culture, and that appeals to a putatively divine source of a belief’s authority can only bring such questioning to a stop arbitrarily. In a context of pluralism, authority has to prove its worth in and only in the argumentative exchanges between humans.10 And it will only be the outcome of such interaction – and not the word of God – that bestows on beliefs whatever authority they have. Second, the pragmatist view of authority contrasts with the monotheistic one by granting a role to the many in its composition. That is to say, whereas in monotheism authority emanates from the one voice, in pragmatism it is unintelligible apart from the many voices that participate in human conversation. Pragmatism’s dialogical model of truth lends it a pluralist character lacking in the approach to truth typical of traditional monotheism. 2.

Pluralist Social Hope The considerations so far suggest that it is not so much belief in the one God that is incompatible with pluralism, but a certain way of taking that belief. It is the idea that belief in God owes its authority to the

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___________________________________________________________ existence of God that is problematic. The suggestion is that monotheists should drop their claim to have divine backing for their beliefs if they are to fit well within a pluralist culture. But even if monotheism makes that amendment, there may be other reasons for thinking that it does not sit easily with pluralism, reasons that suggest further reform may be required. In Rorty’s view there are such reasons, which I now want to consider. As I indicated at the outset, Rorty’s critique of monotheistic religion is targeted not just at its understanding of truth - the consequences of which, we have just seen, are in certain ways inimical to pluralism - but at its conception of the human ideal, that is, the best thing one may hope for. For philosophical pluralism, as Rorty defines it, the highest hopes are well served by the idea that there is no single hierarchy of values by reference to which human beings can orient themselves in pursuit of happiness. Rather, “there is a potential infinity of equally valuable ways to lead a human life,” and the pluralist is committed to maximising “opportunities for individual variation” so that each person can find the particular way of leading a human life that best suits them. Clearly, if monotheism entails commitment to an overarching moral order by reference to which the worth of all human lives can be objectively ranked, then by definition it is incompatible with philosophical pluralism. But even if monotheism does not rule out pluralism quite so straightforwardly, Rorty suggests, it works against the pluralist conception of the human ideal in other ways. It might help at this stage to distinguish between those features of monotheism that allegedly conflict with the pluralist ethos at what we might call the “subjective” and “intersubjective” levels. An example of the former kind of conflict – that is, of how the life-orientation of an individual can be detrimentally turned away from pluralism by monotheism – would be the exclusion of possibilities for self-development arising from the belief that love of God and obedience to His commandments suffices for the individual’s self-realisation.11 To the extent that monotheism posits a single source of the good, so to speak, it can blind the individual to the many, diverse, though potentially conflicting goods that can contribute to the individual’s happiness. Admittedly, Rorty is averse to any talk of “the good,” and his worry would be better put by saying that monotheism encourages all individuals to believe that their happiness consists in essentially the same thing. It is no coincidence that singular designatives such as “the Way,” “the Word,” “the Good” and so forth are so readily associated with religion, or that they typically feature in the vocabulary of religiously minded people. Moreover, the traditional monotheistically mapped path to self-realisation is in principle fixed in advance of any human individual’s understanding

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___________________________________________________________ of and striving for it. Pluralism, by contrast, allows and encourages individuals to imagine that their happiness might consist in something quite different from whatever it is that makes other people happy. Indeed, it allows us to think that “the meaning of one life may not have anything to do with the meaning of another.”12 It also enables individuals to relate to their lives as their own invention, as having a meaning that is made rather than found. And in having this thought or life-orientation, Rorty implies, the individual is more likely to be happy, or to attain the personal ideals they secretly aspire towards. The claim that philosophical pluralism rather than monotheism is conducive to individual happiness, and that this is the decisive point in its favour, is crucial for Rorty and I’ll return to it at the end. But there is another consideration we must briefly attend to first. For monotheism’s alleged tendency to inhibit the capacity of individuals to imagine themselves differently, and to explore diverse aspects of their humanity in a way that enhances their chances of happiness, would not be so bad if it were not for a parallel tendency to inhibit the individual’s capacity to imagine other people’s lives as equally legitimate expressions of their humanity. And indeed it is the conflict between monotheism and pluralism at this intersubjective or social level that most concerns Rorty. After all, if some individuals find that monotheism is right for them – in the sense that it provides them with the most satisfactory orientation for living – it is not the job of philosophical pluralism to instruct them otherwise. Pluralism, on Rorty’s conception, does not prohibit monotheism as an individual creed: it only requires that monotheism sees itself as one among many equally legitimate such creeds. Philosophical pluralism, according to Rorty’s formulation, provides a conceptual framework within which to regard others as equally entitled to their own path to happiness as oneself. Granting each individual as much room for self-definition and selfexploration as is compatible with the same room being granted to everyone is the most effective means, Rorty suggests, of realising the pluralist ideal. It provides the best recipe for human diversity and so for human happiness. It is arguable that this kind of social orientation is more difficult to achieve for someone under the sway of monotheism. For monotheism, at least as traditionally conceived, lays claim to a moral truth that applies to the other as much as to oneself, and it claims to encompass all that is good under the one comprehensive, substantive vision. Furthermore, as the authority of the vision emanates as it were from above, it does not lend itself to negotiation between people. For pragmatism as philosophical pluralism, by contrast, there is no moral authority other than that provided by people negotiating with each other about how to maximise their

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___________________________________________________________ happiness in and through human diversity. Pragmatist philosophical pluralism thus provides a framework for enabling due recognition of the separateness of persons, or if you like, the singularity of each individual, and is better suited for that purpose than monotheism. Rorty shares the view of many liberals that a pluralist philosophical outlook must be based on a recognition of the fundamental separateness of individuals. But unlike some liberals at least, he wants to say that pluralism is just as much a matter of recognising and fostering social connectedness. To say that, in a liberal utopia, the meaning of one life may have nothing to do with the meaning of another must not be taken to mean that in such a society individuals will be indifferent to each other. This worry - that the liberal’s emphasis on the separateness of individuals provides a licence for mutual indifference – can trigger the countermove that some appreciation of a shared human nature, or of the universal authority of the moral law, must be built into the moral culture of a good or decent society. By contrast, Rorty maintains that an ungrounded but overarching commitment to projects of social cooperation, and in particular to democratic institutions, provides all the solidaristic energy a pluralist society needs.13 Philosophical pluralism requires individuals to love and take pride in their democratic, pluralist life form, and it is the flourishing of such a form of life that defines the pluralist’s highest hope. Rorty contrasts this with “the traditional religious hope that allegiance to something big, powerful and non-human will persuade that powerful being to take your side in your struggle with other people.”14 For this too is “a betrayal of the ideal of human fraternity” that pragmatism is better positioned to express than traditional monotheism. Of course, Rorty’s point here is not that monotheism does not, still less cannot, provide a vehicle for the same hopes that inform philosophical pluralism. Rorty himself is deeply impressed by those strands of monotheistic religion (such as the social Gospel movement) that elevate love for the other person and social justice above all other ideals. And he urges all leftists – be they Christian, liberal or socialist – to rally together around such hopes and ideals. They would be particularly well equipped to do this, Rorty suggests, if they were to drop their adventitious metaphysical convictions, and their sense of being on the side of Truth, and were to adopt instead a de-transcendentalised pragmatist outlook according to which there is no authority higher than the free agreement of human beings and no purpose higher than the building and consolidation of democratic institutions, institutions that provide “maximal space for individual variation.” Religion would feature within this variation – it would be one among many sources of private meaning or happiness – but it would by no means oversee the variation and/or provide it with

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___________________________________________________________ justification. Under conditions of pluralism no one’s private concerns have that status. As we have seen, philosophical pluralism is based on the premise that there is no limit to the number of valuable ways to lead a human life and it rejects the idea that lives as a whole can be ranked in terms of their value. Rather than being oriented by a particular notion of human perfection it is geared to the maximisation of variation: while traditional monotheism may have been well-suited to the former conception of morals and culture, the latter, pluralist utopian vision is better served by pragmatism. 3.

Romantic Utilitarianism? Rorty uses the term “romantic utilitarianism” to describe this conception of pragmatism. He notes that the term derives from René Berthelot’s 1911 study of pragmatism, but whereas Berthelot thought that romanticism and utilitarianism were too different “to admit of synthesis,” and that pragmatism was therefore doomed to failure, in Rorty’s view this conjunction of ideas is pragmatism’s underlying strength.15 Whatever Berthelot’s own reasons for rejecting pragmatism on this score were, I now want to suggest that he may have had more of a point than Rorty grants. For in the approach to religion we have been considering, there are instabilities at work that have their roots, I believe, in a tension between utilitarian and non-utilitarian elements. Furthermore, utilitarianism is notoriously weak in accounting for the specific hopes and aspirations that religion, however adequately, has traditionally served to express, and a philosophy of religion that leans too heavily on utilitarian considerations is prone to reproduce that weakness. It seems to me that Rorty’s approach suffers in this respect too. In the remainder of the paper I shall offer a brief amplification of these critical remarks. For Rorty, as we have seen, happiness is the fundamental criterion for assessing the merits of religion. When evaluating religion, we should eschew futile argumentation about the truth or falsity of its assertions concerning the existence of God. A number of considerations motivate Rorty’s position, including the pervasiveness of “reasonable disagreement” in matters of religious belief and the pragmatist epistemology discussed above. These considerations suggest we should leave onto-theology behind and attend instead to the contribution religion makes to human happiness. Let us agree with Rorty that the existence of God cannot be settled by argument and that the energy expended by believers and atheists alike in onto-theological discourse is misspent. Does it follow that the worth of religion lies solely in its utility? Only, of course, if there is no alternative to the utilitarian construal of what it is to have practical worth, which is far from obvious. It is one thing to elevate the

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___________________________________________________________ practical significance of religion over the theoretical worth of ontotheological discourse, it is quite another to cash out that practical significance in utilitarian terms. We can accept that the practical difference religion makes is crucial for a proper understanding and assessment of it without accepting that the measure of that difference is utility. Too often Rorty makes it seem as if practical consequences are all there is to practical significance, as if utility and practical import were one and the same. Rorty doesn’t always talk this way, but it is a simplification his utilitarianism encourages. Moreover, a similar point can be made about the value of pluralism. The value of pluralism is not just a matter of the happiness it brings, or of its useful consequences, even on Rorty’s own account. For according to Rorty, the inhabitants of a liberal utopia possess a dignity and a degree of moral maturity that is lacking in traditional religious cultures, and these virtues are not obviously just one element of happiness amongst others. Rorty does argue that a culture based on the sole authority of the free consensus of its members is more conducive to human happiness than one based on extra-human authority. But this is not the only admirable thing about it: the people of the culture are praiseworthy because they are no longer driven by the childish desire to obey. They are self-reliant and no longer feel the need for non-human interventions on their part. Rorty’s position requires that these virtues are valuable in themselves irrespective of utilitarian considerations. Admittedly, Rorty suggests that pride in belonging to and participating in such a culture would consolidate people’s allegiance to it, which in turn would help make them happy. But whether this type of allegiance is as rich a source of happiness as the happiness derived from allegiance to God is another matter. This raises the prospect that if happiness were to be the criterion for evaluating religion, traditional monotheism might fare better than the de-transcendentalised, privatised version of religion at home in Rorty’s liberal utopia. For this version of religion lacks the means for gratifying the religious impulse available in orthodox religious practices. Rorty is more ready than many of his fellow liberals to acknowledge the depth of this impulse. He certainly does not think it is based merely on an error, and he does not think it is merely a useless remnant of a less enlightened, less rational, pre-scientific age. At the same time, he is confident that the impulse can be redirected in a way that makes the human democratic life form, rather than some non-human power, the object of religious awe and worship. Whether or not this confidence is well grounded is a matter of philosophical anthropology. Rorty is reluctant to engage in that kind of reflection because he fears it would re-introduce the iniquitous vocabulary of the “essence” of the human, human “nature” and so forth. But without it,

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___________________________________________________________ Rorty is open to the charge of anthropological naivety that was the counter-enlightenment’s stock-in-trade objection to classical utilitarianism. Part of the problem here is that Rorty doesn’t really engage with the thought that religion might express needs and aspirations that utilitarianism is bound either to marginalise or discount altogether. One way of thinking about the specific needs and aspirations religion provides a vehicle for is in terms of a desire for meaning that transcends happiness. Even if happiness is the most desirable end, for the religious mind it does not necessarily exhaust the realm of the desirable or the humanly significant. Religion can be seen as an attempt to see good even in things – such as suffering and defeat - that are unqualified bads in the utilitarian outlook.16 If we think of religion as giving expression to a normativity beyond happiness, then it would clearly be inappropriate to measure its worth by the standards of utility. Rorty might reply that religious redemption, say, in the face of suffering and defeat ought to be a private matter, and that the privatised (and ironized) religions of a liberal utopia will satisfy all that needs to be satisfied in the desire for redemption. But it is not clear that the happiness of individuals is all that is really at stake here, or that the religious impulse can so readily be compartmentalised into self- and other-regarding elements. Critics of Enlightenment individualism and utilitarianism have for a long time insisted that a culture in which social meaning is determined exclusively by individual happiness is self-undermining. While Rorty is well aware of the counterEnlightenment distaste for the utilitarian ideal of maximised happiness, and while he acknowledges that this distaste is backed up by a rival anthropology, he has shown little interest in challenging that anthropology or in demonstrating the superiority of his own. Another way of thinking about the specific normative content of religion relevant here is that it harbours a radical historical hope. According to this interpretation, monotheistic religion (at its best) expresses a desire not so much for a meaning that transcends happiness, as for a happiness that transcends current social understandings and practices. Religion, on this view, provides a means of keeping alive “the social virtue of hope.”17 It can do this by envisaging the future in terms of as yet unknown potentialities for happiness and the good life contained in the present. This is clearly the main feature of religion that Rorty himself wants to keep hold of. This “faith in the future possibilities of moral humans, a faith which is hard to distinguish from love for, and hope for, the human community,” Rorty calls “romance.”18 But if Rorty’s pragmatism is “romantic” on this account, it is hard to see how it can also be “utilitarian.” For utilitarianism is hostile to the very idea that the “good” or “true” life is absent, except insofar as utilitarian principles are

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___________________________________________________________ not fully instituted in the social world. For the utilitarian – including Rorty in his utilitarian moments – the future good is and can only be a more fully realised version of the present good, that is, the good as conceived and embodied in modern liberal societies. Utilitarianism claims to know already what the good life for human beings consists in, and in doing so it reflects the self-confidence and sense of historical closure of the epoch to which it belongs. The tension between utilitarian and non-utilitarian elements in Rorty’s pragmatism is nowhere more stark, in fact, than in this attempt at reappropriating the radical social hope of religion. Rorty the romantic speaks of “a sense that the humanity of the future will be, although linked with us by a continuous narrative, superior to present day humanity in as yet barely imaginable ways.”19 Rorty the utilitarian says that “John Stuart Mill has already said pretty much everything there is to say about what sort of society to hope for.”20 It is hard to see how “romantic utilitarianism” can involve anything but an unstable oscillation between these outlooks. This instability is linked to Rorty’s reluctance to reflect systematically on the anthropological presuppositions of pragmatism, and to confront the rival anthropological presuppositions of pragmatism’s critics. It is hard not to see Rorty’s quietism on these matters as an impediment to his larger goal of elaborating a philosophical pluralism that is inclusive of religion. Rorty’s critique of religion, we have seen, is guided by the idea that there is a discrepancy between the self-descriptions embedded in traditional monotheism and the central aspirations of philosophical pluralism. He is convinced that talk of obedience to something non-human, or of divine authority, or the love of truth, etc., gets in the way of the important business of imagining and building a liberal utopia. The task he sets himself is to provide alternative descriptions of monotheism, descriptions that are more congenial to the philosophical pluralist. But if these descriptions are to be anchored in something more than a groundless hope that the ideals of pluralism are realisable, we need some further anthropologically and historically informed account of the nature of the religious impulse and its modes of mutation. I do not see what favours we do philosophical pluralism by adopting a quietist stance on the nature of the human.

Nicholas H. Smith is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Australia.

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Notes 1

Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (Harmonsdworth: Penguin, 1999), 268. 2 Ibid, 237. 3 Ibid, 267. 4 Ibid, 272. 5 Richard Rorty, “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism,” in The Revival of Pragmatism, edited by Morris Dickstein, 23 (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1998). 6 For present purposes I shall confine myself mainly to the pragmatist philosophy of religion sketched by Rorty in “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism” (Ibid). While this sketch attempts to convey the spirit of pragmatism, it is not meant as a summary of the views actually held by James and Dewey. As Rorty makes clear, his own take on religion is closer to Dewey’s than James’s, and he explicitly rejects some of the central conclusions of James’s seminal The Varieties of Religious Experience. 7 Hans Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. and trans David E. Linge (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1976), 3. 8 Richard Rorty, “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism,” 28. 9 See e.g., Richard Rorty, “The Continuity between the Enlightenment and ‘Postmodernism’,” in What’s Left of Enlightenment? edited by Keith Michael Baker and Peter Hannis Reill (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2001), 1936. 10 See e.g., Richard Rorty, “Cultural Politics and the Question of the Existence of God,” in Radical Interpretation in Religion, edited by Nancy Frankenberry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 53-77. 11 Richard Rorty, “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism,” 22. 12 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 266. 13 Rorty sometimes writes as if commitment to democracy in general suffices as a source of solidaristic energy, but at other times, and more commonly, he anchors this abstract ideal in a specific democratic life form, or what he takes to be democracy in its highest stage, namely the U.S.; see Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1998). 14 Richard Rorty, “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism,” 29. 15 Ibid, 21. 16 See e.g., Charles Taylor, A Catholic Modernity? edited by James L. Heft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

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See e.g., Alasdair MacIntyre, Marxism and Christianity, second edition (London: Duckworth, 1995), 142. 18 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 160. 19 Ibid, 52. 20 Richard Rorty, “Hope and the Future,” Peace Review 14, 2 (2002): 152.

References Gadamer, Hans Georg. Philosophical Hermeneutics. Translated and edited by David E. Linge. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1976. MacIntyre, Alasdair. Marxism and Christianity. Second edition. London: Duckworth, 1995. Rorty, Richard. “Cultural Politics and the Question of the Existence of God.” In Radical Interpretation in Religion, edited by Nancy Frankenberry, 53-77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Rorty, Richard. “Hope and the Future.” Peace Review 14, 2 (2002): 149155. Rorty, Richard. “The Continuity between the Enlightenment and ‘Postmodernism’,” in What’s Left of Enlightenment? edited by Keith Michael Baker and Peter Hannis Reill, 19-36. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2001. Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and Social Hope. Harmonsdworth: Penguin, 1999. Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1998. Rorty, Richard. “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism,” in The Revival of Pragmatism, edited by Morris Dickstein, 21-36. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Taylor, Charles. A Catholic Modernity? edited by James L. Heft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Political Philosophy and Pluralism in a Globalised World Hanako Koyama

Abstract How can the language of political philosophy explain the process of globalisation? How can we envision a pluralistic global order without a world government? I will examine three conceptual issues in political philosophy that might help to understand the possibility of a pluralistic global political order in the current world. First, I will study the implication of republicanism for the study of the contemporary global order. Secondly, I will study Carl Schmitt’s exposition of the modern parliamentary democracy for analysing globalisation. Thirdly, I will examine the problem of global founding with the help of Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, and Jürgen Habermas. While I will discuss the three conceptual issues in political philosophy with regard to pluralism in the globalised world, my focus will be on the third one. From the perspective of postmodern philosophy, does the fact of global political order without a global state constitute a serious problem? Is the global social contract ever needed for the legitimation and stabilisation of a new world order? Following Habermas, I will claim that the realisation of a just global political order requires the conditions for unlimited flows of communication and rational opinion- and willformation across national and cultural borders.

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Political Philosophy and Pluralism in a Globalised World

___________________________________________________________ 1.

Introduction What concepts and ideas do contemporary political philosophers offer us to grasp globalisation? How do their philosophical resources help us to envision a pluralist, non-oppressive world order without a world government? In this paper, I will examine some of the discussions in contemporary political philosophy that might help to answer these questions. I will explore the possibility of pluralism in a globalised world today in terms of the plurality of political agents and principles, and will discuss the problem of governance that arises from such a vision. More specifically, my paper consists of three parts. First, I will examine Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s recent attempt to grasp the current global order as Empire. Secondly, I will study Carl Schmitt’s analysis of the “contradiction” between democratic and liberal principles in modern parliamentary democracy. Finally, I will discuss the postmodernist challenge to the relevance of the idea of world government. 2.

Global Order as a “Mixed Constitution” Hardt and Negri grasp the current global order as “Empire.” 1 Empire is the new form of sovereignty, regulating cultural and economic exchanges across the globe. Empire, unlike imperialisms of past centuries, extends over established boundaries or barriers, managing hybrid identities and plural exchanges. Decentered and deterritorialising, it exists “everywhere and nowhere,” engaging in “biopolitical production,” i.e., the production of social life itself through networks of command. 2 Although Hardt and Negri’s exposition of Empire offers many issues worthy of discussion, it is their potentially pluralistic vision of the world political constitution, in particular their appropriation of the republican notion of the mixed constitution, that interests me here. Using Polybius’s idea of the mixed constitution, they depict Empire as consisting of multiple political forces embodying different virtues, including monarchic, aristocratic and democratic ones. For them, the contemporary global order resembles Polybius’s description of the Roman imperial power as the supreme form of government. They argue that when we analyse the configurations of global power in its various bodies and organisations, we can recognise “a pyramidal structure that is composed of three progressively broader tiers, each of which contains several levels.” 3 Hardt and Negri describe the three “tiers” as follows: 4 first, there is one superpower, the United States, which holds hegemony over the global use of force. According to them, this is a superpower that can act alone but prefers to act in collaboration with others under the umbrella of the United Nations. The first tier also includes a set of powerful nationstates controlling the major global monetary instruments and exchanges.

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___________________________________________________________ These states are tied together by such privileged organisms as the G7 and the U.N. Security Council. The second tier includes the networks of transnational capitalist corporations which have extended throughout the world market - networks of capital flows, technology flows, population flows, and the like. The normal (i.e., weaker) sovereign states also exist at this level. Finally, the third tier of the pyramid consists of groups that purport to represent the global “people” and operate in their interest. The United Nations General Assembly and other national and transnational associations such as media, religious institutions and NGOs are included here. These associations are at least “relatively independent” of nationstates and capital. They function as part of global civil society, channelling the needs and desires of the multitude into forms that can be represented within the functioning of the global power structure. Thus, Hardt and Negri show the multi-dimensionality of the global political order being formed today. Importantly, their insight can be taken not just as empirical, but also as prescriptive. In the republican tradition, to which Polybius belongs, the idea of the mixed constitution suggests that a polity is more stable when the three elements - i.e., the monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic - are incorporated within a single polity. A monistic state undergoes a cyclical process: monarchy degenerates into tyranny, to be replaced by aristocracy; aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy, to be replaced by democracy; democracy degenerates into ochlocracy, the rule of the mob; this period of anarchy is followed by the emergence of primitive monarchy. The Roman state broke out of this cycle by blending the three elements in the single polity. To destroy this complex structure is to destroy or endanger the stability of the polity. In other words, a polity is more stable when it is pluralistic. 3. Carl Schmitt on the “Contradiction” between Parliamentarism and Democracy The possibility of pluralism in a globalised world can further be understood by attending to the different political principles that are operative there. Although a rather alien figure in a study about globalisation and pluralism, Carl Schmitt seems to offer us an interesting topic for discussion here. Schmitt’s political thought is usually associated with the concept of the state as the supreme political entity. Attacking the pluralist understanding of the state held by the Anglo-American political philosophers, Schmitt argues that pluralism in politics is conceivable only at the international level as an inter-state pluralism. For him, the bearers of pluralism must be the political unities as such, i.e., the states. “The plurality of states - that is, of the political unities of the different peoples is … the genuine expression of a rightly understood pluralism.” By

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___________________________________________________________ contrast, the national state is characterised by unity, or by the potential to prevent opposing groups from dissociating into an extreme enmity. 5 In his view, no other collective entities or organisations, including religious organisations and the family, can reasonably be called political. It is not Schmitt’s philosophy of the state or his decisionism that concerns me here, however. I am interested in appropriating his idea of the “contradiction” between liberalism and democracy in modern parliamentary democracy. For him, modern parliamentary democracy is characterised by the self-defeating attempt to realise two separate political principles that are in sharp opposition to each other - liberal parliamentarism and mass democracy. Although in his view this “contradiction” applies to the nation-state alone, I want to use his idea to get a grip on the operation of the global political constitution being formed today. Let me epitomise Schmitt’s analysis of the contradiction in The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923). According to him, the principle that underlies parliamentarism is that of openness and discussion. Parliamentarism is based upon the belief that an agreement can be reached through an open exchange of opinion that is governed by the norm of persuading one’s opponent through argument of the truth or justice. This in turn is tied to the conviction that the institutionalised process of discussion or deliberation will produce such an agreement. Although every member of a liberal polity can in principle discuss and form opinions about a given matter, it is the institutionalised discussion in the parliament, conducted by the selected representatives, that can reach at decisions which are conducive to the common good of the whole nation. By contrast, Schmitt says, democracy rests on the idea of the identity between the governing and the governed. The norms of discussion, openness, or truth do not play a role here. Moreover, democracy entails an idea that stands in direct opposition to liberalism - equality. Whereas liberal equality is the equality of all men qua men, democratic equality is the equality of those who are already equals. Schmitt says: “Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires homogeneity and, if the need arises, elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.”6 It is interesting to see that the liberal and democratic principles often clash with one another in the operations of international organisations and political negotiations. Within international organisations such as the U.N., the tension can be said to manifest itself as the one between the “elitist”-institutionalist logic of organisation, rooted in the tradition of the Concert of Europe of the 19th century, and the “democratic” notion of the equality of all sovereign nations. To take the

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___________________________________________________________ example of the U.N., we can see that the Security Council is based on the idea that the institutionalised deliberation of the few powerful nations will contribute to securing international peace and order. By contrast, the General Assembly embodies the principle of inter-state democracy, that is, the equality of all sovereign nations. 7 It demands that sovereign nations be treated equally; the situation that “some nations are more equal than others” is seen as unjust. Certainly, the philosophy behind the elitist form of international organisation is not exactly the same as the philosophy behind parliamentarism. Most significantly, parliamentarism at least assumes that the institutionalised discussion will result in a decision which is good for all members of the society; by contrast, the idea of the “concert” of powerful nations does not necessarily preclude the pursuit of their narrow national interests, which is justified as long as these nations are sovereign states. But even here, what is notable is the fact that the powerful nations increasingly try to act as global representatives that promote the interests of the world community as such, rather than as crude rulers or selfinterested nations. It is increasingly apparent that without such an effort they would not be able to obtain the kind of legitimacy needed for global leadership. 4.

The Problem of Governance This vision of a multi-layered, conflict-laden political order is certainly not without problems. Most significantly, it lacks the authority that can resolve the tensions between the various agents and principles. What happens if the agents existing at different levels act in discordance? How to balance the democratic demand and liberal-elitist conviction? Going back to Empire, Hardt and Negri tend to emphasise the harmony among Empire’s various agents. For them, the plurality of actors - i.e., monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic ones - does not primarily mean the plurality or antagonism of interests and values; rather, the actors are all seen as working together to penetrate and enhance Empire’s domination. Empire realises a single power that overdetermines all agents, “structures them in a unitary way, and treats them under one common notion of right that is decidedly postcolonial and postimperialist.” 8 In their view, international organisations, NGOs and civil associations all tend to act in collaboration with one another, creating a multi-levelled structure of governmentality. 9 In reality, the agents in the three tiers often act in opposition, as the recent case of the war on Iraq suggests. In this case, there was an opposition within the first tier (e.g., the U.S. and France), and between the first and third tier, especially the global civil society agents, which acted

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___________________________________________________________ in sharp opposition to the U.S. (e.g., the anti-war protest movement). In fact, another significant feature of Empire, according to the authors, is that its growth accompanies the rise of the counter-empire. Renewing an almost forgotten Marxist line of argumentation, they contend that within the womb of the Empire the seeds of the global republic of the multitude are hidden. 10 It is not sufficiently clear how the counter-empire of the multitude would overthrow Empire, or how the new political constitution of the new empire would look. What is clear is that we need to find ways of accommodating oppositions and tensions between relatively independent global actors and principles. Scholars typically discuss this problem as the one concerning the need for world government in the global arena. I will not go deeply into this rather old debate here. But I will present some issues for discussion. After the rise of postmodernism in political philosophy, is the idea of world government, more precisely the idea of the democratic institution of world government, still tenable? Is the global social contract ever needed for the legitimation and stabilisation of the current global order? If not, what alternative doctrines or methods can we adopt in resolving the conflicts and injustices that could arise from the excess of pluralism in the globalised world? A. The Institution of World Government: The Postmodernist Perspective The so-called postmodernists such as Jacques Derrida, JeanFrançois Lyotard and Hannah Arendt speak of the “myth” of the republican founding. 11 According to them, the foundation of a republic inevitably exhibits arbitrariness. In the American Revolution, for example, the constitutional assembly declared independence in the name of the “people” which did not exist before but was only constituted through the act of declaration itself. Applied to our context, this suggests that the global, democratic institution of world government would also entail arbitrariness. Such a project is practically impossible given the number and the diversity of the people involved; but even theoretically it cannot be achieved without arbitrariness. Who declares the institution of a world state in the name of the “we”? Whom does s/he represent? The government established by the unanimous and spontaneous agreement of all sovereign nations might be considered as just. But even this option is still problematic as the equality of sovereign states does not yet mean the equality of the people within each state. The postmodernists bring us the insight that what is problematic with the idea of the institution of world government is not that it would act despotically afterwards, but that the very institution of such a government always entails arbitrariness.

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___________________________________________________________ B. Discursive Transformation of the World Order - Arendt and Habermas This should not mean, however, that we must simply leave tension or conflict as it is, waiting for it to be resolved by some transhistorical force or power arrangements. While being sensitive to postmodern insight, we must find ways of directing our political practices in the contemporary world. The normative vision suggested by Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas might help us here. Arendt regards the principle of “mutual promise and common deliberation” as the supreme norm that must guide our political interaction. 12 Adopting her line of argumentation, Habermas insists on the centrality of discourse, which for him answers to the demands of both liberalism and democracy. 13 The Habermasian discourse, unlike the discussion in parliamentarism, must involve all those affected by the decisions in rational and fair deliberative settings. For him, not the idea of global founding but “the general accessibility of a deliberative process whose structure grounds an expectation of rationally acceptable results” must serve to transform the current global order. 14 Trying to steer the middle position between idealism and realism, he says: A functioning public sphere, the quality of discussion, accessibility, and the discursive structure of opinionand will-formation: all of these could never entirely replace conventional procedures for decision-making and political representation. But they do tip the balance, from the concrete embodiments of sovereign will in persons, votes, and collectives to the procedural demands of communicative and decision-making processes. Supposedly weak forms of legitimation then appear in another light. For example, the institutionalized participation of non-governmental organizations in the deliberations of international negotiating systems would strengthen the legitimacy of the procedure insofar as mid-level transnational decision-making processes could then be rendered transparent for national public spheres, and thus be reconnected with decision-making procedures at the grassroots level. 15 In this way, he says, we can progress toward “a world domestic policy, which is possible without a world government.” 16

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___________________________________________________________ Hanako Koyama is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science, New School University, New York.

Notes 1

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard UP, 2000). 2 Ibid, xi-xii, 3-9, 190. 3 Ibid, 309-315. 4 Ibid, 309-311. 5 Carl Schmitt, “Ethic of State and Pluralistic State,” in The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, ed. Chantal Mouffe, (London: Verso, 1999), 203-204. 6 Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1985), 9. 7 Toshiki Mogami, International Organizations (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1996), 29, 76. (Japanese) 8 Ibid, 9. 9 Nancy Fraser, “From Discipline to Flexibilization? Rereading Foucault in the Shadow of Globalization,” Constellation 10 (2003): 167. 10 Andreas Kalyvas, “Feet of Clay? Reflections on Hardt’s and Negri’s Empire,” Constellation 10 (2003): 264. 11 Cf. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 1963); Jacques Derrida, “Declarations of Independence,” New Political Science 15 (1986): 7-15; Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion (New York: Routledge, 2002); Jean-François Lyotard, “Notes on Legitimation,” Oxford Literary Review 9 (1987): 106-118. 12 Arendt, 214. 13 Cf. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contribution to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1996); Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1990). 14 Jürgen Habermas, The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2001), 110. 15 Ibid, 111. 16 Ibid, 104, 110.

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References Arendt, Hannah. On Revolution. New York: Penguin Books, 1963. Derrida, Jacques. “Declarations of Independence.” New Political Science 15 (1986): 7-15. Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion. New York: Routledge, 2002. Fraser, Nancy. “From Discipline to Flexibilization? Rereading Foucault in the Shadow of Globalization.” Constellation 10 (2003): 160-171. Habermas, Jürgen. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1990. Habermas, Jürgen. Between Facts and Norms: Contribution to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1996. Habermas, Jürgen. The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2001. Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2000. Kalyvas, Andreas. “Feet of Clay? Reflections on Hardt’s and Negri’s Empire.” Constellation 10 (2003): 264-279. Lyotard, Jean-François. “Notes on Legitimation.” Oxford Literary Review 9 (1987): 106-118. Mogami, Toshiki. International Organizations. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1996. (Japanese) Schmitt, Carl. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1985. Schmitt, Carl. “Ethic of State and Pluralistic State.” In The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, edited by Chantal Mouffe. London: Verso, 1999.


Part II Political Pluralism


Pluralist Imperialism: The Emergent Paradigm of U.S. Foreign Policy Avery Plaw

Abstract In view of the failure to uncover either weapons of mass destruction, or advanced programs for their development, or indeed any substantial connection between the Hussein regime and Al Qaeda, many critics have charged the American military intervention in Iraq has been wholly without justification. The Bush administration's indecisiveness over how to explain its decisions, and its inclination, when pressed, to appeal to a right of self-defense, have reinforced the impression of an overreactive, ad hoc foreign policy without coherent justification or rationale, and has tended to undermine the case more generally for American-led military intervention, especially without prior Security Council approval. This chapter contests this understandable assessment of U.S. policy by identifying a coherent framework at its core - a new paradigm that can be termed 'pluralist imperialism’. The chapter describes the main features of this paradigm and how it can be defended within the contexts of international politics and law. It shows, in particular, how this new policy paradigm coheres well with the idea of "conditional sovereignty" which is gaining prominence both within the American foreign policy establishment and within the United Nations itself.

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Pluralist Imperialism

___________________________________________________________ In the light of the wholesale failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, many commentators have concluded that the recent U.S.-led military intervention and the occupation that has followed are wholly bereft of justification. The Bush administration has fed such critiques in three ways: first, it has appeared indecisive and uncertain about how to explain its decision to intervene; second, the rationale to which it has most frequently appealed, a right of self-defense, seems particularly weak in light of the collapse of the case for Iraq having developed WMD; and finally, it has continued to emphasise the new Bush doctrine of preemptive or even preventive war which critics understandably see as demanding strong justification. The consequence has been that U.S. policy has wound up looking ad hoc, capricious and self-serving, and this perception has reinforced worries that American "cowboy diplomacy" is destabilising the international political system. 1 This paper elaborates a paradigm, bearing the seemingly oxymoronic title “pluralist imperialism,” which offers a coherent moral, political and legal rationale for recent U.S. interventions, and provides a basis for anticipating where the U.S. is most likely to intervene in the future. The background for the pluralist imperial paradigm is the recognition that while the U.N. and other multilateral international agencies are extremely important bodies that must be allowed to perform their allotted function in international politics, there are real limits on what we can expect such institutions to contribute to the maintenance of international order and to the protection of groups and individual human beings around the world. In the face of some crises, international institutions can be paralyzed by their political structure (as in Kosovo in 1999), or by their limited capabilities and resources (as in part, for example, in Rwanda in 1994). In short, international institutions need to be supplemented by the strong and independent actions of individual states, especially leading states, and most particularly the American hegemonic state. When confronted with crises that involve gross and systematic violation of fundamental human rights, or threaten the stability of the international order, states, and more particularly the hegemonic state, should reserve the right to intervene directly and immediately. Rapid and decisive action has the potential both to control immediate dangers and to deter future threats. If, however, such action is not to appear arbitrary (and hence threatening to everyone) and is to produce a substantial deterrent, it is important that the leading state outline the conditions (and the supporting rationale) under which it reserves the right to act.

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___________________________________________________________ 1.

The Pluralist Imperial Paradigm Contemporary American foreign policy can be usefully seen as employing the central notion of "conditional" political sovereignty as a means of explaining and justifying the right it reserves to act directly in the face of what it perceives as threats to persons or to the international order. The idea is that the state's right to the powers and privileges of sovereignty has become increasingly, and properly, contingent on the fulfillment of certain fundamental obligations both to the state's own citizens, and to the international community. On January 13, 2003 at Georgetown University, for example, the Director of Foreign Policy Planning at the State Department, Richard Haas, argued that sovereignty is not a blank check. Rather, sovereign status is contingent on the fulfillment by each state of certain fundamental obligations, both to its own citizens and to the international community. When a regime fails to live up to these responsibilities or abuses its prerogatives, it risks forfeiting its sovereign privileges – including, in extreme cases, its immunity from armed intervention…. Sovereignty is not absolute. It is conditional. 2 Haas' argument for the conditionality of sovereignty gestured towards two causes of the erosion of the tradition of absolute sovereignty which has played a dominant role in international politics from the establishment of the Westphalian state system in 1648. 3 He cited, first, historical evolution in the international political and economic environment, and, second, certain features of the institution of political sovereignty itself. Although Mr. Haas’ comments were relatively brief, his argument can be elaborated in the following terms. The international system is evolving rapidly, and the political concepts through which it is understood and governed must also evolve. Four areas of change stand out. To begin with, Stanley Hoffman stresses two key areas of evolution in the international system: first, the "internal disintegration or malfunction of many states," especially since the end of the cold war. 4 Some states have become wholly predatory, like Somalia and the Sudan, while others are wracked by warring ethnicities, like Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Russia, while still others have carried out genocides against their own populations, like Rwanda in 1994 and Cambodia in mid1970s. Hoffman, secondly, stresses the progressive emergence of a new body of international law after 1945, addressed not to states but to all human beings as such - that is, what Michael Ignatieff has described as the

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___________________________________________________________ "juridical revolution" of international human rights law. 5 As Czech President Vaclav Havel memorably put it at the NATO summit in Prague on the 20th of November 2002, "human life, human freedom and human dignity represent higher values than state sovereignty." 6 Together these developments produce a powerful rationale for "humanitarian interventions" to prevent or end gross and systematic violations of fundamental human rights, even where such interventions violate the Westphalian notion of absolute sovereignty. These are not, however, the only important developments in the international political system. Hoffman also notes the growing threat of "transnational terrorism." 7 John Ikenberry stresses that "catastrophic terrorism" renders each state vulnerable to atrocities planned and prepared abroad, particularly in light of the technological development of WMD. 8 Finally, and perhaps most broadly, the idea of the sovereign independence of states has been increasingly eroded by the much-discussed processes of economic and informational integration known as globalisation. States are growing interdependent so that developments in one country can instantaneously and profoundly affect another. As their interests have become increasingly intertwined, their vulnerability to one another has also grown. Together these four developments have placed enormous pressure on the traditional notion of absolute state sovereignty, and have drawn attention to two institutional features through which the state’s absolute autonomy may be moderated. State sovereignty emanates from two main sources: (first) from the claim of a national community or communities occupying a specifiable territory to a right of national self-determination, and (second) from the recognition of this claim by the other sovereign states and multilateral institutions which form the international system. The pluralist imperial paradigm emphasises the growing belief that sovereignty is extended on the condition of minimum respect for these sources of authority - that is, the communities of persons composing the nation, and the system of states of which a newly sovereign state becomes a part. As Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun have recently summarised, "It is now commonly acknowledged that sovereignty implies a dual responsibility: externally, to respect the sovereignty of other states, and internally, to respect the dignity and basic rights of all the people within the state." 9 When states violate these obligations, they undermine the sources of their own sovereign authority. Serious breeches of these minimal obligations would then potentially precipitate a suspension of recognition. In cases of clear default of obligations, any party to the establishment of sovereignty could declare it, in their eyes, suspended - whether the declarer is a nation within the offending state, or a state which had formerly recognised its

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___________________________________________________________ sovereignty, or an international body representing the authority of many states. Since the United States has emerged in the post-war period as the world's sole superpower, with a unique capacity to intervene effectively to protect human rights and to secure the integrity of the international system, its assessment of the responsibilities of sovereignty is particularly important. Four obligations of sovereignty in particular have been reflected in recent U.S. policy: (1) states must not engage in gross and systematic violations of human rights; (2) states must not foment terrorism; (3) states must not develop weapons of mass destruction (if they do not already possess them); and (4) states must not invade other states without just cause (where just cause is defined as obligations 1 to 3) Where a state violates an (or several) obligation(s), and international institutions prove unable to adequately act to protect persons or to ensure the stability of the international order, the U.S. retains the right to suspend recognition of the violator’s sovereignty, and then to intervene to protect human rights or the integrity of the international system. If successful, such intervention would generally involve a change of government in the offending state, followed by a restoration of sovereignty. In short, the U.S. reserves the right to act independently where (1) violations of basic obligations are clear and persistent, and (2) where international bodies prove unable or unwilling to act to adequately protect persons or the international order. Preferably, the U.S. will act with the cooperation of other independent states who recognise the same violations of the basic obligations of sovereignty, and are similarly willing to bear the costs and dangers of intervention. Where it does lead interventions, the U.S. will work to establish democracy and then withdraw. 10 As long as states respect their core, minimum obligations they may be of any type – the U.S. foreign policy thus embraces political and cultural pluralism (or diversity). When states violate minimum obligations, however, the U.S. retains the right to remove the offending government and establish democracy – it thus embraces a minimal imperialist role, ensuring the integrity of the international political system. In this way, it can supplement the U.N. by encouraging respect for minimal obligations, while at the same time respecting political and cultural diversity. Moreover, if countries in which successful interventions occur decide ultimately, following the withdrawal of occupying forces, to reform their new constitutional frameworks to diminish or eliminate democratic

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___________________________________________________________ elements, there is nothing to stop them - although like any country they may face some adverse diplomatic and economic consequences in their bilateral relations with Western powers. Evidently, this description provides only a rough sketch of the emergent pluralist imperial paradigm guiding U.S. foreign policy. Even the rough specification of these minimal obligations, however, provides a useful framework for explaining U.S.-led interventions in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The NATO intervention in Kosovo was precipitated by a clear violation of the first obligation of sovereignty. Evidence of widespread expulsions of Kosovar Albanians from the province, and of mass killings, between August 1998 and December 1999, along with Serbia's continued defiance of a Security Council Resolution directing it to end its military offensive in the province produced a clear mandate for intervention. 11 The U.N., hamstrung by Russian support for the Serbian government, proved unable to respond. The United States therefore opted to act through the smaller and more cohesive NATO military alliance. This is not to say that the bombing campaign that followed was necessarily the optimal form of intervention. Even, however, if one deplores the form of intervention, the rationale for action under the pluralist imperial paradigm was clear. In the aftermath, America and its allies have clearly worked to establish political and economic stability and to restore democracy. 12 In the case of Afghanistan, the Taliban government was in clear violation of the second obligation of sovereignty: it was clearly involved in fomenting terrorism, not only in hosting Osama Bin Laden during the planning of the September 11th (and other) terrorist attacks, but in supporting widespread training facilities for Al Qaeda operatives. A case can also be made for violation of the first obligation of sovereignty - that is, the proscription of gross and systematic violations of basic human rights - particularly in relation to its treatment of women and religious minorities. 13 Whether these policies, however, while clearly systematic, rose to the high standard of gross violations of basic human rights, remains contestable. Certainly there was little serious talk of direct intervention in any quarter (in this or in analogous cases) until the terrorist connection became unequivocally clear. Once it did, however, in all too tangible a form for the United States, swift military action in coordination with a widespread coalition followed. The threat was essentially deemed too immediate to allow for U.N. debate and deliberation. The U.S. and its supporting coalition, in coordination with the Northern Alliance within Afghanistan, rapidly achieved the overthrow of the Taliban government. Since this victory, the U.S. has contributed, along with its allies, to the

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___________________________________________________________ establishment of political and economic stability in Afghanistan (concentrating to begin with on the capital city of Kabul), and towards the establishment of full democracy. 14 Finally, in what has proved to be the most controversial recent intervention, the United States along with a comparatively small coalition of supporting states invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime. Both the legality and the moral legitimacy of this intervention have been widely criticised, but under the pluralist imperial paradigm, the rationale for action is by far the clearest of the three cases. While the United States emphasised violations of the third obligation of sovereignty - the obligation not to develop WMD (particularly in-so-far as such Iraqi programs had been specifically proscribed in previous U.N. resolutions) - it is nonetheless clear that Hussein's government had, at one time or another, violated all four of the basic obligations of sovereignty. It had engaged in gross and systematic violations of human rights - most notoriously in the gassing of Kurdish villages in the North, but also through a pervasive campaign of terror against the civilian population in general. It was clearly involved in fomenting terrorism, although not, as was sometimes suggested at the time of the invasion, with the financing of Al Qaeda. Mr. Hussein's government was involved, for example, in terrorist activities against the Israeli population - most notoriously with financially compensating the families of suicide bombers. It had also, albeit some years earlier, clearly violated the third obligation of sovereignty by initiating illicit programs to develop WMD - some of which it proved willing to employ against its own civilian population. Finally, it had also previously violated the fourth obligation of sovereignty by launching unprovoked invasions (justified by none of the foregoing three criteria) of neighbouring Iran and Kuwait - precipitating, in the latter case, the intervention of an American-led coalition under U.N. auspices to expel it from its victim's territory. In the months since its more recent Iraqi intervention, the United States has worked, along with its allies and the United Nations, to stabilise the country and to restore a working democracy. 15 For better or worse then, the pattern of American-led interventions finds a powerful rationale in the pluralist imperial paradigm. Moreover, it is already clear that this shift to an imperial pluralist orientation is not a product merely of Republican policy under the current Bush regime, but a pervasive shift in U.S. politics - after all, the decision to intervene in Kosovo in 1999 without direct U.N. approval was undertaken under Bill Clinton's Democratic administration. It may, however, be objected at this point that if the framework explains American interventions, it nonetheless fails to account for

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___________________________________________________________ American failures to intervene. Why, for example, did America not intervene forcibly when North Korea openly announced its explicit intention to violate the third obligation of sovereignty - not to develop WMD? Here it must be emphasised that the pluralist imperial framework reserves a right to intervene; it does not produce an obligation of intervention. Moreover, if a threat is not perceived as immediate, and if less invasive means to amend the violation of obligations of sovereignty suggest themselves, it is certainly sensible (although not strictly necessary) to explore such possibilities. Moreover, the deterrent impact of Americanled action does not rely on intervention in every single case of violation of the obligations of sovereignty - the possibility of U.S. action may in many cases be sufficient to deter violations. Finally, there may be practical limits to the application of American power to states violating the obligations of sovereignty, and a failed intervention would not only needlessly cost lives but would also do nothing do deter future violators. 16 I will return to some of these points in section 4, which examines some of the questions raised by the pluralist imperial paradigm. For the moment, I will turn to a closer examination of its legal and moral foundations. 2.

Building on the Precedent of Humanitarian Intervention A balance of rights and obligations of sovereignty lies behind the tradition of humanitarian intervention by individual states, and coalitions thereof, which dates back as a matter of international law to the writing of 17th century legal and political theorist Hugo Grotius. Grotius famously maintained that when confronted with states committing or permitting gross and systematic abuses of their population, abuses which, as Sir Hersh Lauterpacht later put it, "shock the conscience of mankind," other states were not only permitted, but were at least morally obligated, to interfere in the internal affairs of the offending country to put a stop to its shocking behaviour. 17 While the importance of this aspect of humanitarian law diminished somewhat in the early post-war period with the emergence of a range of universal and regional human rights instruments, it continued to be employed from time to time (for example, by India in reference to its intervention in East Pakistan in 1971), and has recently experienced a significant resurgence. 18 In particular, the tradition of direct humanitarian intervention without general international (for our purposes, U.N. Security Council) endorsement has been invoked in relation to some of the most horrific episodes of the last thirty years in the face of which international organisations and human rights instruments have been unwilling or unable to act decisively. One notable case was the Vietnamese intervention in 1978 to remove the genocidal regime of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in

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___________________________________________________________ Cambodia. While the Vietnamese sought to justify their action as a humanitarian intervention, it was nonetheless condemned widely at the time as a violation of international law. In retrospect, however, there are few who will argue today that the action was unjustified. The following year, Julius Nyerere's Tanzania, with the help of the British government, invaded Uganda to remove the regime of Idi Amin (estimated to have murdered 300 000 citizens during the 1970s). While the International community fell short of openly endorsing Tanzania's intervention, few countries strenuously condemned its action. The humanitarian context of the action was widely appreciated. More recently, the NATO intervention in Kosovo was widely justified as a humanitarian intervention on this model. The most powerful precedent driving the resurgence of humanitarian intervention as a legitimate tool of state policy, however, is not one of action, but of inaction. In 1994, the U.N., failed to prevent or confront the government-led massacre of Tutsis in Rwanda, despite the presence of a significant U.N. force in the country (UNAMIR), and in spite of a three month warning period and detailed knowledge of the government preparations being made to carry out widespread attacks on the Tutsi population. Once the open attacks against Tutsis began on April 6, it is estimated that more than 800 000 people were slaughtered in the most gruesome and inhumane fashion in the next 100 days. During the genocide, U.N. headquarters ordered its mission to withdraw. The Mission Commander, Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, refused the U.N. order to withdraw as a matter of conscience, and along with a Ghanaian contingent of peacekeepers remained in the country to protect the Tutsis who had taken refuge with him, and to record what details he could of the unfolding genocide. While General Dallaire's decision, since it was not made on behalf of a sovereign country and because it did little to actually stop the slaughter, cannot be categorised as a humanitarian intervention, the principle of defying the normal rules as an act of conscience is similar. Moreover, it is very difficult to deny, in the face of the impotence of the U.N., that it would not have been desirable for some country with the means to oppose the Rwandan Armed Forces and the Interhaemwe militias to have intervened directly. It is difficult to deny, then, that humanitarian interventions can play an important and productive role in contemporary international politics. Indeed, in light of the growing cases of humanitarian intervention led by the most powerful states in the world, the Independent International Commission on Kosovo concluded in 2000 that

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___________________________________________________________ The time is now ripe for the presentation of a principled framework for humanitarian intervention which could be used to guide future responses to imminent humanitarian catastrophes and which could be used to assess claims for humanitarian intervention. 19 Later that year, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged U.N. member states to attain a new consensus on the subject. The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) was set up by Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy to respond to Annan's request. The ICISS reported to Annan on December 18, 2001. 20 It recommended the recognition of states' "Responsibility to Protect" victims of systematic and pervasive violations of human rights when their own states fail to act or are themselves the perpetrator. In other words, it recommended a general legal basis for humanitarian interventions. 21 Indeed, as Ramesh Thakur, a delegate to the Committee, has pointed out (echoing Richard Haas' words), "The core principle of the ICISS is that state sovereignty implies responsibility," both to its own citizens and the community of states. 22 Annan called the ICISS document an "extraordinary and eloquent report," "the most comprehensive and carefully thought out response to date" to the issue of humanitarian intervention. 23 The case for humanitarian intervention then is both very strong, and increasingly widely accepted, even within the U.N., on a basis similar to that of the pluralist imperial paradigm. All of this is only to draw attention to the potent rationale underlying the resurgence of humanitarian interventions as a means of supplementing the activities of international agencies like the United Nations. In particular, the ICISS' new "responsibility to protect" provides a powerful rationale for intervention. It must be noted, however, that the ICISS report emphasised, in Thakur's words, that "[the Security Council]'s authorization should in all cases be sought prior to any military intervention." 24 On the other hand, the report also recommends a lowered standard of Security Council approval. For example, it suggests that Permanent Members give up their vetoes on questions of intervention. "Further,” as Joelle Tanguy points out, the report "proposes that when the council is unable or unwilling to act, intervention could be decided either by the General Assembly in Emergency Special Session under the 'Uniting for Peace' procedure or by regional organizations under Chapter VIII of the charter, subject to their seeking subsequent authorization from the Security Council." 25 Thakur goes as far as to suggest the idea of a 'red light' rather than the current 'green light' standard of approval; 26 that is, interventions would not require direct approval, but only that action not be

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___________________________________________________________ condemned by the Council. Under this standard, intervening states would not require direct U.N. endorsement, only the absence of a consensus disapproval. Moreover, a strong argument can be made that even this lowered standard coheres poorly with the idea of a state "responsibility to protect." In essence, once a state responsibility to act is recognised, it cannot plausibly be treated as contingent on a separate agency. If states carry the responsibility to protect, then they must be permitted to decide how that responsibility should be discharged. This is not to say of course that states considering intervention should not be encouraged to seek Security Council approval (or the absence of disapproval). It is only to say that the ultimate choice of whether or not to intervene must rest with those who bear the "responsibility to protect." As Adam Roberts put it sharply in reviewing the ICISS report, it "does not face up to the fact that strong military action, whether to protect a population, rescue hostages, or end a civil war, is generally best conducted by states or alliances rather than by the U.N." 27 Humanitarian intervention, however, only goes so far in relation to the pluralist imperial paradigm: that is, it only encompasses interventions justified by violations of the first obligation of statehood the obligation to prevent gross and systematic violations of human rights. Once, however, the principle of suspending sovereignty (and therefore breeching the principle of national self-determination) for violation of a core obligation of statehood is accepted, then the way is open to examining the full range of core obligations of sovereignty and the question of whether their violation might potentially incur a similar suspension. If states have a responsibility to protect victims within a state who are subject to shocking human rights violations, do they not also have a responsibility to protect victims whose rights are violated in inter-state conflict, and to deny human rights abusers like terrorists the state support they need to do their work (and the possibility of getting their hands on WMD, with which they could do their work so much more effectively)? 3.

Further Grounds for Intervention Humanitarian interventions obviously focus primarily on the violation of internal obligations of states to their own nationals. Attacks across recognised borders, however, can, in some instances, equally "shock the conscience of mankind," and there is nothing in the principle or practice of humanitarian intervention that prevents an outside country from coming to the help of a beleaguered country subject to attack and humanitarian abuses by another (for example, East Timor by Indonesia following the Portuguese withdrawal in 1975). This elaboration of humanitarian intervention already brings us close to the fourth obligation

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___________________________________________________________ of sovereignty in the pluralist imperial paradigm - that countries not engage in unprovoked attacks on one another. Indeed, this principle is enshrined in Article 2 of the U.N.'s own Charter. The essential point which needs to be made here is that international recognition is as essential to the establishment of sovereignty as internal acceptance and legitimacy. It therefore makes sense to treat the international obligations of sovereignty as seriously as the internal obligation to protect its citizens. Moreover, just as it makes sense that when international agencies are unable (or unwilling) to respond to purely domestic atrocities that "shock the conscience of mankind" that a right of intervention should fall to individual states, so it makes sense (particularly in an age of WMD) that when countries fail in their core international obligations, and so present a threat to other states in the international political system, and where international agencies prove unable (or unwilling) to act, that a right to intervene again falls on individual states most particularly, on the state with the greatest capacity to intervene decisively, in our case the United States. Again, this right coheres fully with the "responsibility to protect" human beings from victimisation and abuse. The second and third (and the full sense of the fourth) obligation of sovereignty would then represent the United State's (plausible) assessment of what all states owe to the international system: specifically, not to foment terrorism, not to develop weapons of mass destruction, and not to invade one another without cause - all of which present grave threats to people both within and outside offending states as well as to the integrity of the international system. Where such obligations are violated, and international agencies prove unable or unwilling to act, the United States then reserves a right of intervention. Where it intervenes, however, it will also recognise an obligation to help to restore stability on the ground and to reconstruct the autonomous capacities of the country towards an eventual restoration of sovereignty. In this pursuit, it commits itself to working towards the establishment of a functional democracy as at least a caretaker form of government - and this for three reasons: (1) because democracy is, in its own view, the best form of government; (2) because democracy is the form of government most sensitive to the will of the people, which must ultimately determine the form and character of the government; and (3) because democratic government is least likely to lead to further violations of core internal or external obligations of sovereignty, at least in the short run. We have thus seen the overall character and dynamics of the pluralist imperial paradigm as well as its application to some important and controversial aspects of U.S. policy. We have also seen the underlying rationale which explains and legitimates the policy. It remains to consider

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___________________________________________________________ some questions and challenges that naturally arise in response to this policy framework. Before turning to these important challenges to the pluralist imperial paradigm, however, it will be helpful to briefly consolidate what has been established regarding its foundations. There is a strong and longstanding legal tradition supporting states' right of intervention in order to restrain serious, pervasive and systematic violations of human rights. There is also reason for arguing that this tradition has shown its relevance and importance today. Moreover, while this traditional legal foundation for intervention focuses particularly on the internal obligations of sovereignty, important legal foundations have emerged over the last sixty years for extending the duties of sovereignty to encompass international obligations. In relation, for example, to the second obligation - that is, not to foster terrorism - a significant body of international law has emerged in the last thirty years. Four major international conventions on the suppression of terrorism have been adopted by large majorities of the international community between 1973 and 1999. 28 Indeed, in September 2001, the U.N. Security Council Adopted Resolution 1373, which made any support for international terrorism a violation of international law. 29 Moreover, the resolution was passed under Chapter VII, the most severe category of U.N. resolutions, which includes the possibility of employing armed force to arrest criminal behaviour. There is no doubt then that both terrorism, and any support for it, is clearly established as a serious crime under international law. Moreover, U.N. member states clearly recognised that the threat is transnational in nature, and that they therefore share an important interest in responding forcefully to the threat at an international level. Admittedly, however, the focus of all of these documents was on suppression of terrorism through either domestic law or common actions through multilateral institutions like the United Nations. Nonetheless, it is a short step to states taking the initiative to address this threat, particularly in light of the apparent inability of international institutions to stem the tide of terrorism, the growing volume and magnitude of terrorist attacks around the world, and the growing evidence that some U.N. members (rogue states) have themselves played a key role in facilitating the growth of international terrorism. Something very similar can be said concerning the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. States have recognised the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction through bi-lateral treaties and through the negotiation and widespread acceptance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968), and the Convention on the

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___________________________________________________________ Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (1972). Again, of course, these conventions provide for continuous oversight by a convention committee in cooperation with international organisations like the United Nations, not for enforcement by individual states and coalitions through direct military intervention. Nonetheless, there is a strong case to be made that the growing range and availability of weapons of mass destruction in recent years, particularly in combination with the growing threat posed by terrorists, demand more aggressive means of enforcement (or at least a credible threat of such means). The paradigm of pluralist imperialism would draw on such an all-too-real possibility, in combination with the precedent of humanitarian intervention, to justify a right of proactive intervention as a means of protecting both citizens of states developing weapons of mass destruction as well as the citizens of other states making up the international political system. The final condition permitting direct military intervention under the pluralist imperial paradigm is unjustified inter-state aggression. Here there are ample precedents for intervention - states have often (although not always) intervened to protect other (allied) states against unjustified aggression by some third state, and in some cases they have, once successful, insisted on the removal of the regime which initiated the unjustified aggression. Allied participation in World War II, for example, began with an attempt to protect Poland from unjustified German aggression, and ended with insistence on Unconditional Surrender followed by military occupations (of axis powers) under which, consistent with the pluralist imperial paradigm, not only were the offending governments removed and prosecuted before international tribunals, but the entire states were re-organised into liberal democracies. States always have retained the right to act to protect themselves, their allies, and sometimes other countries from unjustified aggression and, if possible, to hold those who commit 'crimes against the peace' accountable. The incorporation of this right within the pluralist imperial paradigm would be less like the recognition of a new right, or even the extension of an existing right, than it would be a limitation and systematisation of that right - that is, a specification of exactly what types of aggression that can be legitimately opposed (i.e., all except those justified on one of the first three grounds). Of course, it always remains preferable to act with the authorisation of the major international organisations, especially the United Nations. In cases, however, where the U.N. proves ultimately unable or unwilling to authorise action, the right would be retained to act outside the organisation to protect the ends to which the organisation is devoted - that is, the protection of individuals both within and outside the

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___________________________________________________________ directly affected countries as well as the stability of the international system as a whole. In light of the preceding discussion, I believe that it is clear that the underlying framework of the current American foreign policy is, at least on preliminary investigation, neither incoherent, nor without clear rationale or justification, nor necessarily detrimental to international order. The pluralist imperial paradigm does, however, raise a series of questions about its ramifications and desirability, some of the most important of which I will attempt to address in the following section. 4.

Questions and Challenges The first question that is bound to arise in outlining such a policy paradigm is whether the intention is simply descriptive or positively normative - am I simply saying that things are like this today, or am I trying to justify this development? The answer is a little of both. Before critically assessing the paradigm of U.S. policy it is important to offer a generous reading of what that paradigm is. This chapter is devoted primarily to that preliminary step. In this section, I will consider some troubling questions, and what defenses can be offered for the imperial pluralist paradigm in their light. I will argue that the paradigm is cogent and not unreasonable. This does not mean, however, that it is the best possible policy paradigm. This is a matter that readers will have to judge for themselves. My hope is that drawing out the underlying policy paradigm will help them to do that. If the pluralist imperial framework then offers a rationale for U.S. policy, why should other states believe that the U.S. will consistently follow this rationale, and not turn interventions to its own interest? Why should they defer to U.S. leadership? The answer is at least in part that the maintenance of a stable and legitimate liberal world order is in the American interest, both commercially and politically. Indeed, the American government played a particularly significant role in creating the current world order after the Second World War. It is increasingly evident, however, that the international organisations, like the United Nations, created to preserve and regulate that order are in themselves insufficient to ensure its health and survival. The United States then has a clear motivation for adopting a more pro-active role in ensuring the international order, especially in-so-far as it need not overcommit its extensive but limited resources. It also has an incentive to respect its own guidelines, especially in-so-far as its policy requires the support of other states and to some degree of the international community as a whole. As to why other states should defer to an increased U.S. role, many of them share an interest in the preservation of the order and in the

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___________________________________________________________ protection of the weak against unprovoked aggression and exploitation (especially in-so-far as many of them are among the weak and potentially exploited). Moreover, in-so-far as they retain their freedom to approve or condemn, and to cooperate with or oppose U.S. actions, they may play a critical and continuing role in regulating U.S. behaviour and ensuring that its interventions serve the general good. These considerations will not apply equally to all states, but as long as a majority share such interests, the pluralist imperial framework may provide a viable basis for preserving and strengthening the international order. Why, however, should the Americans be given such a leading role in advancing the international order? In short, because it can. The United States remains the most powerful state in the world, militarily and economically. America, therefore, has the greatest power to preserve (or, should they abandon it entirely, to destroy) the order. When there is a need to protect life or peace, the first responsibility to act falls on those with the means to act. The Americans, then, in virtue of their power, have the first responsibility to take action. If the Americans, however, reserve a right to act militarily (in certain circumstances) with or without the approval of international organisations, won't other states insist on the same right of action? It is likely that some will. As a practical matter, however, the limitations of their power will constrain their interventions, at least at a global level. They may, however, choose to act regionally. This need not present a problem provided that they act in good faith, in light of genuine violations of the obligations of sovereignty. America need not be jealous of sharing its responsibilities, and, in-so-far as the interventions are well-justified, it is unlikely that it will. If, however, the interventions are unjustified, the U.S. and the international community retain the right to refuse cooperation, to condemn such interventions and to render them politically too costly to sustain, and, in the extreme case where interventions violate the obligations of sovereignty, to intervene forcibly to bring them to an end. Finally, won't the adoption of a more pro-active American policy tend to marginalise the United Nations and other international bodies, and even threaten the authority of international law? The answer is that international bodies, and the U.N. in particular, retain first authority to act, and American (or other countries') direct actions remain an extraordinary recourse to be employed only in cases of clear and persistent violation of the obligations of sovereignty where international institutions prove unable (or unwilling) to act. In this sense, they may be seen as a supplement, rather than an affront to the mandate and purview of international institutions. Moreover, interventions will remain dependent in practice, given their difficulties, on the ultimate approval, or at least

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___________________________________________________________ tacit acceptance, of international institutions. No doubt, the adoption of pluralist imperialism recognises the limits of the capacity of international bodies to protect human lives and preserve the international order, but it is a mistake to imagine that it creates such limits. On investigation, then, the emergent pluralist imperial framework of American policy is animated by a coherent and compelling rationale (in the need to protect persons and peace), and exhibits both internal coherence and continuity with traditions of international law. Moreover, it need not marginalise international institutions or throw the international political system into chaos. While none of this proves the desirability of such a policy framework either from a strictly American perspective, or from that of the remainder of the international community, it does at least show, I hope, that this is a genuine and complex question, warranting further examination. Avery Plaw is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

Notes 1

To site just one example of a very widely employed characterization, see the Infact report on "cowboy diplomacy" (10 June 2004). . 2 Richard Haas, "Sovereignty: Existing Rights, Evolving Responsibilities," (9 June 2004). . 3 For a good, if critical, discussion of the shift from absolute to conditional sovereignty, see J.A. Coady, "War for Humanity: A Critique," in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, ed. Deen Chatterjee and Don Scheid, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 281-3. 4 Stanley Hoffman, "Intervention: Can it go on? Should it go on?" in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, 21-2. 5 Michael Ignatieff, “Human Rights as Politics” in Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 5. 6 See Vaclav Havel, "The Transformation of NATO," (8 June 2004). . 7 Stanley Hoffman, 21. 8 G. John Ikenberry, "America's Imperial Ambition," Foreign Affairs, 81 (September 2002): 44.

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Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, "The Responsibility to Protect," Foreign Affairs 81, 6 (Nov/Dec 2002): 102. 10 For a good discussion of American's characteristic efforts to promote democracy through military intervention, and its at least moderate success, see Mark Peceny, "Forcing Them to Be Free," Political Research Quarterly 52, 3 (September 1999): 549-82; also James Meernick, "United States Military Interventions and the Promotion of Democracy," Journal of Peace Research 33, 4 (1996): 391-402; and Margaret Hermann and Charles Kegley, "The Use of U.S. Military Interventions to Promote Democracy: Evaluating the Record," International Interactions 24, 2 (1998): 91-114. 11 See "Kosovo/Kosova: As Seen, As Told, An Analysis of the Human Rights Findings of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission, October 1998 to June 1999," (12 June 2004). . 12 See, for example, Karin Von Hippel, "Democracy By Force: A Renewed Commitment to Nation-Building," Washington Quarterly 23, 1 (2000): 95–112. 13 See U.N. Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, Reports on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, (14 June 2004) . 14 See, for example, Larry Goodson, "Afghanistan's Long Road to Reconstruction," Journal of Democracy 14, 1 (2003): 82-99. 15 See, for example, Daniel Bynan and Kenneth Pollack, "Democracy in Iraq?" Washington Quarterly 26, 3 (2003): 119-36. 16 For a defence of selectivity in interventions see Chris Brown, "Selective Humanitarianism: In Defense of Inconsistency," in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, 31-48; also see Michael Ignatieff, “Human Rights as Politics,” 40-8. 17 Lauterpacht quoted in Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law, (Fifth Edition 1998), 341; Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli Ac Pacis Libri Tres, Vol II. In J.B. Scott, The Classics of International Law, trans by Francis W. Kelsey (New York: Oceana Publications Inc, 1964), 580-4. 18 Indeed, commentators like James Gow, for example, have begun to speak of a revolution in international affairs in favor of humanitarian intervention dating from the late 1990s: James Gow, "A Revolution in International Affairs?" Security Dialogue 31, 3 (2000): 293-306. 19 Independent International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 10.

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For the report, see (14 June 2004). 21 See, for example, Ramesh Thakur, "Intervention, Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect," Security Dialogue 33, 3 (2002): 323-340. 22 Ibid, 330. 23 Remarks of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to International Peace Academy Seminar on "The Responsibility to Protect," New York, 15 February 2002, quoted in Thakur, 338. 24 Ramesh Thakur, 334. 25 Joelle Tanguy, "Redefining Sovereignty and Intervention," Ethics and International Affairs 17, 1 (Spring 2003): 145. 26 Ramesh Thakur, 335. 27 Adam Roberts, "The Price of Protection," Survival 44 (2002): 161. 28 (9 June 2004). 29 (9 June 2004).

References Brownlie, Ian. Principles of Public International Law, Fifth Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Brown, Chris. "Selective Humanitarianism: In Defense of Inconsistency," in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, edited by Deen Chatterjee and Don Scheid, 31-50. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Bynan, Daniel and Kenneth Pollack. "Democracy in Iraq?" Washington Quarterly 26, 3 (2003): 119-136. Coady, J.A. "War for Humanity: A Critique" in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, edited by Deen Chatterjee and Don Scheid, 274-295. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Evans, Gareth and Mohamed Sahnoun. "The Responsibility to Protect." Foreign Affairs 81, 6 (Nov/Dec 2002): 99-110. Goodson, Larry. "Afghanistan's Long Road to Reconstruction." Journal of Democracy 14, 1 (2003): 82-99.

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___________________________________________________________ Gow, James. "A Revolution in International Affairs?" Security Dialogue 31, 3 (2000): 293-306. Grotius, Hugo. De Jure Belli Ac Pacis Libri Tres. Volume II. In The Classics of International Law, edited by J.B. Scott, trans by Francis W. Kelsey. New York: Oceana Publications Inc., 1964. Haas, Richard. "Sovereignty: Existing Rights, Evolving Responsibilities," U.S. Department of State. (9 June 2004). Havel, Vaclav. "The Transformation of NATO," NATO, Prague Summit: NATO Speeches. (8 June 2004). Hermann, Margaret and Charles Kegley, "The Use of U.S. Military Interventions to Promote Democracy: Evaluating the Record," International Interactions 24, 2 (1998): 91-114. Hoffman, Stanley. "Intervention: Can it go on? Should it go on?" in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, edited by Deen Chatterjee and Don Scheid, 2130. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Ignatieff, Michael. “Human Rights as Politics” in Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, edited by Amy Gutmann, 3-52. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Ikenberry, G. John. "America's Imperial Ambition." Foreign Affairs, 81, 5 (September 2002): 44-60. Independent International Commission on Kosovo. The Kosovo Report. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. "The Responsibility to Protect." (14 June 2004). Meernick, James. "United States Military Interventions and the Promotion of Democracy," Journal of Peace Research 33, 4 (1996): 391-402.

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___________________________________________________________ OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. "Kosovo/Kosova: As Seen, As Told, An Analysis of the Human Rights Findings of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission, October 1998 to June 1999." (12 June 2004). Peceny, Mark. "Forcing Them to Be Free." Political Research Quarterly 52, 3 (September 1999): 549-582. Roberts, Adam. "The Price of Protection." Survival 44 (2002): 157-161. Tanguy, Joelle. "Redefining Sovereignty and Intervention." Ethics and International Affairs 17, 1 (Spring 2003): 141-8. Thakur, Ramesh. "Intervention, Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect." Security Dialogue 33, 3 (2002): 323-340. United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1373. (9 June 2004). United Nations Treaty Collection: Conventions on Terrorism. (9 June 2004). U.N. Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights. "Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan." (14 June 2004). Von Hippel, Karin. "Democracy By Force: A Renewed Commitment to Nation-Building." Washington Quarterly 23, 1 (2000): 95-112.


Value-pluralism and Human Rights* Mark Sivarajah

Abstract Value-pluralism has emerged as both an element of, and a challenge to, liberalism. It is argued that pluralism differs not only from the liberal doctrine of reasonable disagreement, which attempts to distinguish between procedural and substantive values, but also from relativism and subjectivism. Value-pluralism broadly defines itself by what it is not, namely a monistic doctrine predefining how human beings reason and conduct themselves morally. However, as it will be defined, valuepluralism also possesses two constitutive criteria: incommensurability and the objectivity of values. It is argued that, contrary to popular belief, these criteria are not mutually exclusive. The liberal doctrine of reasonable disagreement is that which dominates contemporary human rights discourse and practice. It is argued that if some values are incommensurable - not able to be accommodated within a single life or measured hierarchically on a single scale - and are prone to conflict, then no moral principles, liberal or otherwise, can enjoy pride of place. One of the implications for this in the realm of practical policy is that the belief that liberal institutions are the best means of promoting diversity needs further examination. Moreover, the difficulties in facing such a claim are forceful, and are not resolved by liberal theorists and practitioners who acknowledge value-pluralism but attempt to prioritise liberal principles, however tenuously conceived.

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Value-Pluralism and Human Rights

___________________________________________________________ The acknowledgement of moral conflict is not new to the history of ethics. From Socrates to Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Marx, and to John Rawls and his followers in our own time, the acknowledgment of moral conflict has been a constitutive feature of any attempt to harmonise values and beliefs. Evidently, it is still commonplace to assume that our everyday experience can be fine-tuned so as to minimise and accommodate, if not to ultimately resolve, moral conflict. It is with the political significance of these conflicts that this paper concerns itself. The thesis advanced is that moral conflicts in the political domain are best interpreted and accommodated through what has come to be called value-pluralism, rather than attempting to explain away moral conflict by denying the possibility of moral knowledge, or by reducing morality to a set of decision-theoretic legalist principles. The thesis proposes a descriptive account of political morality that in turn possesses normative implications, and concludes by positing that the fundamental assumptions, upon which contemporary human rights discourse and practice rest are, in large instances, redundant in adjudicating between conflicting values. Although in its contemporary form value-pluralism can be located in Oxford intuitionists such as Ross and Pritchard, it was most forcefully explicated through the writings of Isaiah Berlin. Berlin’s account of philosophy was one in which more than one sort of question was excluded from the realm of the determinately answerable. Among these were questions of value, which were, in his view, ultimately contestable. 1 There are many objective ends, ultimate values, some incompatible with others, pursued by different societies at different times, or by different groups in the same society, by entire classes or churches or races, or by particular individuals within them, any one of which may find itself subject to conflicting claims of uncombinable, yet equally ultimate and objective ends… Incompatible though these ends may be; but their variety cannot be unlimited, for the nature of men, however various and subject to change, must possess some generic character if it is to be called human at all. This holds a fortiori of differences between entire cultures. 2 Pluralism has as its central thesis that there are many diverse and worthwhile forms of life that at times will be prone to conflict. Berlin was

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___________________________________________________________ evidently concerned with illuminating the imperfections in human life, contrasting pluralism with ‘monism’. By monism he referred to three sets of interrelated beliefs: the belief that all propositions have true answers; that those answers are knowable, in principle, to all men; and that those answers are in turn compatible with each other. Berlin’s political philosophy was permeated by the idea that there cannot be a world without loss when values conflict and choices need to be made, and that any alternative view that explained away this irredeemable feature of the human condition must be rendered incoherent. For Berlin, the fact that we cannot have everything in moral life was a necessary, rather than a contingent, truth. Where philosophy had traditionally become preoccupied with answering fundamental questions in a timeless and perennial fashion, for Berlin philosophy, moral and political philosophy in particular, had to occupy itself with a “far more humble task.” 3 Value-pluralism in contemporary political philosophy has come to be most closely associated with differing forms of liberalism. Indeed Berlin himself, throughout his writings, although acknowledging that liberalism and value-pluralism were not the same or even overlapping concepts, nevertheless - by prioritising negative liberty - argued that liberalism and value-pluralism were compatible. Although acknowledging that political society cannot be a voluntary association, and that we find ourselves in a particular society at a particular moment of historical time, John Rawls nevertheless always maintained the lexical priority of his procedural liberal principles of liberty and equality, essentially assigning a priority to these deontic concepts, 4 in turn attempting to separate morality and law, by distinguishing between substantive and procedural values. However, this separation reposes on some substantive moral insights of its own. “Behind these Kant-derived formulae stands one of the most fundamental insights of modern Western civilisation, the universal attribution of moral personality; in fundamental ethical matters, everyone ought to count, and all ought to count in the same way.” 5 Therefore, although aware of moral diversity and conflict, and seemingly increasingly sensitive to its existence in later writings, Rawls ultimately failed in his attempt to provide a moral theory that is value-neutral. In lexically ordering his two principles of justice, 6 moral conflict is reduced to a set of decision-theoretic principles, omitting the fact that these principles may themselves conflict. Consequently, whilst seemingly acknowledging the plurality of moral life, Rawls’s ‘reasonable pluralism’ cannot be described as pluralist at all. Rather, it seeks to reduce plurality to a set of constitutional measures. 7 As Charles Larmore notes,

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___________________________________________________________ There have indeed been some who have equated Rawls’s concern with Berlin’s. Yet the two cannot possibly be the same. What Rawls (like others) calls pluralism is the expectable inability of reasonable people to agree upon a comprehensive conception of the good. What Berlin has so memorably described as pluralism, however, is precisely a deep and certainly controversial account of the nature of the good, one according to which objective value is ultimately not of a single kind but of many kinds. Doctrine and reasonable disagreement about doctrine can hardly be the same thing. 8 Larmore’s reorientation of the Rawlsian deontological stance represents a fuller engagement with the problems posed to liberalism by value-pluralism, subsequently dropping the pretence of value-neutrality and incorporating the two hierarchically superior moral principles of ‘rational dialogue’ and ‘equal respect’. Political liberalism, Larmore tells us, is needed if we are to avoid the odious option where “ignorant armies clash by night.” 9 In other words, conceptions of the good cannot function but for the presumption of liberal institutions. It is an argument that Larmore traces back to early modern times, to theorists of toleration such as Locke and Bayle, and of natural law, such as Grotius and Pufendorf, who were responding to “reasonable disagreement about the nature of the true religion and who sought principles that could be affirmed on a non-sectarian basis.” 10 For Larmore, the belief that there is a necessary connection between pluralism and liberalism is a misguided one. Nevertheless, both Rawls and Larmore’s definitions of pluralism are misrepresentative. Pluralism is indeed a thesis that espouses that objective value is ultimately not of a single kind but of many kinds; but can it itself be conceived of as a (controversial) version of the good? If pluralism has in mind the creation of a ‘pluralist utopia’ that would resemble something like an ideal society - in which everyone pursued diverse ultimate ends, but where the eradication of conflict between these ultimate ends and values could be realised - it seems that pluralism would have to concede to the force of Larmore’s argument. This, after all, would represent a preconceived conception of an ideal state of affairs. Alternatively, if this state of affairs resembled a state in which all moral agents, although pursuing differing ultimate ends and values, were to act as ‘good pluralists’ in a manner which predetermined the way in which

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___________________________________________________________ good moral agents were to act; this too would resemble something like a predetermined notion of what a good life or polity may look like. Berlin also wrongly espoused that certain moral principles, specifically negative liberty, are to be prioritised within a plural moral universe. Alternatively, pluralism is concerned with the fact there are a multiplicity of values and ends that can be pursued in moral life and that conflict is an inherent part of their existence. This is something similar to what Joseph Raz refers to as ‘competitive pluralism’, which admits the validity of distinct and incompatible moral virtues, but also of virtues which tend, given human nature, to encourage intolerance of other virtues. 11 The fact that this kind of competitive pluralism is endemic to value-pluralism, and that values necessarily crowd each other out, denies the idea of a rationalised pluralist utopia, or the possibility of espousing that agents should act in accordance with a predefined pluralist course of action. Predefining a pluralist course of action is not only morally untenable, but also a logical impossibility. The boundaries of what practical reasoning may hope to achieve are not fixed. Nevertheless, and as we will see, it is not that pluralism cannot offer a broad schema of concern in which it is possible to identify some sources from which normativity may spring. On the other hand, political liberalism cannot avoid predetermining how good moral agents will act if they are not to stretch liberalism to the point of vacuity. If an agent acts out of accordance with these philosophically abstract summations, they are evidently acting wrongly. However, value pluralism is a thesis about values, and not itself a political ideal. In this sense it is meta-ethical. If true, pluralism seeks to illuminate the diversity of our moral and political world, in turn seeking to create some normativity from the existence, and subsequent structure, of values that exist in the world. Pluralism is not to be valued in and of itself; hence, Larmore’s charge, that pluralism is a doctrinal version of the good, cannot carry any weight. In distinguishing pluralism from political liberalism it is necessary to expound pluralism’s most controversial criteria, that of the incommensurability of value, and how pluralism, entailing incommensurability, differs from relativism and subjectivism. Of all the dancing around the concept of incommensurability, to say that two values are incommensurable is arguably best stated by Joseph Raz, who notes that, “A and B are incommensurate if it is neither true that one is better than the other nor true that they are of equal value.” 12 A significant result of this is the case where this statement is neither true nor false, what Raz refers to as the indeterminacy of value.

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___________________________________________________________ One may counter this definition of incommensurability by noting that this resultant indeterminacy can be more appropriately described as an error, a mistaken judgment; something that is not new to issues of moral and practical reasoning. Following this form of reasoning, one may say to a Muslim woman wearing a veil that her moral judgment is mistaken in the sense that she does not know the decision that contains the most good in this instance the valuation of freedom of expression. Mistaken, that is, in much the same way that we may be mistaken in looking into the distance thinking that we are seeing Peter, but as the figure comes closer we realise it to be Paul. In the Protagoras Socrates dismissed the idea of Akrasia - where deliberative rationality breaks down - conjecturing that scientific knowledge of the good was a sufficient condition for one to make a correct choice. 13 That is, if we possess knowledge of a correct quantitative standard in each particular case, and if this singleness of standard holds across all cases we may attain a reliable connection between the beliefs that are the outcome of weighing and an agent’s actual choices. 14 However, incommensurability denotes that it is not possible to use quantitative judgments when individuals or societies are faced with making a choice between two incommensurable values. The test of incommensurability is what Raz refers to as a failure of transitivity: “Two valuable options are incommensurable if (1) neither is better than the other, and (2) there is (or could be) another option which is better than one but is not better than the other.” 15 This needs two lines of defence. Raz draws on one, I would like to draw on another. Firstly, for Raz, it is incorrect to assume that if A is not worse than B and C is better than A it follows that C is better than B. Taking account of people’s own reasons for valuations - an impossible task to complete exhaustively - may show that C is better than A, but not better than B. Hence, the introduction of a third value can go no way to reconciling the conflict. Secondly, it has been proposed by a recent commentator that it is possible to achieve “parity” by ascribing a covering value to resolve the resultant indeterminacy. Subsequently, if A and B are seemingly incommensurable, so the argument goes, it is possible to ascribe a third value Ø into the picture. 16 Following this line of argument, we may use the covering value of bravery to resolve the dilemma of Sartre’s young Frenchman who has to choose between going to fight for his country against the Nazis or alternatively whether to stay at home and assist his sick mother. However, it is not nihilistic to ask why that particular covering value is to be used and not another, say that of obligation embedded in the promise to his mother, whom he loves dearly, that he would never leave her side? Sartre’s young man faces a significant choice that results in a moral dilemma. There are cases of insignificant

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___________________________________________________________ incommensurable options in which covering values may be able to offer some guide. Nevertheless, I will not dwell on this latter type, for it is types of the former that are most pertinent to the argument thus far. At this point it is worth stating two further analytical distinctions. Firstly, to say that two values are incommensurable is not to say that they are immeasurable. Rather, it is that these values cannot be measured against each other on the same hierarchically ordered scale. In other words, they cannot be ranked. Ranking presumes what the relevant choice criteria are to be. Thus, attempts to quantify value down to absolute measurements of overall welfare, 17 or to explain values in terms of their cost benefit to individuals and societies, cannot be talking about incommensurables. One illustrative example that can be introduced here would be a young Catholic girl who is faced with the choice of whether to live the life of a wife and a mother or that of a nun. Cost benefit analysis goes no way to reconciling the dilemma with which the young girl is faced. No form of subjective choice-making criteria works sufficiently here, for there may be factors worthy of consideration, such as family commitments and traditions that may constrain her options. Nor do any cultural or social factors offer any predetermined guide. The fact of the matter may be that both choices are acceptable within her social and cultural milieu, and that her family may be divided. Furthermore, she cannot take a gamble. Flipping a coin to decide does not allow her to weigh the options properly, that is, give consideration to her reasons for choosing. The fact is that this decision making process is specific to this requirement to make a decision. The point is that there are no predetermined criteria that can offer any definite guide on how she should choose. Secondly, that many values are incommensurable does not mean that they are always incompatible. Incompatibility amongst values can either be contingent, and hence a matter of degree, or constitutive. Collective welfare and distributive justice may sometimes point toward the same practical measures. Alternatively, they may at times conflict. However, certain values, for instance Christian virtue and Machiavellian virtue cannot be combined in any way, as they are virtues that belong in different moralities. 18 The point of incompatibility is that it propounds that some values may crowd each other out, that they cannot always be accommodated within a single life or single society, and that when hard choices need to be made, it will not be possible to realise alternative values. It is in determining that some values, particularly ultimate values, are incommensurable that pluralism, according to some quarters, faces a series of contradictions. For example, if individuals or societies recognise the diversity of moral life, it is said that they face a paradox of conviction,

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___________________________________________________________ where their own goals and values are undermined in acknowledging the validity of alternative ways of life. 19 Not so, for the truth in pluralism is not that it equates realism and anti-realism with a truth-false dichotomy. Rather, acknowledging that others value certain ends is not to admit that these ends are true, but simply that these ends are valued. In this sense, and leaving aside the question of whether secularism can be considered a religious belief itself, I do not think it overoptimistic or unreasonable to expect a theist to be able to understand that an atheist values the fact that God does not exist, without undermining her own belief in the existence of God. Pluralism’s qualitative form of measurement, which incorporates incommensurability, entails that, on certain matters of moral significance, there can be no appeal to reason in the axiomatic sense of the term, and that we cannot predetermine what the choice criteria can be. It is here that pluralism faces the additional charge of denying that moral knowledge is possible at all, in turn confronting the same difficulties that have traditionally plagued subjectivist and socially relativistic accounts of morality. However, to repeat, value pluralism is offered as an account of the actual structure of the normative universe. It advances a truth-claim about that structure, not a description of the perplexity we feel in the face of divergent accounts of what is valuable. So value pluralism is not to be confused with emotivism, noncognitivism, or traditional Humean arguments against the rational status of moral propositions. 20 Much like monism, it advances a realist claim about the metaphysical structure of value. 21 As Alasdair MacIntyre has so eloquently shown, the acceptance of incommensurability allows for the possibility of a rational encounter. 22 It is this mutual intelligibility that offers our best hope for constructing any normative framework in which to accommodate instances of radically conflicting values. In essence, two conceptual schemes must share a common structure. 23 Hence, incommensurability is not to be confused with unintelligibility. In saying that there is a structure to values, we are denoting a level of intelligibility that removes values from being solely socially or want determined. On the contrary, moral knowledge is possible, and universally so. That there is a possibility of understanding the reasons and ways in which values are valued in valuesystems different to our own is what distinguishes value-pluralism from relativism and subjectivism, which both disallow the possibility of moral knowledge. It is this common framework of moral thought that allows values to retain their objectivity. Hence they are not to be seen as mere subjective preferences or desires, nor do they exist within relativised hermetically sealed structures. Relativism explains away moral conflicts by referring moral dilemmas to authorities that exist in anthropological

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___________________________________________________________ isolation. 24 However, the point of pluralism, entailing incommensurability, is that there is no higher authority to appeal to that can eradicate the conflict. Joseph Raz has recently developed this line of thinking, in noting that, although in many disagreements at least one side is wrong, once the structure of two incompatible values has been ascertained, the holders of rival and incompatible views can both be right. Disagreements of this kind have two features: they are fairly general, and they cannot be explained away by ignorance or mistake. 25 Additionally, in politics, as Bernard Williams has noted, a decision going against you does not have to mean that you were wrong, it may merely mean that you lost, and that is what politics is all about. 26 Hence, pluralism, entailing incommensurability, has nothing to do with uncertainty. Berlin’s claim was not that we often do not know what is the right decision, but that we often do know that no decision is right. These are both entirely different matters. 27 So what of all these philosophical arguments? How can pluralism help us to accommodate conflicting values in practice? In short, pluralism can help to describe the moral world that we inhabit and attempt to create some normativity from a more accurate and self-reflexive theoretical understanding of that world, rather than relying on a doctrinal version of the good as an absolute standard of evaluation. For in morality and politics today, it is evident that liberalism has become the more or less absolute standard of evaluation: all societies, values and ways of thought are divided into liberal and non-liberal. 28 Consequently, it is largely accepted as true that liberal institutions embody a single solution to the problem of diverse, and often conflicting values. 29 Within rights discourse this has resulted in the ascendancy of an unbridled form of legalism. However, rights cannot be conceived as theorems that fall out of law or ethics, 30 and it is increasingly evident today that the positivistic belief that there must be a gradual convergence on liberal values, on ‘our values’, is no longer, if ever it was, viable. 31 Of all political alternatives, liberalism, we are told, is the best we have at our disposal. 32 Michael Doyle’s much quoted historical and sociological analysis was quick to point out that, historically, liberal democracies do not fight each other. 33 But this is a myopic view of the practice of liberalism that omits much of the history of liberal values. From the genocide committed by British colonialists throughout their Empire, to the catastrophic damage caused by attempting to apply a Weberian liberal regime on nomadic and radically pluralistic societies such as those in Somalia, the honouring of liberal values can and has laid the foundations for, or directly caused, many atrocities of its own.

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___________________________________________________________ In practice, this limits the scope for a self-reflexive understanding of one’s own values, as well as the possibility of understanding other ways of life. Alternatively, in acknowledging plurality, there is not only space for a rational encounter through ways of life being mutually intelligible, but there is also the possibility of understanding that when we act, our actions may indeed contain wrong. Abstract reason can at times only blur the imagination, the faculty that enables us to imagine what it is like to value ends and goals that are not our own, what Vico referred to as “imaginative sympathy.” As I have implied above, this is best conceived by valuers - after all, values are nothing without valuers - exhibiting a consciousness that there exist a multitude of worthwhile forms of life. This does not equate to the undermining of an individual’s or a society’s convictions. Consciousness of plurality does not equate to individuals or societies valuing alternative forms of life, rather it is that they are conscious that alternative values are valued. Values, and therefore also reasons and other normative phenomena that depend on them, are dependent upon context. However, this does not equate to the fact that what is valuable is valuable only in societies that think that they are valuable. 34 Some, who proceed to take value-pluralism more seriously than deontological liberals, tend to prioritise certain values; Berlin sought to prioritise negative liberty, Raz to prioritise an Aristotelian conception of autonomy. They espouse, in short, in a vein not dissimilar to Rawls and Larmore, that these values enable the pursuit of diverse and worthwhile forms of life. Although admirable, all, to my mind, seem bound to fail. At times negative liberty and autonomy may indeed need to be prioritised as, more often than not, security and peace will need to be. Although some values are generically human and constant, it is the quest for universal, perennial values that seems at times most misguided, particularly the search for a definitive list of human rights. Human rights discourse and practice has proceeded from the premise that it needs to protect universal rights by presuming a set of universal values, based on an arbitrary standard of evaluation. It is the universal structure of value that depends on reconciling the belief in universality with a correct understanding of the real diversity of values that can offer the best hope of creating a bond for humankind. By looking beyond an absolute standard of evaluation, the generically human values that we share are more likely to be realised. Further, by being conscious of the realities of pluralism, there is the moral and political scope for more particularistic values to be protected, and to coexist. In acknowledging that there are other ways of life in the world though apparently different and sometimes alien to our own, nonetheless

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___________________________________________________________ constituted in a manner similar to our own - the correctness of a pluralist consciousness is better expressed. 35 As a result, conflicts of values will not be eradicated; if true, in practice, value-pluralism tells us how to speak to the people who have to pay, not just in their interests, but also in their values, for things that have to be done. 36 I have argued that value-pluralism represents the most appropriate theoretical understanding of moral conflict. Further, I have argued that the separation of procedural from substantive values, embodied within the political form of liberalism, reduces morality to a set of decision-theoretic principles that cannot adjudicate adequately between conflicting versions of the good. I have chosen to develop what is essentially a theoretical discussion within the context of human rights. It is not my purpose to deride the quest for a universal institutional constraint regarding questions of ultimate value. Rather, it is an attempt to question some of the fundamental assumptions upon which contemporary human rights discourse and practice is based, arguing that the exhibition of a pluralist consciousness may be a more appropriate starting point from which political morality and rights discourse and practice can begin to operate.

Mark Sivarajah, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom.

Notes *I would like to thank Duncan Elliott, John Gray, Anthony Grayling and Vincent Guillin for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. 1 Bernard Williams, “Introduction” in Concepts and Categories, by Isaiah Berlin (London: Fontana, 1978), xiii-xx. 2 Isaiah Berlin, Crooked Timber of Humanity (London: Fontana, 1991), 79-80. 3 Berlin, 1978; Berlin, 1991, 209. Berlin additionally notes that “there has, of course, been wide disagreement about the exact paths leading to these, often hidden, truths.” 4 Glen Newey states this quite succinctly by noting Rawls’s ‘priority of deontic concepts.’ See his After Politics: The Rejection of Politics in Contemporary Liberal Political Philosophy (NY: Palgrave, 2001).

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Charles Taylor, “The Diversity of Goods,” in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Bernard Williams and Amartya Sen (London: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 130. 6 Firstly, each person has an equal right to a system of equal basic liberties for all. Secondly, social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 302. 7 Bernard Williams has recently stated: “I think that the fundamental error is to suppose that decisions of politics, even those that involve issues of principle, are in such ways like decisions of constitutional law.” See Bernard Williams, “Liberalism and Loss,” in The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin, ed. Ronald Dworkin et al. (NY: New York Review of Books, 2001), 99. 8 Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity (London: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 154. Emphasis added. 9 Ibid, 151. 10 Ibid, 132. 11 Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 404. 12 Ibid, 322. 13 Martha Nussbaum, “Plato on Incommensurability and Desire,” in Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 106-124. 14 Ibid. 15 Raz, 1986, 325. 16 Ruth Chang, “Introduction” in Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason, ed. Ruth Chang (London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 1-34. 17 It is noted that contemporary utilitarianism has largely sought to shed the idea of ‘welfare’ being calculated purely in terms of pleasure and pain. 18 I would like to thank John Gray for pointing this out to me. 19 Michael Sandel, referring to Berlin’s Four Essays on Liberty in which Berlin remarked approvingly of Joseph’s Shumpeter’s words, “to realize the relative validity of one’s own convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly, is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian,” asks why, if one’s convictions are only relatively valid should one stand for them unflinchingly? See Sandel, “Introduction” in Liberalism and its Critics, ed. Sandel (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 8. G.A. Cohen has explored this issue by noting that, to stand by our convictions, we must possess something additional to the contingency of

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___________________________________________________________ where we are born. See Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian How Come You’re So Rich? (London: Harvard University Press, 2001). 20 William Galston, Liberal Pluralism (London: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 21 Glen Newey, “Value Pluralism in Contemporary Liberalism,” Dialogue, 77 (1998): 499. 22 Alistair MacIntyre, “Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation Between Confucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues” in Culture and Modernity East-West Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Eliot Deutsch (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980), 104-122. 23 Ibid, 110. 24 See Steven Lukes, “Making Sense of Moral Conflict” in Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Nancy L. Rosenblum (London: Harvard University Press, 1989). 25 Joseph Raz, Value, Respect and Attachment (London: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 54. 26 Williams, 2001. 27 Ronald Dworkin makes this point. See his “Do Liberal Values Conflicts,” in Dworkin et al., 73-90. 28 Bhiku Parekh, “Theorizing Political Theory,” in Political Theory in Transition, ed. Noel O’Sullivan (London: Routeledge, 2000), 242-259. 29 John Gray, “Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 6, 1 (1998): 17-36. 30 John Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 113. 31 Stuart Hampshire, Justice as Conflict (London, Duckworth, 1999), 33. Hampshire goes on, “We now know that there is no ‘must’ about it, and that all such general theories of human history have a predictive value near to zero. They are just diachronic versions of the Platonic and Marxist belief in a final rational harmony.” 32 George Crowder, Liberalism and Value Pluralism (London: Continuum, 2001). 33 Michael Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs: Part 1,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 12 (1983): 205-234. 34 Joseph Raz, The Practice of Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 35 Here, I am paraphrasing Bernard Williams who notes that this is where the correctness of the liberal consciousness is better expressed. I do not see any reason why this should be specifically liberal. See Williams, 1978, xviii. 36 Williams, 2001, 102.

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References Berlin, Isaiah. “The Purpose of Philosophy.” In his Concepts and Categories. London: Pimlico, 1978. Berlin, Isaiah. The Crooked Timber of Humanity. London: Fontana, 1991. Chang, Ruth. “Introduction.” In Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason, edited by Ruth Chang, 1-34. London: Harvard University Press, 1997. Cohen, G.A. If You’re An Egalitarian How Come You’re so Rich. London: Harvard University Press, 2001. Crowder, George. Liberalism and Value Pluralism. London: Continuum, 2001. Doyle, Michael. “Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs: Part 1.” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 12 (1983): 205-234. Dworkin, Ronald. “Do Liberal Values Conflict.” In The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin, edited by Ronald Dworkin, Mark Lilla and Robert Silvers, 73-90. NY: New York Review of Books, 2001. Galston, William A. Liberal Pluralism. London: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Gray, John. “Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 6, 1 (1998): 17-36. Gray, John. Two Faces of Liberalism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. Hampshire, Stuart. Justice is Conflict. London: Duckworth, 1999. Larmore, Charles. The Morals of Modernity. London: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Lukes, Steven. “Making Sense of Moral Conflict.” In Liberalism and the Moral Life, edited by Nancy L. Rosenblum. London: Harvard University Press, 1989.

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___________________________________________________________ MacIntyre, Alasdair. “Incommensurability, Truth and the Conversation Between Confucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues.” In Culture and Modernity East-West Philosophic Perspectives, edited by Eliot Deutsche, 104-122. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991. Newey, Glen. “Value Pluralism in Contemporary Liberalism.” Dialogue 77 (1998). Newey, Glen. After Politics: The Rejection of Politics in Contemporary Liberal Philosophy. NY: Palgrave, 2001. Nussbaum, Martha. “Plato on Commensurability and Desire.” In Love’s Knowledge Essays on Philosophy and Literature, 106-124. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Parekh, Bhiku. “Theorizing Political Theory.” In Political Theory in Transition, edited by Noel O’Sullivan, 242-259. London: Routeledge, 2000. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Raz, Joseph. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Raz, Joseph. Value, Respect and Attachment. London: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Raz, Joseph. The Practice of Value. Oxford: University Press, 2003. Sandel, Michael. “Introduction.” In Liberalism and its Critics, edited by Michael Sandel. NY: New York University Press, 1984. Taylor, Charles. “The Diversity of Goods.” In Utilitarianism and Beyond, edited by Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams. London: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Williams, Bernard. “Introduction.” In Concepts and Categories, by Isaiah Berlin, xiii-xx. London: Pimlico, 1978. Williams, Bernard. “Liberalism and Loss.” In The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin, edited by Ronald Dworkin, Mark Lilla and Robert Silvers. New York: New York Review of Books, 2001.


Discourses on Immigration in South Africa: Managing Diversity in a New Nation Tara Polzer 1

Abstract The “new South Africa” is shaped by a plurality of domestic and international actors, values and legitimising discourses. An analysis of immigration discourses can illuminate tensions within this plurality as South Africa builds a new national identity. The paper identifies three distinct discourses which shape immigration policy. The first stems from the apartheid legacy, focused around the control of people’s movements. The second is the discourse of nation-building, based on ideas about human rights and socio-economic entitlements for citizens. While the expansion and deepening of citizenship has been empowering for many in South Africa, it is constructed in a way that not only excludes but also victimises certain categories of non-citizens. Thirdly, developed country discourses about migration management have impacted on South Africa’s domestic policies and on its interactions with other states and international bodies. For all their differences, each of these discourses incorporates the themes of South African superiority, resource competition and fear, underpinning demands for immigration control and reflecting deep-seated sources of tension in South Africa’s attempts of develop a unified identity.

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Discourses on immigration in South Africa

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Introduction Ten years after its first democratic elections, South Africa is still renegotiating its national identity – a process shaped by the country’s inherent plurality. Whether racially, ethnically, culturally, linguistically, economically, or even environmentally defined, South Africa is one of the most diverse countries in the world. This diversity is both an opportunity and a burden. The “rainbow nation” was born out of a commitment to celebrate pluralism as a way to overcome a history of violence and discrimination. In the words of the 1996 Constitution, South Africa belongs “to all who live in it, united in our diversity.” 2 This ideal, however, remains compromised by a deep legacy of inequity based on essentialised categories of difference such as race. This legacy continues to be reflected in unequal income levels, unemployment rates, living standards and education levels. I will use discourses about immigration to look at South Africa’s attempts to manage its plurality. Immigration is not a central policy-arena in South Africa - it is of much less significance than economic reform, employment generation, poverty reduction or responses to HIV/AIDS. Nonetheless, immigration discourses evoke issues central to South Africa’s transformation: the definition of “insiders” and “outsiders” in a new nation; the distribution of rights to resources; and the national identity South Africa presents to itself and the world. Part of South Africa’s transformation is an expansion in the range of actors involved in policy debates, bringing with them a wide spectrum of interests and perspectives. Space has been created for these new actors to express their views: consultation, broad representation and debate are explicitly valued in South Africa and are practiced to a greater extent than in many other countries. However, the value systems according to which interests are given voice and legitimised in the policy-making process remain topics of debate and contestation. South Africa’s post-1994 immigration policy reflects the lack of a common value basis and is generally seen to be “confused, incoherent, reactive, defensive and lacking in vision.” 3 By analysing the assumptions behind the discourses, the competing value systems become transparent. 4 Three national discourses are critically examined here. Each discourse is analysed according to its value-based reference points (legitimate ends), its internal logic (legitimate means), and the tensions it reveals among actors or perspectives. The discussion is based on the Foucaultian perspective that discursive power - control over what can legitimately be said and what can be defined as valuable goals - influences how actors’ interests are expressed, how they compete, and which become dominant.

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___________________________________________________________ The discourses outlined below overlap in many ways, and institutions concerned with immigration in South Africa often utilise two or more of the discourses simultaneously. Therefore, the categorisation used here is only one of several possible ways to describe a complex mesh of values, influences and actors. Nonetheless, it is useful in trying to answer some important questions: where is immigration policy in South Africa going? How does it relate to other policies such as employment generation and crime reduction? How does it relate to the overall nationbuilding project? And generally, which value systems and actors are taking centre stage in this project? The discourses to be discussed are: The apartheid legacy: control over the movement of people. Nation-building: socio-economic rights for citizens; competition for scarce resources. International leadership: international recognition; national interest. 2.

The apartheid legacy The continuity of post-1994 immigration policy and practice with apartheid-era policies and value systems has been analysed extensively. 5 The tenacity of this discourse is epitomised by the long survival of the 1991 Aliens Control Act as the piece of legislation governing immigration policy. 6 Amendments to the Act in 1995 removed the most egregiously racist formulations, but the principle of immigration control (rather than facilitation or management) remained central and was only partly superseded in the 2002 replacement legislation, the Immigration Act. 7 The goal of immigration control is supported by practices and attitudes which criminalise immigration, do not respect the rights of immigrants and do not distinguish between different categories of immigrant. The principle of control has two sides: highly regulated migration for the benefit of South African businesses, and the expulsion of nonregulated immigrants. Bilateral farm and mine labour recruitment agreements with neighbouring countries are still in place, through which the entry of workers is enabled but highly regulated. These agreements still do not allow migrant labourers to apply for permanent residency in South Africa. 8 On the other hand, R35 million (USD 5 million) are spent annually on the immediate transport costs of deporting labourers who enter illegally, a figure which does not include the staff and infrastructure involved, and which has been rising steadily since 1994. 9 The two sides come together in cases where undocumented farm labourers have been deported just before pay day, suggesting both official awareness of, and some collaboration with, the large scale employment of “illegals.” 10

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___________________________________________________________ The criminalisation of immigration through the focus on deportation leads to a “disregard for accountability, transparency, and due process” in relation to immigrants. 11 Brutality at the Lindela detention and repatriation centre and during the deportation process, the deportation of South African citizens and legal immigrants based on stereotypical features or skin colour, the lack of an appeals process for deportees, and extensive corruption in the system are well documented. 12 Rights abuses in the asylum application process are also common. 13 This reflects a lack of respect for the rights of specific groups such as asylum seekers and refugees, and the equation of all foreigners with the criminalised category of “illegal immigrants.” 14 Apartheid South Africa was not party to any of the international conventions concerning the protection and status of refugees. The new regime did pass a Refugee Act in 1998 based on international standards. However, the slow and conservative implementation of the Act attests to the presence of many actors, including in the Department of Home Affairs responsible for its implementation, who show little respect for the rights-based principles enshrined therein. 15 Discourses are continually recreated by actors and in contestation between actors, and actors may use several parallel discourses. The purpose here is to show how the presence of these discourses reflects relationships between actors in South Africa’s shifting policy environment. The continuity of apartheid-informed practices highlights three relationships in particular: the relationship between political and bureaucratic actors; the relationship between traditional big business and government; and the relationship between South African identity and “Africa.” Within government, the lacklustre performance of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) on immigration policy is often portrayed as a problem of ideology or party-political competition. The DHA has been termed the most “untransformed” department in the current government, explained by reference to an Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) Minister accused of having been a collaborator of the apartheid government. Furthermore, the highly publicised conflicts between the Director General of the Department appointed by the ruling African National Congress party (ANC) and the IFP Minister, which have delayed and undermined the Department’s work, have been interpreted as political. A related assertion is that the DHA has been left in IFP hands because the ANC has an interest in distancing itself from policies to which it is not fundamentally opposed, but which clash with its espoused ideals of inclusivity and human rights. 16 While politics certainly play some role, a more nuanced

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___________________________________________________________ interpretation of slow and conservative immigration policy transformation and implementation must emphasise the role of technocrats, advisors, and implementing actors. In the DHA, police, army and other agencies dealing with immigrants, there is much continuity with the past in terms of personnel. These are the actors who initially draft policy and then control its daily implementation - their personal and collective value systems have a significant impact. In the absence of strong political leadership on immigration issues, bureaucratic inertia can be very powerful. However, it is also wrong to assume that all “untransformed” bureaucrats support exclusivist immigration policies or, if they do, do so because of the “apartheid legacy.” Leading up to the 2002 Immigration Act, DHA officials supported a wide-ranging consultation process resulting in progressive Green and White Papers. 17 The final conservative Bill, however, was drafted by advisors in the Home Affairs Ministry without taking account of the consultation papers, reflecting tensions between Department and Ministry bureaucrats. Other examples include recently introduced tighter border control mechanisms, which were put in place using the most “modern” U.S. models and American funding. Many leading army and border police officials, including those who served under the previous regime, openly recognise the futility of these systems in the face of the “illegal” but nonetheless regular circular migration across South Africa’s long borders. Second, there is institutional continuity in those sectors of business which, under the previous regime, were given the most leeway in “managing” immigration for their own labour needs: mining and commercial agriculture. The power of these industries to continue using immigrants for their economic gain is in tension with current government policies of domestic employment creation and protection of labour rights (whether labourers are nationals or not). Finally, the identity of the South African white minority regime as “other” than the rest of Africa was based around a combination of racism and the protection of privilege through limiting access to rights. Today, black South Africans are included in the privileged “insider” category, and the “other” has been pushed beyond the border. 18 Many analysts have described today’s popular xenophobia as racist, since Asian and white immigrants are not included in the image of the threatening “alien,” while dark-skinned Africans are especially targeted. 19 However, rather than seeing this mainly as a discourse of racial discrimination, I suggest that it can be seen more profitably as a continuation of the protection of relative privilege. During the anti-apartheid struggle, panAfrican solidarity was a tool towards gaining entitlements. Today, entitlements won through struggle are perceived as limited and not to be

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___________________________________________________________ shared freely with large numbers of neighbours seen to be begging at the door. This brings us to the second discourse of nation-building, structured around defining right of access to socio-economic entitlements and security. 3.

Nation-building Nation-building processes are inherently about managing relationships among a country’s diverse groups. In South Africa, this means shaping a unified national identity to overcome deep historical divisions of race, urban versus rural development and socio-economic opportunity. The values commonly presented to this effect have been human rights, equity, respect for human dignity, and equality before the law. By looking at these supposedly universal values through their impact on immigration policy and practice, it is possible to build a more nuanced picture of how these rights have been circumscribed and where tensions lie. An inclusive, unifying discourse inevitably demands the definition of a boundary between “insiders” and “outsiders.” I argue that the internal logic of the South African nation-building discourse has defined the boundaries in a way which has made black non-citizens the “outsiders” and has led not only to their exclusion but also to their victimisation. Two vehicles have been especially powerful in constructing a unifying South African national identity: the evocation of a shared history of struggle and the entitlements of citizenship. 20 These broad criteria of inclusion, which embrace cultural diversity and respect for human rights, have the potential to include respect for refugee and immigrant rights and to embrace those neighbouring peoples who share languages, cultures and histories with South Africans. However, this potential has only been realised to a very limited extent. For the first time, South Africa’s history is being reconstructed as a shared experience, expressing apartheid as degrading and oppressive for both black and white. This historical identification process has focused almost exclusively on internal reconciliation, with little popular acknowledgement of the role of neighbouring states in the liberation struggle and the regional damage caused by apartheid destabilisation. 21 In contrast, many immigrants from neighbouring countries expect solidarity in exchange for their countries’ assistance in the struggle. Mozambican refugees who remained in South Africa to vote in the 1994 elections after the end of their own civil war (which was significantly escalated by apartheid South Africa) have since been subject to deportation and abuse. They often express disappointment at the short memory of the new

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___________________________________________________________ regime. 22 Zimbabweans currently fleeing despotism and persecution also lament the different standards applied to South African “political exiles” then and Zimbabwean “illegal immigrants” now. Why are former “brothers in arms” being deported by the new government in the same way as the old? One reason is that the conception of citizenship in South Africa has been framed largely in terms of socio-economic opportunity, in the form of jobs and services and in terms of security from crime. 23 This is coupled with a perceived shortage of state resources to fulfil all the needs and expectations of the newly enfranchised masses. In situations of transition and insecurity, it is not exceptional for “outsiders” to be excluded if they are perceived to be in competition with “insiders” for resources. This exclusion is heightened to victimisation, however, if the basic markers for “insider” status, in this case socio-economic opportunity and security, are defined as directly under threat from the “outsiders.” In South Africa today, citizenship and immigration are constructed as opposite sides of the same coin - one demands job creation and services and the other undermines them. If the government defines success in the national project through job creation it necessarily has to show action against immigration. The same logic is applied to immigration and crime. The deportation of “illegal aliens” is reported as part of crime statistics, giving weight to the claim that the government is serving its citizens by fighting crime. 24 The purpose of deporting thousands of immigrants a week is therefore not to reduce the number of immigrants in the country, which is clearly failing, but to gain political mileage and avoid a crisis of legitimacy. 25 Being tough on immigration becomes a kind of proxy for conferring rights on citizens. This is not to slight the real resource shortages in South Africa. It is much less clear that most immigrants, let alone all immigrants, are competing for these public resources. 26 Research suggests that immigrants often create jobs, 27 are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators 28 and generally do not aspire to stay in the country for long or wish to acquire South African citizenship. 29 The great differences between categories of immigrants are rarely recognised: skilled or unskilled, refugee or economic migrant. Furthermore, the discourse of blame is internally inconsistent. If immigrants were taking South African jobs they would be unlikely to need to resort to crime. If they were destitute, unskilled, criminal, illegal and coming to South Africa to defraud the welfare system, they would be unlikely to be working in the formal economy or able to get jobs desirable for South Africans. There is a convergence between this nation-building discourse and the historical legacy of immigration control, although they are driven

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___________________________________________________________ by different purported values. Once rights are defined as a limited resource, and once immigrants are seen as a threat to that resource, protecting rights for “insiders” requires the control of “outsiders.” This is stated succinctly in a communication from the Department of Home Affairs: “the overriding consideration should always be the protection of the inherent rights of South African citizens or permanent residents to employment opportunities…. [Immigration policy]… truly protects the public interest.” 30 There are four tensions to be explored within the nation-building discourse. The first concerns how government is accountable to its citizens. Blaming immigration for slow progress in realising socio-economic opportunities for citizens is one way to mask domestic reasons for slow transformation and resource redistribution. There is some irony in the fact that diversions of this kind are not very effective. Popular opinion, while picking up on the discourse of blaming foreigners, nonetheless demands concrete progress on jobs and security. Second, there is a tension between limiting rights to protect them and undermining rights by limiting them. As noted by Maxine Reitzes, abusing the rights of immigrants in the name of protecting the rights of citizens may be counterproductive, since it undermines the idea that South African law and government are based on the respect for human rights. 31 Once this is compromised for some, it may be compromised for others, as evidenced by the regular deportation of citizens with features associated with foreignness. On the other hand, the discourse of broadly applicable rights has been deeply anchored in the foundations of South Africa’s new nation – in the Constitution and in the judicial system. 32 This has allowed various actors, generally academics or NGOs, to challenge many of the restricted interpretations of rights still found in legislation and government practice. For example, the right of asylum seekers to work and study and the right of non-citizens to government pensions and child support have both been passed down by the High Courts in recent years. 33 These are cases which directly juxtapose the principle of broadly applicable rights against the principle of restricting access to resources. The relative priority given to these two principles within the nation-building discourse not only creates tensions between government and civil society (the third tension within the nation-building discourse) but, finally, within civil society as well. Popular social movements around service provision and crime reduction, which have taken on very significant roles in South African society, are often explicitly or implicitly anti-immigrant, pushing rather for more effective implementation of their own rights as citizens.

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___________________________________________________________ The nation-building discourse simultaneously conflates all immigrants into resource competitors - a lack of distinction which coincides with the apartheid legacy discourse - and provides the space to argue for the rights of particular immigrant groups, such as refugee rights. However, the powerful evocation of citizenship rights in government circles and in some sectors of civil society, coupled with the sense of limited resources, puts the progressive rhetoric of immigrant rights and anti-xenophobia on the defensive and culminates in a dominant sense of threat and a demand for control. 4.

International leadership While South Africa’s transition, and its immigration policy, are often discussed in the light of the apartheid legacy and nation-building discourses, a third element has been comparatively neglected. This is a discourse which reflects South Africa’s aspirations to be a regional and international leader. South African liberal immigration policy analysts tend to imply that any diversion from an idealised, progressive, human rights-based policy is due to holdovers or throwbacks to the apartheid legacy. An understanding of domestic historical factors is clearly important, but it can obscure an appreciation of how South African policies mirror trends around the world, where borders are closing and the movements of people are increasingly controlled. Draconian practices are not necessarily anachronisms; they can be about being a “modern” member of the international community. On the other hand, following international examples also does not necessarily mean being draconian; there is a wide range of international actors and discourses which provide reference points for domestic actors. There are three groups of international actors who are both models and audiences for the government’s approach to immigration. These are the peers and donors within the “international community” of liberal, democratic states; Europe and the USA, as policy models of rich territories surrounded by poorer nations; and African states as participants in the “African Renaissance.” On the one hand, the “international community of democratic states” demands a minimum commitment to international law and human rights from its members. Signing international conventions, such as on refugee rights, and passing appropriate domestic legislation is part of this process. South Africa acceded to all the international conventions on refugees soon after its own democratic elections. Apart from any intrinsic value, being seen to champion human rights can be transformed into hard international currency in terms of political and financial support for

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___________________________________________________________ projects like the New Programme for African Development (NEPAD). On the other hand, pressures have been growing on “democratic states” to cooperate with a global “anti-terrorism” campaign, which has implied more stringent border controls and justified wide-spread rights-abuses in many states. An anti-terrorism bill has been drafted in South Africa and is pending parliamentary debate. South Africa’s identification with Europe and the USA in terms of immigration management prescriptions stems from the gap between South Africa’s level of economic development and that of most of its neighbours. South Africa’s GDP per capita was 10 times that of Mozambique in 1999. 34 Mirroring the fears of many northern developed states, the perception is that the ‘poor masses’ will flood into the ‘land of milk and honey’ if border controls are relaxed or immigrants treated too well. The import of U.S. border control systems has already been mentioned. Another commonality with Europe is that moderates in government are considering anti-immigrant policies in order to pre-empt right wing political populism. In Europe, a real and perceived influx of immigrants was part of the platform on which right-wing parties grew in popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The public emotiveness of the immigration issue in South Africa today takes on a similar role, since mainstream political parties are afraid that radical voices might gain votes on a xenophobic ticket. A third commonality with Europe provides a more nuanced immigration policy model. South Africa, as Europe, is faced with a skills and labour force shortage in certain areas. Systems allowing the targeted recruitment of skilled immigrants have been in place in Europe for several years. This policy was recently strengthened in South Africa through the 2002 Immigration Act. In the African arena, South Africa is a leading influence in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), NEPAD, and the African Union and has been vocal on the need for “African solutions to African problems.” Migration would seem to be an obvious area in which to implement the pan-African partnerships South Africa espouses. However, the NEPAD framework, drafted largely by South Africa, barely refers to migration issues, and two SADC protocols on free and facilitated movement of persons were vetoed by South Africa. 35 Political and economic “integration” with neighbours does not extend to welcoming their people into the country. A liberal migration regime is clearly not seen to be in South Africa’s national (economic) interest - a criterion which takes precedence over claims of African “solidarity.” Furthermore, invocations of national interests take on a moral character through reference to “international standards.” In the deliberations on whether South Africa should support the 1995 SADC Protocol on the Free

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___________________________________________________________ Movement of Persons, Oucho and Crush argue that South Africa saw itself on “moral high ground” by following international trends and enforcing tight controls on “illegal aliens.” 36 As with the nation-building discourse, the international leadership discourse provides some justifications for tighter immigration control and some for targeted openness. Various domestic actors have used references to international practice to justify their positions. Oucho and Crush claim that “the Department of Home Affairs, its senior white bureaucrats and its expert consultants” instrumentalised international examples to justify their existing “strong anti-immigrationist discourse” in the SADC Free Movement debates. 37 Business is most adept at using all three discourses: retaining its apartheid-era hold on discretionary practices in mining and agriculture; committing to play a part in providing jobs for citizens; and making use of regional leadership rhetoric to argue for the right to recruit SADC citizens. 38 NGOs give weight to their antixenophobia campaigns by pointing out the embarrassing discrepancy between violence committed against foreigners and South Africa’s claims to global and regional leadership on human rights. 5.

Conclusion South Africa’s immigration policies, just like its national identity politics, hang precariously in the balance between assertions of historical particularism, including past legacies and current nation-building, and an external-oriented “normality” as a (leading) member of an international community of liberal democratic states. In analysing its policies, South Africa’s particularity, either positively in terms of respect for inclusive human rights or negatively in terms of the apartheid legacy, is often overestimated. South Africa’s various actors are juggling for position on shifting domestic and international stages. Rather than offering a real plurality of political options to these actors, the themes of control and threat run through all three discourses on immigration, given contemporary international legitimacy, domestic political legitimacy, and the force of decades of habit and internalisation. Most simply, the convergence of the three policy discourses imply that any single change in the current domestic political landscape, such as a change of leadership in the Department of Home Affairs, is unlikely to change (i.e., liberalise) immigration policies significantly. More broadly, the convergent and divergent themes give us some insight into what occupies and plagues South Africa’s quest for unity in its diversity. The three selected themes suggested below are certainly not comprehensive but touch on issues sure to remain sources of tension in years to come.

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___________________________________________________________ The first recurrent theme is the perception that South Africa is superior to its neighbours. Its more developed infrastructure and greater national economic development are assumed to extend into a superior society in which all Africans aspire to live. Assumed political superiority is central to the re-shaping of regional and continental co-operation structures, on immigration issues and otherwise, on South Africa’s terms. Finally, and most ambivalently, the difficulties of re-formulating black South African identities after the vicissitudes of apartheid are reflected in the claim, on the one hand, that non-South African Africans are less civilised, and on the other, that they are often more hard working and entrepreneurial (and therefore economically threatening) than local blacks. The second theme is resource shortages. Where apartheid legitimised the concentration of resources, the new dispensation is legitimised by a discourse of resource distribution, but in the context of actual continued resource concentration. As noted above, blaming external competitors, such as immigrants, for resource shortages distracts from the internal competition, which it has become less politically correct to emphasise. Furthermore, different resources are seen as scarce depending on the actor and the aim. For nation-building, there are not enough jobs for the right people. For businesses following international trends in skills selection, there are not enough of the right people for the jobs. Third is the strong theme of fear. More insidious than black and white racism is the apartheid legacy of distrust and fear between and within various groups and a general dissolution of trust in society. The fear of the other therefore needs to be seen in the context of South Africans’ fear of each other. In addition to xenophobia, South Africa suffers from neighbourphobia. While overcoming this fear should be central to the nation-building project, the consumption-based image of what it is to be a successful South African and the concomitant competition for resources feeds fear and distrust. If in some areas and in uncritical media coverage crime is disproportionately blamed on foreigners, 39 at the national level, crime is widely recognised as committed by locals and people known to the victims. Just as protecting rights by limiting them may backfire, increasing internal trust and sense of “self” by fostering fear of the “other” may be counterproductive. It is certainly not an unusual strategy, and it carries particular international currency in the early 21st century, but South Africa needs the confidence to find an alternative way to unite its diverse peoples under a common identity and a common project. Tara Polzer is Director of the Rural Research Project, Forced Migration Studies Programme, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

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Notes 1

Thanks are due to Jeff Handmaker, Loren Landau, Frederick GoloobaMutebi, Marcus Lenzen, and Rachel DeMotts for helpful comments on drafts of this chapter. Of course, all errors and opinions remain the responsibility of the author. 2 Preamble, Act 108 of 1996. 3 Jonathan Crush, ed., Beyond Control: Immigration and Human Rights in a Democratic South Africa (Cape Town: Institute for Democracy in South Africa/International Development Research Centre, 1998), 14. 4 This is not to suggest that a lack of common values for making and evaluating policy is unique to South Africa or is in itself problematic. In fact, value contestation is the basis of politics. The purpose here is to understand what is contested, not to say there should be no contestation. 5 For an overview, see Jonathan Crush and David McDonald, "Introduction to Special Issue: Evaluating South African Immigration Policy after Apartheid," Africa Today 48, 3 (2002): 1-13. 6 Sally Peberdy and Jonathan Crush, "Rooted in Racism: The Origins of the Aliens Control Act," in Beyond Control: Immigration and Human Rights in a Democratic South Africa, ed. Jonathan Crush (Cape Town and Kingston: Idasa and Southern African Migration Project, 1998), 19. 7 Act No. 12, 2002. 8 Jonathan Crush and Clarence Tshitereke, "Contesting Migrancy: The Foreign Labor Debate in Post-1994 South Africa," Africa Today 48, 3 (2002): 48-70. 9 Department of Home Affairs, (11 February 2004). . 10 A. Johnston and C. Simbine, "The Usual Victims: The Aliens Control Act and the Voices of Mozambicans," in Beyond Control: Immigration and Human Rights in a Democratic South Africa, ed. J. Crush (Kingston/ Cape Town: Southern African Migration Project/ Institute for Democracy in South Africa, 1998), 161. 11 Sally Peberdy, "A Brief History of South African Immigration Policy," in Transforming South African Migration and Immigration Policy, ed. J. Crush & F. Veriava (Cape Town/Kingston: Southern African Migration Project, 1997), 1 (web version). 12 Human Rights Watch, "'Prohibited Persons': Abuse of Undocumented Migrants, Asylum-Seekers, and Refugees in South Africa" (New York, Washington, London and Brussels: Human Rights Watch, 1998).

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Lee Anne de la Hunt, "Tracking Progress: Initial Experience with the Refugees Act, 130 of 1998" (Johannesburg: National Consortium of Refugee Affairs, 2002). 14 Craig Charney, "Voices of a New Democracy: African Expectations in the New South Africa" (Johannesburg: Centre for Policy Studies, 1995). 15 de la Hunt, "Tracking Progress." 16 Crush and McDonald, "Introduction to Special Issue," 7. 17 The South African consultative policy formulation process includes the preparation and public discussion of various draft policy documents, including an initial Green Paper and a more advanced White paper before the drafting of the final Bill. 18 Crush and McDonald, "Introduction to Special Issue," 6. 19 The 1991 Aliens Control Act used the terminology of “aliens.” On the experience of abuse by African immigrants see Ted Leggett, Rainbow Tenement: Crime and Policing in Inner Johannesburg, vol. 78, ISS Monograph Series (Johannesburg: Institute for Security Studies, 2003), 53f; David A. McDonald, Lephophotho Mashile, and Celia Golden, "The Lives and Times of African Migrants and Immigrants in Post-Apartheid South Africa," SAMP Migration Policy Series No. 13 (1999): 16ff. 20 Other national issues, such as land redistribution, have not been related to immigration, although competition between locals and refugees/immigrants for land has been a central problem in other countries. 21 High level government support for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, a “partner in the liberation war,” or even government sponsored memorial days for Mozambicans who died in South African army attacks on ANC training camps, is not shared widely at the grass-roots and does not extend to respecting Zimbabweans or Mozambicans in South Africa. 22 Johnston and Simbine, "The Usual Victims: The Aliens Control Act and the Voices of Mozambicans." 23 S. Peberdy, "Imagining Immigration: Inclusive Identities and Exclusive Policies in Post-1994 South Africa," Africa Today 48, 3 (2002): 14-32; Sally Peberdy and Christian Rogerson, "Transnationalism and Non–South African Entrepreneurs in South Africa’s Small, Medium, and MicroEnterprise (Smme) Economy," Canadian Journal of African Studies 34, 1 (2000). 24 Chris Dolan and Maxine Reitzes, "The Insider Story? Press Coverage of Illegal Immigrants and Refugees, April 1994-September 1995," Social Policy Series Research Report no. 48 (1996): 9-11. 25 Jeff Handmaker, "Closing of Borders a Universal Phenomenon, but Is This Racist?," The African Courier (Speyer, Germany) 10/11 (2000).

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___________________________________________________________ 26

The association of immigration with resource competition and crime is not unique to South Africa, of course. In Western countries, immigrants are associated with “rocketing crime rates, fundamentalist terrorism, collapsing welfare systems and mass unemployment.” S. Castles and M. J. Miller, The Age of Migration; International Population Movements in the Modern World, Third edition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 102-3. 27 Peberdy and Rogerson, "Transnationalism and Non–South African Entrepreneurs." 28 Loren B. Landau and Karen Jacobsen, "Refugees in the New Johannesburg," Forced Migration Review 19 (2004): 45; Leggett, Rainbow Tenement, 52ff. 29 McDonald, Mashile, and Golden, "The Lives and Times of African Migrants," 28. 30 DHA (8 February 1995) quoted in M. Reitzes, "Insiders and Outsiders: The Reconstruction of Citizenship in South Africa," Policy: Issues and Actors 8, 1 (1995): 14. 31 Ibid. 32 For example, the 1996 Constitution (Act 108 of 1996) codifies that “everyone” has the right to “health care services, including reproductive health care; sufficient food and water; and social security, including, if they are unable to support themselves and their dependants, appropriate social assistance” (Section 27(1)) as well as other rights. 33 Minister of Home Affairs and others v Watchenuka 2003 (10) SA, Khosa & Others v Minister of Social Development & Others 2003 (12) SA, Mahlaule & Another v Minister of Social Development & Others 2003 (13) SA. 34 35 J. Oucho and J. Crush, "Contra Free Movement: South Africa and Sadc Migration Protocols," Africa Today 48 (2001): 139-58. 36 Ibid, 145. 37 Ibid, 155. 38 Crush and Tshitereke, "Contesting Migrancy," 49. 39 Dolan and Reitzes, "The Insider Story?," on reporting of crime in the media; and Leggett, Rainbow Tenement on perceptions of crime in inner Johannesburg.

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References Castles, S. and M. J. Miller. The Age of Migration; International Population Movements in the Modern World. Third edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Charney, Craig. "Voices of a New Democracy: African Expectations in the New South Africa." Johannesburg: Centre for Policy Studies, 1995. Crush, Jonathan, ed. Beyond Control: Immigration and Human Rights in a Democratic South Africa. Cape Town: Institute for Democracy in South Africa/International Development Research Centre, 1998. Crush, Jonathan and David McDonald. "Introduction to Special Issue: Evaluating South African Immigration Policy after Apartheid." Africa Today 48, 3 (2002): 1-13. Crush, Jonathan and Clarence Tshitereke. "Contesting Migrancy: The Foreign Labor Debate in Post-1994 South Africa." Africa Today 48, 3 (2002): 48-70. de la Hunt, Lee Anne. "Tracking Progress: Initial Experience with the Refugees Act, 130 of 1998." Johannesburg: National Consortium of Refugee Affairs, September 2002. Dolan, Chris and Maxine Reitzes. "The Insider Story? Press Coverage of Illegal Immigrants and Refugees, April 1994-September 1995." Social Policy Series Research Report no. 48 (1996). Handmaker, Jeff. "Closing of Borders a Universal Phenomenon, but is this Racist?" The African Courier (Speyer, Germany) 10/11 (2000). Human Rights Watch. "“Prohibited Persons”: Abuse of Undocumented Migrants, Asylum-Seekers, and Refugees in South Africa." New York, Washington, London and Brussels: Human Rights Watch, 1998. Johnston, A. and C. Simbine. "The Usual Victims: The Aliens Control Act and the Voices of Mozambicans." In Beyond Control: Immigration and Human Rights in a Democratic South Africa, edited by J. Crush. Kingston/Cape Town: Southern African Migration Project/ Institute for Democracy in South Africa, 1998.

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___________________________________________________________ Landau, Loren B. and Karen Jacobsen. "Refugees in the New Johannesburg." Forced Migration Review 19 (2004): 44-46. Leggett, Ted. Rainbow Tenement: Crime and Policing in Inner Johannesburg. Vol. 78, ISS Monograph Series. Johannesburg: Institute for Security Studies, 2003. McDonald, David A., Lephophotho Mashile and Celia Golden. "The Lives and Times of African Migrants and Immigrants in Post-Apartheid South Africa." SAMP Migration Policy Series No. 13 (1999). Oucho, J. and J. Crush. "Contra Free Movement: South Africa and Sadc Migration Protocols." Africa Today 48 (2001): 139-58. Peberdy, Sally. "Imagining Immigration: Inclusive Identities and Exclusive Policies in Post-1994 South Africa." Africa Today 48, 3 (2002): 14-32. Peberdy, Sally and Christian Rogerson. "Transnationalism and Non–South African Entrepreneurs in South Africa’s Small, Medium, and MicroEnterprise (Smme) Economy." Canadian Journal of African Studies 34, 1 (2000): 20–40. Peberdy, Sally and Jonathan Crush. "Rooted in Racism: The Origins of the Aliens Control Act." In Beyond Control: Immigration and Human Rights in a Democratic South Africa, edited by Jonathan Crush. Cape Town and Kingston: Idasa and Southern African Migration Project, 1998. Peberdy, Sally. "A Brief History of South African Immigration Policy." In Transforming South African Migration and Immigration Policy, edited by J. Crush & F. Veriava. Cape Town/Kingston: Southern African Migration Project, 1997. Reitzes, M. "Insiders and Outsiders: The Reconstruction of Citizenship in South Africa." Policy: Issues and Actors 8, 1 (1995): 36.


Part III Economic Pluralism


Dollarization: The End of Monetary Pluralism in Latin America? Anastasia Xenias

Abstract Globalisation is bringing the countries of North and South America closer together and in some cases eliminating monetary pluralism. One trend, which has gone virtually unnoticed, is full dollarization in small countries of Latin America, such as Ecuador and El Salvador, with Guatemala a possible third candidate. Distinct from Argentina, these countries decided to go a step further than fixed exchange rates and currency boards - they have abandoned monetary policy altogether in favour of using U.S. dollars for all transactions. Former Argentine president Carlos Menem argued for this type of full dollarization for Argentina as well. In many other countries the dollar is accepted as legal tender parallel with the national currency and in all countries the dollar is a common substitute for business transactions and investments. This trend will have a significant impact not only on the types of monetary policy in the region but also on the quantity of independent currencies. Monetary pluralism is slowly disappearing. How far will it go and what are its effects for the region and the rest of the world?

104 Dollarization: The End of Monetary Pluralism in Latin America? ___________________________________________________________ The issues concerning pluralism and monism are as apt in global economics as they are in politics or philosophy. Is there one correct path to development or many? Should there be one standard or none, and whose voice should dominate? Should the international economic system have one currency or many? Should there be a single favoured monetary policy for all or different policies contingent on different levels of economic development? These questions are as salient today as they were fifty years ago. Monetary pluralism is slowly disappearing in Latin America. While all eyes were on Europe’s EMU over the past decade, Latin America was quietly undergoing its own monetary transformation into an unofficial and official dollar zone as citizens and now countries chose to eliminate national currencies in favour of a single monetary instrument in the U.S. dollar. Former Argentine President Carlos Menem put the ball into play when he pegged the peso to the dollar in April 1991 and went further by suggesting as early as January 1999 that the country officially dollarize its economy, a position he still advocates. Since then, it hasn't stopped bouncing around the region: Ecuador, El Salvador and Guatemala have recently adopted various forms of dollarization, Peru and Bolivia allow the parallel circulation of dollars, Mexico, where the dollar is legal tender in border regions, and Argentina both have considered the option of full dollarization, Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua debate the possibilities while even Cuba has allowed the legal circulation of dollars by its citizens. In direct contrast to the euro zone, the dollar zone is a unilateral capitulation of the follower to the target country. Up until now there has been no negotiation, no treaty, no shared sovereignty, no shared seignorage and no say in monetary policy for the common currency area. Moreover, many of the issues of national sovereignty, vehemently argued by Europeans and non-Europeans alike in the case of EMU, are visibly absent in the few economic analyses conducted on dollarization. The overall impression is frequently that the monetary sovereignty of Latin American countries has been so severely compromised already that an official recognition of a de facto situation does not compromise the nation. Indeed, where some considered reducing the number of currencies in Europe a bad move, reducing the number of currencies in Latin America is considered good. In other words, reducing monetary pluralism in Latin America is oddly not considered an infringement on national sovereignty at all; quite the contrary, it may be a wise choice in order to strengthen trade and capital flows. Ecuador is the first and most dramatic modern case of official dollarization, that is, an independent political decision to unilaterally relinquish the national currency in favour of adopting the U.S. dollar and

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___________________________________________________________ the accompanying U.S. monetary institutions and policy. The measure follows just a year after the locking of exchange rates in the qualifying EU member countries initiated the last phase of Economic and Monetary Union. 1.

What Happened in Ecuador? On March 9, 2000 former president of Ecuador Gustavo Noboa Bejarano 1 signed the Fundamental Law for the Economic Transformation of Ecuador, a bill that, among its provisions, made the U.S. dollar the official currency of Ecuador, replacing the national currency, the sucre. In signing the legislation, President Noboa implemented a plan first proposed by his predecessor Jamil Mahuad two months earlier. The first proposal resulted in nationwide protest led by members of the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), which represents some of the poorest Ecuadoreans who feared that dollarization would erode their wages and impoverish them further. Mahuad was overthrown in a civilian-military coup on January 21, 2000. The following day military leaders handed power to Noboa, Mahuad’s vice president. Unyielding, Noboa quickly took up the dollarization policy. Ecuador’s legislature, The Chamber of Representatives, passed the legislation February 29, 2000. Noboa remained president. The measure was part of a bundle of economic and legal reforms that was intended to ease inflation and economic stagnation, restart economic growth and attract foreign investment. As with the Maastricht Treaty of European Union, however, the most attention-grabbing measure has been the abandonment of the national currency. The country’s central bank no longer prints sucre notes or issues debt denominated in the currency (although coins are still minted locally). In direct contrast with the EU members, however, Ecuador adopted the dollar, not as a carefully negotiated option to strengthen a common market with the United States, 2 but as a desperate measure to stabilise its economy, essentially yielding to international pressures on its currency and eliminating malfunctioning domestic monetary institutions. 3 It also ensured much needed new multilateral lending. The new law paved the way for Ecuador to receive a long-delayed aid package from a group of international lenders. The World Bank led with loan credits exceeding $2 billion, which would be stretched over the next three years to support the government’s economic and structural reform initiative. 4 The funds were earmarked to support the replacement of the local currency with the U.S. dollar, as well as to shore up the banking system and strengthen social welfare programs for the poor. The dollarization implemented in Ecuador is bringing about the benefits it promised. It has stabilised

106 Dollarization: The End of Monetary Pluralism in Latin America? ___________________________________________________________ expectations, is wiping out inflation, paving the way for economic recovery and forcing the government into fiscal responsibility and a balanced budget. The measure is the harbinger of an accelerating process that would have been dismissed only a few years ago. In 1996, in discussing international monetary arrangements for the twenty-first century, Barry Eichengreen considered any type of monetary union in Latin America as improbable. In Latin America, he argued, the importance of the United States may interfere with the formation of a monetary union among the Mercosur countries, but a monetary union with the United States or NAFTA countries would not be attractive to them. Indeed, he professed, some groups of Asian countries are better candidates for regional unions than any group of Latin American countries. 5 Today’s reality shows the opposite picture. 2.

What is dollarization? Currency substitution occurs when residents of a country extensively use foreign currency alongside or instead of the domestic currency. When the foreign currency used is the U.S. dollar, the phenomenon is called ‘dollarization’. Commonly, the term dollarization is shorthand for the use, officially or unofficially, of any foreign currency by residents of another country for their own domestic transactions and assets. It is commonly a response to economic instability and high inflation, and to the desire of domestic residents to diversify their asset portfolios. However, dollarization in some Latin American and Asian countries has continued and even accelerated in recent years, even with successful economic stabilisation. ‘Dollarization’ commonly means ‘adopting a foreign currency as one’s own’ since the definitions are the same for dollar, euro, yen or other currency. For the purposes of analysing Latin America, however, I refer to dollarization to mean use of the U.S. currency. 3.

Economics of Currency Unions Economic studies have shown that the reduction of monetary pluralism among countries may produce significant economic efficiency gains. This reduction in monetary pluralism is commonly accomplished through a monetary union. A monetary union between two states exists when: (1) the value of a unit of the currency used in state A has a fixed relationship to the value of the currency unit used in state B; (2) this fixed relationship is enshrined in law; and (3) the states participating in the monetary union are subject to a single monetary policy, set and implemented by a single common central bank. A currency union involves

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___________________________________________________________ all conditions of a monetary union and in addition requires the use of the same currency in all states involved. By this definition dollarization entails a currency union with the United States by unilateral decision of the dollarizing country. While much attention has been paid to the European monetary union, comparatively little research is available on the costs and benefits of dollarization, although that is quickly changing. Recent papers discuss some important characteristics of dollarized economies. For example, one study of the potential costs and benefits of dollarization (or currency union with the United States) for Central America found the benefits in terms of transaction cost reduction in trade and investment to be potentially large given the large costs associated with the present need to transact in two currencies. 6 The consequences of exchange rate volatility and, more generally, currency arrangements, are at the heart of open economy macroeconomics. The empirical literature up to 1997 generally reported a small effect of exchange rate stabilisation on trade volumes. In contrast, a recent influential work by Andrew Rose argues that adopting a common currency provides a substantial expansion of the volume of trade, an effect that goes beyond the impact of reducing exchange rate volatility to zero. The presence of a common currency increases bilateral trade among members by as much as 300 percent more than what would be expected between otherwise identical countries. Others have provided further extensions and support of this claim. Jeffrey Frankel and Andrew Rose have gone on to argue that having a common currency provides a substantial boost to the member countries’ output growth, and income per capita by 1/3 of 1 percent over a twenty year period for every one percent increase in trade relative to GDP. For example, they estimate that dollarization would raise an average country’s income by 4 percent over twenty years. 7 Edwards shows that when compared to other countries, dollarized nations have had significantly lower inflation but also have grown at a lower rate, had a similar fiscal record and have not been spared from major current account shocks. Shang-Jin Wei found that the impact of an institutionalised stabilisation of the exchange rate, i.e., a currency board or a currency union, generally provides a stimulus to goods market integration that goes far beyond reducing exchange rate volatility to zero; long-term currency unions demonstrate greater integration than more recent currency boards. Thus recent theorising on currency unions shows that a reduction in monetary pluralism, that is, fewer currencies, can produce positive results in economic growth. This benefits not only the state as a whole but also its individual citizens. The implication for the global community is that, in this specific area, a reduction in pluralism is good.

108 Dollarization: The End of Monetary Pluralism in Latin America? ___________________________________________________________ 4.

The Trend: Debate and Action in Selected Countries Ecuador was the most dramatic example of a Latin American country turning to the dollar for economic prosperity. Other countries in the region have debated taking similar measures. Some have refused, mostly out of nationalism and concerns about losing control over monetary policy and sovereignty. Others are marching forward with plans that create some form of a dollarized economy. In these different debates, a common disenchantment with national performance of monetary policy functions emerges, often surpassing equally vocal concerns of nationalism. A. Mexico. In 1999 Mexican Bankers Association chairman Carlos Gomez y Gomez called for dollarization because “by adopting monetary union, the country could have a strong currency, which would help to lower inflation and ensure a smooth political and economic transition for the year 2000” (an election year). 8 According to a recent binational survey, half of all Mexicans and four out of ten Americans want to see the dollar as the official currency of Mexico. Furthermore, a telephone survey conducted by the Training Centre of Opinion of the University of Guadalajara established that 50.5 percent of Mexicans would support the use of the dollar as currency of current use in the country, 39.3 percent were against the proposal and 9.8 percent did not respond. For the time being, government officials say they have no plans to eliminate Mexico’s peso or its floating regime. 9 B. Argentina. Argentina has struggled with the idea of full dollarization since 1999 and the debate still rages on. In 2002, as former president Carlos Menem continued to advocate adopting the dollar as the national currency, president Eduardo Duhalde definitively rejected the idea. Menem argued that dollarization would pull Argentina out of recession and provide economic stability while Duhalde argued that the high exchange rate caused by dollarization would only aggravate Argentina’s previous lack of export competitiveness. Duhalde instead devalued the peso and ended Argentina’s decade long currency board which tied the peso to the dollar at par. The Argentine economy is already partially dollarized. Sixty percent of private nonfinancial sector deposits are in dollars, reserve requirements of banks are met with dollar-denominated assets and Argentines are used to carrying out daily transactions in dollars. The dollar has, in effect, become Argentina's second currency. Car loans, bank loans and more than half of all bank deposits are in dollars. Most businesses accept dollars and local cash machines also provide dollars.

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___________________________________________________________ Nationalism runs through popular opinion against dollarization. A cab driver was quoted as saying, that, sure, we'll go on the--Argentina will go on the dollar when the United States agrees to put Eva Peron on the dollar bill. 10 C. El Salvador. Some have argued that crisis, not consensus as was the case with the euro, will be the likely mother of a dollarized Latin America. Not so in the case of El Salvador which adopted the dollar in a moment of economic strength. On January 1, 2001 the Salvadorian national currency, the colon, was fixed at 8.75 units per U.S. dollar, and the national government declared it would not issue any more bills or coins. El Salvador became the third officially dollarized country in Latin America. El Salvador's decision was based on careful consideration, grounded in a reality that predominates in many Latin American countries. The dollar already dominated the country. Some 65 percent of exports go to the United States (compared with less than 25 percent from Brazil and Argentina). The exchange rate has been fixed for most of the past decade and the government saw monetary union with the United States as a way to discipline its own and future administrations. According to Juan Jose Daboub, chief of staff to the Flores government: "We want to avoid the possibility that a [new government] play[s] with the savings of the people." 11 Since dollarization, interest rates have dropped from 20 percent to 11.5 percent, and El Salvador is now the Central American nation with the largest foreign reserves. D. Guatemala. In 2002 Guatemala officially declared the U.S. dollar as legal tender to circulate in parallel to the national currency, the quetzal. This is not likely to last for long as the quetzal is not widely accepted and is considered a weak store of value. Those with cash prefer to hold dollars. Others buy real estate and other durable goods whose value is not affected by inflation. And those of minor spending power find it better to spend the money they receive at once, as a way to guard from a surprise devaluation that eliminates their little savings, an attitude that has a negative impact on the general rate of saving. As the unit of account in transactions of smaller size and contracts of short duration, the quetzal fulfils its function reasonably. But in bigger transactions, such as cars or buildings or long term or commercial contracts at the international level, the account unit used is the U.S. dollar.

110 Dollarization: The End of Monetary Pluralism in Latin America? ___________________________________________________________ E. Costa Rica. In contrast to some of its neighbours, Costa Rica is firmly resisting any moves toward dollarization despite evidence of some potential benefits. In Costa Rica the legislation is very liberal in terms of handling foreign currency and it is common to see prices fixed in U.S. dollars, but the idea of dollarizing the economy is ruled out. Costa Rican policymakers point out the country’s economic and political stability, and thus the contrast with Ecuador and Argentina. Nevertheless the discussion is still open. In 2001, the president of the central bank expressed interest in official dollarization, and a deputy in the Costa Rican Congress introduced a bill to abolish the central bank. F. Cuba. Even Cuba began considering full dollarization as early as 1993. On June 29, 1993, at the closing session of the newly elected Assembly of Popular Power (Cuba’s parliament), Fidel Castro asked the people’s Deputies if it were not time to accept the reality and legalise the dollar as currency in Cuba. He complained that economic realities had forced the country to accept tourism, tipping, foreign investment and hard currency. And he concluded that “there is no way we can control thousands of people who are in fact violating the law” (of not using or holding dollars). The dollar ban was lifted that same year. 12 G. Panama. What other Latin American states are seeking is the financial stability displayed by Panama. While Ecuador is the first case of full official dollarization in Latin America in the twenty-first century, there is precedence in Panama 100 years ago. 13 In 1904 the U.S. dollar was declared a currency of legal course in Panama under the Monetary Association Treaty with the United States. Since then the dollar has circulated along with the national currency, the balboa. Today, the balboa is a unit of account but it only exists in fractional coins. The use of the dollar created a very competitive financial market with low country risk and no risk of devaluation. With financial integration, interest rates are determined by international markets adjusted by costs of transaction and risk, and are generally about 1 percent or less above LIBOR for deposits and less than 2 per cent over LIBOR for commercial loans. 14 Inflation in Panama has been low and stable, averaging 2.4 per cent for the past fortyfive years. And Panama has long been one of the few places in Latin America with long-term fixed-rate mortgages for home and car buyers. The bad news is that Panama is a chronic debtor, and the Western

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___________________________________________________________ Hemisphere's biggest user of IMF relief programs in the past quarter century. 5.

Implications: Pluralism or Efficiency Diversity is frequently hailed in philosophical terms as a source and indication of freedom. In economics it is a profitable complication at best and a nuisance at worst. Efficiency needs sameness. For the less developed countries, however, efficiency in a globalised economy more often than not means they must conform to someone else’s standard. This too is a crucial issue in official dollarization. The countries of Latin America are at a crossroads where they must choose between symbols of their national sovereignty and their national monetary policies (however limited), and greater efficiency in international goods and financial markets offered by dollarization. The decision is further complicated by the limited evidence that dollarization will work. If it sounds too good to be true, it might be. To really get a bang for the buck, countries that dollarize must push through fiscal and supplyside reforms that make their economies more transparent and flexible. There is a need for supporting institutions locally in the dollarizing country. Credible domestic economic and commercial institutions providing stable expectations and positive incentives for productive activity are essential for economic stability, growth and development. If such institutional foundations in the monetary sphere are lacking in any dollarizing country and thus contribute to the decision to abolish them altogether, it is unlikely that the country will be able to function under the tight restrictions that dollarization entails without serious institutional reform. The result could be a reduction in monetary pluralism without any gain in economic efficiency. That said, one cannot ignore the encouraging economic picture provided by Latin America’s first officially dollarized country after years of murky outlooks. In 2001, for the first time in its history, Ecuador posted the fastest growth rate in Latin America. Add to this the efficiency, transparency and credibility produced by the country’s full dollarization, coupled with low labour costs and high literacy rates and the mineral rich country could become one of the most attractive investment markets in the region. When compared to the high uncertainty that has plagued Latin America for most of the past century, investors might favour dollarized Ecuador over many of its neighbours, precisely because dollarization allows for stable planning that permits utilisation of the country’s attractive resources. In the global competition for investment funds, this is a significant benefit. As with the poor countries of the EU, the single strong currency, and ‘tying of political hands’, may be the only way of

112 Dollarization: The End of Monetary Pluralism in Latin America? ___________________________________________________________ stabilising the macro-economy and attracting investment. Some economists have argued that in many Latin American countries, de facto dollarization has rendered monetary policy relatively impotent and active exchange rate policy downright dangerous. 15 By dollarizing, countries gave up no policy instruments they had not in reality already lost, and gained the stability they needed. Indeed, given the prospects of economic growth and stability, if high interest rate premiums, exchange rate volatility and vulnerability and inflation were reduced and foreign investor and lender confidence was increased, dollarization seems a small price to pay in a continent long beleaguered by debt, underdevelopment and weak government institutions and reforms. In their quest for efficiency, however, the nations taking a currency union approach to monetary stability “trade in” a piece of their national identity. In the case of the EU, the new currency is a symbol of shared identity and solidarity with national symbols preserved in coins. In the case of dollarization, however, the national identity portrayed on the currency is entirely that of another country, the United States. In times past, money, like an army, was a visible symbol of an empire’s reach - and the more of it there was, the wider the reach was seen. Where the local economy had no money of its own at all, and no army, the control by the imperial power was complete. In Latin America today, dollarization and empire do not go hand in hand. Sovereign states unilaterally are deciding to adopt the dollar (as their citizens unilaterally chose to hold and use dollars) with no U.S. army in sight, no U.S. pressure and very little U.S. attention even being given to the matter. Nevertheless, the symbolic nature of the result is ever present. Critics of globalisation would argue that it is the empire of the American-centered global economy that forces the hand of monetary authorities to adopt the most efficient outcomes for the benefit of global capital and business. Critics of less developed countries instead blame incompetent and inefficient governments. In dollarizing Latin America the truth is somewhere in between, with some states seeing strength in the end of monetary pluralism. As one analyst noted, dollarization is not an act of political submission, because obtaining access to a stable currency is the first passage towards economic freedom. For productive individuals of any nationality what matters is not the image that is printed on the bill but the need to trust in the currency. They need to be able to plan and assign financial resources today, anticipating higher income tomorrow. Where their own governments are not able to provide that economic freedom, citizens first (then governments themselves) are turning to the government of another country - the United States - for that essential function. They choose to eliminate monetary pluralism. But in

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___________________________________________________________ doing so may be taking a step closer to eliminating their sovereignty in a way that presents a much more real threat than similar discussions surrounding the euro because in dollarization there is no shared institution and no voice in policy.

Anastasia Xenias is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Notes 1

Rodrigo Borja replaced Noboa during the October 2002 presidential elections. 2 The United States is Ecuador's largest trading partner taking in about 30% of the country's exports and supplying 25% of the country's imports, but the two do not have a free trade agreement. 3 That the decision to dollarize was taken in haste and desperation is obvious. What is not obvious is the argument put forth by many, including respected IMF economists, that Ecuador had no other choice but to dollarize. This is not only unclear, it is untrue. Full dollarization has never in economic history, past or present, been presented as the sole policy option. Moreover, between floating exchange rates and no national currency there are at least ten exchange rate arrangements to choose from. The credibility and stability Ecuador sought could for example have been achieved by a currency board, a new national currency or an IMF intervention, all of which have been implemented in Latin America in times of crisis. Ecuador specifically chose a currency union with the United States. 4 In the proposed package, the International Monetary Fund contributed $300 million, the World Bank $425 million, the Inter-American Development Bank $620 million and the Andean Development Corporation $700 million, with an additional $90 million in aid from the U.S. Treasury Department “for specific security and development needs.” 5 Barry Eichengreen, International Monetary Arrangements for the 21rst Century (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994). 6 Ricardo Haussman, the former chief economist of the InterAmerican Development Bank, has been a vocal supporter of dollarization, as is Kurt Schuler, economist for the United States Senate. See Sebastian Edwards, “Dollarization and Economic Performance: An Empirical Investigation”

114 Dollarization: The End of Monetary Pluralism in Latin America? ___________________________________________________________ (Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 8274, May 2001); Juan Luis Moreno-Villalaz, “Lessons from the Monetary Experience of Panama: A Dollarized Economy with Financial Integration,” The CATO Journal 18, 3: 421-440; Zelijko Bogetic, “Official Dollarization: Current Experiences and Issues,” The CATO Journal, 20, 2: 179-214; Guillermo Calvo, “On Dollarization” (Department of Economics, University of Maryland, 1999); Sebastian Edwards and Ricardo Haussman, “The Peg Rift on the Chair Lift,” JP Morgan’s Emerging Markets Today (7 February 2001); Ugo Panizza, Ernesto Stein, and Ernesto Talvi, “Measuring Costs and Benefits of Dollarization: an application to Central American and Caribbean countries,” in Dollarization, ed. Eduardo Yeyati and Federico Sturzeneggar, 117-154. (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2003). See also , a comprehensive site of information on dollarization created and maintained by Kurt Schuler. 7 Jeffrey Frankel and Andrew K. Rose, “The Endogeneity of the Optimum Currency Areas Criteria,” Economic Journal 108: 1009-1025, also printed as NBER Working Paper 5700. Andrew K. Rose and Charles Engel, “Currency Unions and International Integration,” CEPR Discussion Papers 2659, January 2001. 8 Monica Gutschi, “Business groups support monetary union with U.S.,” Laredo Morning Times, 3 February 1999, p. 1. 9 Monica Gutschi, “In Mexico, Support Widens in Business For Eventual Monetary Union with U.S.” Wall Street Journal, 3 February 1999, p. 1. James F. Smith, “Idea of Peso-Dollar Links Gains in Mexico, Currency: Columnists, Bankers, Poll Respondents Back Stabilization plan. Others Resist ‘dollarization,” Los Angeles Times, 10 October 1998, p. 3. 10 Jeffrey Frankel, Dollarization, Fad or Future for Latin America, IMF Forum, 24 June 1999. 11 Latin America Finance, 26 February 2001, p. 34. 12 Arturo Villar, “The Americas: The Dollarization of the Cuban economy,” The Wall Street Journal, 9 July 1993, p. A9. 13 The dollarization of Panama is distinct at its origin as it was related to the political dominance of the United States in that country’s creation and throughout its history established through intervention and directly related to the Panama Canal. 14 LIBOR is the London InterBank Overnight Rate, the interest rates financial institutions charge each other for overnight loans. Typically this is the lowest market determined interest rate in the world. 15 See for example, James D. Dean, “Should Latin America’s Common Law Marriages Be Legalized?” Journal of Policy Modeling (April 2001): 291-300.

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References Berg, Andrew and Eduardo Borensztein. Full Dollarization: The Pros and Cons. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund Economic Issues 24 (December 2000). Berg, Andrew and Eduardo Boresztein. The Choice of Exchange Rate Regime and Monetary Target in Highly Dollarized Economies. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund Working Paper 00/29 (2000). Bogetic, Zelijko. “Official Dollarization: Current Experiences and Issues.” The CATO Journal, 20, 2 (2001): 179-214. Calvo, Guillermo and Carlos Vegh. “Currency Substitution in Developing Countries: An Introduction.” Revista de Aanalyisis Economico, 7 (1992): 48-57. Calvo, Guillermo. On Dollarization. Department of Economics, University of Maryland, 1999. Dean, James D. “Should Latin America’s Common Law Marriages Be Legalized?” Journal of Policy Modeling, 23, 3 (2001): 291-300. De Grauwe, Paul. “Review of Stephen Frank Overturf’s ‘Money and European Union’.” Journal of Economic Literature, 37, 1 (1999): 201-202. Edwards, Sebastian. Dollarization and Economic Performance: An Empirical Investigation. Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 8274 (May 2001). Edwards, Sebastian and Ricardo Haussman. “The Peg Rift on the Chair Lift.” JP Morgan’s Emerging Markets Today (7 February 2001). Eichengreen, Barry. International Monetary Arrangements for the 21rst Century. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994. Frankel, Jeffrey A. Dollarization, Fad or Future for Latin America, IMF Forum, 24 June 1999. Available online at .

116 Dollarization: The End of Monetary Pluralism in Latin America? ___________________________________________________________ Frankel, Jeffrey and Andrew K. Rose. “The Endogeneity of the Optimum Currency Areas Criteria.” Economic Journal 108: 1009-1025, also printed as NBER Working Paper 5700. Frankel, Jeffrey A. and Andrew K. Rose. “An estimate of the effect of Currency Unions on Trade and Growth.” In Currency Unions, edited by Alberto Alesina and Robert J. Barro. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, (2001), 31-38. Fischer, Stanley. Conference on Currency Unions, Ecuador and the IMF. Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution, 19 May 2000. Giovannini, Alberto. The Debate on Money in Europe. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1995. Gutschi, Monica. “Business groups support monetary union with U.S.,” Laredo Morning Times, 3 February 1999. Gutschi, Monica. “In Mexico, Support Widens in Business For Eventual Monetary Union with U.S.” Wall Street Journal, 3 February 1999, p. 1. Levitt, Malcolm and Christopher Lord. The Political Economy of Monetary Union. London: MacMillan Press, 2000. Mancheno, Diego, J. Oleas and P. Samandiego. “Aspectos teoricos y practicos por la adopcion de un sistema de convertibilidad en el Ecuador.” Notas Tecnicas: Banco Central del Ecuador. Quito, Ecuador 1999. Central Bank of Ecuador. Memorandum of Economic Policies of the Government of Ecuador for 2001. Quito, Ecuador, 14 May 2001. Moreno-Villalaz, Juan Luis. “Lessons from the Monetary Experience of Panama: A Dollarized Economy with Financial Integration.” The CATO Journal 18, 3: 421-440. Panizza, Ugo, Ernesto Stein and Ernesto Talvi. “Measuring Costs and Benefits of Dollarization: an Application to Central American and Caribbean Countries.” In Dollarization, edited by Eduardo Yeyati and Federico Sturzeneggar, 117-154. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2003.

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___________________________________________________________ Rose, Andrew K. One Money, One Market: The Effects of Common Currency on Trade. Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 7432 (December 1999). Rose, Andrew K. and Charles Engel. Currency Unions and International Integration. Center for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper 2659 (January 2001). Schuler, Kurt. United States Congress. Report of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. Office of the Committee Chairperson, Senator Connie Mack. Basics of Dollarization. 106th Cong., July 1999. available online at: . Salvatore, Dominick, James W. Dean and Thomas D. Willet, ed.s. The Dollarization Debate. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003.


The FDI Space Heterogeneity Hasan Valiullin

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to comparatively analyse the recent trends in regional distribution of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in Russia and China. To measure the level of regional heterogeneity of national investment spaces in Russia and China both the Herfindahl-Hirshman Index (HHI) and The Lorenz Curve are used. The results obtained clearly show that Russian FDI space continues to grow increasingly heterogeneous, while, in the case of China, the level of heterogeneity is now constant and sharply lower than in its northern neighbour. The increase of inequality in FDI distribution across Russia’s regions is primarily connected with their very different initial advantages in natural, industrial, technological and geographical conditions; and, secondarily, is influenced by the total number and diversity of joint ventures (JVs) allocated in the region, their foreign capital share, and the level of local authorities’ political and economic paternalism or sovereignty.

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The FDI Space Heterogeneity

___________________________________________________________ The rich investment experience of most of the developed countries demonstrates that foreign investment has played a considerable role in their economic growth. Inward foreign capital carries significant potential for both economic gains and social advantages. Moreover, foreign investment is the main source for fixed capital modernisation. In countries in transition to market economy, the competitive pressure from different foreign investors plays an important role in processes of diversifying and modernising the former centrally-planned economies, promoting product innovation and the overall diffusion of new technology, and investment in new production. First, it should be noted that Russia entered into the world market of foreign investment relatively late - in the middle of the 1990s. The existing level of foreign investment in the Russian economy remains far short of its vast needs, while investment outflow is consistently substantial. The cumulative amount of FDI in Russia from 1991 to 2003 was around $27 billion. This performance may be compared with China, its southern neighbour, which attracted more than $50 billion in 2002 alone. 1 The largest investor countries in Russia have been the UK, Germany, USA, France, Italy, and Cyprus. Decentralisation processes and the transition to liberal foreign trade have allowed all the Russian regions to establish direct economic relations with most of the economically developed countries. 2 But different regions work from very different initial conditions to gain the advantages of such liberalisation and decentralisation. The world investment experience clearly demonstrates that the distribution of foreign investment, when compared with domestic investment, has a more localised character. The main reason for that is the fact that foreign investors are usually freer in making their decisions on investment allocation in foreign countries, and, in addition, they pursue mostly high and quick profits. The majority of foreign companies, as a rule, direct their resources (assets) into the most profitable projects, which are to be realised in undoubtedly attractive regions. 3 It is apparent from Table 1 that the regions they prefer are usually large economic centres, with neighbouring regions that have high concentrations of raw materials (oil, gas, metals). Nonetheless, some of the peripheral regions sometimes also get essential opportunities to attract capacious foreign investment if they promise to be extremely profitable. Significant investments are made through transnational companies pursuing global diversification strategies. 4

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___________________________________________________________ Table 1. Russian regions – leaders in attracting foreign investment 5

№

Region (city, oblast, krai, okrug)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Moscow

Share of the region in foreign investment, % of Russia's total ‘95

‘96

‘97

‘98

‘99

‘00

‘01

‘02

46,87 65,45 68,94 49,77 27,76 36,84 39,66 42,68

Omskaya oblast

0,13

0,00

2,98

3,84

9,25

7,23

6,49 12,14

Sverdlovskaya oblast

0,30

0,20

0,58

1,03

1,75

1,49

5,24

6,85

St. Petersburg

5,26

2,51

1,90

3,51

7,31 10,58

8,22

4,45

Chelybinskaya oblast

0,91

0,13

0,33

0,50

5,14

5,44

5,38

4,04

Sakhalinskaya oblast

1,74

0,65

0,43

1,16

1,74

2,29

2,73

3,57

Moscovskaya oblast

6,91

5,93

0,60

6,01

4,64

2,65

2,61

3,49

Republic of Tatarstan

5,40

1,33

5,71

5,81

0,24

1,30

4,57

3,25

Krasnoyarsky krai

0,07

0,01

3,09

0,07

2,04

0,59

0,21

1,84

Samarskaya oblast

2,58

0,82

0,76

1,64

1,56

2,16

1,83

1,54

Republic of Sakha

0,40

0,11

0,11

1,66

0,90

1,46

1,01

1,47

Khanty-Mansiisky AO

1,58

1,75

1,06

0,91

0,93

0,56

1,41

1,18

Krasnodarsky krai

0,94

0,34

0,12

2,72

5,32

8,94

5,56

1,02

Leningradskaya oblast

0,70

2,17

1,39

1,62

3,01

2,79

2,29

0,75

2,01

2,45

1,33

1,27

0,30

0,59

0,15

0,46

Nizhegorodskaya oblast

In total, %

75,80 83,86 89,32 81,53 80,90 84,89 87,36 88,72

Nothing should be strange in the fact that the main flows of domestic and foreign investment display strong coincidences. 6 However, the comparison of some relative parameters of the investments into leading regions testifies to the existence of definite tendencies in the allocation of those investments. The significant asymmetry in investment distribution is determined by investment activities' concentration in two regions: metropolitan centres (Moscow and St. Petersburg) and WestSiberia (Tumen). It is the gap between Moscow and other FDI recipients that serves as the most evident feature of foreign investment space polarisation in Russia (see Table 1). To estimate the level of the heterogeneity of national investment space the Herfindahl-Hirshman Index (HHI) has been used. 7 The results obtained clearly show that Russian FDI space is growing increasingly heterogeneous (while in the case of China the level of heterogeneity is now constant and sharply lower than in its northern neighbour - see below). The increasing inequality of FDI distribution by Russian regions is, at first, connected with their very different initial advantages in natural,


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___________________________________________________________ industrial, technological and geographic conditions. Secondly, it is influenced by the total number and diversity of joint ventures (JVs) allocated in the region, those JVs’ capital structure, and the level of political and economic paternalism (or sovereignty) demonstrated by local authorities. Figure 1 requires some explanation. This HHI graph shows us that the FDI history (1995-2002) consists of three periods. In the first of them, we observe a very concentrated FDI ranging as high as 5,000 prior to the 1998 financial crisis caused by the August 17 default. Moscow city and oblast together received as much as 70% of all the national FDI. The second period (1998-1999) demonstrates a significant decrease of FDI concentration in the capital region and a corresponding increases in some industrial provinces such as Omsk and Chelyabinsk. During the third period (since 2000), annual HHI rises again. So we can draw the conclusion that Russian FDI distribution has an evident tendency to become increasingly heterogeneous. Figure 1. Foreign Investment distribution in Russia : Regional HHI

6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000

112,36

0 1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

Analysis of the data from the table above also supports an additional conclusion that the preferability of regions for foreign investors is determined by the following criteria: 1. The large size of distribution markets and the solvency level of local population; 2. Advantageous geographical allocation and closeness to external boundaries; 3. Industrial development of the region;

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___________________________________________________________ 4. 5.

Highly developed communication infrastructure; and Liberal and active investment policy undertaken by the local authorities. Prior to investing in the regions, in addition to reviewing federal legislation, any potential investor should also attentively examine all the operative regional laws. In fact, some regions have made special efforts to introduce favourable conditions for foreign investment, while other regions have introduced laws that positively discourage investment. One of the most progressive regional foreign investment laws was approved in the Leningrad oblast in 1998. This law was designed to directly increase inward foreign investment in the region and contained loan guarantees and several tax incentives. Other pro-investment regions include Samara, Khabarovsk, Novgorod, Saratov, Nizhnii Novgorod and St. Petersburg. All these entities of the Russian Federation have attracted significant amounts of FDI and have highlighted the need for foreign investors to scrutinise local legislation before investing in a certain region. To attract domestic and foreign investment, special regional programs, which take into account local experience and conditions, have been drawn up. As a rule, they include the creation of different kinds of Free Economic Zones (FEZs) and other incentive programs. 8 Investment incentives can be classified into the following three groups: - Financial incentives, involving the provision of funds directly to the foreign investor by the host government or regional authorities; - Fiscal incentives, designed to reduce the overall tax burden for a foreign investor; and - Indirect incentives, designed to enhance the profitability of FDI in various indirect ways. For example, the regional law "On Attracting Investments to the Pskov oblast," adopted in 1998, sets the legislative, economic and social terms for attracting the capital of Russian and foreign investors and loans from foreign states into the economy of the Pskov oblast. It is aimed at providing property rights protection for investors. The decision of the oblast Administration, or authorised body of the Administration, on investment projects that received positive resolution as a result of feasibility expertise is the ground for privileged taxation. For privileged taxation on the confirmed project it is necessary for the investor to notify tax authorities in the locality of the organisation and the authorised body of the Pskov oblast Administration in writing at the beginning of the investment activity realisation, having enclosed the commitment to keep

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___________________________________________________________ separate accounting records on transactions connected with the realisation of the investment project. Article#7 of the law describes the rights of investors: The investor's use of property, financial and intellectual values in forms not forbidden by the legislation of the Pskov oblast is admitted to be their inalienable right; it is not subject to restrictions and is protected by the law. All investors have equal rights for investment activity performance. Investors have rights: to independently determine directions, forms and volumes of investments; to attract individuals and legal entities to investment activity on agreement basis; to purchase property rights objects directly from individuals and legal entities or through intermediaries without any restrictions on range and volume; to purchase state securities in conformity with the legislation in force; to lease any property objects; to manage, own and use the objects and investment results; to participate in privatisation of state and municipal property objects, and of the objects of fundamental construction-in-progress in the territory of the Pskov oblast in accordance with the legislation; independently establish prices on the products (works, services); freely reinvest the received after-tax profit in the territory of the Pskov oblast; use their property as a collateral of their liabilities including loans attraction; transfer to the individuals and legal entities the right of managing, owning and using his property; lodge claims for compensation of caused damage, including missed benefit; implement other activities not forbidden by the Legislation of the Pskov oblast and Russian Federation. Article#13 of the Tatarstan's “Law on Foreign Investments” is devoted to the incentives for foreign investors in that Republic: With reference to foreign investors the following incentives may be independently implemented by regions: • measures in the field of taxation, such as reduced tax rates, temporary exemption from taxes, delays in tax payment, accelerated depreciation, etc.;

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___________________________________________________________ • financial measures, such as privileged loans (credits), loan guarantees; • conversion of debts into stock values (benefits from discounting of debts accumulated by foreign investors); and • other non-financial measures, such as assistance in infrastructure creation, government agreements (contracts) based on several favourable terms and offering of additional services. Unfortunately, in conditions of multi-level investment legislation (federal, regional and local), the existence of a large number of overlapping legal instruments and initiatives in the investment area is quite obvious. This complex situation inevitably creates various risks of confusion, uncertainties and legal conflicts in investment processes. A particular aspect of this is the problem of coherence between the FDI rules and the foreign trade rules - such as an interaction of the multitude of agreements and initiatives. Frequently mentioned obstacles encountered by investors are: inadequate rules-based legal and regulatory environment, frequent regulatory changes and contradictory interpretation and discriminatory implementation of existing legislation (especially at the regional level). A study of the FDI distribution in China is particularly relevant in the context of this paper because of China’s exceptional size. This country is chosen also due to the fact that it is now the world leader in FDI volume (2002), which exceeds the Russian FDI by ten times (Figure 2).


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___________________________________________________________ Figure 2. FDI in Russia and China, $ billion. .

60,00 50,00 40,00 30,00 20,00 10,00 0,00

China Russia 1979 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 1989

It should preliminarily be noted that China has only 34 administrative units - 31 provinces and three Special Administrative Regions (SAR) - against 89 Russian units. But being compared by the FDI per capita these two countries are parametrically close - about 40 USD of FDI per head. While both countries may be described as countries with economies in transition, China has had twice as long a transition (24 and 12 years respectively) and three times longer an FDI attraction experience than Russia (24 and 8 years respectively). In 1991, actual investment volume in China was only $4.36 billion. In 2002 the volume exceeded the $50 billion level. The latter was achieved through the strong liberalisation policy (particularly applied to several free economic zones) and the relaxing of restrictions on FDI in some important areas (domestic sale, equity control, market access, etc.). 9 By 2002, FDI could be seen in almost all parts of China, apart from extremely mountainous Tibet. The most prominent feature of the provincial distribution of China's inward FDI is that the southeast coastal area permanently dominates here - throughout the reform period (19792002), the share of this area always remained at the level of over 85% of the total actual FDI. The share of the central region saw a modest increase by 1999 - from 1.12% in 1983 to 9.17% (according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC)'s data). 10

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___________________________________________________________ In the early reform period (1979-1982), FDI was concentrated in the first four special economic zones (especially Shenzhen) – the actual FDI in these zones accounted for about 70% of the national total. By 2000, four southeast provinces (Guangdong, Jiangsu, Fujian, and Shandong) and one local city (Shanghai) accounted for 2/3 of the total Chinese FDI. In the earlier 1980s the FDI's main recipients were contractual joint ventures (CJVs) and joint exploration investments (JEIs). Beginning from the middle of 1980s, equity joint ventures (EJVs) and wholly foreign owned enterprises (FOEs) replaced the above noted modes. 11 Despite the fact that China has 34 territorial units, the HHI was calculated for only 31 of them (excluding two SARs – Macao and Hong Kong, as well as Taiwan). Figure 3 shows us the comparative HHIs for regional FDI in both countries during the period from 1998 to 2000. Figure 3. FDI regional distribution in Russia and China: comparative HHI

1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0

333,33 112,36 1998

1999

2000

HHI for Russia HHI for China Min HHI for Russia min HHI for China

To enhance the quality of comparison of national FDI spaces, the Lorenz Curve, a traditional statistical instrument, has also been used. The drawing of the curve for year 2000 confirms the previous conclusions that Russia has the more heterogeneous FDI space (Figure 4) - while in China the leading 10% of the provinces attracted 45% of the national FDI volume, the Russian top 10% attracted close to 80%.


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___________________________________________________________ Figure 4. Lorenz Curves for FDI distribution (2000).

FDI, %

100 80 60 40 20 0 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Number of regions, % Uniform distribution FDI distribution in Russia FDI distribution in China

In conclusion, it should be noted that huge projects are now underway in Russia to renew its national economic and investment legislation - in the fields of taxation and financial services, adopting international accounting standards and applying competition law. In particular, Russia’s objective of protecting intellectual property rights more effectively after the August 1998 default is recognised as a priority in restoring investor confidence. To attract domestic and foreign investment, special regional programs, which take into account local experience and conditions, have been drawn up. They include, as was mentioned above, the creating of Free Economic Zones, Free Trade Zones and other incentive programs. 12 Finally, it may be supposed that a pluralistic approach to the realisation of the regional FDI policy itself serves a long-term investment goal important to the future of both the regions and the country as a whole, and that it is a cornerstone of building a democratic society. Regional FDI inflows foster the transition towards open, market-oriented economies and promote private and entrepreneurial initiative in the countries in transition.

Hasan Valiullin is an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Dubna University, Russia.

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___________________________________________________________

Notes 1

It is quite suitable to note here, that while all the world FDI experts’ eyes are now on foreign investment in China, the country's companies are busily buying up assets overseas; “Spreading their Wings,” The Economist, 4 September 2003. 2 According to The Russian Federal Law No160-FZ "On Foreign Investments in the Russian Federation" all the regions can adopt their own regional investment laws and acts, adjusting local FDI inflows. 3 B. L. Lavrovsky and A. V. Novikov, “Regional Homogenization and Interbudget Relations: The Lessons of the 1960s,” Economic Journal of the High School of Economics 6, 1 (2002). 4 As a clear example here, it may be noted that British Petroleum and Dutch Shell will invest in Russian oil regions about $17 billion in total. 5 All the FDI statistics and calculations involved in the paper are based on official data of Goskomstat, the Russian state committee on statistics; H. H. Valiullin and E. R. Shakirova, “The Heterogeneity of Russia’s Investment Space: Regional Aspects,” Studies of Russian Economic Development 15, 1 (2004): 102-107. 6 Ibid. 7 To calculate the HHI we used the following equation: k ij HHI = ( ⋅ 100%) 2 ; I j =1

∑

where: k – the number of regions (for Russia - 89, and for China- 31 provinces (34)); ij – FDI volume in the region j; I – national FDI volume;

Theoretically maximal HHI is equal to 10000 (all the FDI go to the only region); minimal HHI is equal to 10000/ k (all the regions are invested equally). 8 V. S. Babintsev and H. H. Valiullin, “Special Economic Zones,” The Russian Economic Journal 9 (1992): 117-124. 9 Industrial Policies, . 10 Ibid. 11 L. Pingyao, “Foreign Direct Investment in China: Recent Trends and Patterns,” China and World Economy 2 (2002): 25-32. 12 The Challenge of Free Economic Zones (N.Y.: United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, 1991).

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References Babintsev, V. S. and H. H. Valiullin. “Special Economic Zones.” The Russian Economic Journal 9 (1992): 117-124. Lavrovsky B. L. and A. V. Novikov “Regional Homogenization and Interbudget Relations: The Lessons of the 1990s.” Economic Journal of the High School of Economics 6, 1 (2002). Russian Federation, The Federal Law No160-FZ “On Foreign Investments in Russian Federation,” 9 July 1999 (actualised on 21 March 2002 and 25 July 2002). “FDI in Emerging Market Countries,” Report of the Working Group of the CMCG, IMF publications, 18 September 2003. Industrial Policies at . Pingyao L. “Foreign Direct Investment in China: Recent Trends and Patterns.” China and World Economy 2 (2002): 25-32. United Nations. The Challenge of Free Economic Zones (N.Y.: United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, 1991). Valiullin, H. H. and E. R. Shakirova. “The Heterogeneity of Russia’s Investment Space: Regional Aspect.” Studies on Russian Economic Development 15, 1 (2004): 102-107. “Spreading their Wings.” The Economist, 4 September 2003.

Underdevelopment as Cultural Resistance or Culture as Resistance to Underdevelopment Manuel Branco

Abstract In the attempt to understand the reason why the majority of the world’s population doesn’t enjoy an acceptable standard of living, several economists have tried to show how some of the cultural particularities of poor countries are responsible for their stagnant economic growth and thus for poor living conditions. The idea that culture is an obstacle to development contradicts a pluralistic vision of development processes and therefore does not respect the diversity of human kind. The purpose of this paper is, firstly, to confront orthodox and heterodox approaches to the cultural and economic interaction in development processes, including the role of religion, family and patterns of kinship, ethnic diversity and the performance of authority. Secondly, it gives an alternative explanation for the root of the cultural problem, that is to say, proposing culture as a means of resistance to underdevelopment rather than as an obstacle to development.

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Underdevelopment as Cultural Resistance

___________________________________________________________ Inspired by W. W. Rostow, who stated that capital formation, taken as being at the source of economic growth and, thus, of development, is not just a question of maximising profit, it’s an attitude, 1 a large share of economists believe that the most favourable attitude for development is deeply rooted in the western culture and, therefore, that any development process should start by cultural change, meaning the adoption of western culture. Underdevelopment, or delay in development, should, then, be the result of a strong attachment to local traditional values and beliefs, and of a refusal to adopt western culture. The purpose of this article is to refute on its own grounds this monist vision of development, and to show that traditional culture can be, on the contrary, a means of resistance to underdevelopment. In order to simplify this study I will focus on some of the cultural features most frequently referred to as mattering in the development process. These are religion, family and patterns of kinship, ethnic diversity, national identity and the performance of authority. 1.

The Religious Factor Some aspects of the interaction of religion and economic activity have generated a long-lasting debate that has not yet reached decisive conclusions. A good example of this debate is the discussion about the forbidding of interest on loans. No religion has a particular attraction to interest, not even Protestantism, but its prohibition, in Islam for example, has clearly been overstated. Although there seems to be a slow retreat of Islam from economics, which is seen almost as a perversion, we have to admit that it’s a relatively recent phenomenon and therefore to impute it to some kind of Muslim tradition in relation to economic affairs is an exaggeration. 2 It shouldn’t be forgotten that the Islamic world is responsible for some of the most important scientific improvements in the history of mankind; in economics, for instance, the works of Ibn Khaldun, 3 dating from the 14th century, were strikingly similar, in some of their conclusions, to Adam Smith’s, who wrote in the 18th century. As to other aspects of the protestant advantage, M. Hénaff suggests that, in order to understand the differences between the development process in northern and southern Europe, we shouldn’t look so much at the Protestant-Catholic opposition, as much as we should at the Roman versus Anglo-Saxon traditional law confrontation 4 (to which we could add the Scandinavian and the ancient German law discussion). According to M. Hénaff, therefore, the noticeable differences between the southern and the northern European development processes have a political rather than a religious foundation. So, why should we be interested in religion, then?

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___________________________________________________________ There are, in fact, some aspects of religion, and related values, that may need more discussion, like the role of women and attitudes towards science and education. Once again, it is not my purpose to wear out the subject, nevertheless, it is intriguing to notice that in terms of the level of adult literacy, Muslim countries lag far behind other countries with the same standards of economic well being. 5 The disparity is even more striking if we compare the figures exclusively for women. Research in three villages of Kerala, in south-western India, show that where the Christian community was the largest, much emphasis was placed on education and, on the other hand, amidst a Muslim majority, less importance was placed on it. 6 This research could strengthen the arguments of those who consider religion to have a strong influence on the rhythm of the development process, but P. Kurien puts forward another explanation. During the British control of India the Muslim community was the most affected, and even today it is still hard to dissociate education, bureaucracy, and medicine from the British. Thus, what seemed to be a simple cultural rejection of progressive values is also, and perhaps mainly, the rejection of the symbols of colonial repression. On the other hand, because of the missionaries, the native Christians were accorded special favours by the colonial authorities and, thus, were able to grasp the advantages of investing in education quickly. As for the role of women, there is no doubt that in Islamic culture women do play a small role, but it is not less true that, on some occasions, this obstacle has been overcome and women have participated in the development process, and even innovated at a world scale, as seen, for example, in Bangladesh in the micro-credit experience. 7 Another aspect of religion that should be taken into account is the degree to which individuals believe they are capable of changing their fate. W. W. Rostow described in the stage of the traditional society what he called a long-term fatalism, considered to be a serious obstacle to innovation and to development. 8 C. Morris and I. Adelman point out that the predominant religions in countries showing higher levels of development place more stress on the view that individuals have significant control over their fates. 9 As we would expect, Christianity and Judaism come out winners in this game and the important role played by magic in many parts of Africa undoubtedly shows us where the losers can be found. Once again, one should not disconnect the burst of religious dogma from resistance to what was factual, or virtual, foreign domination. According to S. Latouche, it seems that magic in Africa and Asia grew unexpectedly in the colonial and post-colonial era, and he ascribes this to the frustration generated by decades of underdevelopment. 10

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___________________________________________________________ 2.

Family and Patterns of Kinship In general terms, traditional analysis in development economics finds that the extended family, in other words kinship links beyond the nuclear family, is an obstacle to economic development. The main argument is that it has an inhibiting effect on many of the factors that are taken to stimulate economic development, such as mobility, saving, risk taking and even willingness to work for a higher price. 11 In other words, extended family is a drag on development. 12 Extended family would discourage saving, for example, because kin would have access to funds accumulated collectively and, therefore, any effort to save, with productive investment in mind, would be vain as one would have to take into account unproductive needs resulting from kin obligations. 13 It is true that if one considers economic development as the result of individual effort only, family can easily be seen as a drag on one’s motivation to progress. But if one doesn’t believe in this individualistic vision of development, but prefers a more realistic one, according to which, business is strongly embedded in the social relations, 14 kin, instead of simply consuming capital, could be a source of additional capital. Indeed, families also have a central role in the promotion of skills and, therefore, in the formation of human capital. 15 Employees might work harder because of a sense of obligation to the family; suppliers could provide unusually favourable credit terms to kinsman because they expect them to feel obligated not to let them down. “Clamorous relatives might also provide useful business contacts.” 16 In a rapid, but not hasty, conclusion, extended family can inhibit and promote economic development according to circumstances; therefore, the important issue in understanding underdevelopment is to unveil the circumstances in which extended family is an obstacle to development, and not to try to change the family patterns themselves. Extended family can, indeed, be understood in terms of economic rationality, as it provides a system of insurance, or social security, against common setbacks of life, whether economic or not, such as crop failure, unemployment, or high death rates. 17 The existence of some kind of safety net that could mitigate ill fortune might contribute, thus, to a change in the family patterns more efficiently than many kinds of active policy. Pioneers of development studies P. Bauer and B. Yamey stated, as early as 1957, that “as the economy develops and becomes increasingly removed from the subsistence stage, the concept of the family narrows and the number of people with whom individuals recognise family obligations tends to become smaller.” 18

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___________________________________________________________ Trying to change cultural patterns in order to accommodate the family unit to the goal of accumulation, that is, to privilege the nuclear family, might even be a wrong prescription because, in the absence of a set of improvements in people’s lives, as seen above, the result could be the concomitance of poverty and social isolation. 19 3.

Ethnic Diversity and National Identity The constant propagation of images portraying civil war, along with the procession of statistics about the killing and destruction, are very persuasive in demonstrating the importance of the cultural dimension of economic development and, in this particular case, of the disruptive power of ethnicity, especially for Africa, the most ethnically diverse continent. Some social and economic studies have also described this kind of negative correlation. 20 What’s the matter with ethnic diversity, then? Trying to explain why the industrial revolution started in England, D. Landes brings forward the fact that this country had the early advantage of being a nation, taken not only as a territory but also as something close to what we could call a cultural entity. 21 According to Landes, the importance of nations is that they can reconcile social purposes and individual action, enhancing the latter’s performance through collective synergy. 22 Indeed, Development Economics, either diagnosing or suggesting policy, thinks in terms of the nation-state. The object of the analysis is the national territory, the national income, the national productive structure and so on. Even the obstacles are accounted at the national level: demographic growth, natural conditions, imbalances in foreign economic relations and, of course, ethnic diversity. In other words, one of the first steps of a development process would be building a nation-state, a viable nation-state I should add, and this is exactly the source of the trouble. How are you supposed to build a viable nation-state with strong ethnic diversity? With blood and mud. Indeed, a survey carried out in 1988 showed that 63 out of the 111 conflicts occurring in the world at the time were internal, and amongst these, 36 could be considered as wars for the shaping of new countries. 23 A more pacific way of building nations is to look for the national identity or, in other words, the greatest number possible of cultural features shared by a more or less large group of people. Once again, how can one do it easily if within the 184 independent countries in the world there are more than 600 linguistic groups and 5000 ethnic groups? 24 A glance at Africa’s ethnic map reveals the difficulties of building a viable nation-state on the basis of a strict vision of a shared cultural identity. It is like building a puzzle with the slight difference that you are not aware of how the map is supposed to look once you’ve put all

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___________________________________________________________ the pieces together. This process is all the more difficult because the very idea of the nation-state is a purely European innovation and, therefore, presumably hard to transpose to other cultures. 25 In the 19th century the Europeans believed that Africans had never built nations, and that, indeed, they were incapable of doing so. 26 Considering then, as today, that ethnic diversity was the African curse, they took charge of the physical and cultural construction of the African nation-states. The sad part of the story is that, despite this political and geographical effort and the unwillingness of the Organization for African Unity to discuss any redrawing of national borders, the building of nations is still going on in Africa. It is still going on in every continent, we should add, including Europe and North America. Besides presenting serious difficulties to the construction of nations, what other problems can ethnic diversity raise, especially at the economic level? Studies on ethnic diversity and public policy suggest that, in addition to leading to inferior macroeconomic policies, ethnic diversity reduces the efficiency of public service delivery and undermines economic performance through the inhibition of social capital and trust, 27 it fosters clienteles 28 and, finally, ethnic diversity restrains development because it represses democracy, taking for granted that democracy is essential to economic development. 29 Let’s check out these arguments starting with the last one. It is easily accepted that whenever there is a strong ethnic diversity, political structures tend to be organised around ethnic groups rather than around philosophical affinities. Therefore, whenever an election is called, it is ethnic belonging, or demographic vigour, that is balloted rather than strategies outlined to enhance the public good. Consequently, democracy is clearly distorted, at least in its role of promoting economic development. In this particular case, there is no doubt that culture interferes negatively with democracy, but are we sure that in mature democracies, where free choice is a powerful instrument to legitimate economic policies, such interferences never occur? In other words, ideology is accepted as one of the pillars of western democracy, but, regardless of our values, what would justify prioritising ideology over ethnicity in procuring stability, representativeness and fairness in governance? The more than one-century old confrontation between the Liberal and the Conservative parties in Colombia, and the dramatic consequences for all its population, show that ideology or philosophical affinities might not be intrinsically superior to ethnicity. Studies have shown, in fact, that it is not so much ethnic diversity that impedes democracy, but democracy that is essential to mitigate, or even eliminate, the potentially negative effects of ethnic diversity, 30

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___________________________________________________________ although others do not agree with this. 31 Studies on democratic Botswana and Mauritius show that, not only have these countries succeeded in maintaining a high growth rate, but they’ve also created reasonably honest and competent bureaucracies, in which the plural character of their societies has apparently been reasonably reflected. 32 One could argue that Botswana doesn’t have a very strong ethnic diversity when compared to other African countries, 33 but according to P. Collier, for example, the risk of conflict is higher, precisely, when countries, such as Botswana, face the presence of a major ethnic group side by side with smaller groups, rather than when ethnic diversity is wider. 34 With respect to the question of ethnic diversity raising transaction costs, some studies tend to say that, on the contrary, in the absence of trustworthy institutions, like courts or other contract enforcement institutions, 35 the ethnic group reduces cheating because of the moral obligations that each member has to respect in order to preserve the good name of the group. 36 Therefore, ethnicity can in fact contribute to reducing transaction costs. Furthermore, in the absence of a safety net the ethnic group can play the same role as the extended family as seen in a previous section of this chapter. The Nigerian historian P. Ekeh draws a parallel between the rise of feudalism in Europe and the consolidation of the ethnic affiliation in Africa, each of these systems being a response to the need for security among the people. 37 Thus, every time the State couldn’t ensure security to its citizens, as during the slave trade or the post-colonial and neo-colonial state predation, ethnic and kin affinities were strengthened. In relation to the lowered efficiency of public service delivery, the deleterious effects of ethnic diversity, in general, only occur in the context of governments that are undemocratic. 38 Indeed, dictatorships tend not to transcend the ethnic group of the dictator, so that the more ethnically fragmented the society, the more narrowly based will a dictatorship be, whereas democratic governments, in such societies, must be ethnically cross-cutting. In turn, the more narrowly-based the government, the greater the payoff for predation relative to the inducement of generalised growth. 39 The problem, thus, is not ethnic diversity as much as the lack of democracy. Therefore, we’re facing a political rather than a cultural problem. And, in order to find the reasons for African underdevelopment, for example, one should look for the obstacles standing in the path of the implementation of democracy rather than exhaustively examine the complexities of ethnic differentiation. In other words, cultural homogeneity, once again, is not the answer. After independence, in many of the new African states it was thought that building nations meant more or less the same as

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___________________________________________________________ homogenising society. By consequence, they used a considerable amount of their energy to repress any claim to difference, institutionalising undemocratic governance as the only way to reach the alleged first stage of development. The irony of this process is that repression in itself can depress development, especially when facing ethnic diversity as we have seen. The result is a vicious circle from which it is hard to escape. On one hand, dictatorship is used to repress ethnic differences in order to build the nation-state, and on the other hand ethnic diversity is especially detrimental to development in the context of undemocratic governments. The attempt to erase cultural difference by means of political repression is not only harmful to economic development but, in several cases, it is also both inefficient and counterproductive in fostering national unity. According to S. Amin, the repression of cultural pluralism drove it, in effect, underground, exacerbating this same cultural pluralism in clandestine forms much more dangerous to the national unity that the repression was supposed to promote. 40 Was Africa condemned from the beginning to use repression to build nation-sates on the basis of colonial territories? B. Davidson says that it is true that the ancient multicultural kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, Songhay and Kamen, were similar to the feudal European states but, unlike them, couldn’t produce any kind of national identity; 41 but he also says that where national identity was created and was starting to evolve towards a very western-like form of nation-state, with the Asante for instance, its potential was disrupted by the colonial domination. 42 The irony in all of this is not half equivalent to the tragedy. After spending so much time, losing so many lives and destroying so many of its resources in building the nation-state, African countries are now confronted with globalisation which says, almost like a bad joke, that the national state is not important anymore, and this right at the time when many of them finally have gotten rid of their undemocratic regimes. 43 When the nationalist movements in Africa and elsewhere sought for independence, why did they build the new nations within the borders of the colonial territories and why did it appear to be hard for the ethnic groups trapped inside these limits to cohabitate and to cooperate. Were they condemned to conflict from the very start because of difference? Until this moment we have assumed the ethnic diversity of the new territories as an undisputable, and almost natural, fact, but is it so obvious? Cultural differences exist everywhere within nations. In Europe we talk of provincialism instead of ethnicity. In some cases cultural differences led to the establishment of precise borders circumscribing separate national states, and in many others, the vast majority of cases, the construction of the national states arose from the aggregation of different

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___________________________________________________________ cultural identities. The question, then, is why this process has been so hard to achieve in so many areas of the third world, especially in Africa. S. Amin says impudently that the colonial administration has a determinant responsibility in the creation of the ethnic reality. 44 G. Nkrumah affirms that the laws and the institutions inherited from the colonial powers were often designed to exploit ethnic, religious and linguistic differences within and between African states. 45 Moreover, B. Davidson declares concerning tribalism - a ramification of ethnicity - that it is a convenient invention of the colonial period. 46 What was, then, the purpose of this invention? The answer is obvious, to make the colonial administration of vast territories easier and cheaper without the mobilisation of a great number of Europeans, who were not only scarce, in view of the enormous task, but also clearly unadapted to the climatic conditions in the field, and thereby condemned to face high natural mortality rates. 47 Does this mean that ethnic diversity only exists in our minds? Not at all! Ethnic diversity, and ethnic conflict, is a fact in many parts of the third world, especially in Africa. The point is that this diversity was overestimated from the beginning and exacerbated through calculated action by the colonial administration. S. Amin ironically observes that the invention of the ethnic group was made by a bunch of bad anthropologists albeit good servants of the colonial enterprise. 48 Their frenzy of classification, drawing the physical and cultural borders of tribes and peoples, actually reminds one of the meticulous work of botanists discovering the rain forest. The differentiation between Tutsis and Hutus in both Rwanda and Burundi, for example, is a perfect illustration that the artificial methods used to separate people were as arbitrary as any important feature, culture, language or history. Some say that, traditionally, the Tutsi minority was the ethnic group that dominated the Hutu majority, but we know well today that the feudal Tutsi domination was made up by the Belgian colonisers. 49 Indeed, in order to control the territory the Belgian administration relied on the Tutsi minority, invoking a fake ethnic, and almost racial, distinction between a Bantu and Hamite origin that gave the Tutsis an alleged touch of nobility at which Hutus couldn’t aim. The colonisation established the Tutsis as the elite and naturally the administration in the pre-independence period was monopolised by them, creating, as one would expect, natural frustration and resentment amongst the Hutus. The external influence of the coloniser is at the origin of the surge of many other ethnic groups, such as the Bambara in Mali, or the Bete in Ivory Coast. 50 In Madagascar, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the colonial administration artificially defined the existence of eighteen tribes and today people recognise themselves in this distinction,

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___________________________________________________________ especially because the names that were given to the tribes were related to the physical characteristics of the territories they inhabited, Tefasy meaning those who come from the sands, Tanala, those coming from the forest, and so on. 51 Ethnic conflicts can also be the result of other external interferences besides colonial adventure. According to Lacoste many of today’s ethnic conflicts in Africa have an origin in the slave trade. 52 From the 8th century until the 19th, the Arabs, first, and the Europeans later, used some ethnic groups to capture the slaves they needed. A great deal of the actual ethnic conflicts would, thus, be coincidental with the frontier between the predator and the predated groups amongst the African population. Although slavery is a very old system, that actually continued long after the Congress of Vienna prohibited it in 1815, there is no doubt about the fact that the massive destructive effects on African society have an external origin, based on the labour demands of the economic systems of other colonised regions - the Americas supplied by the Europeans and the Mediterranean and the Middle East by the Arabs. Thus, more than a cultural problem, we are facing an historical, political and economical issue. 4.

The Performance of Authority In the Wealth and Poverty of Nations, attempting to draw the outline of the political and social institutions necessary to reach the goals of economic growth and development, D. Landes refers to the importance of tolerance and the rule of law, regarding property rights especially, but not necessarily democratic institutions or government. 53 Democracy, as we know it, is rather recent, even in the great majority of the “old” democratic countries. Indeed, European economic development was in progress long before the consolidation of the democratic regime. Does this mean that the way in which authority is exercised is not an issue? The opposition between centralised and delegated use of power is, on the contrary, quite relevant in explaining, for example, the precocity of economic development in England and in the Netherlands when compared to France or Germany. Regarding political institutions, the Roman tradition establishes the unconditional character of the sovereign’s power. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, on the contrary, sovereignty is delegated. 54 In terms of the administration, the principles are the same, in the Roman tradition it is the central administration that decides all, whereas in the Anglo-Saxon tradition matters that can be decided locally need not be taken higher up in the hierarchy of the State. In England, for example, county sheriffs and judges have been elected since the 12th century, whereas in France the need is felt to designate the public servants from the

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___________________________________________________________ centre and, very often, to make sure that they come from a region other than the one to which they were appointed. 55 This procedure is, actually, still largely followed in today’s French administration. The centrality tradition gave French kings the possibility of deciding, more or less by themselves, the nature and the level of taxes; consequently, taxation struck essentially the productive population leaving the socially inactive elites free of charges. In England, on the contrary, the monarchy was obliged to negotiate with different social groups. The taxes were then decided in common and the tax burden was more equitably distributed. According to M. Hénaff, this resulted in innovation and competitiveness with long-lasting benefits for all. 56 After this rapid overview, the question one should ask is: can we find in the different cultural traditions in the third world a tendency towards authoritarianism in politics that could explain the obstruction to development as presented by Hénaff for France, for example? The Roman tradition was undoubtedly transplanted to Latin America, but what about the rest of the underdeveloped world? In a conference on Globalisation, Science, Culture and Religions, held in Lisbon in October 2002, D. Etounga-Manguelle, chairman of the Yaounde based company SADEG, declared that amongst the progressresistant features of the African culture there was “an excessive concentration of authority and power in one individual, who will often claim magical powers.” 57 The recent history of Africa gives indubitable examples of this excessively centralised character, to say the least, of performing authority, but is this the demonstration we were looking for, that authoritarianism is a cultural feature? Indeed, on many occasions, while analysing the cultural background of underdevelopment, especially in Africa, there is a tendency to isolate these features from the last centuries of the societies’ history. If one wants to look for, say, an African tradition of performing authority one should not forget the few hundred years of colonisation and unequal development that have affected this continent. In order to get a more authentic view of tradition in these fields one would probably have to study pre-colonial Africa. In doing so, the image of the despotic tradition in African politics is rendered less striking. Thus, where there were organised states, the forms of government could be either centralised or more participative. One feature, though, which seems present almost everywhere, is the possibility of the people overthrowing the ruler in many different institutionalised ways. 58 Regarding Asia, A. Sen states that it is not clear to him that Confucius is more authoritarian than, say Plato or St. Augustine, and that in the Buddhist tradition great importance is attached to freedom. 59

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___________________________________________________________ According to him, the advocates of the authoritarian view of Asian values base their reading on very arbitrary interpretations and extremely narrow selections of authors and traditions. To justify this judgement Sen refers to edicts of the 3rd century BC found in India, where tolerance is clearly emphasised not only as a rule for government but also for individual behaviour, and to the writings of Kautilyia, an Indian contemporary of Aristotle, in whose writing freedom is considered indispensable to the upper classes, though not to the rest of the people. 60 As for the Far East, the question is tricky. There is a clear image of rigid authority in these countries that the contemporary near deification of rulers in China and in Japan only reinforces. The tricky aspect of this issue is that, in general, this excessive authority is considered to be one of the reasons for the success of this region in the development process. Here, authoritarianism doesn’t seem so bad after all. Despite this strong feeling, Lê Thàn Khôi refers to the value of loyalty to the ruler and to the community as far more decisive than the authoritarian character of the political culture. He even stresses the fact that, in China, the theory of the celestial mandate admits the right of the people to rebel against the monarch every time he does not fulfil his mission to ensure its well being. 61 However, if culture or tradition cannot explain the authoritarian exercise of power amongst the majority of the third-world countries during the post-colonial period, what can? The brief, and obviously limited, alternative explanation presented here results from the combination of the economic structure and the institutions inherited from the colonial period. Regarding the economic structure, a major part of African economies are dependent on the export of a variety of natural resources, or plantation crops, which have shown a tendency to lead to loot-seeking activities. 62 This kind of appropriation of national income is clearly opposed to democratic problem solving, distribution of national wealth, even more so when the ruling elites constitute a small group. The gains of an extractive strategy, an euphemism for loot, are closely related to the size of the ruling elite group, 63 thus, when the elite is not abundant, each member can expect a larger piece of the cake and so, the smaller the elite group, and we could add the more unequal the income distribution, the greater the incentives to be extractive. Following the same line of thought, the greater the extractive character, the greater the risk for the elite of becoming a political loser, that is to say, of losing their economic and social status if replaced, which, in turn, favours authoritarian strategies to keep the power. In many parts of Africa, the fact that the European colonisation was mainly interested in exploiting the natural resources and the exotic

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___________________________________________________________ crops is the main reason for their excessive specialisation and their alienating dependence on volatile external markets. 64 In turn, the fact that the colonial administration delegated the day to day running of the state to a small domestic elite 65 and their low investment in educating the native population partly explain the existence, at the time of independence, of a small elite group, almost exclusively connected to either extractive activities or colonial administration. After having taken control of the State, this elite received few incentives to change the institutions and consequently favoured the undemocratic and extractive institutions that had prevailed in the colonial era. 66 This process may, actually, have also occurred in others parts of the world, such as the Caribbean. 67 If we believe all of this, it follows that the authoritarian exercise of power has little to do with culture and is much more related to historical and economic matters. A comparative study of Botswana and Lesotho gives an enlightening example of this. Despite sharing the same traditional ruling institutions in precolonial times - Botswana and Lesotho are, indeed, very close both linguistically and culturally - Botswana evolved towards a democracy and Lesotho did not. The reason for this divergence should be sought in the recent history of the two countries. The limited impact of the colonial rule in Botswana, as compared to the experiences of many other nations in Africa, South America or the Caribbean, allowed the continuity of the precolonial institutions and the elites that came to power after independence were only partly members of the former administrative elite, 68 and the power, therefore, was delegated. In Lesotho, on the contrary, the wars against the Boers and the fact that the British were much more interventionist undermined the traditional institutions and contributed to the centralisation of political power in the hands of the elites. 69 6.

Conclusion Let me draw, now, some intermediate conclusions that seem to contradict the orthodox vision of the interaction of culture and development. Firstly, the fact that some of the cultural features that we have seen result from exogenous interference prove that they are the result of an evolution, the outcome of history and of the development process, and consequently it is oversimplistic to assume that culture acts as a brake to change. Secondly, culture shouldn’t be seen as an obstacle to development, but rather as an instrument in resisting underdevelopment. That is to say that without their cultural institutions, people in a great number of developing countries would probably be worse-off nowadays. I would like to stress that this defence of culture shouldn’t be confused with radical relativism or with the consecration of difference.

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___________________________________________________________ We should avoid ignoring what ‘the other’ has to say, but we also have to make sure that there still is something to say to each other. In practical terms, development policies shouldn’t rely exclusively either on the use of universalistic models nor on a prodigality of case studies and monographs. On the one hand, the knowledge produced is useless to understanding the complexity of the development processes because of its lack of realism, and on the other hand there is a risk of the dissolution of policy-oriented knowledge because any information gathered is threatened by the immediate expiration of its validity. Thus, between the dominant model, which ignores difference, and the particularistic fundamentalism that depoliticises the development process, we will have to find some kind of path.

Manuel Branco, Department of Economics, University of Évora, Portugal.

Notes 1

W.W. Rostow, “Le Développement: L’Économie Politique de la Longue Période Marshalienne,” in Les Pionniers du Développement, ed. G. Meier, and D. Seers (Paris: Economica, 1988), 253. 2 I. Al-Naquid, “Islam et Économie: La Cruauté du Jeu,” Revue du MAUSS, 15, 1er Semestre (2000): 165-171. 3 L. Baeck, The Mediterranean Tradition in Economic Thought (London: Routledge, 1994). 4 M. Hénaff, “L’Éthique Catholique et le Non-Esprit du Capitalisme,” Éthique et Économie, Revue du MAUSS, 15, 35-67 (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 2000): 61. 5 PNUD (UNDP). Relatório do Desenvolvimento Humano (Lisboa: Mensagem, 2002). 6 P. Kurien, “Non Economic Bases of Economic Behaviour: The Consumption, Investment and Exchange Patterns of the Immigrant Communities in Kerala, India,” Development and Change 25, 4 (1994): 757-785. 7 M. Yunus, Vers un Monde Sans Pauvreté (Paris: JC Lattès, 1997). 8 W.W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). 9 C. Morris and I. Adelman, “The Religious Factor in Economic Development,” World Development 8, 7/8 (1980).

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S. Latouche, Faut-il Refuser le Développement ? Essai sur l'antiéconomique du Tiers-monde. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986). 11 B. Herrick and C. Kindleberger, Economic Development, 4th edition (Singapore: McGraw-Hill International Editions, 1983), 102. 12 W. A. Lewis, The Theory of Economic Growth (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1995), 114. 13 M. Moore, “Societies, Polities and Capitalists in Developing Countries: A Literature Survey,” The Journal of Development Studies 33, 3 (1997): 300. 14 See M. Granovetter, “Economic Action and the Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” in The Sociology of Economic Life, ed. M. Granoveter and R. Swedberg (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992). 15 R. H. Bates, “Ethnicity and Development in Africa: A Reappraisal,” American Economic Review 90, 2 (2000): 131. 16 M. Moore, “Societies, Polities and Capitalists in Developing Countries: A Literature Survey,” 301. 17 B. Herrick and C. Kindleberger, Economic Development, 103. 18 P. Bauer and B. Yamey, Economic Analysis and Policy in Underdeveloped Countries (Cambridge: James Nisbet & Co., 1957), 6667. 19 M. Moore, “Societies, Polities and Capitalists in Developing Countries: A Literature Survey,” 319-320. 20 W. Easterly and R. Levine, “Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, 4 (1997): 12031250. 21 D. A. Landes, Riqueza e a Pobreza das Nações (Lisboa: Gradiva, 2002). Original edition in English, Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 1998. 22 Ibid, 244. 23 L. Berlinguer, “Globalisation and the Conflict of Identities,” Conference on Globalization, Science, Culture and Religions, October 15-16 (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2002). 24 Ibid. 25 E. Kantorowicz, “Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought,” American Historical Review 56 (1951): 472-492; E. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 26 B. Davidson, O Fardo do Homem Negro (Porto: Campo das Letras, 2000), 20. 27 A. Alesina, R. Baquir and W. Easterly, Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1997); W. Easterly and R.

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___________________________________________________________ Levine, “Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions,” 12031250; P. Collier and A. Garg, “On Kin Groups and Wages in Ghanaian Labour Market,” Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 61, 2 (1999): 131-151. 28 N. Van de Walle, “Economic Reform in Africa, 1980-2000: Patterns and Constraints,” Workshop on Democracy and Development, June 23-24. (Lisbon: Gulbenkian Foundation, 2000). 29 See for example, A. Alesina and R. Perotti, “The Political Economy of Growth: A Critical Survey of Recent Literature,” The World Bank Economic Review 8, 3 (1994): 351-371; M. Branco, “Da Democracia e do Desenvolvimento,” Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais 55 (1999): 53-85; and A. Przeworski and F. Limongi, “Political Regimes and Economic Growth,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, 3 (1993): 51-69. 30 P. Collier, “The Political Economy of Ethnicity,” Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1998, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1999): 388. 31 D. Horowitz, “Structure and Strategy in Ethnic Conflict: A Few Steps Toward Synthesis,” Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1998, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1999): 362. 32 D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson and J. Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” The American Economic Review 91, 5 (December 2001): 1369-1401; B. Carroll and T. Carroll, “State and Ethnicity in Botswana: A Democratic Route to Development?” The Journal of Development Studies 33, 4 (1997): 464486. 33 S. J. Stedman, ed., Botswana: The Political Economy of Democratic Development (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993). 34 P. Collier, “The Political Economy of Ethnicity,” 387-399. 35 P. Collier and J. W. Gunning, “Why has Africa Grown Slowly?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 13, 3 (1999): 3-22. 36 R. Wintrobe, “Some Economics of Ethnic Capital Formation and Conflict,” in Nationalism and Rationality, ed. A. Breton, G. Galeotti, P. Salmon, R. Wintrobe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 37 P. Ekeh, “Social Anthropology and Two Contrasting Uses of Tribalism in Africa,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, 4 (1990): 660. 38 P. Collier, “The Political Economy of Ethnicity,” 387-399. 39 P. Collier and J. W. Gunning, “Why has Africa Grown Slowly?” 9. 40 S. Amin, La Faillite du Developpement en Afrique et dans le Tiers Monde (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989), 163. 41 B. Davidson, O Fardo do Homem Negro, 96.

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___________________________________________________________ 42

Ibid, 80. F. Schuurman, “Paradigms Lost, Paradigms Regained? Development Studies in the Twenty-First Century,” Third World Quarterly 21, 1 (2000): 7-20. 44 S. Amin, La Faillite du Developpement en Afrique et dans le Tiers Monde, 151. 45 G. Nkrumah, “Battling Africa’s Colonial Legacy,” Al-Ahram Weekly 381 (June 1998). 46 B. Davidson, O Fardo do Homem Negro, 219. 47 D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson and J. Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” 1369-1401. 48 S. Amin, La Faillite du Developpement en Afrique et dans le Tiers Monde, 151. 49 Y. Lacoste, ed., Dictionnaire de Géopolitique (Flammarion, Paris, 1993), 747. 50 S. Latouche, Faut-il Refuser le Développement ?; Y. Lacoste, ed., Dictionnaire de Géopolitique. 51 J. A. Rakotoarisoa, “Les Racines Culturelles de la Crise Malgache,” Le Monde Diplomatique (Mars 2002). 52 Y. Lacoste, ed., Dictionnaire de Géopolitique. 53 D. A. Landes, Riqueza e a Pobreza das Nações. 54 M. Hénaff, “L’Éthique Catholique et le Non-Esprit du Capitalisme,” 6263. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 D. Etounga-Manguelle, “Globalisation and The Conflict of Identities,” Conference on Globalisation, Science, Culture and Religions, October 1516 (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2002). 58 B. Davidson, À Descoberta do Passado de África (Lisboa: Sá da Costa, 1981); G. Ayittey, Les Blocages du Développement Africain (Paris: Institut Euro 92, 1992); Y. Lacoste, ed., Dictionnaire de Géopolitique. 59 A. K. Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1999), 234. 60 Ibid, 236. 61 Lê Thàn Khôi. Culture Créativité et Développement (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992), 157. 62 P. Collier and J. W. Gunning, “Why has Africa Grown Slowly?” 9. 63 D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson and J. Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” 1376. 64 See for example A. Gunder Franck, “The Development of Underdevelopment,” Monthly Review 18, 4 (1966): 17-31; P. Jalée, Le 43

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___________________________________________________________ Pillage du Tiers Monde (Paris: Maspero, 1973); S. Amin, Le Développemendt Inégal (Paris: Ed. Minuit, 1973); S. Amin, O Imperialismo e o Desenvolvimento Desigual (Lisboa: Ed. Ulmeiro, 1977). 65 D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson, J. Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” 1376. 66 Ibid. 67 D. Elliott and J. Harvey, “Underdevelopment in Jamaica: An Institutionalist Perspective,” Journal of Economic Issues 34, 2 (2000): 393-401. 68 D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson, J. Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” 23. 69 Ibid, 29.

References Acemoglu, D., S. Johnson and J. Robinson. “An African Success Story: Botswana.” Discussion Paper Series 3219, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, 2002. Acemoglu, D., S. Johnson and J. Robinson. “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation.” The American Economic Review 91, 5 (December 2001): 1369-1401. Alesina, A., R. Baquir and W. Easterly. Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions. Washington, DC: World Bank, 1997. Alesina, A. and R. Perotti. “The Political Economy of Growth: A Critical Survey of Recent Literature.” The World Bank Economic Review 8, 3 (1994): 351-371. Al-Naquid, I. “Islam et Économie: La Cruauté du Jeu.” Revue du MAUSS, 15, 1er Semestre (2000): 165-171. Amin, S. La Faillite du Developpement en Afrique et dans le Tiers Monde. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989. Amin, S. O Imperialismo e o Desenvolvimento Desigual. Lisboa: Ed. Ulmeiro, 1977.

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___________________________________________________________ Amin, S. Le Développemendt Inégal. Paris: Ed. Minuit, 1973. Ayittey, G. Les Blocages du Développement Africain. Paris: Institut Euro 92, 1992. Baeck, L. The Mediterranean Tradition in Economic Thought. London: Routledge, 1994. Bates, R. H. “Ethnicity and Development in Africa: A Reappraisal.” American Economic Review 90, 2 (2000): 131-134. Bauer, P. and B. Yamey. Economic Analysis and Policy in Underdeveloped Countries. Cambridge: James Nisbet & Co., 1957. Berlinguer, L. “Globalisation and the Conflict of Identities.” Conference on Globalization, Science, Culture and Religions, October 15-16. Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2002. Branco, M. “Da Democracia e do Desenvolvimento.” Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais 55 (1999): 53-85. Carroll, B. and T. Carroll. “State and Ethnicity in Botswana: A Democratic Route to Development?” The Journal of Development Studies 33, 4 (1997): 464-486. Collier, P. “The Political Economy of Ethnicity.” Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1998, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1999): 387-399. Collier, P. and A. Garg. “On Kin Groups and Wages in Ghanaian Labour Market.” Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 61, 2 (1999): 131151. Collier, P. and J. W. Gunning. “Why has Africa Grown Slowly?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 13, 3 (1999): 3-22. Davidson, B. O Fardo do Homem Negro. Porto: Campo das Letras, 2000. Original edition in English, The Black Man’s Burden, 1992.

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___________________________________________________________ Davidson, B. À Descoberta do Passado de África. Lisboa: Sá da Costa, 1981. Original edition in English, Discovering Africa’s Past. Longman Group, 1978. Easterly, W. and R. Levine. “Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, 4 (1997): 12031250. Ekeh, P. “Social Anthropology and Two Contrasting Uses of Tribalism in Africa.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, 4 (1990). Elliott, D. and J. Harvey. “Underdevelopment in Jamaica: An Institutionalist Perspective.” Journal of Economic Issues 34, 2 (2000): 393-401. Etounga-Manguelle, D. “Globalisation and The Conflict of Identities.” Conference on Globalisation, Science, Culture and Religions, October 1516. Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2002. Granovetter, M. “Economic Action and the Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” In The Sociology of Economic Life, edited by M. Granoveter and R. Swedberg. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992. Gunder Franck, A. “The Development of Underdevelopment.” Monthly Review 18, 4 (1966): 17-31. Hénaff, M. “L’Éthique Catholique et le Non-Esprit du Capitalisme.” Éthique et Économie, Revue du MAUSS, 15, 35-67. Paris: Editions La Découverte, 2000. Herrick, B. and C. Kindleberger. Economic Development, 4th edition. Singapore: McGraw-Hill International Editions, 1983. Hobsbawm, E. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Horowitz, D. “Structure and Strategy in Ethnic Conflict: A Few Steps Toward Synthesis.” Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1998, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1999): 345-370.

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___________________________________________________________ Jalée, P. Le Pillage du Tiers Monde. Paris: Maspero, 1973. Kantorowicz, E. “Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought.” American Historical Review 56 (1951): 472-492. Kurien, P. “Non Economic Bases of Economic Behaviour: The Consumption, Investment and Exchange Patterns of the Immigrant Communities in Kerala, India.” Development and Change 25, 4 (1994): 757-785. Lacoste, Y., ed. Dictionnaire de Géopolitique, Flammarion, Paris, 1993. Landes, D. A. Riqueza e a Pobreza das Nações. Lisboa: Gradiva, 2002. Original edition in English, Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 1998. Latouche, S. Faut-il Refuser le Développement? Essai sur l'antiéconomique du Tiers-monde. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986. Lê Thàn Khôi. Culture Créativité et Développement. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992. Lewis, W. A. The Theory of Economic Growth. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1995. Moore, M. “Societies, Polities and Capitalists in Developing Countries: A Literature Survey.” The Journal of Development Studies 33, 3 (1997): 287-363. Morris, C. and I. Adelman. “The Religious Factor in Economic Development.” World Development 8, 7/8 (1980). Nkrumah, G. “Battling Africa’s Colonial Legacy, Al-Ahram Weekly, 381 (June 1998). PNUD (UNDP). Relatório do Desenvolvimento Humano, Lisboa: Mensagem, 2002. Przeworski, A. and F. Limongi. “Political Regimes and Economic Growth.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, 3 (1993): 51-69.

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___________________________________________________________ Rakotoarisoa, J. A. “Les Racines Culturelles de la Crise Malgache.” Le Monde Diplomatique (Mars 2002). Rostow, W. W. “Le Développement: L’Économie Politique de la Longue Période Marshalienne.” In Les Pionniers du Développement, edited by G. Meier and D. Seers, 247-286. Paris: Economica, 1988. Rostow, W. W. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960. Schuurman, F. “Paradigms Lost, Paradigms Regained? Development Studies in the Twenty-First Century.” Third World Quarterly. 21, 1 (2000): 7-20. Sen, A. K. Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1999. Stedman, S. J., ed. Botswana: The Political Economy of Democratic Development. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993. Van de Walle, N. “Economic Reform in Africa, 1980-2000: Patterns and Constraints.” Workshop on Democracy and Development, June 23-24. Lisbon: Gulbenkian Foundation, 2000. Wintrobe, R. “Some Economics of Ethnic Capital Formation and Conflict.” In Nationalism and Rationality, edited by A. Breton, G. Galeotti, P. Salmon, R. Wintrobe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Yunus, M. Vers un Monde Sans Pauvreté. Paris: JC Lattès, 1997.

Part IV Cultural Pluralism


Invention as Intervention: Negotiating the Margins of Pluralism Vijay Devadas

Abstract This paper animates the challenge posed by pluralism to disrupt the homogenisation of the social scene and foreshadows an inherent paradox in pluralism that limits its radical creativity. Both these concerns are addressed through recourse to the terrain of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is double-edged: firstly, it sets up the terms of cultural engagement and negotiation that are founded upon and legitimated through the political doctrine of pluralism. However, because pluralism is entangled in an inhibiting paradox, the radical possibilities of multiculturalism are arrested. To leave this paradox unaddressed is to return to a structure that is singular and homogenous. It fosters the materialisation of an exclusionary agenda, which raises questions about pushing the limiting boundaries of pluralism, dealing with the paradox, and challenging the articulation of solidarities in the name of multiculturalism. To address these questions, I propose the notion of invention as intervention. The argument is that invention, as going to work, as translation, gestures to a process of permanent revolution, of endless movement, and transformation. The upshot of this is that pluralism is heterogenised, critically self-conscious, and most crucially, called to bear witness to its own injustices and to continue to extend the discourse of cultural pluralism.

156 Invention as Intervention: Negotiating the Margins of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ 1.

Introduction There is, to a certain extent, something attractive about the notion of pluralism in that it calls upon the social contemporaneity to bear witness to a multiplicity of allegiances. 1 In a sense, pluralism calls forth the urgency of entertaining difference and diversity and nowhere is this more evident than in the institutionalisation of multiculturalism as an ideological discourse and as an official policy in various nations, particularly Australia, which is the focus of this paper. The discourse of multiculturalism, which is built upon an understanding of pluralism and which emphasises cultural pluralism, calls into question the nation’s efforts to singularise the national narrative, to subsume cultural difference and diversity in the name of the nation. In other words, the discourse of pluralism, the harbinger of a democratic body politic upon which multiculturalism is built, is both powerful and pungent. However, as much as I find pluralism to be both positive and productive, I am also sceptical because pluralism “contains a paradox, since the very moment of its realization would see its disintegration.” 2 The question that beckons then is how to champion pluralism without falling prey to the very paradox that hinders the materialisation of a pluralist democracy. This is the central concern of this chapter, hence the invocation of an ambivalent relationship to the discourse of pluralism. I wish to chart this ambiguity by first animating the challenge posed by multiculturalism and exploring some of its limitations before suggesting that a democratic and just notion of pluralism is productive only insofar as we bear witness to the notion of invention as a strategy of intervention. 2.

The Challenge of Multiculturalism The history of Australia provides a fascinating documentation of the shift from a monistic conception of the nation to a much more plural, multicultural one. Since the early 1970s, the Australian national fabric has been sutured around the policy of multiculturalism, as a response to the racist history of the White-Australia policy and as a response to the influx of migrants, namely from Asia. In other words, the shift in the 1970s was toward a “pluralist and equitable recognition of the diverse ethnic groups living within the boundaries of the nation.” 3 It marks a rupture in the Australian imaginary that set up the foundations for the construction of the nation through the discourse of multiculturalism. In and against the earlier marginalisation of ethnic minorities and the indigenous community motivated by the desire for a singularised and pure idea of the nation, Australia, both at the level of official government policy and as an ideological discourse, embraced the idea of cultural pluralism. The redefinition of the foundation of the national narrative in terms of

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___________________________________________________________ multiculturalism exemplifies the challenge of pluralism to earlier narratives espousing a singular, monistic imagination of the nation. More specifically it “entailed a fundamental redescription of the nation away from racial and cultural homogeneity in the direction of ethnic and cultural diversity.” 4 The challenge of cultural pluralism, while opening up the terms of narrating the nation, has, nevertheless faced significant counterchallenges: in 1996 for example, the liberal government, led by John Howard came into power on the wave of a backlash against the earlier (labour) government’s intensive push into Asia and the perceived ‘Asianisation’ of Australia. At the same elections, Pauline Hanson came into the political scene as an Independent on a campaign condemning Asian immigration into Australia and lashing against the perceived ‘special’ treatment of Aboriginal-Australians. More seriously, “she wanted the policy of multiculturalism ‘abolished’.” 5 However, the populist-racist agenda had no place in a culturally pluralised nation-space. And John Howard, in an attempt to both curb the rise of purist nationalistic slogans (the spectre of the White-Australia Policy) and respond to calls for solidifying the multicultural foundation of Australia, first commissioned the discussion paper “Multicultural Australia: The Way Forward” to debate the appropriateness of framing the national narrative in terms of multiculturalism. Later in 1999, the Howard government announced their embrace of multiculturalism in their statement “New Agenda for Multicultural Australia,” thus reinforcing and cementing the national government’s commitment to cultural pluralism. And in 2003, the government announced a renewed statement affirming its commitments to multiculturalism with an updated version of the 1999 document – “Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity” - in response to the events of 11 September and 12 October in Bali, which entrenched the notion that cultural diversity binds the nation’s pluralism together. On the one hand, the liberal government’s continued emphasis on multiculturalism is rather ironic considering that the party only came to power because of electoral backlash against the contamination of the Australian national fabric by Asian migrants. On the other hand, the continued emphasis and affirmation is but testament to the challenges posed by multiculturalism to the national fabric. At every turn where multiculturalism is debated, affirmed, and reaffirmed, where the pluralities of cultures is recognised, the national fabric is reminded of the impossibility of representing national identity, nationalism, and the idea of the nation in counter-pluralist terms. As Anne Brewster remarks, “cultural pluralism above all problematises expression of nationalism, especially in the post-colonial contexts.” 6

158 Invention as Intervention: Negotiating the Margins of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ 3.

The Dilemmas of Multiculturalism While I share Brewster’s enthusiasm and the affirmation of the disruptive challenge posed by cultural pluralism, I have several reservations that necessitate a degree of scepticism. These reservations materialise, firstly, because the challenges posed by multiculturalism are founded on a problematic assumption; secondly, because the notion of cultural pluralism staged through multiculturalism simultaneously liberates and subordinates; thirdly, because multiculturalism espouses cultural pluralism through a process of mediation; and finally because pluralism is entangled in a paradox which arrests the radical possibilities of multiculturalism. The challenges posed by the articulation of a discourse of cultural pluralism are hinged upon the assumption that the nation narrates itself in very fixed, rigid, and unchanging terms. Only insofar as this assumption is upheld can we share Brewster’s positive affirmation of cultural pluralism as a threat to the expression of the nation. But this assumption is rather problematic because it fails to consider the possibility that the national narrative is contingent, mobile and flexible. The epistemic discontinuities - the shift from desiring homogeneity to embracing difference within unity - are but testament that the discourse of nationalism and the contract of nation-building are not fixed but follow “a transitional logic,” as Julia Kristeva asserts. 7 That is to say the idea of the nation, the fostering of a sense of nationalism and the forging of a national identity are regenerative; the nation “changes with the times” 8 to keep itself alive, and today the contemporary demands of the world encourage, and, to a certain extent, institutionalise a hegemonic approach that is much more contingent, unfixed, and mobile. This is precisely why it is all the more urgent to maintain the spirit of criticism as the nation reconstitutes itself and not celebrate, uncritically, the ideological leaning on cultural pluralism. In other words, the survival of the nation is contingent upon the flexibility of the discursive constructions that make up the idea of the nation. Only insofar as the nation is able to accommodate and later co-opt the foreign, the different, the ‘other’ and sometimes the antagonistic can it succeed in extending “its pursuit of universality.” 9 This is the paradox an attempt to construct the nation confronts - the search for universality while acknowledging the particularities embedded within this universalisation. In that sense, it can be argued that there has been a shift from the desire for a pristine and fixed conception of the nation. This is why Brewster’s comment needs to be questioned, because cultural pluralism is now the hegemonic basis from which nationalism and national identity are constructed. But at the same time the discursive constructions of the nation nevertheless repress “other” particular voices in favour of the

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___________________________________________________________ national, general interest even though it claims to be transitional. So, while bearing witness to the shifts within the nation, the concern of criticism should (also) be focused on the strategies through which specific ethnic or cultural communities are “wholly or partly merged into national societies so as to support the political organization of the national state.” 10 The second reservation, the simultaneous liberation and subordination of cultural pluralism, and the third reservation, the mediation of cultural pluralism, are summed by Homi Bhabha as follows: one is the very obvious one, that although there is always an entertainment and encouragement of cultural diversity, there is always a corresponding containment of it … The second problem … is … the universalism that paradoxically permits diversity masks ethnocentric norms, values and interests. 11 The first problem can be seen in the way in which Australia constructs a sense of national identity. The official approach entertains a range of differences, hence giving the illusion of a liberating politics, while at the same time containing and subordinating differences, by distancing it from what Trinh Minh-ha calls “critical difference.” 12 A sense of critical difference, as compared to non-critical difference, is a threat to the national desire for unity; it interjects in the construction of Peoplehood by playing on the ambivalence at the heart of the official attempt at constructing a unified subject. This is a sense of difference that challenges the notion of identity and shores up the impossibility of neatly containing identities within specific categories. In other words, to restage and rearticulate the notion of identity and the politics of identification from the space of critical difference reifies the idea of identity as composed of infinite layers and intervenes in the official narration of a national identity. In contrast to critical difference, which is a threat to the nation’s myth of unity, non-critical difference “induces an attitude of temporary tolerance … and … constitutes an efficacious means of silencing the cry of … oppression.” 13 This is how difference is embraced through multiculturalism in the official discourse and this is how the volatility of difference is muted. The second problem can be staged through Etienne Balibar’s argument that differences that are acknowledged and promoted through multiculturalism are played out through a process of “mediation.” 14 A more popular point of view would argue that the confrontation between cultural identity and national identity always leaves open a gap in the national fabric precisely because cultural identity remains non-

160 Invention as Intervention: Negotiating the Margins of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ synchronous with the universalising discourse of national identity. Against this, Balibar conceives of cultural identity as necessarily describing universality, thus working paradoxically in the service of championing a unified national identity. This is because cultures cannot be thought in their social or anthropological diversity except by comparison with universals (whether natural or logical). Next, because this very diversity induces a communication ‘between cultures’ or between ‘bearers’ of singular cultures which at least potentially crosses all borders. Finally and above all, because identity of each culture would have to be recognized as containing a value that, as such, is universal. 15 In other words, while cultural identity expresses and lays claim to some form of singularity, it also paradoxically affirms the irreducibility of the universal. In that sense, the universal is not collapsed but reinforced. The hegemonic task thus becomes one of affirming “singularity by the mediation of the universal. And, reciprocally, it would affirm the reality of the universal by the mediation of singularities.” 16 The fourth and final reservation, pluralism’s paradox, is the most critical. Keeping in mind Bhiku Parekh’s insightful comment that multiculturalism is founded upon and legitimated through the political doctrine of pluralism, it can be suggested that the arresting paradox within pluralism that Chantal Mouffe discusses limits the articulation of a radicalised notion of cultural pluralism. In The Return of the Political, Mouffe argues that an urgent radicalisation of the idea of pluralism is necessitated because while pluralism advances “open conflict of interests … there is a tendency that it can too easily be replaced by a confrontation between non-negotiable … essentialist identities.” 17 Such a possibility emerges because pluralism is held hostage to the discourses of rationalism, individualism and universalism, which impose certain conditions of possibilities within which pluralism can be articulated. More precisely, the borders of pluralism are fixed and subordinated to a discursive regiment that “apprehend[s] the multiplicity of forms… that exist in social relations.” 18 The argument that Mouffe is making manifests itself in the discourse of multiculturalism, the harbinger of cultural pluralism, which specifies the way in which cultural pluralism should be embraced. The various criticisms discussed stage their reservations against multiculturalism for the very same reasons: that multiculturalism

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___________________________________________________________ essentialises cultural difference and diversity in the very terms that arrest and mute the volatility of difference and the attempt to reconfigure the national space to just and equitable ends. What is urgently required, therefore, is to break away from such linkages, which arrest the radical potential of pluralism. However, such a project must bear in mind that pluralism “contains a paradox, since the very moment of its realisation would see its disintegration.” 19 In other words the very materialisation of pluralism would solidify what kinds of plurality can be articulated and set up an exclusionary structure that apprehends the multiple possibilities of enunciation. The questions that must be addressed next then are how to deal with the paradox, how to push the limiting boundaries of pluralism and how to challenge the articulation of solidarities in the name of multiculturalism. 4.

Invention as Intervention The reservations raised previously have a shared emphasis against any kind of fixity or essentialism, which inhabits and inhibits both multiculturalism and pluralism. In addition, through Mouffe, it is clear that the radicality of pluralism can be kept alive only insofar as pluralism remains constantly mobile so that a certain static version of pluralism does not dominate. It is possible to rethink a much more radical version of pluralism and multiculturalism by bringing into the current structures of articulation a certain instability, a certain incompleteness that demands a renegotiation of the terms upon which pluralism and multiculturalism are set forth. Such a possibility can be animated through Derrida’s re-reading of Freud in “To Speculate - On ‘Freud’.” 20 “To Speculate,” as the title declares, is to do some guess work; to open the space of the maybe, of another possibility within the system: maybe the game is not complete as Freud suggests and maybe there is no assurance of completeness. Against the surety of completeness, Derrida sets out to contend that the condition of a message’s legibility is that it “can always not arrive at its destination.” 21 And it is this condition of the possibility of non-arrival that keeps alive the spirit of invention, which “consists of reassembling, of searching in order to bring together, in reuniting in order to give back.” 22 How else can we seek to explain the joyful ‘Da’ exclaimed by Ernst repetitiously? Why does Ernst exclaim joyfully, for the umpteenth time, as if he had never expected the spool to return when the transaction, every time it is enacted, is completed? Freud does not inquire as to why, on what conditions or expectations, Ernst does not expect the return of the spool? Is Ernst’s joyful response not a surprising exclamation at the return of the spool as Freud points out? And since it is, then it must follow that “the

162 Invention as Intervention: Negotiating the Margins of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ condition for it to arrive is that it ends up and even that it begins by not arriving.” 23 In other words, every time Ernst cast the spool away, he casts it on the condition that it might not arrive or return. This explains the joyful exclamation at the reappearance of the spool every time it is cast. The doubt of non-arrival is temporarily postponed by the joyous utterance. In questioning the completeness of Freud’s observation, Derrida is not attempting to demolish the fort/da structure; rather the imperative is on de-emphasising the completeness of the structure, on disaffirming the assumption that the return would be complete every time the spool is cast and every time an attempt at retrieval takes place. An assumption that does not account for the possibility of non-arrival, for the non-return of the spool within the system of arrivals and departures can turn to dogmatism for thought and action. Against such dogmatism, Derrida’s re-reading of Freud opens up a space of play within the system or structures and attempts to work against an affirmation of the solidity of established narrative structures. In terms of identity politics, Derrida’s deflection to the site of play firstly destabilises the assurance of the national temporality, which is built upon properly constituted received traditions; that is, traditions that are congruent with the imagining of the nation. Secondly, Derrida’s deflection gestures to the opening of another space of enunciation that divides and distances the destination of every address, narrative, temporality, and sign. The notion of play is not predicated upon erasing structures, nor is it proposing a sense of all out freedom. Rather it is gesturing to a moment within the structure that rejects the dogmatic claim to unified notions of identity and the terms on which identity is staged. In other words, the notion of play suggests a sense of incompleteness within the systems and structures of validated cultural identities and cultural imaginings. This is where Bhabha similarly locates culture, in the passage of play within the polemics. To conjure the other, to bring forth migrant culture projectively in the space of the structure or system emphasises the fluidity of culture, its transformative value. However, as Bhabha astutely reminds us, this is no plea for unregulated open-endedness or the celebration of pluralism. It is, in fact, an argument for recognizing the necessity of that anxious moment of minority enunciation that insists upon the possibility of choice … in those negotiations of culture and identity. 24

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___________________________________________________________ On the one hand, conceiving culture in terms of the passage of play emphasises not only the fluidity of culture, but also underscores that one needs to go to work, to invent, as an interruptive gesture, the terms upon which the notion of a migrant culture is enunciated. This is why Bhabha writes that culture is best conceived as “composed of incommensurable demands and practices, produced in the act of social survival.” 25 To conceptualise culture in this way opens the domain of culture to invention rather than closing it down and dogmatising it. Such a conception, which emphasises the necessity of going to work upon the trope of culture, can be framed in terms of what I call a politics of invention as intervention. And this is the idea of going to work upon the established order of enunciation by asking questions about the legitimacy of the grounds of enunciation, the order of enunciation, the frequency of enunciation, the right to enunciate, and the space and time of enunciation. On the other hand, Bhabha’s conception of culture through the notion of play also points to the location of the in-between. That is to say the notion of play gestures to the inconsistencies and the irreducibility of the struggle for recognition to open a third, in-between space in which culture can be staged proactively. Bhabha calls this space the hybrid space and the opening of such a space a hybrid moment. This is the space that shores up the ambivalences and contradictions in the national narrative. The hybrid moment questions the national claim to mastery of particular and universal identities and the inherent lack within such a system of naming. In enunciating from a hybrid moment, where culture is no longer assumed to be stable, an arbitrary moment is opened up, one that “turns into a struggle for the historical and ethical right to signify.” 26 It is by gesturing to the ambivalence in the system of naming, that a lack or excess in the system is evoked to bring forth the need for change, for reaffirming the imperative of the right to signify, and keeping watch on the way in which particular identities are staged. It is in the essay “Signs Taken For Wonders” that Bhabha sets forth the workings of hybridity most clearly. The question that drives the paper is “how is historical agency enacted in the slenderness of narrative?” 27 That is to say, how do we circulate the sign of the other that is deprived of subjectivity? Here, we return to the moment of the “fortuitous discovery of the English book … an insignia of colonial authority and a signifier of colonial desire and discipline.” 28 The relation of the Book to the colonial vocabulary has been well documented - it legitimised the colonial episode, gave it cultural authority, as one steeped in the ‘logic’ of civilising the native through Christian missionaries. As Bhabha writes, “the discovery of the book installs the sign of appropriate representation … [and] is presented as universally adequate.” 29 This

164 Invention as Intervention: Negotiating the Margins of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ universality is, however, shattered when one asks how the Hindu audience, for whom the teachings of the Bible remained alien to their religious paradigm, received the Book? Posing this question moves the concern from the space of cultural production to the site of cultural reception, to the moment when the Hindu native confronts the impossibility of consuming Christian eschatology. In shifting the concern to the locus of reception, Bhabha is attempting to restate the question of agency at that moment when agency, in the figure of the Hindu native, confronts the obscure textual sign of Christianity. This is when and where the contests for the authority over the Book and the authority of the Book take place. The reply to Anund, the Indian catechist, captures well the ambivalence that is set forth in the reception of the Book: “to all the other customs of Christians we are willing to conform, but not to the Sacrament, because the Europeans eat cow’s flesh, and this will never do for us.” 30 Because both the Hindus and the Christians share the concept of God, the discourse of religion is not alien to either. This shared cultural sign of God however invokes dissimilar signifiers - The Holy Spirit, Krishna, and so on - and different passages of religiosity - for the Hindu, for instance, the consumption of beef is sacrilegious. And it is this difference that prompts the native’s suspicion toward the missionary’s godly zeal: how can the beef eating European sahib be the messenger of God? “‘That cannot be, for they eat flesh.’” 31 This unfamiliar connection, between religion and dietary habits, prompts a question, which “turn[s] the origin of the book into enigma.” 32 And in this enigmatic moment that emerges between the shared sign (God) and the alien associations (flesh eating), the native agrees to conversion but only if the missionary could provide “an Indianised Gospel.” 33 This is the menace of hybridity played out through the native’s confrontational scandalisation of the Bible. The hybrid as confrontational is not set forth in terms of a politics of negation, of an outright rejection or opposition of the Christian missionaries. Rather, it is a more ambivalent contest that deflects the terms on which the Authority of the Bible is premised and sets up new terms of engagement. The native’s “bastardized repetition” 34 of the familiar trope of the Book and demand for an Indianised Gospel pushes the terms of engagement to another lexicon that “terrorizes authority with the ruse of recognition.” 35 In the contest between Hindu religiosity and Christian eschatology, the native response must be understood as a supplementary strategy - one that does not seek to superimpose Hindu belief-systems upon the colonisers religious convictions, or opting to unequivocally agree or disagree to conversion. Rather, the metaphor of the “Indianised Gospel” deflects the terms of engagement to open new grounds of contestation that show the inconsistencies and limitations within the coloniser’s rules of

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___________________________________________________________ engagement. This is when adding up does not necessarily add up. There is therefore a double movement. On the one hand, the metaphor of the Indianised Gospel shows how the demand for a localised, nativised version of the sacred texts disrupts the authority of the Bible because such a demand creates a moment of contingency that opens “a contingent, borderline experience … in-between coloniser and colonised.” 36 It cannot be accommodated within the sensibilities of the Christian missionaries. On the other hand, the transformation of the authority of the Book and of the colonial world also reinvents the Hindu conception of religion and the colonial encounter. The hybrid moment instantiates a fracture and an ambivalence within the colonisers and colonised grammar and sets forth another location. It is in the hybrid moment, captured in the metaphor of the Indianised Bible that we see “Fanon’s image of an introjected agency … languish[ing] and lash[ing]” 37 restlessly, inventing the terms of the dialectics of domination as a form of intervention. In the terms that I have marked out, Bhabha’s intervention can be located in the conflictual terrain of the hybrid moment and can be understood in terms of the notion of invention as intervention. In the time and space of the nation that bears witness to “the multiculturalist mantras … that instantiates difference without revealing those interstitial articulations,” 38 locuting and locating oneself from within the hybrid moment opens a space which engenders the possibility of participating in the national discourse without recourse to an established version of difference. Invention, as going to work and as survival gestures to this hybrid moment, to the constitution of play within the national space and time, and marks another adjunct migrant spatiality and temporality through the passage of play. This is how Bhabha intends it in championing hybridity as an interventionist strategy to invent new terms of engagement. That is to say, hybridity must be conceptualised in terms of going to work, in terms of translating and inventing “those languages through which knowledge gains authority.” 39 The notion of invention as intervention is an ongoing and mobile transaction and engagement, one that resists the “normalizing strategy of nationalizing minorities” 40 by gesturing to the need to inscribe a spatial and temporal network from in-between the staging of difference that exceeds the terms of the nation. When invention ceases, the familiar becomes comfortable and normalised and the unfamiliar more alien. When invention halts, the present, the moment of the ‘now’, ‘here’, is given a sense of authority and legitimacy. When invention is dismissed, the other is also dismissed and this, as I have been emphasising, is an irresponsible utterance. In the event that the Hindu natives did not invent the Bible on their own terms they would have readily and unequivocally converted or

166 Invention as Intervention: Negotiating the Margins of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ radically opposed the conversion without negotiating with and through the Master’s Text. The relations of power and domination remain unchallenged. It is only in the invention of the Bible in their own terms that the natives stage different terms of recognition and another tactic of articulation that disrupts the terms of the Master’s Text. 5.

Conclusion To conceptualise the notion of invention as intervention in the terms outlined addresses the concerns animated in this paper. In other words, the notion of invention as intervention, which is built upon the idea of play and hybridity, radicalises multiculturalism and inscribes a certain movement in pluralism that continually defers the possibility of some new stable form materialising and instituting itself as Law. It is “something closer to a radical heterogeneity, discontinuity, the permanent revolution of forms.” 41 Hence, pluralism and consequently multiculturalism must remain ambiguously located between the possibility of materialising and the impossibility of materialising. It must be constantly in invention, being opened up to new possibilities and redefinitions. The upshot of this is that multiculturalism is continually interrogated, critically self-conscious, and most crucially, called to bear witness to its own injustices and to continue to extend a radical sense of cultural pluralism. It is because multiculturalism in Australia, as an official policy and ideological discourse, lacks an in-built mechanics which resists stability and fixity, that the response to the Tampa crisis in August 2001 and the subsequent detaining of illegal refugees in appalling conditions in detention centres, took on the form it did. The arrival of the refugees at the borders of the Australian nation challenged the terms upon which multiculturalism is imagined, challenged the foundation of the national narrative only to discover that the multicultural nation had constituted a specific way of imagining itself and as such excluded those that could not be situated within the established paradigm of cultural pluralism. So rather than to uncritically celebrate cultural pluralism because it challenges the national narrative, as Brewster does, it would be productive to mourn the impossibility of sharing Brewster’s conviction and continue to signal the urgency of pushing the limits of cultural pluralism so that other voices can be heard. To return to the opening of this paper, it is clear that pluralism does pose a challenge to singularising agendas, but it can only do so in terms of gesturing to the impossibility of materialisation. It is also clear that the question of reconciliation does not seek to perform some kind of semiotic closure, but rather compels us to think in terms of a radical irreconcilability and incommensurability. To do so one must continually invent the terms of pluralism and that of

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___________________________________________________________ multiculturalism to open up access routes for marginalised communities to signify within the social scene.

Vijay Devadas teaches at the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

Notes 1

My thanks to Rakhee Chatbar, Andy Barratt, Brett Nicholls and Lhizz Browne for their assistance in writing this paper. 2 Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993), 8. 3 Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West (London: Routledge, 2001), 95. 4 Ibid, 99. 5 Ibid, 96. 6 Anne Brewster, “The Discourse of Nationalism and Multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia in the 50s and 60s,” Span 24 (1987): 147. 7 Julia Kristeva, Nations Without Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 40. 8 Ibid, 50. 9 Ibid, 45. 10 Anthony Birch, Nationalism and National Integration (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 36. 11 Homi Bhabha, “The Third Space,” in Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 208. 12 Trinh Minh-Ha, Woman Native Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 90. 13 Ibid, 89. 14 Etienne Balibar, “Culture and Identity (Working Notes),” in The Identity in Question, ed. John Rajchman (London: Routledge, 1995), 174. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid, 175. 17 Mouffe, 6. 18 Ibid, 7. 19 Ibid, 8. 20 Jacques Derrida, “To Speculate - On Freud,” in On Signs, ed. Marshall Blonsky (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 236-258.

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Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 123. 22 Derrida, “To Speculate,” 239. 23 Derrida, Post Card, 29. 24 Homi Bhabha, “Editor’s Introduction: Minority Manoeuvres and Unsettled Negotiations,” Critical Inquiry 23 (1997), 459. 25 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 172. 26 Homi Bhabha, “‘Fireflies Caught in Molasses’: Questions of Cultural Translation,” in October: The Second Decade, 1986-1996, ed. Rosalind Krauss et al. (Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press, 1997), 214. 27 Bhabha, Location, 198. 28 Ibid, 102. 29 Ibid, 105. 30 Ibid, 104. 31 Ibid, 103. 32 Ibid, 116. 33 Ibid, 118. 34 Ibid, 113. 35 Ibid, 115. 36 Ibid, 206. 37 Homi Bhabha, “Day by Day … With Frantz Fanon,” in The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation, ed. Alan Read (Seattle: Bay Press, 1996), 201. 38 Bhabha, “Editor’s Introduction,” 435. 39 Homi Bhabha, “Novel Metropolis,” New Statesman & Society, 16 (February 1990): 18. 40 Bhabha, “Editor’s Introduction,” 436. 41 Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995), 25.

References Ang, Ien. On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West. London: Routledge, 2001. Balibar, Etienne. “Culture and Identity (Working Notes).” In The Identity in Question, edited by John Rajchman, 173-196. London: Routledge, 1995.

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___________________________________________________________ Bhabha, Homi. “Editor’s Introduction: Minority Manoeuvres and Unsettled Negotiations.” Critical Inquiry 23 (1997): 431-459. Bhabha, Homi. “‘Fireflies Caught in Molasses’: Questions of Cultural Translation.” In October: The Second Decade, 1986-1996, edited by Rosalind Krauss, Annette Michelson, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh and Hal Foster, 211-222. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press, 1997. Bhabha, Homi. “Day by Day … With Frantz Fanon.” In The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation, edited by Alan Read, 186-205. Seattle: Bay Press, 1996. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Bhabha, Homi. “Novel Metropolis.” New Statesman & Society 16 (February 1990), 16-18. Bhabha, Homi. “The Third Space.” In Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, 207-221. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990. Birch, Anthony. Nationalism and National Integration. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Brewster, Anne. “The Discourse of Nationalism and Multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia in the 50s and 60s.” Span 24 (1987): 136-150. Derrida, Jacques. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Derrida, Jacques. “To Speculate - On Freud.” In On Signs, edited by Marshall Blonsky, 236-258. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985. Kristeva, Julia. Nations Without Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Minh-Ha, Trinh. Woman Native Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989. Mouffe, Chantal. The Return of the Political. London: Verso, 1993.

170 Invention as Intervention: Negotiating the Margins of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ Parekh, Bhiku. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2000. Young, Robert. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995.

Historical Catharsis and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission Yianna Liatsos

Abstract This chapter concentrates on the idea of “catharsis,” a notion that has been widely associated with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) but has so far eluded analysis. More specifically, I examine how the idea of historical catharsis, which has been used to contextualise and legitimate the function of the TRC, has had a dual connotation: understood to signify the “purgation” of historical trauma, historical catharsis has promoted the creation of a “new” national identity for post-apartheid South Africa; understood to signify the “clarification” of the historical past, historical catharsis has advocated the creation of a human rights culture which attends to and protects the specificity of individual memories. Upon examining the quality and implications of these two kinds of historical catharsis, my paper concludes by reflecting on their tension and by noting how each of the two frameworks of catharsis informs and complicates the current debates on the character and function of the South African TRC at large.

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___________________________________________________________ This chapter engages the discussion on the institution charged with writing an official history for the “new” South African nation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 1 by introducing a new variable: that of historical catharsis. More specifically, I am interested in reconfiguring the exchange between what Richard Wilson has described as the “two competing visions” of the TRC - the commission seen either as “an instrument of moral and emotional catharsis for the nation,” aiming at the unity and reconciliation of the new South Africa, or as “a legal process” aiming to recover the truth of the obscured past in an effort to establish a culture of human rights in the new polity. 2 In its former role, the TRC has been (primarily) praised for its pragmatic attempts to accommodate the multiple sociopolitical, material and emotional needs of the post-apartheid era; in its latter role, the TRC has been criticised for its historiographic and judicial limitations. 3 Rather than aligning myself with either of these two competing interpretations of the South African truth commission, I will attempt to complicate their opposition by rethinking the function of catharsis vis-à-vis both perspectives. As the first new institution to be created in post-apartheid South Africa, the TRC was understood to provide a public space for the individuals designated - by the commission - as the “victims” of apartheid to share their traumatic experiences, and for those designated as the “perpetrators” to admit to their crimes. This story-telling process was perceived as capable of uniting the people of South Africa in a shared ritual of purging - the victims articulating and ridding themselves of their previously silenced traumas, and the perpetrators of their previously concealed crimes against humanity. From politicians to religious authorities and from judicial figures to popular journalists, the faith in the cathartic potential of the TRC hearings was either implicitly or explicitly articulated and unequivocally affirmed, even when other methodological and epistemological dimensions of the TRC were critically analysed. Examples abound: Nelson Mandela, the first state president of the new South Africa, advocated the creation of the TRC and warned that unless the violence of the apartheid years was openly and collectively addressed, it would “live with us like a festering sore.” 4 Archbishop Desmond Tutu who presided over the TRC, promoted confession and forgiveness as the ultimate means of purifying the souls of the perpetrators of their sins and guilt, and ridding the souls of the victims of their anger, anguish and desire for revenge. George Bizos, a prominent human rights lawyer in South Africa who represented black families opposing the amnesty applications of ex-perpetrators before the TRC, nevertheless commented favourably on the catharsis offered by the TRC public hearings which he likened to “ancient tragedies”:

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___________________________________________________________ The audience [of the TRC hearings] actually plays the role of a chorus in an ancient tragic play. Here we are, the actors on the stage - it’s unusual to have a traditional [legal] proceeding on a stage, but here we are on a stage - [with] an audience, and when [the people in the audience] see [the perpetrators] squirming, it’s part of the cathartic process. [The audience thinks,] “Here you were, the all powerful that could come and arrest us in the middle of the night, not give account to anyone, you white masters, and now you are not the super-humans you thought that you were; you are subjected to cross-examination by a person who is on our side.” I think that that is an important aspect of the TRC’s work. 5 Similar sentiments regarding the catharsis provided by the TRC were expressed by journalists Jann Turner (whose father was murdered by security police in the seventies) and Tony Weaver (who testified on his coverage of the “Guguletu Seven” funeral) 6 , who spoke of the cathartic effect that the TRC hearings had on them personally. Max du Preez, one of the journalists covering the truth commission hearings for South African television, told Bill Moyers in the PBS documentary Facing the Truth that the story-telling process the victims engage in “is a very cathartic and healing thing, because most of their lives [these people] were treated as non-entities.” 7 Describing Nomonde Calata’s testimony about the death of her husband and the audience response before the TRC, 8 Lynne Duke, an American journalist, said, A piercing wail rose from her mouth, the sound of purest pain… It filled the chamber like a presence. Heads could only bow. Hands could only wipe eyes. Sobs gurgled up and were muffled. Tutu had said the pain would be cleansing. And here it was. I almost gagged. I could barely hold back the huge lump in my throat. A foreigner who had not ever known such pain, I felt overcome by just witnessing it. 9 As is made evident from these examples, the prevalent interpretation of how catharsis functioned vis-à-vis the TRC hearings was qua purgation: associated with the reconciliation of South Africans into a common nation, the rhetoric of catharsis evoked the pursuit of purgation

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___________________________________________________________ of historical affect, purging from national consciousness the traumatic weight of past sociopolitical violence for the sake of building a coherent and peaceful future. Nevertheless there is an additional interpretation of catharsis which bespeaks the vision of the TRC, that of catharsis as a process of clarification of historical memory, bringing to light historical truths that were previously hidden. Where the rhetoric of catharsis qua clarification addresses the singularity of the historical experience of living through apartheid, thus exposing the multifaceted character of the South African past, the rhetoric of catharsis qua purgation aims to resolve the anticipated tension among the singular experiences by uniting them into a collectivity sharing a common vision of the future - and also, in part, a common memory of the past, either as victims or as perpetrators. Categories that complicate the formulaic correspondence of “victims = non-white South Africans” and “perpetrators = white South Africans,” such as beneficiaries and passive or active collaborators, the more complex power dynamics played out within the apartheid regime itself and among the ranks of antiapartheid organisations, the racial tensions among the groups classified as non-white, the ethnic tensions among both whites (English versus Afrikaners) as well as blacks (primarily manifested between the Xhosa and the Zulu), the political tensions within the same ethnic group (primarily found within the Zulu supporters of the African National Congress - ANC - and the Inkatha Freedom Party - IFP), all these and other such nuanced historical memories had to adhere to the logic of the larger narratives of victims and perpetrators if they were to be voiced at all. Accordingly, the nation-building aim of the TRC, with its pursuit of catharsis qua purgation of the past, informed the very constitution of the commission and impacted the way historical truth was sought - that is, how catharsis qua clarification was promoted. While aware of this structural stipulation, I nevertheless argue that the emphasis of the truthrecovery dimension of the TRC, which was based on the human rights credo of restoring individual agency and expression, evoked a tension within the hearings that was in fact never reconciled: the singularity of individual historical experience articulated by a South African in the TRC hearings often exceeded the logic of the victim/perpetrator categories and expressed memories that not only challenged the vision of reconciliation, but also challenged the abstract separation of the present from the past that the TRC hearings aimed to inaugurate. It is in this respect that the South African truth commission has been perceived as inadequate for accommodating the epistemological and methodological requirements of its historiographic and legalistic tasks – an inadequacy I attribute to the TRC’s capacity to attend to the stories told in the hearings, as these stories

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___________________________________________________________ complicated the conventional categories of positivist discourses. In turn, I perceive the popularly acclaimed success of the TRC to evoke the purgation of the apartheid trauma in the name of building a unified nation (predetermined to mirror the western prototype) as the commission’s inability to attend to the radical potential present when testimonial discourse provides a plurality of standards by which to measure the value and integrity of social experiences, and when the public space is made available for ritual acting out and working through testimonial speech acts. 1.

The TRC as a nation-building project The fact that the TRC was the first new institution to be created in post-apartheid South Africa is not particularly surprising. As many scholars of nationalism have repeatedly suggested, 10 a new political order needs a new historical past through which to gain an identity and direction, and the reconfiguration of South Africa from a segregated to a “rainbow” nation, demanded a further reconfiguration of the country’s past national identity which had sustained the apartheid state and from which the new South Africa could appear to clearly depart. In this respect at least, when Antjie Krog claimed that “when the Truth Commission started… I realized instinctively: if you cut yourself from the process, you will wake up in a foreign country - a country that you don’t know and that you will never understand,” 11 she did not make a very different claim from the one articulated by David Lowenthal regarding sociopolitical transitions in early modern western Europe: Only in the eighteenth century did Europeans begin to conceive the past as a different realm, not just as another country but a congeries of foreign lands endowed with unique histories and personalities. This new past gradually… came to be cherished as a heritage that validated and exalted the present… The past [became] a foreign country. 12 Thus the nation-building project of the new South Africa shared common traits with the prototypical nation-building projects driven by a desire for emancipation from either troubled or no longer usable times - echoing what Paul de Man has described as the larger vision of the modern “desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at last a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.” 13 Nevertheless, the South African national project configured the past in a slightly different manner than typical nation-building projects

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___________________________________________________________ undertaken after revolutions - what Frantz Fanon has called “descents into real hell.” 14 Emerging from a negotiated settlement, the new South Africa approached its past less as a Nietzschean “monumental” history 15 which served to exalt the present, and more as a period of victimisation that needed to be uncovered and purged from the psyche of the new “rainbow nation” - its purgation, to use Mandela’s metaphor, resembling that of the healing of a “festering wound” in an ailing body. In this respect, the historical memory of apartheid South Africa was pathologised in order to legitimise the optimism and good faith of the new South African reconciliatory spirit. Following in the tracks of previous truth commissions established in polities undergoing sociopolitical transitions from authoritarian to democratic political orders, the South African TRC has been extensively analysed for this compromise of justice. Briefly, described by Henry J. Steiner as “a type of government organ that is intended to construct a record of…history, and… respond to…horrific human rights violations that occurred while countries were caught up in racial, ethnic, class, and ideological conflict over justice and power,” 16 truth commissions are most widely employed by countries emerging from military dictatorships after negotiated settlements that protect the top officers of former authoritarian regimes and military groups from prosecution. Truth commissions aim to compensate for such absence of retributive justice by filling up the national public space with locally recovered historical truths supported by popular notions such as “The truth shall set us free” and “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In this manner, the trade off of amnesty for historical truth is legitimated and given moral gravitas via a rhetoric of historical clarification, which is predetermined to purge the nightmare of history once its truth is known. Nevertheless, the political agency that is renounced in this transaction, and the very implications that this renunciation suggests, become the source of persisting sociopolitical dissociations for two primary reasons. First, there is the dilemma over the truth-recovery process and its value. The conundrum of how this process compensates for the inability of either the state or the individual to prosecute someone who has wronged them is excused in the name of political “pragmatism,” as though political rule is no longer a constructed and contestable reality in the post-1989 “New World Order,” and historical truth at the service of politics holds an autonomy that is self-validating. It is even debatable to what extent truth commissions uncover previously hidden historical truths. Which truths exactly were hidden, and from whom? Even if we are to resort to the limiting classifications of “victims” and “perpetrators” usually employed by truth commissions at the exclusion of other, more complicated

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___________________________________________________________ categories, we find that the “truth of what happened” is mostly known: those who were persecuted by the previously authoritarian regime are intimately aware of a particular “truth,” the agents of persecution share knowledge of yet another “truth,” and by and large both these groups, as well as those who kept out of harm’s way, know each other’s truths, including those things they are not supposed to know - albeit, often, as an intimation. As Lawrence Weschler has claimed in his analysis of postdictatorial Uruguay, the types of truth, such as who the torturers were, who the tortured were, where the tortures and other such crimes took place, and so on, are by and large public knowledge in nations living under dictatorial regimes. 17 Even when some scholars clarify that the redeeming quality of truth commissions is not so much that they reveal previously unknown truths, as it is that they produce a public acknowledgment of past crimes against humanity, the point of making the truth public, in order to provide some form of justice or other, remains moot: the value of public acknowledgment still appears to be caught up in theatrics that prioritise cathartic performance in the form of purgation over the attentiveness to material constraints that make psychological, physical and monetary reparations, in the form of tangible retributions and restitution, an ethical imperative. The idea, central to truth commissions, that a person who was tortured or who lost a loved one is going to be reconciled with his/her traumatic memory - that is, in psychoanalytic terms, overcome the trauma of the loss and proceed to mourn the lost loved one - when the government or criminal acknowledges the crime, is to reduce historical experience to some abstract variable belonging to a set of immutable computations, rather than understand it as a set of exchanges born of past and present power-struggles and their affect. In making this judgement, I am not dismissing the value of acknowledgment, the importance of having one’s historical identity and experience recognised; as Martha Minow has suggested, such an acknowledgment can at times carry more weight than a symbolic reparation which may be perceived as a similar effort to purge history of its weight and its irreparable losses. 18 What I nevertheless question are the consequences of offering this acknowledgment at the expense of the recognisant’s political agency, which is to say, freedom to choose one’s response. Jean-François Lyotard once questioned the value of the freedom of expression when one has nothing new to say. 19 In a similar spirit I ask what the value of being recognised is if this recognition comes at the cost of one’s freedom to choose the manner of reply. It appears to me that in this case, acknowledgment is nothing more than a Scylla to the Charybdis of absolute silence.

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___________________________________________________________ The second category of justice-dilemmas producing political dissociations pertains to the politics of memory that emerge from reconciling historical truth in advance and thus purging the dimensions of traumatic memory that defy assimilation. Bound by an already established amnesty, these truths appear to either matter enough so as to be obliged to make the past palpable for the present (make amnesty an acceptable decree for the history that preceded it), or to have too little relevance in legitimating and shaping the political scene, and so to disappear into the annals of history, and/or produce sociopolitical dissociations, compelling the public sphere with stories whose affect is already purged by decisions agreed upon in the negotiated settlement that preceded the truth commission. Frozen in time, already redeemed via the legal-historical catharsis qua purgation granted by amnesty, the process of recovering historical truths via the institutions of truth commissions rests on an ethic of remembering whose primary aim, however successful or not, is to forgo the risk of a memory escaping from the homogeneous, empty historical time, what Walter Benjamin has called “historicism’s bordello,” so as to “blast open the continuum of history” and enter into an action-evoking configuration with every present moment 20 - the same potential that is compromised when one is not given the freedom to chose the manner of reply to the confession of a crime against humanity during the truth commission hearings. The ethic of remembering promoted by truth commissions, then, is perhaps best expressed in a passage from Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, wherein the narrator reflects on the Nietzschean idea of the eternal return vis-à-vis his own reconciliation with Hitler as a figure stranded in history: [My] reconciliation with Hitler reveals a profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the non-existence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything is cynically permitted. 21 If the nation-building dimension of the South African TRC has been plagued by such dilemmas of justice that impact, in one form or another, on every nation that employs the institution of truth commission to promote a reconciliatory politics qua purgation of memory associated with a discordant history, then there are also additional aspects of the South African history that complicate this dimension of the TRC even further: unlike other countries that have employed truth commissions, South Africa did not only emerge from a brief period of authoritarian rule, but from several centuries of colonisation, to become, for the first time in

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___________________________________________________________ its history, a truly democratic polity. The apartheid system directly evolved from a period of colonisation that began in the mid-17th century, and partook of the legacy of the slave trade with its importation of Indian and Malay slaves into South Africa, as well as of its extensive use of natives for cheap manual labour. Even though South Africa became an independent, modern state within the Commonwealth in 1910, its 1961 transformation into an altogether sovereign republic was at least in part triggered by the Afrikaner government’s refusal to renounce its affinity with past political orders which denied political representation to the majority black and coloured/mixed race population - refusing thus to accommodate the African nationalism that was building in other British territories with Britain’s consent. For this reason, post-apartheid South Africa resembles a nation-state emerging from a revolution of independence for the first time in its history - albeit a negotiated one: this is at least the historical experience of non-white South Africans who, while constituting 88% of the population, were granted equal rights and political representation for the first time in 1994. 22 Understood thus, the TRC gains an entirely new perspective: not only did it serve as a compensatory formation for the absence of punitive justice in the negotiated settlement between the white authority of the apartheid regime and the black majority, but it also served as the mnemonic institution endowed with the task of shaping the historical memory that would produce the national identity of post-apartheid South Africa - rather than simply reconfigure an already existing national identity to a coherent status that corresponded with its pre-authoritarian standing. It is for this reason that the question of “why remember?” could not have been asked in the South African case: where other countries that employed truth commissions in the post-Cold War era could have entertained the alternative of simply bracketing the authoritative/civil conflict period within the historical memory of the nation (as was done with several nations during the Cold War years), South Africa needed to address its past in light of its task of creating an entirely new identity on which to ground its radical sociopolitical transformation, creating a collective national identity from scratch. Accordingly, the propensity of the TRC to practice historical catharsis qua purgation of the traumatic affect of individual memories undermined the examination of a much longer and more complicated history than the one covered in the hearings - events spanning the time from the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 23 to the first non-racial elections of 1994.

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The TRC as a human rights project Much of the critical scholarship analysing the shortcomings of truth commissions in general, and of the South African TRC in particular, emphasises the limitations of the human rights discourse, with its generic ideology, in accommodating the sociopolitical and historical nuances of each unique nation that employs it. Many thinkers have claimed that with its “Western agenda” and “neo-imperialist universalism,” the human rights discourse is actually an essential dimension of the normalising forces that have taken over the international political arena since 1989, compromising local political agencies and voices. These arguments primarily rely on a notion of human rights as the set of amendments that have been historically produced and adopted by nation-states throughout the world mainly in the post World War II era - amendments against genocide, certain types of war crimes, and so on. Nevertheless the notion of human rights has gathered a much more precarious popularity in recent years, and certainly since the Helsinki Accords of 1975, when the international legitimacy of state politics became intimately connected with the protection of its citizens’ human rights. When world leaders resort to the idea of human rights to support their international policies, and grassroots activists appeal to the idea of human rights in order to galvanize international demonstrations demanding alternative policies from the same world leaders, we know that the discourse of human rights is not restricted to an international set of amendments agreed upon by state governments, but to the much more slippery and thus debatable ideals that lie behind them. Michael Ignatieff has criticised this tendency, suggesting that “Rights inflation - the tendency to define anything desirable as a right ends up eroding the legitimacy of a defensible core of rights.” 24 I would argue that it is precisely this slippery dimension of the human rights discourse that rescues human rights from the criticisms stated previously. The capacity of state leaders and grassroots activists to appeal to the human rights discourse in order to defend their ideas, points both to the malleability of the discourse and to the possibilities it holds: human rights are not just a “bureaucratic apparatus” but also a set of compelling principles generating transnational spaces where dialogues among different actors can take place. As Claude Lefort has suggested, the indeterminable quality of rights is precisely what safeguards a right from all power which would claim to take hold of it whether religious or mythical, monarchical or popular. Consequently, these rights go beyond any particular formulation, which has been given of them; and this

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___________________________________________________________ means that their formulation contains the demand for their reformulation. 25 Open-ended, human rights can be perceived to be more closely associated with a generating principle than to the realisation of an end-goal. Following Cornelius Castoriadis’ formulation of the “social instituting imaginary,” 26 I thus perceive human rights to safeguard the potential of society to reinvent itself by means of advocating for the autonomy of the individual and her expression of agency. Ignatieff has explained in detail how this protection functions, taking time to clarify both the type of individuality thereby entailed, as well as the universal application of the human rights discourse itself: [Human rights] are meaningful only if they confer entitlements and immunities on individuals; they are worth having only if they can be [universally] enforced against institutions like the family, the state, and the church… Universality cannot imply universal assent, since in a world of unequal power, the only propositions that the powerful and the powerless would agree on would be entirely toothless and anodyne ones. Rights are universal because they define the universal interests of the powerless, namely, that power be exercised over them in ways that respect their autonomy as agents. In this sense, human rights is a revolutionary creed, since it makes a radical demand of all human groups, that they serve the interests of the individuals who compose them… To seek human rights protection is… merely to avail yourself of the protections of “negative liberty.” 27 What interests me in Ignatieff’s claim is that this essential element of the human rights ideology, the prioritisation of individual agency and expression over the uniformity of a collective identity, echoes Theodor W. Adorno’s claim that “the matters of true philosophical interest at this point in history [that is, after Auschwitz,] are… non-conceptuality, individuality, and particularity.” 28 The individual who, according to Adorno, is the concern of true philosophy, is very different from the prototype of the bourgeois individual, which on the one hand exonerates and legitimates the absence of social ethics in the modern market, and on the other hand sustains the conviction of existential philosophy that truth lies in the recovery of an

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___________________________________________________________ authentic self. Adorno calls the combination of these tendencies “the cult of the individual” which he blames for stripping the individual of all his/her agency: “The situation in which the individual [began to] vanish was at the same time one of unbridled individualism, where ‘all was possible.’” 29 His or her existence a “mere abstraction,” 30 the modern individual can be restored to his/her freedom only by refusing to succumb to the inadequacy and emptiness of “the social principium individuationis,” 31 the concept that reifies individuality in advance, and in reality stifles the potential of the individual to act autonomously. Not a figure of embellishment as much as one who evokes persistent remembrance of the cost at which the authority of the concept is had, the individual that Adorno has in mind represents the singular instant that has the potential of breaking through the tyrannical totality of the concept and its metanarrative authority. This notion is analysed in the fullest and most contradictory detail in Negative Dialectics, whose central premise is to break free from the teleological identity of the Hegelian dialectics. Where the Hegelian dialectic is founded on the moment of synthesis of polar opposites already foreclosed by the teleological aim of history, Adorno sought to free the dialectic from its predetermined orientation and realise its true potentiality by restoring the force of the contradiction that gives rise to the dialectic in the first place - the difference, the antithesis, the tension between the two opposing forces crystallising around the awareness of their difference. 32 In restoring the primacy of dialectical “antithesis” that the Hegelian dialectic ended up undermining in light of its teleological vision, Adorno’s negative dialectics restore the integrity of individual uniqueness both vis-à-vis the concept and vis-à-vis the Other. To bring the idea of catharsis into this transformation of dialectics, where Hegel sought to purge the tension between the different forces and unite them in a larger identity situated in advance as the end-goal, Adorno sought to clarify the difference between the two opposing forces, so as to restore contradiction and the limit of appropriation of the particular by the universal. This interpretation understands catharsis as a process of clarification qua critical reflection, implying that rather than gaining its significance by approximating or nearing a predetermined purpose, catharsis is realised via clarifying the state of things, not as they are outside the proverbial cave, but within it. There is a correspondence between Adorno’s attentiveness to the singularity of every memory that comprises history and the emphasis given to the expression of individual agency in the human rights discourse. More specifically, a truth commission, as a human rights institution, is also geared, at least in principle, toward addressing and protecting the dignity of the historical experience of this same individual. The so-called

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___________________________________________________________ “negative liberty” of the individual, which, according to Ignatieff, is associated with human rights, manifests itself as the individual memory finding expression in the truth commission hearings. As a singular expression, the individual memory demands the kind of attention to detail and attentiveness to the effects and affect of history, that collective categorisations of the victim/perpetrator kind turn into kitsch formulations, evoking sentimentalisms that all too conveniently confirm (even as they disturb) ego-affirming identifications. To paraphrase Kundera’s formulation of kitsch in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How disturbing to know that victims have to suffer like this! The second tear says: How moving to be disturbed, together with all mankind, by victims having to suffer like this! It is this second tear that makes kitsch kitsch. 33 By offering the occasion for individuals to come forth and tell their own experience of history, truth commissions hold the potential of breaking apart the succession of the two tears. The audience has the chance to listen to an individual story in a way that stimulates the kind of critical reflection (first tear) that undermines predetermined identifications (second tear). This potentiality is dependant on both the individual telling the story, and on the audience hearing it, for the occasion of a critical exchange - the realisation of “negative dialectics” - is only a potential, susceptible to reduction to the kind of foreclosed visions which become internalised by story-tellers or superimposed by listeners, and which in turn perpetuate reified identifications thriving on kitsch sentimentality. Internalised, the emphasis given to the nuance of singularity has the potential of producing the kind of double-consciousness that stimulates critical self-reflection. Externalised, this same emphasis becomes a form of attentive listening that keeps individuals from superimposing their own logic on those fragments in the story of the other which defy understanding. Returning to Benjamin’s accusation that “historicism’s bordello” prioritises the sacrifice of historical knowledge on the altar of a foreclosed future utopia, which in turn gives rise to a cynical ethics of memory, we can imagine the ethics of remembering, stipulated by “negative dialectics,” as an antidote: historical memory captured in a singular experience and story is not purged but brought to light “arrested.” Accordingly, “thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions [and] gives that configuration a shock by which it crystallizes into a monad… This structure [holds] a revolutionary chance

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___________________________________________________________ in the fight for the oppressed past [at the present moment].” 34 The difference between this revolution and the ones acting out the Hegelian dialectical path to absolute spirit is that the former is not foreclosed. Therein lies the revolutionary ethic of remembering in all its radical potential to exercise its power of creation. It is accordingly my argument that in its human rights aspirations of clarifying the singularities and nuances comprising the greater apartheid historical memory, the South African truth commission held the potential of creating an environment in which the past could evoke diverse constellations of meaning, inspiring present and future political agencies. In this respect, what may have originally appeared as a judicial and moral compromise in the South African case, namely employing a truth commission under the auspices of a negotiated settlement safeguarding amnesty (instead of pursuing the ostensibly more politically viable punitive justice model), actually opened up opportunities for radically exploring the potentialities held by the human rights discourse - namely, to clarify and arrest the tension of contradictory memories in a manner that restores the individual agency to imagine alternative presents and futures. At the same time the political demand that the plurality of these historical narratives be reduced to a coherent vision of national unity and reconciliation, purged of its historical affect and its unpredictable forces, stifled the potentiality of each of these truths through a predetermined purpose. That is, by demanding in advance that the stories told before the TRC be reduced to the same, singular goal of uniting and reconciling the South African nation, in the name of purging from the new polity the traumatic memories of the apartheid era, the TRC foreclosed the possibilities of what political agency could come out of the public hearings process, and in essence, did not allow truths arising from different testimonies to be expressed or heard in themselves - that is, in their singularity and autonomy. It seems to me, then, that the aspect of the TRC that has been most renowned (primarily outside South Africa), undermined both the productive tensions and negotiations that could have been found in the dialogue and the confrontation of different stories, and the possible coalitions to be imagined, tried, and refined among unlikely allies, in the name of a prescribed and foreclosed reconciliation.

Yianna Liatsos is a Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

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Notes 1

Colin Bundy, “The Beast of the Past: History and the TRC,” in After the TRC: Reflections of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, ed.s Wilmot James and Linda Van De Vijver (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 2000), 13. 2 Richard A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 41. 3 Deborah Posel and Colin Bundy have most famously critiqued the TRC’s historiographic merit, while Anthea Jeffery employed a similar critique to address the commission’s legalistic limitations. 4 Martin Meredith, Coming To Terms: South Africa’s Search for Truth (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), 17-18. 5 This quote was transcribed from the film by Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffmann, A Long Night’s Journey Into Day (San Francisco, Calif: California Newsreel, 2000), videorecording. George Bizos’ comments are in reference to the hearings where he defended the “Cradock Four” widows’ opposition to amnesty for the four policemen who murdered their husbands. 6 The “Guguletu Seven” case pertains to the 1986 murder of seven juvenile boys from the township of Guguletu near Cape Town by police operatives, which included members from the infamous police hit squad known as Vlakplaas. 7 This quote was transcribed from the television documentary Facing The Truth with Bill Moyers (New York, NY: Channel 13). Broadcast 30 March 1999. 8 Nomonde Calata’s cry on that day, triggered by her memory of finding out about her husband’s death, was described by Desmond Tutu as “the defining sound of the TRC” - in Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 148. According to Antjie Krog, Calata’s testimony has been widely perceived as having endowed the Commission with the role of “finding words for that cry” - in Antjie Krog, Country of my Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1990), 57. 9 Lynne Duke, Mandela, Mobutu, and Me: A Newswoman’s African Journey (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 104. 10 Some of the best known of these theorists, which Anthony D. Smith has categorised as ‘modernists’ (because they regard the formation of the nation as a product of modernisation), are Eric Hobsbawm, Terence

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___________________________________________________________ Ranger, Ernest Gellner, Tom Nairn, Michael Hechter, John Breuilly, Elie Kedourie, and Benedict Anderson. 11 Krog, 172. 12 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985), xvi-xvii. 13 Paul de Man, “Literary History and Literary Modernity,” in Blindness and Insight (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1983), 148. 14 Frantz Fanon employed the Hegelian idea of the struggle between master and slave to speak of the fate of the black man who needed to free himself from white control (Fanon’s analysis of the fate of the black woman has become quite controversial in its reductionisms). The description Fanon gave regarding the “struggle for recognition onto death” that is associated with the Hegelian dialectic, goes as follows: “There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinary sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born. In most cases, the black man lacks the advantage of being able to accomplish this descent into a real hell,” in Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 8. According to Fanon, the reason why the black man continues to feel inferior to the white man is because the black was granted his freedom without fighting for it, and thus is left at the position of thanking the white man for his liberation. In this sense, the black man never achieved the recognition from the white man of being an equal - a feat that demands one’s willingness to descend into real hell. 15 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, trans. Peter Preuss (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980), 14-19. 16 Henry J. Steiner, “Introduction,” Truth Commissions: A Comparative Assessment, May 1996 (Harvard Law School Human Rights Program, 1997). Available at . 17 Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts With Torturers (New York: Penguin, 1990), 3-4. 18 Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), Chapter 5. 19 I am referring to Lyotard’s question “What use is the right to freedom of expression if we have nothing to say but what has already been said?” Jean-François Lyotard, “The General Line,” in Jean-François Lyotard: The Political Writings, ed.s Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 109-111.

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Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 262. 21 Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 4. 22 Department of Social Development. Chief Directorate Population and Development. National Population Unit in Pretoria, South Africa. . 23 On the 21st of March, 1960, police opened fire and killed 69 African anti-pass-law demonstrators - wounding another 186 - who were peacefully protesting in front of a police station at Sharpeville in the Transvaal. 24 Micheal Ignatieff, “Human Rights as Idolatry,” in Human rights as Politics and Idolatry, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 90. 25 Claude Lefort, “Politics and Human Rights,” in The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism, ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1986), 258. 26 Cornelius Castoriadis’ notion of the “social instituting imaginary” pertains to the creative agency circulating between the society and the individuals who comprise it - that is, the agency to break a stagnant cycle of recycled hegemonic narratives and produce creation ex nihilo. As he explains, “the individuals are made by the instituted society, at the same time as they make and remake it. The two mutually irreducible poles are the radical instituting imaginary - the field of socio-historical creation - on the one hand, the singular psyche on the other. Starting with the psyche, using it, as it were, as a material, the instituted society each time makes the individuals - which, as such, can henceforth only make the society, which has made them. It is only insofar as the radical imagination of the psyche seeps through the successive layers of the social armour, which cover and penetrate it up to an unfathomable limit-point, and which constitute the individual, that the singular human being can have, in turn, an independent action on society;” Cornelius Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” in Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy: Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. David Ames Curtis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 145-146. A more extensive study of this notion is to be found in Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987). 27 Ibid, 66-69. 28 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1973), 8.

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Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (New York: Verso, 1974), 149. 30 Ibid, 150. 31 Ibid, 149. 32 “[Negative] dialectics says no more… than that objects do not go into their concepts without leaving a remainder, that they come to contradict the traditional norm of adequacy… The dialectical primacy of the principle of contradiction makes the thought of unity the measure of heterogeneity. As the heterogeneous collides with its limit it exceeds itself. Dialectics is the consistent sense of non-identity” - in Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 5. 33 Kundera, 251. The original formulation by Kundera goes as follows (I add the previous sentence as well for context): “The feeling induced by kitsch must be a kind the multitudes can share. Kitsch may not, therefore, depend on an unusual situation; it must derive from the basic images people have engraved in their memories: the ungrateful daughter, the neglected father, children running on the grass, the motherland betrayed, first love. Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.” 34 Benjamin, 262-263.

References Adorno, Theodor W. Negative Dialectics. Translated by E.B. Ashton. New York: Continuum, 1973. Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia. Translated by E.F.N. Jephcott. New York: Verso, 1974. Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, 253264. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. Bundy, Colin. “The Beast of the Past: History and the TRC.” In After the TRC: Reflections of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, edited by

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___________________________________________________________ Wilmot James and Linda Van De Vijver, 9-20. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 2000. Castoriadis, Cornelius. “Power, Politics, Autonomy.” In Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy: Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by David Ames Curtis, 143-174. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Castoriadis, Cornelius. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987. de Man, Paul. “Literary History and Literary Modernity.” In Blindness and Insight. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Duke, Lynne. Mandela, Mobutu, and Me: A Newswoman’s African Journey. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Ignatieff, Michael. “Human Rights as Idolatry.” In Human rights as Politics and Idolatry, edited by Amy Gutmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Jeffery, Anthea. The Truth About the Truth Commission. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1999. Krog, Antjie. Country of my Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999. Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. New York: Harper Collins, 1991. Lefort, Claude. “Politics and Human Rights.” In The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism., edited by John B. Thompson, 239-272. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1986. Lowenthal, David. The Past is a Foreign Country. U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

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___________________________________________________________ Lyotard, Jean-François. “The General Line.” In Jean-François Lyotard: The Political Writings, edited by Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman, 109-111. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Meredith, Martin. Coming To Terms: South Africa’s Search for Truth. New York: Public Affairs, 1999. Minow, Martha. Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. Translated by Peter Preuss. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980. Reid, Frances and Deborah Hoffmann. A Long Night’s Journey Into Day. San Francisco, Calif: California Newsreel, 2000. Videorecording. Steiner, Henry J. “Introduction.” Truth Commissions: A Comparative Assessment. May 1996. . Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday, 1999. Weschler, Lawrence. A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts With Torturers. New York: Penguin, 1990. Wilson, Richard A. The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Religious Plurality, Referential Realism and Paradigms of Pluralism Douglas Pratt

Abstract Two issues, among others, are of particular significance for religion today. One is the question of dealing with plurality; the other is whether or not there is a reality to which religion actually refers. The classical religious response to plurality has been the stance of exclusivism: plurality has been vitiated or denied credibility. Since the 1960s the perspective of inclusivism has tended to predominate. Here the plurality of religions is in some sense overcome or relativised by a viewpoint that sees variation and alterity subsumed within a dominant norm. More recently the paradigm of pluralism has been proffered whereby the integrity of difference is upheld, yet some point of common reference advanced such that specific religions are variously viewed as different expressions of, or responses to, the same thing or the same reality. This leads to the question of reality: to what do religions refer, and is it the same thing? In respect to the problematic raised by religious plurality, this chapter discusses a range of paradigms of pluralism and explores something of the work of Peter Byrne with regard to the question of realism. 1

192 Religious Plurality, Referential Realism: Paradigms of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ 1.

Introduction Plurality names the context of our so-called postmodern life. It names the contemporary situation of religion in society: religious plurality is a fact of our time. Plurality cannot be avoided. Neither can it be factually acknowledged then cognitively shunned, except by enacting a most obtuse denial. The social fact of religious plurality impinges today in a new sort of way, demanding a cognitive response: and it is in this sense that it may be perceived afresh as a particular element of our time and our global weltanschauung. However, of equal significance and interest, I suggest, is the question of the ‘reality’ with which religions have to do - or perhaps represent - or not, as the case may be. Are religions variations on the same thing? Is there a common reality to which they each refer and which therefore provides the basis for a pluralist point of accommodation of religious difference? Further, if in consequence of a pluralist position other religions are not to be denied, are they to be treated as equal? But then what is the meaning of equal? Do religions aspire to the same goal? Are they just varying paths with the same end? It is in response to issues such as these that the paradigm of pluralism has emerged to challenge not only any narrow exclusivism, but also the more subtle inclusivism where one religion is perceived to function as the dominant paradigm to which all others, in some sense, are subsumed. I contend there is more than one model or paradigm of pluralism, just as there is more than one model of inclusivism. Even the paradigm of exclusivism is open to nuanced variations of application. I have elsewhere identified and discussed a range of paradigms that adhere to the modalities of religious exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. 2 I shall here briefly review, and critically discuss, the paradigms of pluralism, with reference to some aspects of Peter Byrne’s work on the question of the reality to which religion(s) may or may not refer. 2.

Plurality and Pluralism Pluralism, broadly speaking, is the stance that embraces the fact of plurality and gives it a positive interpretation. Religious pluralism, as a conceptual construct, may be viewed as an assertion of a ‘measure of equal standing between the major religious traditions’ at the very least. It entails a denial of any type “of uniqueness and absoluteness claimed for one tradition or another.” 3 Some versions of the pluralist response focus on truth, affirming that all religions are equally true. Other versions focus on salvation, affirming that all religions

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___________________________________________________________ are equally valid paths to salvation. Yet others focus on the notions of religious experience and encounter, affirming all religions to be equally good means of encountering a divine transcendent reality. 4 As applied to religion, pluralism opens the way to situating particular religious identity within a larger framework of understanding and knowledge. As Peter Byrne remarks, “Pluralism is one important intellectual response to the fact of religious diversity.” 5 One cannot, with intellectual integrity, simply assert one’s own faith as the only valid or true religion and thereby deny all others. Nevertheless, there are religious groups - Christian and Muslim in particular, as well as others - that tend to respond to the contemporary phenomenon of an amorphous Western/secular socio-cultural globalisation with fervent resurgence of their own identity and allied behavioural extremism. Such reactions may be viewed as modes of localised assertion of particular identity, as a counter to the fear of loss of such identity to that of some imposed or seductive universal or global entity. These reactions to the social dimension of globalisation highlight the dialectical tension of universal and particular in religion - and especially so in Christianity and Islam. This is the tension that holds between asserting and maintaining the particularities of a relatively local or specific religious identity over against an expression of universal identity of the religion, or asserting the particularity of self-identity as, in fact, representing the true notion of universal religion per se. For example, a protestant Christian denomination might assert its particular identity over against the Roman Catholic Church’s claim to represent the universal Christian faith. And arguably Hanbali Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia portrays itself not only as the true expression of Islam but, mutatis mutandis, the expression of true religion over against any other claim to authentic religious identity. The fact of plurality does not necessarily lead to openness to pluralism: indeed the tendency to exclusivist reactions is all too prominent as the burgeoning of religious and political fundamentalisms illustrates. 6 The advocating of a paradigm of pluralism needs, of course, to be seen in the context of countering the alternate paradigms of exclusivism and inclusivism. The paradigm of exclusivism has to do with the material identification of a particular religion (or form of that religion) with the essence and substance of true universal religion as such, thereby excluding all other possibilities to that claim. From this viewpoint, the exclusivist’s religion is the Only Right One.

194 Religious Plurality, Referential Realism: Paradigms of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ The exclusivist affirms identity in a complex world of plurality by a return to the firm foundations of his or her own tradition and an emphasis on the distinctive identity provided by that tradition… Exclusivism is more than simply a conviction about the transformative power of the particular vision one has; it is a conviction about its finality and its absolute priority over competing views. 7 So, for the exclusivist the mere co-existence of religions is not possible. Instead, the tendency to exclusive self-assertion predominates. By contrast, inclusivism may be regarded as the effective identity of a particular religion with the universal, with some allowance made for others within the predominating schema. That is to say, this paradigm suggests the other is included surreptitiously, by being understood, as already and anonymously, indirectly within the fold of the true religion identified, of course, as being the religion of the proponent - the Only Fully Right One. Within Christianity it has been embraced formally by the Roman Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council convened during the 1960s, and it reflects most official contemporary Protestant Church positions. The paradigms of both exclusivism and inclusivism are premised on the notion that there is but one universal truth or religion. With each the relationship between the universal and specific is problematic given that there are competing, or at least alternative, specific particulars, with each claiming veridical if not exclusive rights as the authentic representation, or manifestation, of the universal. Either way it is taken as a sine qua non of universal that there can be only one valid expression of it in terms of particular form. Thus the religious exclusivist makes an assumption that his or her religion is, in fact, the only universally true one. All others are necessarily false. The inclusivist holds views that allow for a measure of universal religious truth being found in more than one particular religion, but that, nonetheless, it is his or her religion that fully contains, or is the full expression of, the universal truth. Does this suggest pluralism offers a way forward instead? Perhaps, but the paradigms of pluralism are no less problematic. The essential idea of pluralism, as an ideological or hermeneutical response to the fact of plurality, is to posit a multiplicity of particular expressions of that which is deemed to be universal, in opposition to the idea that there can only be but one legitimate, or fully valid, expression of the universal. This means that, for pluralism, different religions are equally valid expressions of some universal religious reality.

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___________________________________________________________ Specific religions are co-equally valid expressions of some universal notion of true religion. Thus both difference and equality are affirmed. Religions are not all the same - their differences are important; yet religions are no better or worse than each other as equally valid expressions of the universal. On this basis, no one religion can lay claim to an objective superiority, or superlative congruence with the universal religious reality, in respect to other religions. However, pluralism itself is no one thing. Indeed, I suggest there are a number of paradigms of pluralism. Some are more obvious and well known; others are somewhat novel. As already noted, I have discussed in detail elsewhere five variants I have identified, which I group here into three sub-sets. 3.

Paradigms of Pluralism The first set might be called the standard or predominant definitional paradigms of pluralism, namely Common Ground Pluralism, which views religious differences, or the variety of religions, as contextualised variable expressions of/from a Universal Source, and Common Goal Pluralism, which holds that religious differences reflect the variety of salvific paths leading, or drawn to, the Universal Goal. The fundamental ideas are clear - there is a common ground of religious reality from which the different religions of the world derive; or a transformative goal that is the end-point of all religions, even though it may be differingly expressed (in concert with the narrative tradition within which each religion dwells uniquely) and differently attained (again in keeping with the unique transformative or salvific narrative of each religion). John Hick, the philosopher-theologian who is a leading representative of this set of predominant views on religious pluralism, argues that “it is not possible to establish the unique moral superiority of any one of the great world faiths.” 8 All religions contain examples of great good and of great evil. Neither is it possible to argue for superior truthvalue adhering to any one religion over another. Rather he argues that the different encounters with the transcendent within the different religious traditions may all be encounters with the one infinite reality, though with partially different and overlapping aspects of that reality. 9 Hick reminds us that the great world religions, seen in historical context as movements of faith, are not essentially rivals. They begin at different times and in different places, and each expanded outwards

196 Religious Plurality, Referential Realism: Paradigms of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ into the surrounding world of primitive natural religion until most of the world was drawn up into one or other of the great revealed faiths. 10 According to Hick, the variant expressions of Divine Reality contained within the different religions are not necessarily or automatically mutually exclusive, but rather necessarily limited, yet complementary, images or manifestations of the Divine Reality, “each expressing some aspect or range of aspects and yet none by itself fully and exhaustively corresponding to the infinite nature of the ultimate reality.” 11 Hick further suggests that the variant salvific paths of religion indicate that religions themselves may be regarded as different manifestations to humanity of a yet more ultimate ground of all salvific transformation... the possibility that an infinite transcendent reality is being differently conceived, and therefore differently experienced, and therefore differently responded to from within our several religio-cultural ways of being human. 12 Ground and goal, though complementarily linked, are nevertheless two variant paradigms of the pluralist hypothesis which together form the usual definitional understandings. Peter Byrne, while seeking a philosophical defence of this first form, or set, of the pluralist paradigm, is critical of Hick. He asserts that Hick’s Kantian epistemology, instead of supporting realism, “threatens the realist perspective on religious discourse.” 13 Byrne argues that “it is very easy to read Hick’s account as giving us only cognitive contact with the appearances of the transcendent: reference is cast as a ‘mode of cognitive contact between speaker and object.’” 14 Thus he further asserts that from Hick’s use of the appearance/thing in itself distinction, true beliefs about the sacred as it appears and as it is defined by... culture do not carry over into true beliefs about the sacred itself. Sense in this case does not appear to be connected with reference. 15 In effect Hick opposes any view that sees the transcendent in itself - that to which religions refer - as the objective focus of religious activity. Rather what is regarded as the object of worship is but a phenomenal focus. For Byrne, Hick holds that the sheer fact of religious experience

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___________________________________________________________ yields cognitive contact with the sacred; but the how of the contact - the phenomenal features of the experience, so to speak - are a matter of culture and tradition. Thus Hick upholds a concept of noumenal commonality, but grants phenomenal variety in relation to that. Furthermore, on Hick’s view this variety is a function solely of perception and reception within a religious tradition, therefore giving no apodeitic certainty as to the substantive content of the noumenal referent of religion: the ‘religious reality’ behind, or under-girding, the religions is beyond direct comprehension. But, argues Byrne, authentic “cognitive contact with an object surely entails that something of how that object is perceived is down to its character.” 16 Byrne views Hick’s distinction as too severe. He states: Hick thinks that differences in conceptions of the transcendent provide prime evidence for the necessity of employing the terms of his Kantian idealism for a theory of religion. They prompt us to make the distinction between the Real in itself and the Real as reflected and refracted within human thought and experience. The latter, phenomenal Real, gives us a set of personae and impersonae through which the Real in itself is encountered. Their authenticity as models of the Real consists solely in whether the traditions which surround them are in soteriological alignment with the Real itself. So... phenomenal personae and impersonae have a limited cognitive value. 17 Thus Hick’s realism effectively claims that “the objects of religious belief exist independently of what we take to be our experience of them.” 18 Of course, Hick does write of religious experience in terms of relationship with or to “an extra-mental, extra-mundane reality” although such experience is nevertheless mediated by concepts that belong to the phenomenal side of his noumenal/phenomenal divide.” 19 However, it is human concepts which give the experience its determinate character, and that character is thus explicable in human, cultural terms. So the determinate character of the experience is a product of human construction. Each tradition provides a ‘cognitive filter’… which determines the precise character of the experience of the Real. What then is left for the

198 Religious Plurality, Referential Realism: Paradigms of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ ontology demanded by religious realism to contribute to the actual character of religion? 20 Byrne’s point against Hick’s epistemology is that “its greater stress on cognitive freedom and on the contribution of the knowing subject to the contents of consciousness leaves links between the ontology of realism and its semantics and epistemology problematic.” 21 So, from Byrne’s perspective, it would seem that this first - and predominant - paradigmatic set of pluralism is fraught with philosophical problems. However, there are other sets. The second paradigm set consists of a single extreme definition of pluralism, namely a paradigm I call Radically Differentiated Pluralism. This holds that religious differences signal irreconcilable differentiation of religious identities. Thus there is no reasonable ground to assume a link across religions: their individual, or particular, identities militate against any such linkage as inferred by the predominant paradigms of pluralism. The difference between religions is of such a nature that, strictly speaking, it is illicit even to consider that there is any point of meaningful conceptual contact among them. A leading exponent of this variant is the American theologian and philosopher John Cobb. 22 For him religions are not variant expressions of, or responses to, the one Divine Reality. Rather they are genuinely plural and discrete phenomena in respect of the realities they represent. Cobb is suspicious of the notion of a “universal theology of religion,” for example. Indeed, following Cantwell Smith, he sees difficulties with the term religion itself as a denominating label, for the term presupposes one singular thing, or one phenomenal category. What are conveniently called religions, on this view of pluralism, cannot be said to be variant examples of any single category in the first place. The attractiveness of this paradigm lies in its clear assertion of the individual identity and integrity of the religions: none can be adequately interpreted in the terms of another; none can be viewed as in any sense subsumed within another. So it would seem to offer no opening for Byrne’s discussion of referential realism in respect to religious pluralism. However, the radical relativism of this definitional paradigm effectively rules it out of a discussion of religious pluralism and referential realism. So we move on. There is a third set that stands alongside the standard and the extreme sets of definitional paradigms of pluralism, and which, I suggest, offers more fruitful ground for the sort of philosophical consideration that Byrne pursues. We might call this the interdependent set of paradigms, and there are again two variants.

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___________________________________________________________ The first I call the Complementarity Holistic Pluralism for it holds that religious differences may be discerned as complementary particular expressions which together comprise the Universal Whole. The American scholar, Paul Knitter, exemplifies this category in that he proposes an idea of “unitive pluralism.” 23 As Ariarajah points out, Knitter argues that “in the contemporary pluralistic world there cannot be just one religion, but neither can there be many that exist in ‘indifferent tolerance’.” 24 Knitter holds a relational view of truth wherein the differences and particularities of religions are reconciled, but not materially equivalent. The plurality of religions is not so much a matter of non-competing variant out-workings of a common ground or goal, but rather the mutual complementarity of different parts together comprising a complex whole. The world’s religions together comprise the whole of what religion is as such. The Divine Reality encountered and expressed variegatedly in and through different religions is not the One Reality behind religions, as it were, but the One Reality that is comprised by them all. In similar fashion, Dynamic Parallel Pluralism is a paradigm which holds that religious differences are perceived as reflecting a parallelism of religious phenomena. This perspective may be gleaned from the phenomenological study of religion as espoused by Ninian Smart and others. 25 The affirmation of pluralism asserts the authenticity of phenomena without commenting on matters of validity or veracity. What is observed as a result of analysis of presented data - the phenomena that together comprise any given religion - is the presence of dynamic parallels of religious phenomena rather than substantive sameness. From the observation and analysis can be discerned a number of dynamic parallels across all dimensions of religious phenomena that are operative in and through the various narrative traditions of the religions of the world. For example, all major religions contain a narrative account of an inherent less-than-satisfactory state of affairs for human existence, howsoever arrived at in terms of specific narratives. In all cases, however, this state of affairs requires some transformative action to overcome and so enable the attainment of an ultimate outcome or destiny. The stories expressing this vary, as do the doctrines and teachings relating thereto. But the dynamic contained within the differing narratives redounds with parallel similarities. Religious plurality may be interpreted in terms of dynamic parallels of religious intuition and response. This is the point of commonality that yet preserves the integrity of difference. Religions are not variants of the same thing, but they are variant expressions of parallel processes.

200 Religious Plurality, Referential Realism: Paradigms of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ 4.

Pluralism and Realism Peter Byrne aims to show that “at the heart of pluralism” there “lies a realist perspective on religion... a realist perspective on human religious thought is best represented by a pluralist view of the religions.” 26 Now, there is a significant debate within philosophical theology in regard to the realist versus anti-realist divide. Realist perspectives - there is more than one - view religions, and so religious language, as having an external real referent; anti-realism denies this in favour of a view that religion is a product of human imagining and is shaped by human language. On this view religious language is still meaningful - contrary to early twentiethcentury linguistic positivism, which also held an anti-realist view of religion but concluded that religious language, if not religion itself, was essentially and strictly meaningless. Contemporary anti-realists such as Don Cupitt and Lloyd Geering hold that, Wittgensteinian-like, religious language comprises a human meaningful game: but there is no Divine Reality as such that is outside of human ken. A religious fundamentalist, who tends to reflect an exclusivist mentality, avers just the opposite: God, or some equivalent Divine Reality, not only exists, but is the fullness of reality itself, and is directly described by the scriptural text and doctrinal formularies of the religion. This represents the position of naïve realism. Other theists may wish to take a different tack, something which has been referred to as critical realism, that is to say, religion does refer to an objective reality beyond human experience and conceptual construct, but that the relationship between this reality and human language that refers to it needs to be critically assessed: symbolism, metaphor and indeed a wide gamut of linguistic modalities and conceptual typologies apply. It is more into this context that the work of Byrne speaks. Byrne seeks to propound the plausibility of pluralism, philosophically, by recourse to an exposition of referential realism, and he begins by acknowledging religious pluralism in terms of the standard definitional set I described above, namely as being concerned with the postulate of a “common object of reference for at least many of the world’s great religions.” 27 Indeed, following Janet Martin Soskice, Byrne asserts that the doctrine that all major religious traditions refer to a common sacred, transcendent reality is at the heart of pluralism. To distinguish itself from naturalism, it must affirm that some sacred, non-human reality informs the religions even though no religion ever describes that reality adequately. 28

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___________________________________________________________ Rather like John Hick who uses the term The Real to denote this object, so Byrne utilises the terms sacred and transcendent, where the former evokes an evaluative category and the latter an ontological one. The sacred is that which is conceived as being of the highest possible value and, on some conceptions, as the source of all value in the world. The transcendent is an object of reference whose reality is not exhaustively contained within the spatio-temporal and which, in consequence, is crucially unlike in certain respects ordinary objects of reference. 29 Byrne argues that there must be, as a minimal point of pluralism, at least one common referent held within religions and this he names as the providing of “real contact with a single transcendent focus.” 30 This does not entail equality in all respects, or the vitiation of evaluative comparison either across religions or with reference to component elements. Setting aside the paradigm of radical differentiation, it would seem that Byrne’s claim might hold. But he adds to this minimum “the element of scepticism or agnosticism with regard to the detailed dogmatic or mythical structure of any specific form of faith.” 31 Now a pluralist tends to question “whether the detailed dogmatics of any particular religion can be known with sufficient certainty to enable [that particular] faith to be the means of interpreting human religion.” Therefore, concludes Byrne, “pluralism must take its stand on a grand negative: there is not the certainty in any particular religion to enable its world-view to be the basis of a viable interpretation of religion.” 32 It is this, he says, that draws a boundary between pluralism and inclusivism. Putting together - as fundamental perspectives on reality arising from out of the plurality of religions - on the one hand the notion of transcendent-sacred reality, and on the other the interconnecting of human existence (with that reality as the route to a salvific or transformative resolution), and adding in a stance of “agnosticism toward, and therefore disengagement from, the specifics of any confessional interpretation of religion,” Byrne arrives at what he refers to as the three minimal elements of religious pluralism as philosophical theses. (1) All major religious traditions are equal in respect of making common reference to a single transcendent, sacred reality. (2) All major traditions are likewise equal in respect of offering some means or other to human salvation. (3) All traditions are to be seen as

202 Religious Plurality, Referential Realism: Paradigms of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ containing revisable, limited accounts of the nature of the sacred: none is certain enough in its particular dogmatic formulations to provide the norm for interpreting the others. 33 So far, so good. Clearly Byrne is taking a realist perspective - religion has to do, philosophically speaking, with reality. But, it has to be asked, reality of what sort? Pluralism, he says, “shares realism with confessional interpretations of religion, but whereas their realism is partial (favouring some one tradition above others), pluralism’s is not.” 34 That is to say, the pluralist attack upon the confessional stances “stresses the epistemological implausibilities in exclusivism and inclusivism.” 35 That being so, what then is Byrne’s positive perspective on pluralism? He avers that it is important to note that pluralism must define its commitment to the cultural basis of religious thought very carefully. It cannot, on the pain of incoherence, ally itself to any doctrine affirming that all thought, or all religious thought, is through and through culturally relative or determined. It needs instead an account of how religious thought is culturally limited and hence relative to a degree. 36 Thus the notion of a transcendent referent requires capacity of thought beyond the culturally limited; the notion of universal perspective inherent in pluralism presupposes a larger vista or capacity: we have returned to the issue of particularism and universalism. Pluralism is not inimical to religious commitment. It does not abandon faith. It is merely sceptical as to assertions of dogmatic detail. 37 Philosophically, the pluralist perspective holds that each major tradition is to be seen as a revisable, limited, relative but nonetheless valuable attempt to put human beings in contact with a sacred, transcendent reality. The existence and nature of this reality has informed all these major traditions to a degree. 38 Byrne argues that the fact of the same referential object, or reality, holding across different systems of thought does not of itself require there to be agreement as to the description of the object. Thus, for religion, the attempt to simply “establish a thesis of common reference for the religions need not be defeated by the varied list of key features which have been

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___________________________________________________________ applied to the transcendent in them.” 39 For example, there can be even fundamental differences holding “between personal and impersonal conceptions of the sacred” and, indeed, “further differences within each of these two families.” 40 At the same time, Byrne points out that there is, indeed, substantial overlap with respect to descriptions of the transcendent as held by the different religious traditions which can “bring out the apparent major point of agreement across many traditions that there is a transcendent ground of reality which is the sum and source of value.” 41 Thus he suggests that a pluralist realism is but “a matter of finding sufficient identifying description of the transcendent across traditions.” 42 In respect to alternatives to referential realism, Byrne points out that so-called “descriptive-reference” simply begs the question of truth and leads to a “dominance of one tradition over others in articulating the common truth or reality.” 43 The descriptive-referential viewpoint is the philosophical seedbed of both exclusivism and inclusivism. Thus pluralism must be detached from descriptive referentialism, or the descriptive theory of reference, “both because it does not provide an easy way of securing common reference in the face of cognitive conflicts between religions and because it promises an unfavourable account of the character of realism.” 44 Byrne further makes the point that “if alleged identifying descriptions could be seen as referential not attributive, because they were facets of a gradual, fallible process of epistemic access to the sacred, divergence would not matter to the same degree.” 45 This is a significant point and is suggestive, in my view, of what might be called a phenomenological hermeneutic of religion wherein a distinction is made between descriptive data and the embedded dynamic such that the clue to the nature of what it is that the descriptive data refers to is indicated by the dynamic contained within the narrative or action or whatever religious phenomena that is the subject of attention. Thus we might say there is a two-level, or two-stage referential process and any notion of the truth of the matter is found in respect to an analysis of the dynamics as well as the data of religion. Now, in discussing realism per se, Byrne states that pluralism entails a realist view of religion, but what in turn that view consists in and what it implies for our understanding of religion is hard to determine. At its crudest a realist conception of religion states that there are real things corresponding to religious concepts. 46 Whereas the non-realist holds there is no correspondence between commonsense concepts and the extra-mental existence of things

204 Religious Plurality, Referential Realism: Paradigms of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ corresponding to the concepts, realism holds there is a point of correspondence. So, what is the nature of the correspondence? Religious realism, according to Byrne “is more properly a minimal realism, affirming that an extra-mental entity or state corresponds to the fundamental concepts of the focus of religion.” 47 Thus realism in religion looks as if it ought to be the view that some religious concepts genuinely correspond to transcendent entities and states. Put this way it is no more, and no less, than the view that there is a sacred, transcendent reality. 48 Quite. But has the cause of arguing realism as congruent with pluralism been advanced? For Byrne, a common referent can attract divergent descriptions and responses. This suggests more than simply variant descriptions of the one thing, be it ultimate ground or goal. Rather it suggests religions varyingly refer to a real object, but not that which is known directly through experience or observation, but mediately, through the responsive interactions that have formed religious narrative and discourse about that reality. Thus the semantic heart of religious realism is in the notion of reference rather than truth. Byrne avers: It will be the idea of reference which establishes the cognitive contact between concepts and reality which in turn grounds a realist perspective on the way of thinking that embodies those concepts. 49 And, indeed, reference to this reality is “a material practice in which true description plays but a small part - contexts, methods of investigation and causal links between speaker and object being primary.” 50 Thus, as Byrne points out, on the one hand something can be “interpreted realistically although it is to a large extent false” and, on the other, “strict or extensive truth in a mode of discourse is not a necessary condition for interpreting it realistically.” 51 How is this so? Byrne holds that a statement is true “because it has an objective structure, because the appropriate referential relations hold between its parts and reality, and because of the independent nature of that reality.” 52 Furthermore, unlike the claim of Idealism, Realism suggests that the knower does not construct or constitute the thing known … so it opens the possibility

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___________________________________________________________ that knowledge may be hard to come by and that many of our statements about the world may not posses strict truth. 53 Thus, for Byrne, referential realism allows for a middle path between, on the one hand, those who opt for rampant subjectivism in religion as the only means to save ourselves from intolerant, authoritarian dogmatism and, on the other hand, those who think that strict truth must attach to the dogmas of some confession or other if we are not to fall into the pit of out and out relativism and non-cognitivism. 54 5.

Conclusion Byrne asserts that what is proclaimed by pluralism, in general

terms, is an agnosticism which makes the possibility of absolute truth in one of the confessions too unlikely to serve as the basis for interpreting religion as a whole... pluralism does not affirm that an affirmation such as ‘Jesus is the Son of God’ is proved false. (Rather) it can and does affirm that such an affirmation belongs to a set of doctrinal statements which have cognitive point. 55 That is to say, such doctrinal statements that “define a particular faith may have referential success, metaphorical truth and thereby a referential intent which is vindicated.” 56 On the other hand, he acknowledges the potential retort that pluralism affirms that one cannot say ‘Jesus is the Son of God’ and reasonably believe it to be true, in the sense of corresponding to reality. Doctrinal statements may refer to religious reality, but they are presumed by pluralism not to describe that reality truly, in detail and with any certainty, since no one can do that. 57 Arguably, Byrne’s discussion is limited to the extent that he is working within the framework of the standard predominant definitional set, namely Common Ground and Common Goal pluralisms. We have seen above that

206 Religious Plurality, Referential Realism: Paradigms of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ the extreme set, that of Radically Differentiated pluralism, effectively excludes itself from the discussion. I suggest that Byrne’s advocacy of referential realism might resonate better with pluralism understood in terms of the interdependent set of paradigms that involve notions of complementarity and dynamic parallels holding across religions. The point of comparative contact, then, is not a matter of substantive sameness versus difference with allied problems of truth and relativism. It would seem, for example, that Byrne’s assertion that “pluralism does not require all religions to offer the same account of salvation, merely that all religions must be alike in offering some means of relating salvifically to the sacred” is a case in point where Byrne’s argument is arguably congruent with the dynamic parallelism interpretation of pluralism. 58 Byrne’s work on referential realism as the philosophical underpinning for religious pluralism has much to commend it. Further discussion and development is called for. My own juxtaposing of Byrne with an analysis of the paradigms of pluralism is perhaps suggestive of fruitful possibilities.

Dr Douglas Pratt is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Religious Studies Programme, Department of Philosophy, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

Notes 1

Peter Byrne, Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism: Reference and Realism in Religion (London: Macmillan, 1995). 2 See my “Pluralism and Interreligious Engagement: The Contexts of Dialogue,” in A Faithful Presence, essays for Kenneth Cragg, ed. David Thomas with Clare Amos (London: Melisende Press, 2003), 402-418. 3 Byrne, vii. 4 Ibid. 5

Ibid. See my review of Tariq Ali’s The Clash of Fundamentalisms (London: Verso, 2002), “The Fundamentals of Fundamentalism,” in The Drawing Board: An Australian Review of Public Affairs, 20 June 2003, . 7 Diana L. Eck, Encountering God. A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banares (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 174. 8 John Hick, The Rainbow of Faiths (London: SCM Press, 1995), 15. 6

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___________________________________________________________ 9

Ibid, 139. Ibid, 137. 11 John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate (London: SCM Press, 1993), 140. 12 Ibid. 13 Byrne, 37. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid, 38. 16 Ibid, 39. 17 Ibid, 153. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid, 171. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 See for example, John Cobb, Beyond Dialogue (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982). See also Leonard Swidler, et al., Death or Dialogue? (London: SCM Press, 1990). 23 See Paul F. Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1985); - One Earth Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue & Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1995). 24 S. Wesley Ariarajah, Hindus and Christians: A Century of Protestant Ecumenical Thought, volume 5 of Currents of Encounter: Studies on the Contact between Christianity and Other Religions, Beliefs and Cultures. (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi; and Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B. Eerdmns, 1991), 177. 25 See Ninian Smart, The World's Religions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); also, for example, John A. Hutchison, Paths of Faith, 4th ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991); Theodore M. Ludwig, The Sacred Paths, (New York: Macmillan, 1989); Douglas Pratt, Religion: A First Encounter (Auckland: Longman Paul, 1993). 26 Byrne, viii. 27 Ibid, ix. 28 Ibid, 39; cf. Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 149. 29 Byrne, 39. 30 Ibid, 5. 31 Ibid, 6. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid, 12. 34 Ibid, 17. 10

208 Religious Plurality, Referential Realism: Paradigms of Pluralism ___________________________________________________________ 35

Ibid, 19; note that for Byrne ‘confessional’ includes exclusivist and inclusivist accounts. 36 Ibid, 22. 37 cf. Ibid, 26. 38 Ibid, 32. 39 Ibid, 33. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid, 35. 43 Ibid, 36. 44 Ibid, 42. 45 Ibid, 54. 46 Ibid, 167. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid, 168. 49 Ibid, 173. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid, 174. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid, 176. 55 Ibid, 202. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid, 85.

References Ali, Tariq. The Clash of Fundamentalisms. London: Verso, 2002. Ariarajah, S. Wesley. Hindus and Christians: A Century of Protestant Ecumenical Thought. Vol. 5 of Currents of Encounter: Studies on the Contact between Christianity and Other Religions, Beliefs and Cultures. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi; and Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1991. Byrne, Peter. Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism: Reference and Realism in Religion. London: Macmillan, 1995.

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___________________________________________________________ Cobb, John. Beyond Dialogue. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982. Eck, Diana L. Encountering God. A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banares. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. Hick, John. The Rainbow of Faiths. London: SCM Press, 1995. Hick, John. The Metaphor of God Incarnate. London: SCM Press, 1993. Hutchison, John A. Paths of Faith. 4th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991. Knitter, Paul F. No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1985. Knitter, Paul F. One Earth Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue & Global Responsibility. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1995. Ludwig, Theodore M. The Sacred Paths. New York: Macmillan,1989. Pratt, Douglas. “Pluralism and Interreligious Engagement: The Contexts of Dialogue.” In A Faithful Presence: Essays for Kenneth Cragg, edited by David Thomas with Clare Amos, 402-418, London: Melisende Press, 2003. Pratt, Douglas. “The Fundamentals of Fundamentalism,” The Drawing Board: An Australian Review of Public Affairs 20 June 2003, . Pratt, Douglas. Religion: A First Encounter. Auckland: Longman Paul, 1993. Smart, Ninian. The World's Religions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Soskice, Janet Martin. Metaphor and Religious Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Swidler, Leonard and John Cobb, Jr. Death or Dialogue? London: SCM Press, 1990.

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